Digital Stores Censor Adult Games After Advocacy Push

Thousands of titles removed sparking free speech debate and backlash

Major digital game platforms have removed thousands of adult-themed video games, igniting fierce online debate over censorship and the influence of payment processors on creative expression.

Payment Processors Drive Platform Policy Shift

The upheaval began when Steam, the world’s largest PC gaming marketplace, implemented a new rule requiring all content to comply with the policies of major payment providers, including Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal. This change, introduced approximately two weeks ago, led to the swift delisting of hundreds of adult-oriented games, some with explicit titles such as “Slave Doll” and “Sex Adventures: Incest Family.”

Shortly after, smaller platform itch.io announced a complete removal of all games tagged as “not safe for work” (NSFW). In a statement, itch.io founder **Leaf Corcoran** explained the decision was made to satisfy payment processor demands while a new adult content policy was being developed. The platform later updated its policy on July 28, explicitly prohibiting themes such as “Rape, coercion or force-related,” “Underage or ‘barely legal’ themes,” and “Incest or pseudo-incest content.” Neither Steam nor itch.io provided comment to the ABC.

Advocacy Group Fuels Policy Changes

These sweeping policy changes were spurred by a targeted campaign from the Australian non-profit Collective Shout, which advocates against the objectification of women and the sexualization of girls. In May, the group launched an initiative urging payment processors to pressure Steam and itch.io into removing games that contained “rape, incest and child abuse-themed content.”

Collective Shout’s campaigns manager, **Caitlin Roper**, stated she had identified 491 games on Steam featuring “rape” and “incest” tags prior to the campaign’s launch. She argued that such content, even in fictional contexts, contributes to real-world harm, stating, “This kind of misogyny and normalisation of violence against women … feeds real-world harm to women and to girls.”

On July 11, Collective Shout published an open letter addressed to the CEOs of major financial institutions, questioning how facilitating transactions for such games aligned with their corporate values. A PayPal spokesperson affirmed the company’s commitment to a safe platform, stating, “PayPal is committed to maintaining a safe platform for its customers. We have a zero-tolerance policy towards any illegal activity. Any accounts found to be associated with illegal activity will be closed.” Visa and Mastercard did not respond to requests for comment.

Community Outcry and Free Speech Concerns

The platform changes have ignited significant backlash within the gaming community, with many decrying the moves as censorship and an infringement on free speech. A change.org petition, garnering over 200,000 signatures, criticized Mastercard and Visa for “interfering with legal entertainment.” The petition demands “an end to this censorship of fiction, and the right to choose the stories we enjoy without moral policing.”

Bravo

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 29, 2023

Tech billionaire **Elon Musk** publicly supported the petition by retweeting it with the comment, “Bravo.” **Caitlin Roper** countered the free speech arguments, labeling them as misogynistic. She stated, “What we’re seeing is freedom of speech being used as a justification for misogyny and male violence against women and men claiming free speech in defence of their access to rape simulation games.” **Roper** also revealed that she and her team had faced numerous threats of violence, commenting, “This is not fiction. We are real women in the world being inundated with threats of rape and violence and murder and just the worst kind of misogynistic abuse you can imagine.”

Expert Analysis: Moral Panic and Broader Impacts

Researcher **Brendan Keogh** from the QUT Digital Media Research Centre highlighted the significant influence payment processors wield over online content distribution. He noted, “In reality, a very small number of companies that we rely on to move money around the internet have a lot of power to determine what you are allowed to spend money on, on the internet.”

**Dr Keogh** suggested that Collective Shout’s campaign exhibited characteristics of a moral panic, employing extreme examples to mobilize public support. He cautioned that this could serve as a “smokescreen to remove a much, much broader range of content, which includes primarily queer content and trans content.”

Following the broad removal of NSFW content from itch.io, the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) expressed concern about the potential disproportionate impact on marginalized developers. The IGDA stated, “Queer, trans, femme-identifying, and POC developers may be disproportionately affected by overreaching censorship.” While the IGDA does not endorse games depicting sexual violence or the sexualization of minors, they criticized the blanket ban on NSFW content for affecting the livelihoods and reputations of developers who had not violated any laws. “The issue is not a lack of safeguards, but a lack of proportionate, informed, and transparent enforcement,” the IGDA commented, adding that “The right to make mature games with legal adult content is a creative right, just like the right to tell stories about war, death, or love.”

Advocacy Group Clarifies Scope of Campaign

**Caitlin Roper** clarified that Collective Shout’s campaign specifically targeted games involving rape and incest, stating, “We did not set out to get all NSFW content removed. We specifically targeted rape games, games that promoted sexualised violence against women and children.” Collective Shout’s movement director, **Melinda Tankard Reist**, refuted claims that the campaign targeted LGBT content as a “slanderous lie.” She asserted the group’s unified purpose: “But we come around a common cause for a world free of sexploitation.”

**Melinda Tankard Reist** described the online abuse and threats as aggressive and constant but maintained they would not halt the group’s mission. She added, “This has been a 24/7 operation to protect ourselves and our systems. But once we get through this, we will certainly look at how we can expand the good things that have come out of this campaign. This is a win.”