itch.io removed adult games from search results, and at least some titles will be deleted
The owner of itch.io, Leaf Corcoran, announced that the store is forced to "deindex" all NSFW content. Adult games will now be temporarily excluded from search results due to pressure from activists at Collective Shout.
No Mercy
Corcoran apologized for how abruptly everything happened. He explained that Collective Shout recently launched a campaign against both Steam and itch.io. The organization complained to Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, and other major payment systems about the taboo nature of some adult games and urged them to stop engaging with such projects.
"This is a critical moment for itch.io. The situation developed rapidly, and we had to act quickly to protect the platform's core payment infrastructure. Unfortunately, because of this, it was impossible to notify content creators about the changes in advance," Corcoran wrote.
Currently, the itch.io team is reviewing adult games for compliance with payment systems' requirements. During this review period, these games are hidden from search results. Titles failing the audit will be permanently removed.
Itch.io will soon update the rules for publishing NSFW content in the store.