Recently, I've been seeing people talk about this issue. TLDR if you don't know, a group named collective shout has told payment processors like Visa or Mastercard to use their powers to remove nfsw games under the pretense that many of these games promote the abuse of women
However, I firmly believe this is does not make sense.
Games like GTA or Detriot:Become Human have been targetted for reasons like child abuse.
This does NOT make sense, many of these games do not focus on the abuse of women AT ALL.
Furthermore, most games that they claimed to have "Incest" or "Rape" are genuingly extremely small, non-mainstream games that do not have a central focus, and to that I must ask, how much of an effect can these small games really do?
These small games are supported by people who are inherently into said topics, and removing these games does not remove the number of people who like these topics.
This means that
This means that collective shout fundamentally did not acheive anything aside from removing a few niche games
This has alot of long term harms, mainly, once we place a large blanket ban and show that payment companies can use reliance on them as leverage to implement policies that they want, they are going to continue abusing this power.
This looks like companies refusing key services simply because they disagree with what is currently happening.
For example, Elon Musk turning off Starlink during a Ukrainian offensive just because he felt like it was a "mini pearl harbour". We cannot allow people who may be uneducated on certain topics choose to step in with massive leveraging power, just because.
This also harms games who are NOT inherently sexual, this looks like sex positive games that can teach the younger generation how to deal with their urges in healthy ways, you're telling me that you're gonna remove games on sexual education?
And for the people who do not believe these games have been affeacted, yes they have. Nomnomnami, a game novel developer who focuses on LGBTQ stories has had her game which focuses on healthy sex delisted from Itch.io