Regarding the itch.io and payment processor fiasco

Hello everyone!

I really didn't think I'd ever need to make a post like this, but here we are.

As you may be aware, there's an ongoing drama with payment processors like visa and mastercard which folded under pressure from a group called Collective Shout.

They claim to fight against incest and sexual abuse in games and in the name of this, they pressured payment processors to stop handling payments for game platforms which list the games they consider immoral.

The result?

The whole Adult catalog of itch.io and hundreds of games on Steam have been delisted.
Many games not even falling into these moral categories they claim to be against.

The whiplash of this situation also hit this project. According to my analytics, itch.io plays a major role in discoverability of the game and in-turn support for the project.
The game is not on Steam and while I have thought of releasing it there after version 1.0 this plan might be dead in the water for this moment.

The unfair part is that the game does not break any of these moral rules imposed by the payment processors. But it doesn't seem to matter to them as long as the self-imposed moral crusade appears to be won.

Why should you care?

A pair of monopolistic companies just imposed a bunch of rules on how you can spend your money, pressured 2 major gaming platforms to do whatever they say because of their vision on morality. Not legality, morality. They make up the rules and expect everyone to play by them, even worse, they can be pressured into that by third parties. If we stay apathetic, this collar will only get tighter. We don't know if that's just the beginning, who knows which platform will be targeted next? It could even happen right here on Patreon :<

itch.io is really close to my heart, I love it and I think that's what gaming platforms should aspire to be. A platform where everyone is free to create and play whatever they want, free from abusive policies and censorship. Not the mention being really fair to developer.
itch.io has already apologized and I genuinely think it's not their fault things turned out this way, I hold no grudge.

What's next?

Hard to say at the moment, there aren't many platforms to migrate to, but I'd like to give my props to tfgames.site as it's currently the only platform where the game is publicly listed and I'd like to invite you all to give it your support :)

I do believe that itch.io will fight on the side of the developers and resolve the issue with minimal damage and reinstate the adult tag to the previous state. (Hope I won't regret those words)

To cheer everyone up, I'll be releasing full version 0.60 alpha for free.

Here's hoping the next post will be much more positive and development related. 🥂

Cheers~!