It’s time for another bulletin from the exciting world of desexindexification. Itch.io have re-listed a bunch of free adult-themed games that were taken down as part of a recent massive cull of supposedly licentious materials under pressure from payment processors. Itch are still, however, working out whether and how to restore paid NSFW projects that were removed from public channels as part of their efforts to stop the payment companies suspending store purchases in general.
In a further mild twist, one of the firms behind Itch.io’s delistings, Stripe, have now informed the site that they themselves are acting under pressure from one of their own banking partners, without naming names. They’d like “to support adult content in the future”. Nonetheless, Itch are still looking for new payment partners who are happier to process this kind of material.
Itch.io’s owner, Leaf Corcoran, announced the return of free NSFW projects to search results, browse pages and recommendations in a blog post today.
To be eligible for re-indexing, your game must have the “no payments” option checked under the “pricing” section of your project’s editing page on your dashboard. Leaf cautions that any “individually priced files” on that game will become free in the process, as Itch doesn’t currently support the ability to have “owners only” stuff on a page configured to be fully free. The site’s management are looking at adding new developer dashboard options to address this.
As for the paid games, Leaf writes that “we are still in ongoing discussions with payment processors and will be re-introducing paid content slowly to ensure we can confidently support the widest range of creators in the long term.”
According to Leaf, Itch have had some relatively positive conversations lately with Stripe, a $91 billion corporation and one of the world’s largest privately owned financial tech companies. The bad news is that Stripe have told Itch.io that they can no longer support payments for any “content designed for sexual gratification”, perhaps the baggiest of recent efforts to pin down the kind of adult content the payment processors object to. They have also, however, passed along the below message to Itch.io’s users:
Stripe is currently unable to support sexually explicit content due to restrictions placed on them by their banking partners, despite card networks generally supporting adult content (with the appropriate registrations). Stripe has indicated that they hope to be able to support adult content in the future.
Itch are still looking for other partners to handle payments for “adult NSFW content”. Leaf defines the latter as follows:
pages that have both the “Contains sensitive material” option checked and a tag suggesting adult content (e.g., “porn,” “mature,” “lewd,” “erotic,” “hentai,” “fetish”).
Regarding the recent paid game takedowns, Leaf says that “now that we have a more specific definition of what Stripe won’t process, we may review that initial list for potential re-introduction”, but that the long-term plan remains “to implement one or more new processors to avoid putting the platform at risk”.
Itch.io are not, of course, the only PC storefront to have taken an axe to their catalogue recently. Valve have also changed their policies to give payment processors, banks and internet service providers more say over what constitutes unacceptable adult material on Steam. They’ve delisted or removed some games as a consequence, though nowhere near as many as Itch. You can read more about that and the pressure group who’ve claimed overall responsibility for the cull here.
I’m currently talking to some economists to build up more of a picture of the financial machinations that undergird this moral panic. I’ll hopefully have more for you on that front next week. In the meantime, why not learn how to put on a condom in Emma Kidwell’s Well This Is Awkward, pictured above.
