Recently, Steam purged a bunch of NSFW games from its storefront. This occurred as the result of efforts from Australia-based anti-porn group Collective Shout who applied pressure through payment processors. Collective Shout is a “””feminist””” group, although nobody with a passing glance would recognize them as legitimately feminist. Its founder is anti-abortion, what does that tell you? Collective Shout has previously fought to ban GTAV, Detroit: Become Human, as well as rappers Snoop Dogg, Eminem, and Tyler, the Creator.

The games that were banned on Steam primarily contain non-consensual and incest erotic content. I was curious what specific games were banned, and found a website dedicated to tracking it (warning: link contains thumbnails for NSFW games).

At a glance, these look like shovelware. And it seems quite possible that some of these games express socially regressive or misogynistic values. But, I can’t tell, since the store pages no longer exist. And nonetheless, I would defend these games:

• If they truly are shovelware, then the appropriate response is to down-rank them in the algorithm, not to remove them from the store.
• I do not believe that fictional representations of incest are necessarily harmful. Pornographic representations of incest often have little to do with real world incest, in the same way that video game violence often has little to do with real world violence.
• Even presuming the games have regressive themes, I believe in the tradition of critiquing the media that we enjoy. Which leaves room to enjoy things even if you’re critical of them. Look, I also think stuff like Star Wars has examples of misogyny, but I wouldn’t dream of banning Star Wars and don’t have an issue with people enjoying it. Calls to ban certain kinds of pornographic content actually crowd out critique, making thoughtful discussion of NSFW games (such as the Adult Analysis Anthology) harder.

Even if we were okay with these games getting removed, we might worry about the slippery slope. If a conservative group can apply pressure to remove certain NSFW games, what’s to stop them from removing, say, LGBT content?

I am here to tell you that it has already happened.

Collective Shout didn’t just apply pressure to Steam, they also applied pressure to Itch. Itch is a digital storefront whose main appeal is a lower barrier to entry compared to Steam. I put my game on Itch, because listing on Steam costs $100, which is most of my game’s budget. Itch is a common choice of platform of hobbyist game devs, as well as NSFW game devs who are justifiably concerned about Steam’s volatile content restrictions.

Itch had a more severe response than Steam–likely because they’re a smaller company that can’t afford as many risks. Itch delisted all NSFW content, meaning they no longer appear in Itch’s search results. Itch is conducting an audit to determine which pages should be permanently removed in order to comply with payment processor requirements.

So, the games banned from Steam seem fairly obscure… but I’ve certainly heard of some of the games that were delisted from Itch.

I’m ace, I’m mostly not interested in playing erotic games. However, I would say one of the best examples of ace representation in a video game is the time looping RPG, In Stars and Time. The game has been delisted from Itch! You can still access the page, but it doesn’t appear in Itch search results. To be quite honest, I’m not sure why In Stars and Time even has an NSFW tag. But it doesn’t matter: still delisted!

Another game I have played is the gay furry visual novel Echo. Echo is not an erotic game, it’s a horror game that contains some sexual content–not always for erotic purposes, but often to meaningfully build on its themes. Echo is widely considered to be the most influential furry visual novel of all time, inspiring many others. Echo has an NSFW tag. So it’s delisted, along with many of the other queer visual novels it inspired.

Echo and In Stars and Time are both well known, so being delisted on Itch will not kill them. I doubt that they would be removed permanently as a result of Itch’s audit. But you can imagine the harm to more obscure games, or to the up and coming games which are as yet unknown.

I do not blame Itch or Steam for taking the measures that they did.  The blame falls on the payment processors, and the political forces restricting them.