The Overreach of Payment Processors and the Future of NSFW Games v2.00

It’s been a while since my last post. So before diving into the headline topic, I’ll just drop a status update on game dev and other personal news.

I haven’t done a heck of a lot in terms of working on any game dev projects. I haven’t stopped completely, but I really can’t say the time I’m putting in is noteworthy.

My physical health has been fine (it's actually been really good TBH, all things considering), but my mental state is another story. I feel sort of emotionally empty and exhausted, I have the energy to get shit done physically, but no motivation to reach any tangible goal. I want to get shit done, but feel like I’m waiting on someone or something to finish their ‘work’ or arrive at the ‘destination’, so I can consider all the ‘positions and locations’ and plan ahead with those variables in mind. At some point I’m just gong to say fuck it and go on ahead with or without everything/everyone/all relevant information….

While my game dev journey has slowed to a crawl, a lot of things in my life have changed or will change soon. I feel like I’ve been on autopilot, and everything is definitely looking ‘very’ positive all things considered.

When everything in my life has settled down, I hope to get more accomplished when it comes to game dev.

Anyway, that’s enough of my life rambling.

So here we are here again. Revisiting the topic of censorship and payment processor overreach.

This time the flag bearer that led the charge for this round of bans is a group called Collective Shout, a Right Winged Feminist group, and they like to look at the world through a Victorian lens. While they lean on the Political Right, they share the same enthusiasm as the crazy Left feminist when it comes to wanting to removing anything that suggest or insinuate abuse on woman.

It may be a shock to some of the late millennial's, but the political and ideological Right used to be really pushy and authoritative too. They did things like take singers to court for ‘devil music’ and threw D&D players in the clink for being ‘too goth’. It would appear, in current day political climate, the bad actors on the crazy right and left have now met midway. It would be hilarious if it weren’t so painful.

Collective Shout also happens to be situated in Australia of all places. I shouldn't be surprised since they are one of the countries that bans games on a regular basis. And a beachhead for feminist and communist extremist. Aside from Germany, they are also the country that got locked-down the hardest during the Bullshit P(l)andemic. (At least in my opinion)

It’s evident to me that a lot of the globalist despots that are feverishly trying to steer the world into a avocado toast flavored dictatorship, have taken a liking to stomping their boot heals on the honest hardworking people of Australia.

I have faith in the Aussies though. They will turn their avocado toast dictatorship back into a chill, don’t give too fucks, crock dun dee place once again. (All the DEI money is running out all over the world now)

Anyway, back to the topic at hand.

Collective Shout managed to get a game called No Mercy pulled from the Steam store not too long ago. While they technically only got it pulled from some countries, the harassment the developers got caused them to take the game down themselves,

Collective Shout are citing all the same tired old arguments about violent/edgy content being a source of all woes in the world. (or something like that)

Basically the same, tired 'video games make people violent' argument.  An argument that is so easy to disprove at this point it's almost comical.  The way I see it, you don't even have to look at statistics or studies to prove violent content doesn't make people violent.  If video games made people violent, then all players would eventually be in prison.  Since I don't see a massive influx of incarcerations (and massive loss of sales) when a new violent video game comes out, I'm going to call BS on the whole violent video games argument.

No Mercy is a visual novel, it’s main theme is abuse on on woman and incest among other kinky tropes. I saw a let’s play of it, observing the quality of graphics, game-play, writing, etc. I can’t honestly say I’m sad it’s ‘gone’.

However as low quality as it is, I still feel it was up to the customer to decide to buy it or not.

Collective Shout, or I should say the Payment Processors should not be allowed to dictate what is created from someones imagination. It would be a different story if they made a live action film to put in the game were the actor(s) were actually abused or hurt, but non of that applies to No Mercy.

I went into a long winded rant* over a year ago about this issue. Back then the payment processors were just starting their crackdown on ‘gamer culture’. I would like to reiterate that It’s very important that we don’t censor games or any other entertainment media:

- Censorship just encourages more censorship.

- Games with ‘unpleasant’ content is like a horror movie, it’s not intended to give you a warm fuzzy feeling.

- ‘Unpleasant’ content is a safe way to explore the dark side of the human condition.

- ‘Unpleasant’ content can help reduce stress and frustration in a way the soft and fluffy cannot.

- Censorship is often very bias. A very popular American TV (and book) series called Game of Thrones had practically everything the typical crowed of people take issue with.

- Censorship doesn’t reduce harm in any statistically observable way.

- Censorship often causes great harm as it is often used as a tool by despots and bad actors in positions of power to steer and mislead people.

- Censorship will create a chilling effect for all forms of art and speech.

I’m actually happy this is happening finally. Not because I’m advocating for censorship, but because this is the metaphorical hornets nest being kicked. This event has gotten a LOT more traction than the payment processors previous transgressions.

Regardless of what happens next, there will be a fight. And when you have a fight, you usually get a resolution. We may not agree with that resolution, but at lest we don’t have to wait around being slowly ‘tortured and poisoned’ into accepting our fate.

* https://arkinum.itch.io/i-couldnt-become-a-farmer-so-i-decided-to-capture-and-br...