#masterCard

[harlequinoccult]

What you can do to help indie devs

[serpexnessie]

Cold take: Credit card companies should not have the unilateral power to decide what is or isn't acceptable art. Also fuck weirdo puritan terfs.

Art is based off this post

For the random terfs seeing this wondering which games I'm referring to, it's every single nsfw game on itch.io, putting tons of indie artists and game devs out of work.

[tomatomagica]

[readgoods]

anyway here's a thing i drew a while ago of gooner mastercard chan getting rammed by artist chad thank you mastercard for giving me this wonderful idea

[alleecatblues]

INFORMATION ABOUT QUEER/ADULT CONTENT BEING DELISTED

Hey, I'm sure you've heard by now that several online retailers have blanket delisted queer/adult content. Information seems sporadic, so I want to create a masterpost of what happened, why it matters, and what you can do about it.

WHAT HAPPENED

You've probably heard that Steam and Itch.io have removed all of their adult/queer content from listings. Itch has even gone so far as to prevent creators from being able to get their payouts.

This is not Steam/Itch's fault. Mastercard and Visa have pressured them to remove their adult content. Visa and Mastercard collectively hold over 90% of the market share in payment processing. Unfortunately, if they cut you off, you pretty much lose over 90% of your gross income, which is a death sentence for basically any company.

This is also not just localized to Steam and Itch. Several anime/manga retailers have also been affected, and more companies are likely to follow. I would not be surprised if Patreon cracked down again soon, so if you have adult/queer content on there, I suggest you prepare accordingly.

The reason for this happening is not a response to the current US political climate, or these payment processors randomly deciding to force their puritanical views. It is a concerted effort by a group called Collective Shout, an anti-porn group masquerading as a feminist liberation org. (Look up the meaning of the word SWERF.)

Collective Shout has, allegedly, sent over 1,000 letters to Visa and Mastercard urging them to take action against certain digital retailers selling adult content. Which, thankfully gives us an avenue to respond. More on that in the third section.

WHY THIS MATTERS

For some of you, I don't need to explain why you should care. For others, let me explain to you why this is a massive cocern for everyone, not just adult content creators.

First of all, we've already seen perfectly sfw queer content catching strays from this. You should already be well aware that adult content and queer content are often conflated, and the two are pretty inextricably linked to each other. If you try to ban one, you will, inevitably, end up banning the other as well.

Secondly, this sets a precedent for "concerned citizens" to be able to pressure payment processors into removing whatever content they don't like from the internet. Even if you don't partake in adult content. Even if you're not queer. Even if this doesn't currently affect you or anyone you know right now, it will. They managed to do this with only 1,000 letters. If they get away with it, it'll only be the beginning.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Remember when I said they sent 1,000 letters to make this happen? I bet we can get more.

I wrote a form letter for Mastercard and for Visa. Fill in your name. Print them. Sign them. Mail them out. The addresses for the respective companies are at the top. It shouldn't cost much. Even international postage shouldn't be prohibitively expensive for most people.

Some people are sharing phone numbers and emails. That's fine, but I prefer a physical footprint. You can't see 1,000 phone calls. 1,000 emails don't take up physical volume. If you get 1,000 letters about something, you can see how much people care about it. That means something in this day and age.

IF YOU LIVE IN THE US there is a bill being introduced right now that stops payment processors from being able to control what people can and cannot purchase. Call your representatives. Right now. Even if you don't think they'll support it. Here's a script I wrote. And trust me when I say it'll help. I used to talk to politicians for a living. I know what I'm talking about.

SHARE THIS POST. Reblog it. Reblog it multiple times a day. Send it to everyone you know. Seriously. Everyone. Even if they're not on Tumblr. Get the word out. The most successful advertising is word of mouth. So use your voice and make sure people hear it. We've beaten this shit in the past and we'll do it again, but we still need to put in the work.

[superdillin]

Everytime one of these "protect women and girls" orgs go viral for doing something evil I like to take a look through their "wins" and see if they've ever helped protect even one single living woman or girl.

Collective Shout has:

Gotten a hotel to cancel a legal-aged porn star's reservation

Gotten a venue to cancel a Playboy Bunny themed party - again, attended by only adults

Pressured the Breast Cancer Foundation to pull ads that they found too sexy

got ads for a sex doll company removed because they felt the dolls resembled children

Got a beer coozy that had pinups of adult women printed on them discontinued.

Got an H&M ad pulled for back to school clothes for saying "Turn Heads"

Got Tyler the Creator banned from performing in New Zealand

I'm still scrolling and I have yet to see a single instance of a real, living woman or girl being protected by any one of their actions. They have on multiple occasions punished real, adult women for the audacity to be naked in some capacity they find distasteful.

Adding to this that they have lobbied to get a real pedophile released AND supported Cuties, which objectified and exploited real living children.

My main point is not that you have to love any of the things above, you can even hate them and wish they didn't exist. but they were able to dismantle the entire games industry and set a dark precedent regarding banks deciding who is morally good enough to spend money - and they aren't even helping any real women or girls in the process.

[fifty-fired-fay]

So it happened to itch now....

So there's a lot of talk about steam being forced to delist a bunch of adult games because Mastercard and visa dont want people to spend their own money.

Itch.io has de-listed any adult and erotica games. This is likely for the same reason.

I AM FUCKING LIVID. I am a full legal adult, why cant I spend my money? Why are big money processors just allowed to go full puritan on what we spend our money on? It's my hard earned money!

Even better ALL adult games were delisted, even the free ones! Wtf?

So looks like most games need a direct link to see and some even cant be downloaded at all.

[astarionconsort]

We just have an era where queerness is accepted in RPG genre and even become an important features in life sim and farm sim genre. Now conservative will take that acceptance away

People who are cheering for pornographic censorship unknowingly warped a cord around their own neck as well. Censorship will come after the things that you like too even if it's sfw

anti sex work online is used as a wedge to expand the surveillance state and discrimination of LGBTQ art.

[aimee-maroux]

I made a thing.

It's a riff on this meme, referencing the recent hostility towards NSFW creations and creators.

[doggendoodle]

First and foremost the Mastercard Visa crackdown on adult content is bad because pornography and adult content are Things That Are Good - at the absolute least, a society where creative expression allows people to make and consume them without fearing for their livelihood is a Good Thing. We're in a cultural moment where conservative pearl clutching is in vogue, and in a society where sex workers are routinely cast aside and told they deserve the mistreatment they receive. On a fundamental level the only reason this was able to happen is because we live in a society where sexual freedom is seen as Evil and Sinful.

Second and foremost the crackdown is bad because like every other crackdown before it, it is not and will never be limited to the Icky Gross Stuff and Evil Pornography. Collective Shout's other targets include Detroit Become Human, a game that is not only not pornographic in the slightest but also very progressive (if often hamfisted). The list of topics Steam is now banning includes menstruation. The porn ban on this very site already proved years ago that these sorts of initiatives will always, always be used as a tool to enable and perpetuate bigotry and oppression, lest we forget both the proliferation of the Hayes Code and this very site's active and ongoing crusade against black and trans women.

The American Civil Liberties Union has an active petition against Mastercard and their targeting of sex workers. I would strongly suggest signing it if you haven't already.

In addition, Collective Shout have claimed that it only took just over 1,000 calls to pressure Mastercard and Visa. Even with the force of conservatism firmly on their side, I am certain there are many, many more people opposed to this move. Whether or not you live in Australia, if you are able I strongly suggest calling the payment processors yourself and voicing your own concerns. Be mindful that the people taking the calls aren't the decision makers - but do not mince words. Speak in no uncertain terms.

[zwoelffarben]

(x)

Mastercard (US): 1-800-627-8372

Mastercard (Global): 1-636-722-7111

Visa (US + Canada): 1-800-847-2911

Paypal: 44-0203-901-7000

Perverts can do better than 1000 calls.

[gatto-italiano]

If you want to do something about this, here's a link with the phone numbers and emails of Visa, Mastercard, Stripe and Paypal. https://yellat.money/

Call them to protest this policy, ESPECIALLY if you're a card holder for them. Make some noise and raise some hell. Collective shout claimed it only took them 1000 calls to get them to bend the knee. I'm sure we can do more than 1000.

so itchio has shadowbanned any games tagged with 'nsfw', 'adult', or 'erotic' so they don't show up in searches, and several devs have reported that their r18 games have been removed from the site with no warning

you know, maybe the internet shouldn’t be controlled by payment processors and terf lobbyists. and maybe people should be more concerned about this rise of censorship on queer media.

[tazzy-zooming]

Censorship doesn’t only matter when you think something you like might be censored next. Censorship is wrong in and of itself.

Fiction is fiction. It’s not real. People should be allowed to purchase and engage with fiction that others dislike. They should be allowed to purchase and engage with fiction that others find wrong.

I was going to say “people might be using fictionalized depictions of things to explore their trauma! They might be using it to explore important messages! They might be using it for [other justification]”. And any of these things could be true. But they don’t need to be.

Censorship of fiction is wrong. It doesn’t matter if the things I like will not be censored. It doesn’t matter if I find the things being censored repulsive. The problem with focusing on the slippery slope is that it assumes that the bad thing happening now is only bad because of what might come next. But censorship is bad in and of itself.

No one should choose what others can engage with. Not Mastercard. Not Visa. Not Collective Shout. Not Moms for Liberty. No one.

[thoughtportal]

Collective Shout, an Australian anti-pornography group, has claimed credit for Steam's recent removal of a large number of sexually explicit games and new, stricter moderation guidelines regarding such material. In a statement to PC Gamer, Valve cited pressure from payment processors like credit card companies and Paypal for the move, while Collective Shout touted its open letter and consumer campaign targeting payment processors for inciting that pressure.

This was first reported by Waypoint, which has since pulled its two articles on the subject without explanation. The articles' author, Ana Valens, has alleged that Vice's parent company, Savage Ventures, removed the articles due to concerns over their controversial content rather than any error in the reporting.

Collective Shout began in 2009, co-founded by self-described "pro-life feminist" Melinda Tankard Reist. Collective Shout describes itself as "A grassroots campaigning movement against the objectification of women and sexualization of girls in media, advertising, and popular culture". To date, it has been involved in:

Unsuccessful efforts to ban Snoop Dogg and Eminem from Australia.

A successful 2015 campaign to prevent Tyler the Creator from touring Australia.

A successful 2015 campaign to pressure Target and Kmart to stop selling Grand Theft Auto 5 in Australia.

A petition to ban the game No Mercy from sale, which ultimately led to the developers pulling it from Steam.

An unsuccessful petition to ban Detroit: Become Human from sale in Australia.

On July 7, Collective Shout shared an update to its No Mercy Change.org campaign calling on supports to email payment processors (including PayPal, MasterCard, Visa, and Discover) to demand that they "cut ties with Steam and itch.io" over "hundreds of r*pe, incest, and child-abuse games." This was followed by an open letter from Collective Shout asking that they "immediately cease processing payments on Steam and itch.io and any other platforms hosting similar games."

Collective Shout later wrote that 1,067 individuals called and emailed payment processors as part of this campaign. It's unclear when Valve updated its TOS for developers, but the mass deletion of sex games appears to have begun on July 15 judging by SteamDB's recorded package changes. On the 18th, Valve confirmed to us that this was in response to pressure from payment processors.

Collective Shout claimed victory that same day. "Since we launched our campaign calling on Payment Processors to stop facilitating payments for rape, incest, sexual torture and child-abuse themed games on Steam, they have added a new rule to their policies + removed hundreds of these games," the group wrote on Twitter.

In follow-up tweets, Collective Shout wrote that it was experiencing harassment from "misogynistic gamers" over the campaign, and that there remain 82 games "tagged with rape and incest" that the group will continue campaigning to have taken down⁠—this is of a claimed 500 games that the group took issue with.

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Those numbers do not add up, though. Counting up all "Removed" and "Retired" games on SteamDB since the 15th, I got 456 hits, but that includes double counts for most of the offending games (many of which were both "Removed" and "Retired"), DLC and demos for those games (also given the double-r treatment), and a number of unrelated games that were taken off Steam during this time.

"All these porn sick brain rotted pedo gamer fetishists so desperate to get their hands on rape-my-little-sister incest games they’re now exchanging clues on how to find them so that they don’t all die overnight," Collective Shout co-founder Melinda Tankard Reist tweeted on July 18th. Later that day, she shared a long Tweet thread further claiming victory with Steam's decision.

The two retracted articles from Waypoint appear to be the first among the games press to point out the connection between Collective Shout and the recent changes on Steam, a connection which is public knowledge⁠—by Collective Shout's own statements⁠—and not an allegation made by Waypoint against the group.

The articles remain available on the Wayback Machine, and I have reached out for comment from Savage Ventures regarding their deletion. Ana Valens and two other Waypoint writers, Shaun Cichacki and Matt Vatankhah, have all resigned from the site. "I stand by all of my retracted articles, especially the Collective Shout ones," Valens said in a statement to PC Gamer.

"I fact-checked every article's content rigorously. I believe that Collective Shout and its related organizations deserve further journalistic investigation by other reporters in the games industry. I hope more writers look into the clear and obvious signs of payment processor-based censorship that are occurring toward Steam, and have occurred against Pixiv, itch.io, DLSite, Gumroad, Patreon, and other sites."

This is likely far from over: Collective Shout is no doubt feeling emboldened by a second public success in its efforts to police content on Steam specifically. The games I saw removed from Steam in this wave all featured risible content and suspect quality, but Collective Shout has a broader anti-pornography, even anti-expression remit that it has demonstrated in the past.

By Ted Litchfield July 20, 2025

[catfindr]

[neharbstuff]

absolutely disgusting. mastercard is a monopoly and doing this makes me sick

>Toronara (doujin store) halts sale of certain works because of credit card companies

>MangaZ shuts down because payment processors blocked it

>Melonbooks no longer accepts use of VISA & Mastercard on online stores (because of censorship)

>DLsite starts to block countries from viewing certain content, no longer accepts VISA & Mastercard

>Payment processors block team payments for creators of adult games on Steam

>Now Surugaya has removed their online listings for adult games & doujin because of payment processors

Fucking hate these cretins, I swear.