Games platform itch.io has temporarily removed all adult NSFW games from its service, following pressure to comply with credit card company rules.
The platform says it has “deindexed” NSFW adult content while it conducted a “comprehensive audit” of content, to make sure that it complied with the requirements of payment and credit cards processors.
On Thursday (July 31, 2025) one of the site’s administrators said that free adult NSFW were being returned to the platform. Paid-for adult NSFW titles, which remain removed as of Friday, will have to comply with financial organizations’ rules to be relisted. Itch.io said that such content will return to the platform “slowly”.
The move came after Steam, another, larger games platform, introduced new rules banning NSFW content that clashed with financial organizations’ rules. Steam purged a slew of content from the more extreme end of the NSFW scale, such as games featuring incest.
Credit card companies and other financial organizations often have policies about not working with companies that promote vice and adult content. This has affected many porn sites, and it seems that credit card firms are now exerting far more control over games platform content too.
Content that includes “sexualized images or videos of real-life humans” is banned on itch.io, which does not pre-approve submitted games and is billed as a platform supporting independent creators. “Fictional, illustrated, and rendered content is generally fine” on itch.io, according to its policies.
Content “glorifying sexual violence” is also banned from itch.io, as are “depictions of minors, minor-presenting, or suggested minors in a sexual context”.
At the same time as the NSFW content delisting process, itch.io introduced more specific listings of what kind of adult content was banned. This included non-consensual content (real or implied), rape, coercion, incest and pseudo-incest, plus revenge porn and sex trafficking implications.
itch.io works with PayPal and Stripe, both payment systems that link to credit cards, for payments on the platform. itch.io said it was waiting for “final determinations” from the two companies before it restored paid-for NSFW adult content. It added that it had suspended the ability to pay on itch.io with Stripe for 18+ content “for the foreseeable future”.
Stripe said that it does not allow content “designed for sexual gratification”.
“We must prioritize our relationship with our payment partners and take immediate steps towards compliance”
-itch.io
Alternative methods
Itch.io said it was looking into alternative payment methods for paid-for NSFW adult content on the site.
The platform said: “We understand this action is sudden and disruptive, and we are truly sorry for the frustration and confusion caused by this change… we must prioritize our relationship with our payment partners and take immediate steps towards compliance.”
The platform also addressed why it went further than Steam, by removing access to all NSFW content instead of just removing the most extreme adult content.
“The difference in our responses stems from the difference in our platforms,” itch.io said. “Steam is a ‘closed’ platform where every product page is approved before it appears on the store. Because they were generally aware of the content they host, they could identify and act on specific pages.”
In contrast to Steam, itch.io is a UGC (user-generated content) platform. “We could not rely on user-provided tagging to be accurate enough for a targeted approach, so a broader review was necessary to be thorough,” itch.io said. “Additionally, itch.io is a small company, both in team size and in transaction volume, compared to a company like Steam. We have limited ability to ‘push back’.”
itch.io said that the increased pressure was partly derived from an open letter to payment companies including Visa and Mastercard, signed by sexual exploitation activists in Australia in July.
In the letter, the authors urged the financial companies to “cease processing payments on gaming platforms which host rape, incest and child sexual abuse-themed games,” specifically mentioning Steam and itch.io.
The authors of the letter highlighted a “rape simulation” game called No Mercy (pictured above), that had allegedly been available on both Steam and itch.io.
itch.io said: “This is a time critical moment for itch.io. The situation developed rapidly, and we had to act urgently to protect the platform’s core payment infrastructure.”
The platform said that it will be implementing new content warnings for itch.io pages tagged as NSFW, and that page owners will be required to comply with them to be indexed.
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