Itch.io has “deindexed” swathes of NSFW content from the storefront’s browse and search pages, making thousands of adult games impossible to find.
The sudden move comes amid “critical” pressure from the platform’s payment providers, Itch.io said in a statement, something which forced it to act immediately and without warning to game creators, whose titles have now been pulled from sale.
Itch.io’s move comes just a week after Valve booted a long list of adult games from Steam, and updated its storefront rules to say it would no longer allow content that violated the “standards set forth by Steam’s payment processors”. Prior to this, some users had reported being unable to purchase Steam games via Paypal for several days.
“Recently, we came under scrutiny from our payment processors regarding the nature of some content hosted on itch.io,” the platform said today in a statement. “Due to a game titled No Mercy, which was temporarily available on itch.io before being banned back in April, the organization Collective Shout launched a campaign against Steam and itch.io, directing concerns to our payment processors about the nature of certain content found on both platforms.”
Launched in April and removed within days, No Mercy was strongly criticised for its depictions of extreme sexual violence and incest. Itch.io and Valve pulled the game amid mounting pressure from politicians and campaign groups such as Collective Shout — which has continued to push for games featuring sexual assault or abuse to be delisted. Last week, the organisation said Valve had removed more than 400 games focused on rape or incest from Steam as a result of its pressure on Mastercard, Visa and PayPal.
“Our ability to process payments is critical for every creator on our platform,” itch.io’s statement today continues. “To 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.
“This is a time critical moment for itch.io. The situation developed rapidly, and we had to act urgently to protect the platform’s core payment infrastructure. Unfortunately, this meant it was not realistic to provide creators with advance notice before making this change. We know this is not ideal, and we apologize for the abruptness of this change.”
Users have suggested that itch.io’s decision has impacted more than 20,000 adult games previously available on the storefront, and criticized the abrupt move as feeling panicked, and heavy-handed. Others have said that previously-purchased content is also currently unavailable to be re-downloaded.
But while Steam looked to have made definitive choices over which content it was booting, Itch.io has said it will now conduct a “comprehensive audit of content” before introducing “new compliance measures” — indicating that some currently-hidden games will return. Indeed, various games that were rating 18+ as they feature sensitive themes, but not pornographic adult content, have also been caught up in itch.io’s action — such as the IGF Award-winning Consume Me, a semi-autobiographical indie strategy game that explores teenage eating disorders.
Other games, however, will now be permanently unavailable — with impacted developers due to be notified in the coming days.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
