LONDON – Gaming community is witnessing unwanted changes lately as the internet’s last havens for adult indie games are suddenly removing explicit titles from their storefronts.
Despite Mastercard’s public denial of any involvement, developers and platform insiders say otherwise. Steam’s parent company Valve, said the crackdown is being driven by third-party processors who claim they’re simply “following Mastercard’s rules.”
Over the past few weeks, adult and controversial titles mysteriously vanished from Steam’s and Itch.io’s search results and storefronts. Indie creators who poured their lives into these projects are watching helplessly as their games are quietly buried or de-listed.
Those familiar with trend call it murky chain of command where Mastercard sets vague compliance standards, processors enforce them, and platforms are left to clean up the mess, or lose access to crucial payment systems.
In sharp rebuke, Valve accused Mastercard of acting through back channels. The gaming giant says it was never contacted directly. Instead, payment processors and acquiring banks, operating under Mastercard’s broad content guidelines, began rejecting adult games without a conversation.
Itch.io is also feeling the heat. As site entered talks with Stripe, one of the biggest online payment processors, developers noticed their adult games vanishing from visibility.
Stripe reportedly told partners it’s bound by whims of its banking backers, institutions that refuse to process anything involving sexually explicit content.
Developers and gamers called it financial gatekeeping, where giants define what art can be sold or seen, without ever needing to say the word “ban.”
As platforms like Steam and Itch.io walk the tightrope between creative freedom and financial survival, some backed their moves for removing adult content while others lament supression.
