Credit Card Companies Are Hurting the Future of Video Games
Payment processors are rapidly changing what types of content can and can’t be easily accessed online. Mastercard, Visa, PayPal, Stripe, and other major players that process most of the money people earn on the internet have always had this power, and have long discriminated against sexual content and sex work, but they have been forcing more change recently.
Some of the content they've recently pushed to the margins, like AI image generation models on Civitai that were used to create nonconsensual sexual content of real people, were actively used to cause harm, as 404 Media has reported many times. Other media they’ve asked companies to remove, like exploitative “rape and incest” games on Steam, did not have many defenders, but did not actively harm any specific person.
But last night, when the independent game distribution platform Itch.io suddenly deindexed much of its adult content, creative works that people are ready to passionately defend became collateral damage.
