In Anti-Porn Group’s Crusade on NSFW Games, LGBTQ+ Creators Are Being Hit Hardest

“Queer art has also long been artificially linked with adultness, by default, by the dominant cishet culture," games journalist Caroline Delbert told Jezebel.

By Danielle Han  |  August 1, 2025 | 2:47pm
Photo: iStockphoto Politics
In Anti-Porn Group’s Crusade on NSFW Games, LGBTQ+ Creators Are Being Hit Hardest

After sending an open letter to payment processors such as Visa and Mastercard, Australian anti-porn organization “Collective Shout” has managed to pressure some of the Internet’s biggest online game hubs to crack down on their NSFW offerings. But, as with any ridiculous far-right campaign claiming to protect children and women, the “crackdown” is amounting to censorship, and LGBTQ+ creators are once again getting caught in the crossfire.

“We the undersigned are writing to request that you cease processing payments on gaming platforms which host rape, incest and child sexual abuse-themed games,” the letter read. It’s the latest crusade from the group, which has ties to Australia’s right-wing, after successfully getting a game featuring incest removed from Steam and Itch.io in April.

Soon after the letter, Steam released an update to its guidelines that would ban “content that may violate the rules and standards set forth [by] payment processors and related card networks and banks, or internet network providers,” and “certain kinds of adult-only content.” Another decision by Itch.io followed, who reportedly “delisted” anything tagged NSFW, which included some tens of thousands of games (the affected games still exist, but they are no longer searchable).

The ban, however, disproportionately impacts marginalized creators–and, in particular, LGBTQ+ titles. “My SFW sci-fi comic that’s no worse than a standard Marvel movie also got deindexed… but it had the LGBT tag,” wrote cartoonist Yuki Clarke on Bluesky. She condemned the move, saying it set a “dangerous precedent.” 

Other indie developers were also concerned. “[Itch] hosts a lot of LGBTQ games and content, not just my games,” Robert Yang told PC Gamer. “If we’re all permanently deindexed or deleted, then we have nowhere else to go, really.” 

In an attempt to get their games back out there, creators are now resorting to new ways of sharing their titles. One of which is through the Queer Games Bundle, which has existed since 2021–but is moving “forward” after Itch’s “delisting compromise,” its organizer, journalist Caroline Delbert, explained to Jezebel. “Queer art has also long been artificially linked with adultness, by default, by the dominant cishet culture,” Delbert says. “Some projects in our group that are delisted are, for example, about sexual trauma or experiences with sex work.”

Delbert also explained that cutting organic-search access chokes developers’ revenue streams. “I know first-hand that we have many developers who rely on this money in order to survive…It’s a very hard industry to survive in.” 

Ironically, Collective Shout–which was founded by “anti-porn crusader” and “pro-life feminist” Melinda Tankard Reist–calls itself “a grassroots campaigns movement against the objectification of women and the sexualisation of girls.” But as developers Jenny Jiao Hsia and AP Thomson told Wired: “Their actions here mainly serve to cut off income streams for adult content creators, many of them women.” 

But creators are refusing to back down. “I refuse to censor or make changes to the game,” Vile:Exhumed developer Cara Cadaver wrote on Bluesky. “I will not retell a story about these topics in a way to make people who don’t understand feel more comfortable.”

On Thursday afternoon, Itch.io said they were beginning to restore previously delisted NSFW games–so long as they’re free.

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