Under pressure from payment companies, video game platforms are getting rid of their pornographic content

"Your companies facilitate and profit from the sale of games depicting rape, incest, and child sexual abuse." These are the words used by the Shout Collective, an Australian association committed to combating online sexual exploitation, in an open letter dated July 11 to several payment companies, including Visa, PayPal, and Mastercard, highlighting their links with two online video game platforms, Steam and Itch.io.
The former is the world leader in PC gaming, the latter has built a reputation for independent production. They share a staggering number of games in their game library—no fewer than 30,000 on Steam—a large portion of which is paid. Also included in this catalog is erotic and sexual content, which is at the heart of the issues raised by Shoutout.
As hosts, not publishers, neither Stream nor Itch.io enforce any moderation policy, refusing to take editorial responsibility for published content. This is how a game that simulated rape and incestuous practices, No Mercy , ended up on Steam last April. Shoutout then launched a petition, which ultimately got the game removed from the platform in several countries.
After which, the Australian association "conducted extensive research," which resulted in the identification of hundreds of similar content on these platforms, depicting "sexual abuse of women and children." Following the lack of a response from Steam and Itch.io following their initial mobilization, they chose to call on the payment companies that allow the purchase of these games (Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, etc.). While Visa and Mastercard remained silent, PayPal told the Guardian that it "applies a zero-tolerance policy towards any illegal activity."
Shortly after the open letter was published, both online gaming sites took action, explicitly citing the involvement of payment companies. For example, on July 16, the SteamDB account, which closely follows the platform's news, noted on sur X a recent change in its rules. The ban "on games that violate the rules established by payment processors and card networks, or Internet network providers." The online gaming leader did not specify the nature of these new criteria, however . On social media, several users also noted that many incest-themed games had been removed. of the platform, with supporting screenshots.
Narrative
On July 24, Itch.io released a statement announcing that it had de-indexed all of its NSFW ( not safe for work ) content. "To ensure the sustainability of our business [...], we must prioritize our relationships with our payment partners," the platform conceded. Such catalog cleanup remains extremely rare. In recent years, Steam has already removed certain games following growing controversies—such as No Mercy, a simulation reenacting the October 7 attacks perpetrated by Hamas against Israeli civilians and soldiers, and a game depicting the protests that took place in Hong Kong in 2019.
This time, the pressure from payment companies has been incredibly effective. And this isn't the first time this has happened. In 2020, the online payment giants, worried about the reputational risks they were running by being associated with certain content, had already threatened Pornhub with suspending its services on its platform if it didn't remove its illegal content, and the porn giant complied.
A line whose radicalism concerns some users, some of whom fear that it goes beyond criminal content. An anonymous user launched a petition two weeks ago to protest against "MasterCard and Visa" for "interfering with legal entertainment and demanding the right to choose the stories we like without any moral control." The petition, which defends the production of "legal" adult content and calls for "true transparency in regulations," now has more than 180,000 signatures. Several users deplore the situation in comments, worrying about a form of "censorship," and demanding the right to consume pornographic content that does not represent anything illegal.
The new criteria set out by the platforms remain very opaque. Itch.io, for example, mentions the new ban on marketing productions featuring "rape, incest, sex trafficking." In this case, "a video game addressing the subject of sex trafficking with the aim of raising public awareness of this problem would be removed from the store," underlines the specialist site Game Industry , because these "new rules do not seem to take into account the intention of a game or the way in which it deals with a theme."
For its part, Collectif Shout deplored a wave of attacks from users very upset by these new policies. "On multiple online platforms and via emails addressed to staff members, men threatened to rape and kill us, and sent us pornographic videos," states a July 22 press release , including screenshots. But the organization still welcomes the results of its mobilization.
As the controversy rages, the UK-based Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association has suggested a potential solution: the implementation of PEGI, a European indicator for video games that indicates the minimum recommended age for access and the potentially sensitive content it contains. For now, online game hosts do not use this system.
Libération