{"id":12402,"date":"2025-07-24T18:13:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T18:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/itch-io-follows-steam-in-removing-adult-games\/"},"modified":"2025-07-24T18:13:00","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T18:13:00","slug":"itch-io-follows-steam-in-removing-adult-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/itch-io-follows-steam-in-removing-adult-games\/","title":{"rendered":"Itch.io follows Steam in removing adult games"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Jess<\/p>\n

Jess Weatherbed is a news writer focused on creative industries, computing, and internet culture. Jess started her career at TechRadar, covering news and hardware reviews.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The indie-focused open gaming marketplace Itch.io has abruptly deindexed adult content from its browse and search pages, warning that some games will be permanently removed from the platform. In a blog post on Thursday, Itch.io creator Leaf Corcoran said that the update was due to concerns that the website\u2019s payment processors had \u201cabout the nature of certain content\u201d hosted on the platform, following similar scrutiny against Steam.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur ability to process payments is critical for every creator on our platform,\u201d said Corcoran. \u201cTo ensure that we can continue to operate and provide a marketplace for all developers, we must prioritize our relationship with our payment partners and take immediate steps towards compliance.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Itch.io hosts a variety of gaming content, adult and pornographic titles are often among the top-sellers on the platform. Content creators who host their work on Itch.io were given no warning ahead of the decision. \u201cWe know this is not ideal, and we apologize for the abruptness of this change,\u201d said Corcoran. It\u2019s unclear if customers are currently able to access games and visual novels that they had paid for prior to the update. We\u2019ve reached out to Itch.io for clarification.<\/p>\n

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Credit card companies like Visa and Mastercard have rules that restrict some kinds of illegal and NSFW content. Steam similarly purged some adult titles last week after quietly changing its policy guidelines to ban any content that might violate rules set by the platform\u2019s payment providers and card networks. Backlash against both gaming platforms online has likened the situation to Tumblr banning pornographic content in 2018, a decision that Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Tumblr\u2019s parent company, Automattic, attributed to pressure from credit card companies, and is widely believed to have driven many users away from the platform.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Itch.io has yet to provide full guidance for creators that outlines the content that will be permitted on the platform following this change, but notes that creators will be required to confirm that their NSFW content abides by any rules set by their account\u2019s payment processors. That is, of course, providing that this doesn\u2019t cause a Tumblr-esque mass exodus of users who may now be looking for an alternative service to host, sell, and buy NSFW games.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are currently conducting a comprehensive audit of content to ensure we can meet the requirements of our payment processors,\u201d said Corcoran. \u201cPages will remain deindexed as we complete our review. Once this review is complete, we will introduce new compliance measures.\u201d<\/p>\n

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    Jess Weatherbed is a news writer focused on creative industries, computing, and internet culture. Jess started her career at TechRadar,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7282,"featured_media":12403,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1166],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-website"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7282"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}