According to ebihimes, the producer of the visual novel game "Blackberry Honey", the independent game platform itch.io has shadowbanned all games marked with "NSFW", "adult" or "pornographic" labels so that they do not appear in search results, and multiple developers have reported that their R18 games were removed from the website without any warning.
Another game developer also confirmed this phenomenon, saying that the adult content of the website has been hidden, and some games have been directly removed from the shelves and received a notice: "If you plan to make money through this game content, you must comply with the 'acceptable use policy' of all relevant payment service providers used by your account. Accounts that violate our terms will not be eligible for payment."
Recently, Steam updated its content distribution guidelines, which resulted in the removal of a large number of adult games from the platform. According to Valve's response, some of the removed games violated the standards set by payment service providers and related financial institutions.
This move also caused dissatisfaction among players. Netizen Zero Ryoko launched a call on the petition website Change.org, asking Visa and MasterCard to stop censoring legal fictional content on Steam and other platforms, resist pressure from activist groups such as Collective Shout, increase the transparency of restricted content, and protect the rights of creators to create adult content.
The petition was launched on July 18 and currently has 34,000 signatures. However, since the results of the petition website itself have no legal effect and can only simply increase the attention of the discussion topic, it remains to be seen whether the two major financial institutions will respond or adjust.