
Australian pressure group Collective Shout has claimed responsibility for the recent Itch.io and Steam developments that have seen the platforms change how they deal with - and in some cases remove - NSFW games and content from their respective platforms.
The group had already been closely linked with the situation, which has seen Itch.io and Steam scramble to appease payment providers like Visa as they suddenly took an interest in the kind of games available on the platforms, especially those which contravened rules and "standards" the payment providers apparently had. It led to Itch.io deindexing all NSFW content from its browse and search pages, and Steam introducing vague new rules about adult content, while removing a slew of games.
"In response to false claims and misinformation about our campaign, we're setting the record straight," wrote Collective Shout in a Facebook update. "Some have asked why we involved payment processors, and others have claimed we are responsible for Itch.io removing all NSFW content.
"We raised our objection to r*pe and incest games on Steam for months, and they ignored us for months. We approached payment processors because Steam did not respond to us.
"We called on Itch.io to remove r*pe and incest games that we argued normalised violence and abuse of women. Itch.io made the decision to remove all NSFW content. Our objections were to content that involved s*xualised violence and torture of women."
Collective Shout shared a timeline of the campaign on its website, noting how it began with No Mercy, a game which involves extreme sexual violence, being brought to its in March. The group's actions - a mixture of petitioning, emailing, and lobbying - began in early April and led to the game being removed from sale later that month.

The group continued to send hundreds of emails to Valve about problematic games that remained on Steam, but said it wasn't until it began lobbying payment processors such as Visa, PayPal and MasterCard that change began to happen.
This rush to appease payment processors has met with pushback from parts of the gaming community. There have been collective efforts, for instance, to counter-lobby payment companies like Visa in an effort to turn them around.
An open letter template to Visa, shared on Reddit (via TheGamer), reads:
"I am concerned customer about Visa's recent efforts to censor adult content on prominent online game retailers, specifically the platforms Steam and Itch.io. As a long-time Visa customer, I see this as a massive overreach into controlling what entirely legal actions/purchases customers are allowed to put their money towards.
"Visa has no right to dictate my or other consumers' behavior or to pressure free markets to comply with vague, morally-grounded rules enforced by payment processing providers. Unless these Draconian impositions are not reversed, I will have no choice but to stop dealing with Visa and instead swap to competing companies not directly involved in censorship efforts, namely Discover and AmericanExpress."
Some people have reportedly had responses from Visa to this letter, which insist the company is not moderating content, does not make "moral judgements" about content, and supports the sale of all content considered "legal". Visa's alleged response reads (via Reddit):
"While we explicitly prohibit legal activity on our network, we are equally committed to protecting legal commerce. If a transaction is legal, our policy is to process the transaction. We do not make moral judgements on legal purchases made by consumers.
"Visa does not moderate content sold by merchants, nor do we have visibility into the specific goods or services sold when we process a transaction. When a legally operating merchant faces an elevated risk of illegal activity, we require enhanced safeguards for the banks supporting those merchants."
No one will lament the removal of No Mercy from sale on Steam, but whenever a net like this is thrown over an entire area of perceived problematic content, there will be well-intentioned games caught in the net too. Specifically, LGBTQ+ games are under threat - games that don't align with the Christian values underpinning the pressure group Collective Shout.