Itch.io are seeking out new payment processors who are more comfortable with adult material

Itch.io are seeking out new payment processors who are more comfortable with adult material | Rock Paper Shotgun

After delisting thousands of games with adult or NSFW sexual material, indie store Itch are looking to move away from Paypal and Stripe.

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Itch.io has been on a mission to find new payment partners that won’t freak out over NSFW games after Stripe and PayPal forced them to delist thousands of adult-tagged titles. They admit their blanket audit was clumsier than Steam’s more targeted removals (Valve vets every page before it goes live, whereas Itch is basically an open Mic Night for devs), and they’re now talking to “adult-industry-compliant” processors like Verotel and CCBill, beefing up age-gating, sharpening content tags—and promising you can still download any games you’ve already bought.

The whole crackdown traces back to big banks edg­ing away from sexual content after pressure from Australia’s anti-porn group Collective Shout, so Itch is also calling for more transparency and fairness in how finance firms police adults-only material. Their new prohibited-content list is admittedly vague and very much a work in progress, but they’d rather give creators something to work with than stick their heads in the sand—and remind everyone: back up your games and don’t let corporations dictate what you own.