Itch.io Made a Home For the Marginalized, Then Discarded Us
One week after Ana Valens reported on Collective Shout's efforts, including it's future targeting of Itch.io, and the half-resuscitated corpse of Waypoint decided to censor her, again (and reveal how botched that resurrection was)
A week after the purge of NSFW games on Steam, a feat later claimed by Collective Shout...
A month after Fansly gave sex workers 5 days to remove everything they'd ever posted using extremely common kink terms...
Four years after OnlyFans limited what could be hosted on their platform at the behest of Exodus Cry...
Four years since Ana first wrote about the weakness of Itch to payment processor tampering...
One day ago, Itch quietly "de-indexed" nearly every "adult" game, book, and piece of media on their site without warning, and many queer works that were not "adult." This goes beyond the usual "shadow-banning" adult content normally faces, where it ceases to appear in searches, but you can still find the work from the artist's page.
These de-indexed works vanish from nearly every part of itch, save for your library, if you already bought them, of course. Since Itch's UI has always sucked, that also means to find and download any such works before they're potentially removed from there too, one must scroll the unsearchable library of everything you own until you spot it.
Note; at time of writing, despite still being an active tag, NSFW is only returning 3 games, there were over 20,000 yesterday, and a single book on itch. The results are largely the same or lower for "adult" and the "erotic/erotica" tags as well.
Before I bother going further, there's on point I'm going to make very clear; Porn is art. Games are art. Books are art. Censoring it is wrong. I don't care if your kid sees it, it's your responsibility as a parent to have those discussions with your kids. It's your responsibility to keep them safe and pay attention to the media they have access to. Censoring NSFW, trans, and otherwise queer art does not keep children safe.
Second point of clarification, freedom of speech is great, mostly because it expressly doesn't and has never protected hate speech, though it is often used as the justification.
Got it? Cool, so here's what happened.
Sometime yesterday, the news started spreading around trans-authorial-BlueSky, that some adult works were being shadowbanned from Itch.io with no notice to the sellers. Around midnight Mountain time Itch put out their damningly pallid statement, the first use of the "Itch Updates" page since 2019. To their sellers who'd been pressing for answers in the Itch discord server, they said nothing.
Several other issues have been brought to light in the hours since the wave of poor choices began. Some SFW works being caught in the drag net, yes of course they're queer.
Some sellers are reporting they can't request payouts, believed to be related to they have funds tied to suspended products. With the barest benefit of the doubt, Itch had this to say in response to a now deleted post, making this one significantly harder to find organically.
We have not denied any payouts to creators as part of yesterday's review. If there are any creators in which we are unable to process a payout for then we'll contact them directly. We do understand that the eligibility message is confusing given the context so we're updating the text on the notices
— itch.io (@itch.io) July 24, 2025 at 12:50 PM
It bares a macabre resemblance to December 2024, when all of Itch was taken down for seven hours by Funko Pop. For those who forgot, Funko is a client of BrandShield, an, of course, "AI" powered, brand protection tool, which saw images of the Funko Fusion game hosted on Itch because a user had DARED to make a fan page for the critically panned game; which drove Brandshield so mad it generated a fraud complaint for the domain.
This omnishamble, on the other hand, has been blamed on Collective Shout, the far-right Christian "feminist" group out of Australia who claimed responsibility for the Steam delistings two weeks ago. Collective Shout maintain defuse and nebulous connections to, the NCOSE (National Center on Sexual Exploitation) a powerful Christian anti-sex and anti-porn lobby based in the US, though they make a habit of parroting the same talking points at convenient moments. And like the Funko Take down, their gripe was supposed to be over a single game, one that was already banned from itch in April*, after it was banned from 3 countries and voluntarily left Steam in March.
*This link is primarily to denote when "No Mercy" was removed from itch, as it was not popular and received little coverage. I must warn, the linked post is using the legitimate censorship grievances and making correct points about them, while also using it as cover for the elements of the game that actually deserve objectionWhy yes, it was the same game Collective Shout went after Steam for, and no, your masterful awareness of linear time has not failed you, July 2025 did still come after both March and April 2025.
That game was No Mercy. It’s a 3d animated visual novel whose Steam page description I won’t even risk putting on my website. It’s rape-y, male power fantasy, all women are cheating skanks, drivel. Go look at the steam page if you really care, it’s still up.
Is it vile, repugnant, and offensive? Sure.
I also find orientalist and rape-y hetslop romance novels vile and repugnant. Know what I do about them?
I don't fucking buy them!
I stay away from those who do save to occasionally offer the less unreasonable ones something better. It existing hurts me significantly less than the systems of patriarchy and capitalism in the real world the rape game is emulating.
Collective Shout, the group that took credit for bullying Mastercard into recently censoring more platforms, stated that apparently it took them ~1000 phonecalls to convince them to give them what they wanted? We got like way more people than that don't we?
— Mr Peculiar 🔞 (@mrpecu.bsky.social) July 23, 2025 at 8:59 PM
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According to Collective Shout themselves, all it took was 1067 calls to Master Card.
Both Steam and Itch have agreed to stricter controls on adult and queer works after a single organization pressured their payment processor over a single game. One which both storefronts removed MONTHS ago. And of course, the game still exists on the owners's site (actually , while editing this their site updated to remove the subscribestar link, so it may not actually be available anywhere) I've be honest, I also maintain some suspicion with the game itself; as while I can see someone deciding Zerat Games is a cool combination of phonemes, I can't help but notice the dev hasn't really expressed a connection to colonial India nor a niche all women group from a squad tactics game even my nerd ass has never heard of (nor does it feel great they're called 'ze rat' for being spies and assassins).
Let's just say neither of those resonate with a game about blackmail, rape, and white women being more monstrous than their rapists in a non-suspicious way.
Some have argued that Stripe’s recent update to its Prohibited and Restricted Businesses list may have been a factor as well. While they may have been a contributing factor, that update was on July 8th and Collective Shout has been focused on Steam and Itch for months.
I already hear you asking, "Well it sounds like this 'charity,' Master Card, and maybe Stripe are the ones who we should blame right?"
Wrong, but only partially.
Itch is also to blame. Most stores have "non-disparagement" clauses with their payment processors, so while they couldn't necessarily say, "This change is evil and being forced on us by Stripe and Mastercard," they could have talked with sellers. They could have organized with sellers and buyers.
They could, say, have seen that The Queer Lights in the Darkness Bundle, a single bundle supporting 38 different authors, ALONE made $46,160 during its 30 day run. The bundle was organized by Benjanun 'Bee' Sriduangkaew, a prominent figure in the rapidly growing pond of self-published lesbian authors feeling abandoned by modern publishing. Her support has been instrumental to myriad first time authors, especially trans women. Bee has also been one of the greatest proponents of Itch as one of the best spaces for those marginalized authors.
Bethany Karsten, of The Trans Femminine Review, whose coverage I will always recommend (you really should look at her piece on this shit show too), has been another major forces driving trans and lesbian authors to Itch.
She and Bee have been WILDLY successful! The 50% of the Popular and Top Sellers sections of Itch.io books that aren’t programming language books are now and have been for months, lesbian and trans fiction!
Instead of talking to the people who’ve been in their corner, who have been organizing and marketing for them, or literally ANYONE using the platform; Itch fed the NSFW and queer works, those bringing new blood to the platform for the first time in years, to the payment processor gestapo.
One can empathize with their position, but I do not care about the "struggles" of the shop, which takes a cut of every sale, known for hosting adult and queer work, kneecapping that work.
Itch will lose some money. Each of those sellers is losing a livelihood; for many, one their art already earned. They are not of a par.
It's a classic Catch 22. Itch will likely lose MORE money when this all shakes out. For those who haven't caught the pattern yet, unless you have the cultural ubiquity of Steam, the results of situations like this are consistent. Revealing that you allow artistic work to be censored, leads to leftist and aware artists avoiding your platform. Which leaves only the inattentive and the chuds. The same ones who already hate Itch and created the situation for having ever allowed queers at all.
The censors and the fascists don't want these stores to operate. They don't care about claiming them. They care about killing the spaces where marginalized people are welcome.
You can see it with Harvard and Columbia too. If you give in to the fascists all they're going to do is keep tearing chunks off until they leave your bleeding, hollowed-out, corpse in the street as an example for the everyone else.
So, yes, you should be pissed at itch. They can and should have organized in response. Hells, while, I think she's overly credulous with those those who haven’t earned the benefit of the doubt (I say that with an admitted dollop of envy for her ability to do so), Ana Valens has been warning that this was a known weakness of Itch for YEARS, and they did nothing.
However, being angry at Itch does not do anything to fix the problem. So here are several things you can do.
First and foremost, you can and should call Mastercard and Visa. Yes, really. It's what Collective Shout did, and there are way more than 1067 people who want to buy lesbian, trans, and/or horny art. I know for a fact Magica Riot alone has sold 2 times that. Void has already written a step by step guide for calling and emailing Visa and Mastercard as well as several of the other options I’m going to talk about and maybe dissuade you from in a minute, so read through this first.
I know we're upset about itch, but they're not the only ones Payment processors harassed companies bc of a 1,000 email hate campaign But we can EASILY top 1,000! I prewrote an email + got the contact info - you just have to send! ↻💬♡ to boost We CAN make a difference 💕 #itch #censorship 1/🧵
— Void🔞 | VGen (@voiddebris.bsky.social) July 24, 2025 at 8:19 AM
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Next, Collective Shout itself may also be in violation of the ACNC (Australian Charity and Not-for-profits Commission) for operating as an Australian based charity (and lobbying organization) while failing to materially direct relief or provide a service to any marginalized group. Only Australian citizens can access this method, but it is an option.
this is worth repeating honestly. if you are in Australia and would like to look more into it, you can do so here: www.acnc.gov.au/raise-concern
— Lucy. (@transtextual.bsky.social) July 24, 2025 at 5:41 AM
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If you're a seller on Itch, you can also join the growing movement of folks setting the percentage cut Itch gets of each of their sales to 0%.
These last two are, frankly, liberal and naive, but they are options. If they do end up working as intended, I will gladly and gayly eat crow.
First is the ACLU petition against Mastercard. The ACLU has consigned sex workers and trans people to our fates before, it is not an organization to be trusted implicitly. They have done and will hopefully continue to do good work, but they're not unimpeachable by any means. Additionally, this petition has hit it's threshold before, but they have not pursued a case, raising the required signature numbers instead. Heck, while I wrote this piece is crossed 100,000 and the petition page jumped right up to 150,000 needed.
Second issue with this option; the American court system does not function. It barely did before, but SCOTUS has repeatedly made it clear that their rulings will be in support of fascist policies despite all existing precedent and law. Any ACLU case would likely need to reach SCOTUS to have the desired impact. Do the math.
The other option is... fraught. The idea is for Americans to push their senators and representatives to support S.401 (senate version) and H.R.987 (house version), the Fair Access to Banking Act. Neither has had any action since being submitted to respective committees after their introduction on February 5th 2025 by Representative Andy Barr [R-KY] and Senator Kevin Cramer [R-ND].
Obviously, those R's are telling. The situation is similar to the GOP obsession with un-taxed tips. The stated goal is great, the problem is the intent to turn executive pay and bonuses into untaxed "tips."
It's also why these bills are sitting in committee despite 43 and 73, GOP only, co-sponsors respectively. Good on paper and in-fact, the stated desire is even one I agree with, but before you support a bill, you should know it's intended impact. Namely, these bills are to prevent another instance of Operation Choke Point, an initiative of the US Department of Justice and the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) that ran from 2013 until August 2017, investigating banks that operated in areas which, while legal, the FDIC argued were at a higher risk for fraud. This notably included things the GOP famously make billions off of, including firearms sales, travel clubs, debt schemes, ponzi schemes, multi-level-marketing schemes, telemarketing, home-based charities, payday loans, and online gambling. Feel free to note who was president when it was ended and how many of his business ventures I just described and why the Chairman of the House Committee on Financial Services was going on about it and it’s paltry anti crypto 2.0 under Biden, on February 5th, when H.R. 987 was submitted.
That being said, currently, the bills have no amendments and their text does actually seem to do what we want it too here. Caveats of course being.
The GOP are not that far from declaring porn, which they define as seemingly everything not white, Christian, and straight, illegal
The US judiciary who'd be obliged to enforce the law have, again, already made their position as a purely political and fully biased body known
The US legislator is currently out on one of it's extremely regular vacations, while also ducking their MAGA constituents hoping they'll forget about the Epstein Files (which they likely will)
Read the quote at the end of this article when you get there
We are long past the point where the US government or law can be counted on to act the way Americans like to think it does. You can't, "vote blue no matter who" your way out of this world. You can't pretend you don't see the Democratic 2028 presidential hopefuls lining up to take their free shot at trannies and Palestinians and still claim to stand against this shit.
Let me not fill you entirely with dread, the position is not hopeless.
You need to let this, and the last decade of fascist back-sliding, radicalize you. The systems are not broken. They are functioning exactly as intended, you're merely noticing who they were always supposed to support.
Sure, call your reps, see if they answer the phone. But, first, call and email Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, and Stripe. Tell them, respectfully, those customer service folks didn't do shit to you, what you want and what you will do if you don't get it.
Stop letting white suprematists and Nazis decide what artist is allowed to eat or have a roof over her head because making a phone call or writing an email is hard.
Before I get to thanking my supporters, I will leave you with a quote you likely heard at least a bit of before now, and yes, the legislator and courts, are the master's tools.
“For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. Racism and homophobia are real conditions of all our lives in this place and time. I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside herself and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives here. See whose face it wears. Then the personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices.” - Audre Lorde
Upside, noted racist shit gremlin and huge Trump fanboy, Hulk Hogan, finally died today.
Thank you as always to my supporters for making all of this possible, as a reminder I really only make about $80 a month between Patreon, Ko-fi, and Twitch, so please consider throwing me and other creatives you enjoy a few bucks. I can honestly say every time I get a new $5 supporter I have to fight back tears, and I know plenty of folks are in the same boat as me.
