I think the key issue here concern more the creators than consumers pov. Yes, I'm confident consumers will still have access to specialized websites that fly under the radar of the 2 or 3 majors payments processors
BUT sex workers who make a living by creating stuff (yes, porn game creators
are by design sex workers) are being hit the hardest. Many can no longer monetize their work - itch (and steam too I believe?) has suspended transactions for adult creators: since last night, and their surprise GCU update, when a consumer buy an adult game, Itch holds the money until the game is "reviewed".If itch approves the game, the money is released to the creator; if not: the buyer is refunded. But with When they will review all the games with only ~100 employees? No one knows
If people can't make a leaving from there work, there will be far less content produced, and with a huge drawback in quality
There is also 2 things I'd like to point out:
- Platforms like F95zone or LoversLab rely heavily on ads or sponsorships. Running large forums and hosting huge databases costs money; and vatly rely on those payment processors: we already saw this happened with mindgeek (pornhub, redtube, youporn, ...)
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- Japanese platforms like dlsite and independant creators on local Patreon have already seen their aggreements directly cutted off too:
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- and even though these websites use local japanese payment processors, those are under attack as well
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TLDR: It's getting much harder for sex workers to survive through content creation. Even if fan-running alternative sites emerge, the quantity - and quality - of available content will likely decrease. And that's coming
just from the pressure exerted by the payment processors alone; there are already other ongoing purinatical and anti-lgbt efforts censorship as well. itch, for instance, has used the "anti-porn" excuse to remobe lgbt themed content.
On a side note, even if someone feels okay with the "anti-lgbt" censorship or just doesn't care, don't worry the pattern is known from a long time:
first they come for what you don’t care about… and then they’ll target content you do.