Note: Many of the links on this page lead to adult and age-gated content.On Wednesday July 23, 2025 popular self-publishing indie games site, Itch.io deindexed thousands of games, comics, novels, and assets from their website. This means the media will no longer appear in searches, severely limiting their reach. They’ve also removed some media altogether, and limited or turned off payments for some creators. The creators that were hit the hardest were ones who produce 18+ media, LGBTQ+ media, and/or furry media.
This has directly affected the income, lives, livelihoods, and mental health of many creators, most of whom are already marginalized or low-income individuals.
Why Itch.io and Why Now?
For those who don’t know, this ordeal has been brought on by a chain of pressure and caving to a right-wing religious group in Australia called Collective Shout. Collective Shout targeted both Steam and Itch.io back-to-back, but Itch has been hit much harder than Steam. How did Collective Shout apply this pressure?
It all started with the group targeting a specific game a couple months ago called No Mercy. The group thrust a small game most people had never heard of into a spotlight it was never meant to have, and misused this game as an example of why all adult games should be banned.
Then, they had just over 1,000 people associated with or following the group call payment processors—mainly Stripe, Visa, and Mastercard—and told them to put pressure on Steam first, and then Itch, about the games they were hosting on their storefronts. Itch, with no announcement or warning, deindexed or removed thousands of games in the middle of the night and didn’t even make an announcement about it until hours after at 2:19 AM EDT.
Devs and Other Creators, by the Numbers
Editor's Note: Out of the 70 creators Radiant G had spoken to, 25 had answered and filled out the form he sent out. The stats brought up in this article are meant to help paint a picture of the ongoing situation.I created a social media post on Bluesky to find and connect directly with creators who have been affected. I spoke to over 70 creators, and had around 25 of them answer a series of questions. Here are some of the statements, information, and statistics I received from those who answered them.
Although Itch.io is a platform centered around video games, there are plenty of media types hosted on the site. Let’s take a look at the games and other content affected most by this change. More than half of the 25 affected creators I got more information from created visual novels.
Related: Are Visual Novels games? On Steam Visual Novel Fest
Five of the folks I spoke to created TTRPGs, five created comics or zines, and five created downloadable assets. Two creators were authors of novels or light novels.
100% of the 25 created adult/18+ media, however three of the creators stated that their non-18+ media were affected as well. And it should be noted a creator who didn’t make adult media, but was still affected, contacted me while I was about done writing this piece.
80% of the 25 openly identified at queer, and more than half of those queer-identified creators were transgender specifically. Over half of the 25 also stated they were neurodivergent, and over half said they were low-income. Roughly 20% of the creators I spoke with expressed they were chronically ill, and 16% were physically disabled. 16% declined to share, and only one creator explicitly stated they were non-marginalized.
100% of these devs had media deindexed, 20% had media removed entirely, and while only one explicitly had payments turned off, four others have outstanding payments they are worried about if they will receive or not.
Overall, there were 117 affected files among these 25 creators. 80% of the affected creators made LGBTQIA+ media, 72% percent made media involving some type of kink, more than half of the affected creators made romance, and more than half of the affected creators made horror. 28% of the creators made furry media, and 20% made media with an extreme or hardcore fetish. Roughly a third of these creators were also creating media that featured polyamory.
Now remember, this is just a subsect of the thousands of that have been affected, but it is a look into who is being hurt by these changes the most. We are seeing queer, neurodivergent, and low-income creators losing their visibility and their income.
84% of the creators I spoke with made money from Itch, and roughly half of that 84% made over $100 USD a month from their itch account alone. Two creators made between $500 and $750 a month nearly entirely off of content that was affected. One creator made over $1000 a month and over 75% of the media bringing in that money was impacted.
A majority of the creators I talked to have been using itch and building a following there for four or more years, with roughly a quarter of them having been on there for eight years or more.
What do devs and creators who were affected have to say about the situation?
“It’s extremely disheartening, I just want to make the art that I like. I just started making things that are NSFW. And now all of the sudden I’m being essentially punished for it. I have already seen the way this is affecting the TTRPG community, especially the queer TTRPG community, and there’s just a hanging sense of dread and overall anger.” said Maddie May, creator of the two-player GMless vampire-themed TTRPG Let Me Be Your Thrall. “It’s fascism, plain and simple,” said another creator, Achilles, who had delisted all of his games.
Some singled out the Payment Processors
“It’s unfair to adults who want to spend money to be told no its not allowed, and its detrimental to free speech that a variety of voices and stories can be silenced by a handful of individuals,” said Yuki Clarke, creator of Rita & Josey in the Red Dirt Ruin.
“It’s an awful situation. It’s Payment Processors over-reaching and we’re suffering because of a small group of people are unhappy in their life, so they must extend the unhappiness to other people,” said FireValleyGames.
“I think it’s a gross and selfish overreach that is affecting people’s livelihoods and free speech,” said Vanis, the lead of Tentakero, an indie Hentai studio.
“Payment processors should have nothing to do with policing completely legal media content, much less applying pressure on marginalized authors across the entire planet,” said Rien Gray, the author of the f/f Medusa-inspired novel, The Scales of Seduction.
Other creators spoke out against Collective Shout & Itch as well
“I believe the payment processors should not be able to decide where people spend their money, if they are spending it legally. Payment processors do not own the money in the account, the person who worked for it does. I believe Collective Shout’s behavior and call for censorship – disguised as some sort of “feminist movement” that helps women – is nothing other than a shameful attempt to impose their moral compass on the rest of the world.” said Tightly, creator of Modification App.
“By hiding behind ‘keeping the platform safe’, Itch has broken trust of developers, clients, and customers by capitulating to the demands of Payment Processors and Collective Shout, and has contributed to the continual rise of global fascism and erasure of freedom of expression,” said Thomas “jetstorm4” L..
“The whole situation is deeply messed up. This should not be happening. But itch is acting like it took them completely by surprise when they’ve hosted NSFW for years and watched other platforms get ruined for queer and adult creators. They should have at least had a contingency plan for this instead of the slapdash mess they’ve executed,” said Sasha Reneau, creator of Helm & Shield, a submission to the Faggot Games TTRPG Jam.
“Disappointed but not surprised. As someone who’s been in this sphere for 15 years, this was a long time coming. Itch.io should have been prepared for this instead of scrambling at the last moment- they really let creators down and should feel ashamed, honestly. I know we’ll weather it, but I’d really love to not have to jump from platform to platform constantly,” said Nero Villagallos O’Reilly, creator of six affected comics.
“Itch.io has been a haven for marginalized communities for years. Maybe small developers used it as a way to show their art to the world, much of which is free. The cave-in to Collective Shout goes against the ideals that Itch has stood for all these years and has hurt thousands of developers, artists, and musicians. It is an utter betrayal and we’re confused, angry, and disappointed,” said BrickZed, creator of Silverstone.
And everyone wanted to fight back
visceralhit, the writer of illustrated light novel series, Beyond Bringers, said “My thoughts are simple. This must stop. We cannot allow censorship to take hold in any way; we have to push back. We have to make phone calls. It’s going to be hell on the underpaid customer service reps, but unless there are significant disruptions to their daily workflow, these companies have no need to roll over and give us back our freedom. My thoughts are that we need to create a united front against them, or our free speech is gone.” And Tetra Yon, who’s only visible game on itch was suspended. said “Collective action from artists and common individuals is required because companies will not take action themselves.”
And we’ve gathered up a list of how we can do just that below.
Calls to Action
So, you want to fight back? Here are a variety of ways you can help.
Contact the Payment Processors
They had pressure put on them in one direction, let’s send them the other way.
The Itch.io team has named Stripe as the main offender in this case. You can complain to Stripe in the following ways.
- Stripe Complaint Form: https://stripe.com/legal/complaints
- Stripe Complaint Email: complaints@stripe.com
- Phone Number (United States): +1 (877) 887-7815
- Phone Number (France): +33 805 11 19 67
Stripe United States Address for Physical Letters:
Stripe, Inc.
354 Oyster Point Boulevard
South San Francisco, California, 94080
Stripe Europe Address for Physical Letters:
Stripe Payments Europe, Ltd.
10 Boulevard Haussmann
75009 Paris, France
Additional Countries and Methods for Stripe Here
You can also make a difference by contacting other offending payment processors:
Visa, Mastercard and PayPal details in the following embeds.
And some extra advice for reaching Mastercard:
Sign the ACLU Petition against Mastercard
This is a 2-in-1 to help limit Mastercard’s say in what they can or can’t do in regards to adult content, and will also make life better for sex workers in general.
Speak Up
Use your platform, I don’t care if you have 10,000 followers or 10 followers. Adult creators deserve more recognition for the work they do, and deserve our love all year, not just when thing like this happen. To every adult, queer, and/or furry creator out there: I am with you, I am you, I fight with you. I will always have your back. We are one. And we won’t stop fighting.
What we are fighting for?
Lastly, I asked everyone: What does making adult, LGBTQIA+ &/or furry media mean to you? Here is what they had to say:
“It is the reason I live.”
“It’s freedom of expression.”
“Always me to express myself in my own way. I can view myself in my media that I created.”
“It’s a creative outlet, and generally therapeutic. It’s also brought a sense of community I didn’t have before.”
“It’s my livelihood and it has allowed me to discover myself as a queer person and I’ve never been happier in my life.”
“Making LGBTQ work means being able to express myself and my story, and a hope to bring joy and a feeling of being seen to others”
“It means more than just making peace with my identity and sexuality, but celebrating it and finding joy in it in play, and expressing something I think is vital and beautiful to other people”
“I started creating and sharing artwork online to discover myself away from a religious/fundamentalist upbringing. it’s a bitter irony to see the free internet I knew and loved be even more restrictive than what I grew up with.”
– krad
“It’s something I sincerely love doing! I wouldn’t still be here if I didn’t love making comics that turn people on. There’s so much you can do and I feel like we’ve barely scraped the surface. There [are] so many stories yet to tell!”
“The stories that I’m able to tell are important to me. Making games is my purest expression and the medium that I chose to make myself heard. I want to make the kinds of stories that I wish were already around for others like me to find and feel something resonating from.”
“Everything. It’s the kind of media I always wanted growing up and is the freedom of expression I’ve devoted my life to in a thousand ways. Queerness and eroticism are inextricable parts of reality, and stifling it to please a fascist mindset is a doomed and self-destructive project.”
“Adult entertainment has been part of my life on and off for a long time. It’s how I show people the joys of trans bodies, trans love, trans sex, and how there is no one right or wrong way to BE trans. More than anything, I want to make people feel happy and safe with their bodies and desires.”
– Achilles
“I just want to tell my stories the way I want. The reason I went indie was to be able to create things the way I see things in my head without an editorial telling me something is unmarketable. I started doing adult work because after getting less explicit work dinged on other sites like Webtoons and Ko-Fi I got fed up holding things back even with those considerations.”
– Althea
“Making that content is freedom for me. I love making the games I make on my TastyAce account, and I can’t be more humbled by the fact that people like them enough to pay for them every month. I love being part of the furry fandom; I love being in kinky spaces where I can be myself. I bring queerness to every single game that I make, because I want to share it with everyone.”
“As a transmasc queer person, everything. It connects me to others in my community and reminds me that I’m not alone. It allows me to financially support my peers when I’m able. From a Neurodivergent standpoint, sex and sexuality are some of my special interests. Knowing that my access to media, information, and resources are being stripped not just from me but also from people who NEED them fills me with fear and rage.”
“Making adult media is a form of expression. It is a way to push the boundaries of my own suppressed sexual expression and actually put myself and my own, sometimes darker, desires into my work. But more importantly, the adult content I make is my own, broken free from usual restraints, and is something I think is more genuine and sincere- the primal form of what I want out of video games and entertainment, shared with others.”
“Personally, I give a lot of value to the community I have been able to build in the short time I’ve made adult games. I like to see players invested in my characters. I like they enjoy the scenarios I write and the art I produce. I like hearing their suggestions and getting feedback. These things must not seem like it’s really exclusive to adult games – and it really isn’t. My game isn’t much different than a lot of other games, but just because mine had adult themes was enough to deindex it, and my community suffered because of it.”
– Tightly
“It’s my job. It’s how I feed my family. It’s what got me out of working a garbage retail job that truly was exploiting me. I make these games along with my wife and both of us had a major life improvement by doing so. Our story is literally the definition of the boot straps analogy that so many like to tell people to do. We self-taught ourselves every step of game development in order to make a game, ultimately turning it into a career that pulled us out of borderline poverty. To have that taken away by puritans because they don’t like it is enraging.”
– Vanis
“I’m disabled and gay, and the furry community is a place that accepts me. It is a place where you can express yourself and share your art and feelings with the world. In terms of NSFW, I would say Silverstone is on the tamer side of things, only being labeled NSFW for graphic violence that’s described and never shown. I love media like Higurashi: When They Cry and Stephen King’s It, and Silverstone is basically a fusion of those with animal characters. I want to see this project through because it’s one of the few ways I can get my name out while being creative. If I lose my way to share my art, I lose my voice.”
– BrickZed
“Making games is art to me. It’s expression. Not every game I make is going to be adult, LGBTQIA+, [or] furry. I just go where the mood strikes me and all I want are places to show off what I’ve made. Despite social media platforms being more massive than ever, it feels like it has become increasingly difficult to engage with people as a nobody. People just take whatever algorithms wash their way, the days of niche communities on specialized websites and forums are practically over. If the big platforms decide to hide the games I make, then where can people even go anymore? Sure, I make games for myself, but it’s nice to get a little bit of feedback every now and then.”
– Star Hunter
“I’ve been drawing adult, LGBTIQIA+, furry art since the early aughts. It is a community that is filled with good friends and cohorts that support each other in their endeavors of self-expression and generally building artistic spaces. People who will take the time to alpha or beta read your works in progress, without hesitation toss you a redline when you’re unsure of your sketch, leave room for you if you just need a body-double.
It brings me joy if I can draw someone’s OC/Fursona it put a smile on their face, or helped them through their day, be seen. A story that might resonate with someone out there. You never know how it connects people in the world to a moment, a place, a feeling. I’d say this space means the world to me.”
“As a closeted IRL aroace trans guy from Poland (not so fun reminder about my country having “LGBT free” zones some time ago and that it’s only been recently that trans people here don’t need to sue their parent to have their gender recognized (after going through medical transition, jumping through multiple hoops around the system) and only cause a politician was trying to make it even harder and accidentally got constitutional court to recognize that this whole thing was against constitution), creating queer (mostly nsfw) media is pretty much my only outlet to express myself freely and process through stuff I’m too afraid to talk about to people around me IRL plus it’s just fun to smash your OCs together and make them kiss and then see others enjoying it as well”
CW: SA mentions
“I’m someone who has had a lot of painful sexual experiences (csa, incest, sa), who has had a complicated history of hiding sexual expression to try to be a “good person” (or what purity culture considers a “good person”). I’ve been slowly shaking that off and learning a lot more, and I joined the toxic yuri vn jam with a few friends to try to engage more with messy queerness, nsfw, and whatever else.
I was looking forward to the freedom I would have in making this work now. Making this sort of media is cathartic for me, it is trying to tell stories I can see myself in, trying to share complicated and ugly interactions I’ve had or heard about or whatever else, after years of being scared to share.
I made this story (and will continue to work on it) with the intent of possibly helping others with similar issues see themselves, to feel less alone, to feel empowered to grow. OCD especially is misrepresented often and I find that depicting it in stories is massively important. To express, to encourage introspection, to reach out to those who don’t even know they are struggling yet… It means a lot to me.”
– Pengo
“Before I started HRT, I couldn’t write. My head was just full of fog. Starting estrogen made me clear-headed, made me able to create stories for the first time. There are not nearly enough trans stories out there. If we’re in mainstream media at all, it’s in very stereotypical roles, or some very basic, cookie-cutter stories about transitioning and how much of a struggle it is. And fine, it can be a struggle. But there’s so much more, because we’re humans before anything else! There are stories about trans joy that need to be told.
There are stories about trans people who are fucked up and make terrible mistakes. There are stories about us in the distant past, and the far future… I want to tell all kinds of trans stories! It makes me happy when I can express these ideas, and it makes me happy when people connect to them and enjoy them; and all this means that there cannot be any restrictions of what I can make, of what I can express.
I’m in love with making stories! My chosen medium is visual novels, because there are so many amazing trans creatives working in visual novels right now. They’re telling amazing stories that I simply am not seeing in any other field. Seeing these people and reading their incredible work inspired me to start making them myself! I hope that I can inspire someone else someday too!”
“I made the Porcelain Fox Avatar in large part out of spite as a competitor to the Rexouium Avatar. The Rexouium, or “Rex,” has been a staple avatar of the VRChat Furry LGBTQ+, used by many to represent themselves in virtual reality, notably Herculean Vulpines. However, its creator has been constantly proven time and time again to be a homophobic bigot that uses religion to excuse his puritanical worldview, such that his TOS explicitly forbids using the avatar for Adult Content and Sex Work.
I wanted to give the community that I resonate with and made friends in to have an avatar made with them in mind and celebrating them: an unapologetically queer fox that they can customize and feel they can be free to express themselves in however they please, and love whoever they please. If I had the funds to support myself, I’d rather just give the avatar away for free in exchange for people to stop using the Rexouium Avatar.
Since I have a mental disorder that prevents me from working a typical job, I’ve distanced myself from such a stiffling society and put all my time and energy into making VRChat Avatars and painting Adult Artwork that embraces love, sex, joy, and freedom of expression of the self in all forms, including Non-binary, Therian, Trans, and other atypical forms of representation, Not only as a means to support myself, but to create art that serves to legitimize a way of life that has historically seen so much suppression, censorship, and discrimination.”
– Swiri Ko
“Making adult, queer stories is everything to me. It is why I wake up every day. These stories are my response to questions and feelings I have about the world. I feel the freedom to express them to their fullest degree must be maintained. These characters all begin as thoughts, feelings, and questions. I draw circles around them, explore them like I would a person, and then I tell their stories. They’re art. Adult work isn’t made exclusively to comfort others. They exist to be reacted to, to feel seen in, to portray my reactions to our society to others so that they may react in turn.
Adult work is a conversation to me. One where we talk about what is right and what is wrong, exploring the entire spectrum of how and why. Narrators are allowed to truly be unreliable; we’re allowed to not believe them. I make novels, particularly adult novels full of kink and taboo, because I believe in them in catalysts of change. I believe we can see the humanity in others, in the dark, and respond to it.
Art irrevocably changes the lives of everyone it touches, and art MUST be free to be whatever it must be. I never want the conversation to end. Humans are social creatures. We need this kind of work. To laugh, to cry, to grieve, to scream, to smile. It’s freedom to be.
I have more stories to tell than just Beyond Bringers. My next book contains content that would have led to removal based on the experiences of others I have spoken to. Perhaps I am lucky to not have been hit the hardest with Beyond Bringers, but this just solidifies my stance and what it means to me. People around the world have a wide array of good and bad experiences.
Adult work is freedom to explore them, and without that freedom, our humanity is impacted. How are we to express our pain? our love? our joy…”
