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Steam, Itch.io are pulling ‘porn’ games. Critics say it's a slippery slope
A conservative group is targeting payment processors as “a weapon” to get adult games deindexed in storefronts. Even games that have nothing to do with sex or abuse have been caught in the dragnet.
On the Itch.io site, founder Leaf Corcoran said the “sudden and disruptive” move is the direct result of an ongoing campaign by Collective Shout, an organization critics have alleged is “anti-porn.” The group has recently targeted payment processors for Itch and Steam, urging the banking services to stop doing business with those platforms because of the content they host, a tactic known as financial censorship. At the same time, Collective Shout—the nonprofit had previously worked with anti-porn group The National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) to rally against platforms like OnlyFans and Reddit that host adult content—began campaigning to have No Mercy removed from storefronts. Shortly before learning Itch had removed his games from search, the developer Robert Yang told WIRED that companies like Valve “should not defer content moderation to moralistic puritanical payment processors.”
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