Itch.io Controversy Highlights Growing Rift Between Platform Rules and Gamer Needs

Gamers are not known to be forgiving when censorship heavily affects their realm of enjoyment. When governing bodies of media try to censor games, the pushback is strong.

This is exactly what happened when Steam caved to pressure from a group called Collective Shout. Collective Shout claimed that certain games contained harmful and NSFW material and that payment processing companies should refuse to work with platforms that sell these games.

The danger of losing access to these payment processing companies forced Steam to respond, despite many claiming that Collective Shout's motives are anti-LGBTQ rather than anti-sexual violence.

Indie gaming platform Itch.io also waded into the controversy when it shocked gamers by announcing that it, too, would comply with the demands to remove certain games. However, it eventually walked back their plans.

Here's what we know about the controversy that has so many gamers up in arms against Steam and Itch.

It all started when a not-for-profit group called Collective Shout started a campaign claiming to remove pornography and other NSFW material from social media and gaming platforms.

The group's website claims, "Since our launch in 2010, we have achieved many wins: billboards objectifying women pulled down, sexualised children's clothing withdrawn from sale, sexually violent games banned, Andrew Tate’s pimping courses removed from Spotify, and an age verification trial underway to help protect kids from exposure to porn."

Those "wins" included pressuring Steam to remove several games that they claim included incest or sexual violence. According to Know Your Meme, it started after CS sent a letter to payment processing companies like Mastercard, Visa, and PayPal, demanding that they stop processing payments for companies like Steam due to the presence of these games on their platform.

A few days later, Steam updated its "What you shouldn’t publish on Steam" rules to include "certain kinds of adults-only content."

Not long after that update in July 2025, users shared screenshots of games that were removed, many of which included themes of incest.

In the following days, Itch.io released a statement addressing Collective Shout's demands, writing, "We have 'deindexed' all adult NSFW content from our browse and search pages," (excerpts via KYM).

They were concerned that the payment processing platforms would react negatively to the presence of such games, and felt compelled to get ahead of the issue, according to the statement.

However, early August 2025 saw a change of heart. On the platform's developer's blog, they posted, "Today, we are re-indexing free adult NSFW content. We are still in ongoing discussions with payment processors and will be re-introducing paid content slowly to ensure we can confidently support the widest range of creators in the long term."

According to Itch.io, they are working on ways to remove content that would violate NSFW rules from payment processing systems and reintroduce the ones that were removed erroneously.

It's a confusing and complex situation, and many users took to social media to defend the platforms for doing what they have to do to survive. If the platforms believe they will no longer be able to process payments through any of the major companies, their ability to do business would be seriously curtailed.

However, others have blasted the platforms for "caving" to "censorship demands."

Some users claim that LGBTQ content is the true target of what Collective Shout is trying to get removed from the platform, and not NSFW or harmful sexual content at all. One TikTok user wrote, "Frankly, how dare itch.io do this after thousands of queer and adult creators flocked to them to escape censorship."

In the comments of that video, another TikTok user wrote, "This is because of an Australian morality group called Collective Shout. They have pressed Steam and itch.io to remove adult content from their storefronts by telling bank and card companies that these platforms were pushing Pe Do content. Collective Shout is part of a larger group of Evangelical interests, Anti-LGBT and Anti-Trans groups, and other bigoted groups. Their ultimate goal is to have all adult and queer content removed and made illegal."

They added, "They are using extortion to get what they want, and we need to stop them before this tactic becomes common practice and is used to silence marginalized groups."

Social media has become a tennis match of back-and-forth between people encouraging Steam and Itch to fight back, while others acknowledge that they're between a rock and a hard place. Others have turned their efforts towards fighting against Collective Shout's campaign.

For these users, the march towards censorship and the loss of freedom of expression is being hidden behind what they say is a false concern about sexual material, aimed instead at queer creators and gamers.