The past week saw gaming’s biggest storefront, Steam, bend the knee to payment processors’ demands and remove hundreds of games featuring explicit content. Shortly after, Itch.io removed all NSFW games from its store due to pressure from payment processors.
But why are payment processors pressuring online stores to remove NSFW games? It’s due to a manufactured campaign from an Australian anti-porn, pro-censorship group called Collective Shout.
A Slow, Calculated Start
Initially, Collective Shout targeted games depicting sexual violence and incest. They also claimed that many games on Steam and Itch.io contained child abuse, but neither platform allowed or sold any content involving child abuse in their stores.
Also Read: How The UK’s Online Safety Act Is Affecting AI Roleplay
Collective Shout’s initial campaign was strong and faced little opposition. Many agreed that games depicting rape and incest shouldn’t be available, making it hard for others to oppose their movement. However, a vocal minority warned that this would lead to more censorship, as Collective Shout was just beginning. And they were right.
Collective Shout’s Manufactured Campaign
Collective Shout launched a campaign with alarming language and misleading content, directly reaching out to payment processors like Mastercard, Visa, and PayPal. They claimed that stores such as Steam and Itch.io were using their payment services to profit from games involving rape, incest, and child abuse.
Collective Shout ignored the facts. They didn’t acknowledge that Steam and Itch.io have strict policies against child abuse, and no games on their stores include such content. However, payment processors were swayed by their shocking language and misleading information, forcing Steam and Itch.io to take extreme measures and open the door to morality-based censorship.
Collective Shout Is Pro-Censorship, Among Other Things
Journalists began investigating the history of the anti-porn, pro-censorship group. An article published by VICE Media detailed how Collective Shout targeted games like Detroit: Become Human and Grand Theft Auto V, claiming that these games featured child abuse and violence against women.
Ana Valens, the reporter for the VICE Media article, left the organization after VICE’s owners, Savage Ventures, pulled her article down over concerns about “controversial subject matter.”
MadamSavvy, a vocal pro-fiction and free speech gamer, further exposed Collective Shout for their inconsistency and double standards. She found that Collective Shout is an anti-LGBTQ+, pro-life, and anti-expression group.
Additionally, she discovered that the group had a history of deliberately using extreme language and terms to trigger false alarms in their calls for banning Anime and other content that conflicted with their moral beliefs.
Next On The Chopping Block
After witnessing payment processors act on Collective Shout’s misleading campaign against Steam and Itch.io, there is a genuine concern that these processors may force platforms to remove “controversial” or “morally questionable” games.
Games that portray and support LGBTQ+ themes or explore controversial issues might be the next targets. Outside of gaming, Collective Shout also actively pushes for bans on anime series and manga publications they consider morally wrong. They don’t want to stop at games; they aim to regulate everything according to their brand of moral policing.
Publishing and similar fields have always faced regulations that go beyond the law, but the fact that a payment processor, which is involved in the entire infrastructure of content distribution, can do such things at its own discretion seems to me to be dangerous on a whole new level.
Yoko Taro, creator of NieR Automata
Their strategy of using payment processors as weapons against platforms raises concerns about freedom of speech and expression. What we engage with as adults, capable of critical thinking and making our own choices, may soon be influenced by corporations shaped by the moral policing of pro-censorship groups like Collective Shout.
Collective Shout Is Bad News For AI Roleplay
The AI roleplay space is new and growing, with many adults engaging with AI characters to unleash their creativity, fulfill their fantasies, or explore sensitive topics in a safe space.
Collective Shout and similar groups are bad news for AI Roleplay. They overlook that AI roleplay platforms are mainly used by women, who have consumed literature, erotic or otherwise, much more than men. They forget that users are mature adults capable of making their own decisions. All they see is a space without moral policing or censorship and target it.
Currently, most online AI roleplay platforms operate at a loss. Platforms that provide an uncensored or unfiltered experience encounter additional challenges in securing a payment processor to make their platforms financially sustainable.
A group like Collective Shout, which uses misinformation and shocking language as weapons, could start campaigns that quickly shut down AI roleplay platforms.
The Fight Against Collective Shout
People across the world are standing up against censorship. They are opposing Collective Shout, a group known for advocating a ban on any content that conflicts with their morals. They realize that letting such a group go unchecked would be damaging to their hobbies, livelihoods, and freedom of speech and expression.
People are organizing campaigns through phone calls, emails, and petitions to raise awareness about the censorship of legal content by Mastercard, Visa, and other payment processors.
We can only hope that they hold Collective Shout back from invading other hobbies. Because if they fail, our chances of protecting AI roleplay from moral policing and the weaponization of payment processors are extremely slim.
