Aussie group Collective Shout claims responsibility for removal of NSFW games on Steam, itch.io

Though players insist that payment processors shouldn't be responsible for content moderation.

Australian lobbyist group Collective Shout has claimed responsibility for the removal of not safe for work (NSFW) games from both Steam and itch.io.

“We raised our objection to [rape] and incest games on Steam for months, and they ignored us for months,” reads a post from the group detailing a timeline of events. “We approached payment processors because Steam did not respond to us.”

Here, Collective Shout is referring to a rape and incest simulator called No Mercy, which had appeared and was eventually removed on both platforms.

On Steam, the game was removed from Canadian and Australian storefronts within 24 hours, though it remained on the UK storefront for the better part of a week. Itch.io directly referenced No Mercy in its statement detailing the delisting of all NSFW games, saying it “was temporarily available on itch.io before being banned back in April”.

Regardless, Collective Shout then organised to send 1,067 emails to payment processors including Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal asking for those services to put pressure onto Steam and itch.io. The tactic worked — Steam implemented new (yet vague) strategies to deal with adult content, including the removal of a number of games, while itch.io opted to delist all NSFW content.

Players are organising themselves in the aftermath of Collective Shout’s actions, saying that payment processors like Visa shouldn’t be responsible for the moderation of content.

“I am concerned customer about Visa’s recent efforts to censor adult content on prominent online game retailers, specifically the platforms Steam and Itch.io. As a long-time Visa customer, I see this as a massive overreach into controlling what entirely legal actions/purchases customers are allowed to put their money towards,” reads an open letter to the company (via Reddit, via TheGamer).

“Visa has no right to dictate my or other consumers’ behavior or to pressure free markets to comply with vague, morally-grounded rules enforced by payment processing providers,” it continued. “Unless these Draconian impositions are not reversed, I will have no choice but to stop dealing with Visa and instead swap to competing companies not directly involved in censorship efforts, namely Discover and American [Express].”

That same Redditor received an alleged response from Visa, which insisted it does not make “moral judgements” about content.

“While we explicitly prohibit legal activity on our network, we are equally committed to protecting legal commerce. If a transaction is legal, our policy is to process the transaction. We do not make moral judgements on legal purchases made by consumers,” reads the alleged reply.

“Visa does not moderate content sold by merchants, nor do we have visibility into the specific goods or services sold when we process a transaction. When a legally operating merchant faces an elevated risk of illegal activity, we require enhanced safeguards for the banks supporting those merchants.”

As The Guardian notes, Collective Shout has previously called for a mandatory internet filter to restrict access to adult content here in Australia. Recently, it called for Elon Musk’s social media network X to ban all adult content.

The Guardian says that Musk himself has injected himself into the conversation, voicing his approval for a Change.org petition that calls for payment processors to “stop controlling what we can watch, read, or play”. At the time of writing, the petition has over 166,740 signatures.

While games that champion rape shouldn’t be available to purchase and play, as one LGBTQIA+-identifying signatory notes, “banning sexual content has always been a slippery slope”.

“First it’s anything outrightly explicit, but different people have different definitions of what sexual content is, and bans like this disproportionately harm the LGBTQ+ community because of it,” the petitioner wrote.

“The kind of people that fight against pornography for ‘family values’ are the same kind of people who would label the very existence of someone like me as ‘explicit’. Bans like this help no one and cause far more harm than good. And even if you don’t agree with the existence of explicit content, why should payment processors have the right to dictate what we can and can’t purchase?

“It’s a direct violation of personal freedoms. No company should be allowed to decide where and what I use my own hard earned money to purchase.”