Australian Karens Are Coming for Video Games

I really thought we were past this shit after Anita Sarkeesian and her cadre of frauds faded into obscurity, but apparently not. If you haven't heard, Steam and it's smaller, indie-focused counterpart itch.io suddenly and without warning, removed or deindexed their catalogs of NSFW or Adults Only rated titles. Steam has been mum on the issue to the public, but itch.io posted a statement explaining that this is due to demands from their payment processors, while Valve has told developers similar and quietly updated their onboarding rules accordingly:

As of now, the pressure is coming from Visa, Mastercard and PayPal, but other processors are being lobbied as well. Hundreds of titles have been impacted by this sudden change and found themselves unable to sell their works on two very popular PC digital storefronts. There has of course been collateral damage too:

itch.io insinuated that the payment processors' demands left them no time to notify or work with developers and that they had to act immediately or lose the ability to take payments, effectively putting them out of business. Steam took similar action at the same time, so they presumably got the same demands.

Now, I don't care for NSFW games. Much like the Postal series, I think many are crap quality titles that use sexuality and being edgy to try to succeed through other factors than quality. It works too because it's a big category that sells a lot of units each year. They're obviously not all like that, but many are and I just don't bother with that subgenre because of it. However, I'm firmly against censorship, except where the law is broken. Defending the right of art--including offensive art--to exist is not a matter of individual taste. Art is art and yes, letting this happen is the top of a slippery, chilly slope and it won't stop here.

So, why is this happening? An Australian activist organization called Collective Shout (warning, their site is cringe central), sent an open letter to a number of payment processors and for some reason, the three biggest targets buckled like belts. Steam and itch.io need these companies to be able to do business, so they buckled too.

"Who the Hell are Collective Shout?" I hear you ask. I was asking too. They claim to be a "feminist" organization that's against the exploitation and over sexualization of women. Doesn't sound too different than the likes of the zealots who tried to influence the games industry with minimal success in the mid-2010s. This is much worse though.

They've been around for 15 years and despite only having 10 employees, somehow have significant influence and social reach. Their founder and main policy leader is a religious fundamentalist--though she tries to keep that quiet--who is anti-abortion, anti-sex work, anti-sexuality in general really and is said to be a transphobe. I couldn't find a solid source from that last one, but it would not surprise me. I don't know about you, but this doesn't seem very women forward to me. They've undertaken a number of campaigns and you'll see they all have a very anti-sexuality stench to them. Say what you will about Feminist Frequency, but they were not generally about removing rights of choice, from women at least. What they do share in common is that like most extremists, they feel it's not only their right but also their duty to impose these "morals" onto the rest of the world because of course, they're more enlightened than the rest of us and it's for our own good.

These people are zealots and should have no influence, yet they somehow managed to convince three of the world's largest payment processors to sanction an entire genre of art and bully Valve, one of the game industry's biggest companies.

This boils my fucking blood and not just because of them.

Yes, I think anyone who is sane should agree that a bunch of Australian Karens who want to impose their fake diety's "morals" on the rest of the world should be told to sit down and shut up. But what the fuck are Visa, Mastercard and PayPal doing by not telling them exactly that? These people have no legal authority and represent an insignificant number of their customers. They have no power beyond what's handed to them. What, are 10 religious zealots and their idiot followers going to convince the Australian government to stop allowing payments from them? Visa and Mastercard are a de facto duopoly in credit cards and despite being one of the worst companies on Earth, PayPal still holds huge market share as well. If Australia did cut them off, big chunks of their economy would die overnight and they know it. These is nothing notable that Collective Shout can do to these companies, so why did they cave to them? We may never know, but the Goliath in this battle is definitely not who won here.

Second, why are private companies that serve little function but moving money from point A to point B allowed to have any say in the types of content their customers sell? They processed payments for illegal hate groups for decades until the pressure got turned up, but games acknowledging that human sexuality exists are a bridge to far? What fucking decade is this?! Visa, Mastercard and their ilk are essentially infrastructure companies like Internet providers, ones which have spent decades making themselves fundamental to modern life and they should have no authority to determine what is objectionable or to apply morals to anyone, as long as it doesn't violate the law.

You might argue that they're private companies and can do what they want. In the case of Steam and itch.io, I agree. As the retailers, they should be free to decide what they sell on their stores. If people want things they don't offer, they'll go elsewhere. In this case, they did not make that decision, it was forced on them by companies they have no choice but to use, none of which have any understanding of the gaming medium. This is like if Jack Thompson had succeeded in his also religion driven crusade against certain violent games, only this impacts an entire genre, though one that doesn't genreate the hype of something like Grand Theft Auto. If infrastructure middlemen are allowed to be moral arbiters of content, then so should your Internet provider, your operating system vendor or anyone else in the chain of getting content to you. I'm guessing you don't want that.

As if that wasn't bad enough, reporter Ana Valens had two critical articles she wrote about Collective Shout for VICE's Waypoint--which1111 is apparently still a thing that exists--get deleted by their new parent company Savage Ventures "due to concerns about the controversial subject matter":

I do not agree with Ana Valens on many things, but this is another example of a company caving to Collective Shout because seemingly, the heat isn't worth it. Thankfully, the articles have been archived here and here and I do recommend reading them as they shine a lot more light on these censorious cockroaches.

The chilling effect here is very real and should scare everyone. Valve is a notoriously private company, but their silence is deafening and reeks of another company with a de facto monopoly not showing the concern for the customers they've always claimed to be front and center. Make no mistake, though their finances aren't public, they are one of the biggest companies in the industry by far and could suit up and fight this with their couch cushion money. I will give some benefit of the doubt and say that given how little notice both Steam and itch.io had here, taking this quick action isn't a sign that they're otherwise ignoring it. Indeed, itch.io said as much in their statement. Things like this don't happen overnight and no company wants to make less money. But it would be nice if Valve at least said something to indicate that they are trying to create a solution for the developers who they take 30% of revenue from. If they decide to just bow out of the fight, I will definitely be aiming to take a lot more of my business to the likes of GOG in the future.

Beyond this, what can we really do? Unfortunately, the duopoly of Visa and Mastercard makes direct protest and boycott difficult as it's pretty tough to live a modern digital life without a credit card. You can make your voices heard though. Contact Valve and tell them to get in the ring, sign the petition that's already far bigger than anything Collective Shout has done, contact the payment providers and tell them what you think and most importantly, do it respectfully. Screaming and insults will not get you listened to. I wouldn't contact Collective Shout at all because just like Anita Sarkeesian used to do, they'll take the minority of trill comments and use them to scream harassment.

Make no mistake, if this is allowed to stand, it will only be the beginning. There will be other games, other media, other things that are censored by proxy due to out of touch activists and companies that would rather shun consumers than risk a bit of bad optics. Organizations like Collective Shout cannot be allowed to win because when they do, it only empowers them to go further. This is a group whose core belief is that pornography shouldn't exist and each victory further emboldens them to push for that. It doesn't matter whether you care for these games or not because one day, they will come for something you do care about.

All we have to do is make our voices louder than theirs and we can undo this. Believe me, we have far greater numbers than they do and if there's one thing gamers know how to do, it's make noise when they feel they've been wronged. Stop them now and stop them forever!

Fuck you Collective Shout! I'll be damned if I'm going to let your religion dictate our art!