The State of Things

The Problem

As most of you may already know, a small puritan group from Australia has badgered payment processors to stop processing payments for adult games. They claim their targets were games that had highly illegal content, however, the fallout has affected all NSFW games on itch and Steam. They also don't plan to stop there. All horror games, and other games such as Grand Theft Auto, Detroit: Become Human, and Saints Row are all on the chopping block.

Artifact has been de-indexed. Not only has this affected traffic and new payments, but it has also frozen existing itch payments that were waiting to be paid out, nearly toppling Mesmerizers Gaming overnight. Steam may or may not still pay out, it's unclear at the moment, but I'm holding on hope. OppaiMan uses Patreon, so that should still be fine for now. In other words, purchasing games through itch currently does not go toward supporting Mesmerizers Gaming.

Changes

At the moment, Patreon seems to be the only platform unaffected. Until itch is able to resolve the issue, I will be dramatically increasing that price of the game on itch only to discourage payments on that platform– the game is still downloadable through itch when ordered directly through a Patreon pledge.

***A side effect of this change is that some OG Patrons who bought the game through Patron about 3 years ago in its early days may see that their game access is revoked. If you are an affected Patron, just shoot me a DM and I will restore it for you.

In addition, Steam keys will now be available for those downloading the game on itch, whether you have ordered through itch or Patreon, past or present!

The Future

I have faith that this whole situation will be sorted out with time, but I'm still uncertain how long this will take. The damage, however, is already being done. For now, progress on the game is expected to slow as we scramble to find new work. Possibly even coming up with another, smaller, non-adult game in the meantime if it helps to keep the Artifact train running. And of course, thank you again for all your support. It helps now more than ever!

If you are interested in helping out indie game devs further, and stopping censors from dictating what kind of games you choose to spend your money on, here is a collection of resources and actions you can take: https://bsky.app/profile/voiddebris.bsky.social/post/3lupqc2p7jk2n

August 12 EDIT: Itch has finally processed the pre-censorship payouts. We'll continue to keep an eye on the situation and hopefully be able to restore the game's Itch page to normal soon.