Legality is not the determining factor for them, and thanks to them, adult games have disappeared from Steam and Itch.io.
Since forcing payment processors to remove numerous adult games from Steam, the Australian anti-pornography group Collective Shout has been relatively quiet—except when its founder, anti-abortion, conservative Christian Melinda Tankard Reist, appeared on Twitter to condemn the outraged. She called them “porn-sick, brain rotted, pedophile gamers.” The group’s campaign manager, Caitlin Roper, spoke with TweakTown via email, providing more detail on the group’s worldview, goals, and reactions to date.
“Legality is not the defining factor. It’s about documented evidence of harm to women and girls. Our work focuses on combatting the sexual objectification and exploitation of women and girls, so we focus our energy there. That said, we call out the objectification and abusive depictions of women and girls, even when they are not illegal. There is no greater removal of a woman’s agency than rape. Media that glorifies sexual violence against women harms all women, regardless of whether some women participate in its creation or consumption. If Steam and Itch.io had properly moderated their platforms, there would have been no need to temporarily delist games for violating their policies.
Not being able to access rape games on popular gaming platforms is a minor inconvenience, not a violation of a person’s rights. Payment processors have the right to determine what content they will host, including or excluding illegal content such as rape, sexual violence, incest, child sexual abuse and exploitation, and bestiality. I would ask those who view the loss of their rape games as censorship to consider whether they are as concerned with women’s basic human rights and the glorification of male violence against women,” Roper wrote.
When Itch.io removed all NSFW games from its platform, regardless of their content or legality, Collective Shout boasted that this was its 27th victory of the year. The fact that this huge blow affected all kinds of creators, including women, apparently doesn’t matter to Collective Shout. Nor did Collective Shout’s report mention that this disproportionately affected queer creators, who have historically been targeted by indecency laws. Roper says that if someone who shouldn’t have been affected was caught up in the purge, it’s the fault of the platform responsible. By extending its activities to legal content and continuing its campaign by pressuring payment processors rather than elected government officials, Collective Shout paved the way for the grim consequences highlighted last year by Nier creator Yoko Taro.
“The fact that a payment processor, which is involved in the entire infrastructure of content distribution, can do such things at its own discretion seems to me to be dangerous on a whole new level. It implies that by controlling payment processing companies, you can censor another country’s free speech,” Taro said.
Those outraged by the removal of the games are not bothered by wanting access to them, but rather by the fact that payment processors are unilaterally dictating what adults can spend their money on. This is contrary to the ideals of a free and democratic society. However, it seems that Collective Shout has no answer to this.
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