Collective shout seems to have expanded its scope: games like cult classic Fear And Hunger have been removed from Itch.io, while horror game VILE: Exhumed has been delisted from Steam just a week after launch.
Collective shout seems to have expanded its scope: games like cult classic Fear And Hunger have been removed from Itch.io, while horror game VILE: Exhumed has been delisted from Steam just a week after launch.
I think it actually is more complicated. There are anti obscenity laws in the United States where these companies (Steam and Itch.io, but also Visa, Mastercard, Stripe and Paypal) are based. The way those laws have been applied have been mostly permissive in the recent past, but I think there’s reason to believe that this could change quickly. We may find ourselves in a situation where the highest court decides that this has all been illegal this whole time. Procedural and legal norms are feeling a bit shaky these days. People wonder why payment processors would bend over backwards on behalf of some group of aussie weirdos, but maybe being on their good side isn’t the concern. Maybe it’s that they’re trying to self regulate to get ahead of any government action. Collective Shout may just be highlighting to them the most risky instances, making it so that they have no plausible deniability with regards to the content they are processing payments for.