A quick update

As I'm sure most of you have already noticed, there's been a big crackdown on NSFW content on Steam and Itch in the last few days. Steam have removed a lot of games containing content that goes against Visa and Mastercards terms of use. Thankfully, my games don't seem to meet that criteria of removal so far!

Itch have deindexed all adult games. It seems they're going through and removing any with offending content, but will be reindexing the rest at a later date. Again, thankfully, my games aren't being targeted.

There's a lot of uproar about this thankfully, as this is huge censorship from companies that aren't elected. Personally I have no issue with making certain types of content illegal, as long as it's done as a society through democratically elected officials. Companies should not be able to dictate what legal media you can and cannot purchase based on their own morals.

If that wasn't enough, the UK passed the Online Safety Act in 2023 which is now coming into force in the last few days. This means that any services hosting adult content need to have age verification measures in place to serve the UK, as well as giving regulators way more power to remove content they deem offensive.

The EU have also just announced that similar measures will be coming for the whole of the EU in the near future. Platforms have 12 months to comply with the EU ruling.

What does all this mean for you? Well, it means adult content will be harder to access, that your private information could be leaked after you verify yourself (linking you to the adult content you access) and that smaller websites who cannot implement these measures (such as hobby forums) will have to shut down of block access to anywhere that requires these measures.

Personally, I think these measures are massively overstepping their mark. They have already been proven ineffective as they can be bypassed by using pictures/videos from the internet. On the same day they came into force in the UK, there was a data breach of another verification system, proving these places are not secure.

There are multiple petitions going around for all of these things, which I'll link here. Please sign them if you want to help stop this. Remember, UK folks can only sign the UK petition. I'm unsure if there is an EU yet.

UK: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/722903/

Stop censorship petition: https://www.change.org/p/tell-mastercard-visa-activist-groups-stop-controlling-what-we-can-watch-read-or-play

There are also bills being submitted to congress in the U.S to stop payment processors stopping payments of legal content. I don't know much about these, but if you're in the U.S, look them up and call your local representatives.