We can blame the religious organisation as much as we want, but the fundamental problem here is payment processors. They should be common carriers. Content-neutral middlemen who facilitate payment to anything that isn't literally unlawful. This is no different to an ISP throttling access to Netflix because they operate their own streaming platform. If the storefront, the developer, and the buyer are all ok with a transaction, there's no good reason for a fourth party to stand in the way of that.

Collective shout finacials
year: 2024
revenue: 458043
employee_expenses: 107000
other_expenses: 215488
net_surplus: 135555
employees: 
  total_fte: 2
  full_time: 0
  part_time: 1
  casual: 4
volunteers: 15
donations_and_bequests: 389800
government_grants: 0
commercial_income: 0
expense_to_revenue_ratio: "70.4%"
average_expense_per_employee: 39400

Leadership
- name: Melinda Tankard Reist
  role: Founder, Movement Director
  public_socials:
    - Twitter: @MelTankardReist
    - Instagram: @collective.shout
  public_email_address: Not publicly listed
  salary: Not publicly listed

- name: Caitlin Roper
  role: Campaigns Manager
  public_socials:
    - Instagram: @collective.shout
  public_email_address: Not publicly listed
  salary: Not publicly listed

- name: Renee Chopping
  role: Campaigns Strategy
  public_socials:
    - LinkedIn
  public_email_address: r******@collectiveshout.org
  salary: Not publicly listed

- name: Lyn Swanson Kennedy
  role: Campaigns Strategy
  public_socials:
    - Instagram: @collective.shout
  public_email_address: Not publicly listed
  salary: Not publicly listed

- name: Coralie Alison
  role: Movement Operations Manager
  public_socials:
    - Twitter: @CoralieAlison
    - Instagram: @collective.shout
  public_email_address: Not publicly listed
  salary: Not publicly listed

Fuck.

These.

Fucking.

Shitsucking

Subhuman

Leeches

Payment processors and financial institutions sure do seem to hold disproportionate amounts of power.

Damn guess we'll need to move to the alternative- ah wait- no- itch was the alternative.

I wonder if a federated game platform would work as an idea or if that's just an inherently bad idea due to the nature of trusting strangers with your money.

It's the same religious organization that went after them NSFW games on Steam. Like the games or not, it's always a slippery slope with this kind of censorship.

My biggest problem is, they banned with this method, all the games that are targeted for adults but not porn, or gore. Like they hate spicy food and banned all things that are not white rice and unseasoned chicken breast.

It was really hard to find deep philosophical games which are good and are not containing porn or gore, but targeted to adults. Now its imposaible. They have literraly no platform. Unlike the porn games, they have many aside from steam and itch.

Wow, I might actually have to stop using itch.io, is nowhere safe from the craziest anymore? I dont even make NSFW games, but bending the knee to dickheads over some overtly religious bullshit isnt gonna work for me.

Wonder how long it will take for them to start going after LGBT+ stuff. Hope I'm wrong.

I would understand forcibly banning/removing something, if it poses a real existential threat to the majority of people.

But religion fueled bigotry, in a place where you can CHOOSE to buy and play something, or completely ignore and hide if you’d like? Come on. Adults can decide if they want to have access to this content on their own, without a completely unrelated third party constantly trying to fucking inject themselves in between

It's not difficult to imagine what kind of expression these groups might decide to deem as unacceptable next.

Literally the bottom line. They have found something that works, and they are going to use and abuse it.

Puritans are going to destroy the world.

Direct link to their statement rather than reading an article talking about it: https://itch.io/updates/update-on-nsfw-content

I'm just learning about this and I wonder what has Steam done in this case to protect my rights as their client.

Ah fuck their board head is Australian. FFS