Intro

Hello to everyone who's been following me through out the years and supporting my projects.

A few days ago I was made aware of the current itch.io issue regarding a massive NSFW games ban and now, after some thinking I thought I wanted to share some thoughts and updates regarding my projects and my NSFW content in general. To get as much attention as I can, I am posting this as a devlog to my most popular project, so hopefully I can reach as many of you as I can.

Also before I start my venting, I'd like to thank every single one of you who supported me either by donating, following, commenting or even just playing my games. I'm very grateful to have gathered a small group of people who actually enjoyed to interact with what I enjoy to make. I am forever grateful to you for seeing me and my art. 💜

Now to the shitty part of this post.

How the ban impacted me

So far me and my few projects were relatively lucky. I only got "shadow banned", which can be seen by how my daily views dropped by approximately 90%. But I have also heard of some games being removed by itch.io, including games that people have payed to play.

Here you can see a screenshot of my total project views from my dashboard. That huge dip is the day when all the shit went down.

Downloads and browser plays also took relatively the same amount of damage.

Even though I was pretty much absent from the game dev scene for a bit due to life, I was still developing some stuff for the future. Currently I am not sure if I'm going to be able to continue giving the circumstances. Player base building for the type of content is dead. There are no alternatives to itch.io that fit my needs and how I want to distribute my content.

Issues with the ban

To some this ban might not seem like a big deal, but for many others it's just a way to shut down creativity and entertainment, which is very inhumane. Art can take many forms, including sex and sexual content. Sex always was here and it will always be here. No matter if some payment processor assholes want it or not.

I doubt that anyone from the itch team will see this, but just in case I'll also leave a message for them: You can't handle shit. You can't empathize for shit. You can't make valid public announcements for shit. You can't just blame everything on the PPs and say that this shit is because of them. Partially this is also because itch.io never had a proper content moderation and this is only for itch.io to blame. "Our team is too small to moderate properly" is also not a valid excuse. With the payment cut you take from the creators you could afford a team of moderators if you wanted to. Yet you didn't.

I really hope, that everyone who had their NSFW content on itch as a full time job to pay for their life is doing ok. I can't imagine how it is to just be shut down like that with no prior warning and an alternative route provided. 

What's next for me

At the moment I have no other choice but to stop any developments I currently have since I still haven't figure it out how to promote my games as good as I could on itch prior to now. I will also be on a lookout for itch.io alternatives, since now this website can be deemed useless. I will also gladly hear out any of the recommendations to the itch.io alternatives!

I haven't retired NSFW entirely, though! If anyone is interested, you can find me on my BlueSky where I sometimes post some gay stuff. I will also post updates on the game hosting situation once I find a new place which doesn't treat sexual content as some illness or a crime. So don't be shy and come say "hi" to me on my bsky)

Again, I'm endlessly thankful to everyone who stuck around my content and my page on here. I hope this is not the end of itch.io, since there's unfortunately no good replacement for the time being. Hope you stick around on bsky for now so see you there 💜

Best regards to y'all, worst regards to itch.io staff and payment processors

That Lewd Dev Adam