Sorry, I really didn't mean for you to feel attacked for it, but I do think it's conspiracy nonsense.
Obviously the dev can make their own mind up, but that's my opinion.
I certainly don't mean any ill-will towards you though.
Thank you, and you are certainly welcome to your beliefs. But if you are willing to listen I think I can adequately prove that there is something weird happening in regard to hypno content. You might not agree with the same conclusions I have reached, but I think there is enough evidence to make you question things for yourself once you stop and check things out for yourself independent of my own research.
My next post is long so feel free to skip reading it if your mind is made up and you do not want to listen to me point out things that do not make sense for me with the accepted narrative regarding hypno content.
First I want to start by saying that I wish it was all simply just a made up conspiracy in my own crazed mind. Unfortunately it is a reality that Patreon (among other companies) has made game makers in the past remove hypno content once they were aware of it.
Now, I can't prove the "why", or even my explanation of cause and effect, but I can give a timeline of when things happened. So in that sense I agree with you that this can easily seem like just a "conspiracy theory" since those usually share those distinctions.
But while I can't prove my "theory", I can very easily disprove the usual given excuse of "we ban this content because it is a form of forced content." and my theory is the only other reasonable explanation after you take that away.
Further, my theory is based on economics and domino effect caused by individual choices alone rather than the usual conspiracies involving intentional shadow groups behind everything in a puppet show.
I honestly do not think there is some big plan involved nor that anyone is colluding in backrooms somewhere or any such thing. Instead I think that each group (MasterCard, Patreon, PayPal, etc.) are simply trying to make more money and risk less money which is basic capitalism at work. Which is actually an accepted narrative once you start investigating things (if you ask I can point you to dozens of news articles and press releases).
Where my "conspiracy theory" differs from the accepted narrative is that the companies all claim that their reasons, for the removal and banning of the word "hypno" and content associated with it, have to do with it being a "forced sexual experience" or similar words to that nature.
The thing is that these companies actually let by some forms of "forced" content while being very proactive at removing "hypno" content. And this just does not make sense when you take their excuse at face value.
If a game has content where you drug someone or get them drunk out of their minds and then show that person having sex that does not (yet) get taken down as long as you include a disclaimer about it being fictional. If a game has content where you use blackmail or guilt trip or trick, or use other forms of "persuasion" that does not (yet) get taken down either assuming the same disclaimer. Nor does it get taken down if there is pain play, sadism, torture, abuse, or other types of related content.
But if you put in a person being exposed to hypno images, and then made to have sex, then like magic it does get taken down. Further unlike those things which are allowed with a disclaimer, hypno content is forcibly removed regardless of disclaimer. All that matters is whether they realize your game exists with that content. (And my point that started all of this was that having that word "hypno" in your game name makes that awareness happen much faster.)
I am not just basing it on "I heard from a friend of a friend that..." or anything of the sort. A few years back in 2014 there was a game developer who specialized in f/f game content. One day that developer suddenly had the funding frozen. This case stood out for me back then because to get the hold on funding removed they had to remove just one scene from their game. It was not the bad ending scene where a gun was held to the MC girl's head and she was ordered to give a bj then a black screen while he said things that made compliance be inferred and then finishing with a *BANG* followed by a game over screen as he presumably shot her dead anyway. No, that didn't get censored. Instead it was the scene where a dominant female character decided to use fetish hypnotism to make the MC girl picture in her head a scene where she accepted a submissive lesbian act.
But ignore that for a moment. Right here on this website there have been several instances of game devs being told by Patreon to remove the hypno content. Including in some cases the devs posting the actual letter they received from Patreon.
For a quick example, the game Perverted Education was forced by Patreon to remove incest, the therapist's hypnotist content causing mental and behavioral changes, and the teacher's content was changed from forced to assisting; but meanwhile other content such as the cheerleader using peer pressure and trickery to shame, humiliate, and basically rape the MC was allowed to continue unchanged among other similar scenes and acts.
Patreon and games hosted on it are by no means alone with this unreasonable banning of content. And the ban on "hypno" is quite specific. Going outside of games to videos is like comparing apples to oranges, but it is the easiest way for me to prove how specific this issue really is.
Take for example the porn site XHamster. If you try to post a comment on any video with the root word "hypno" in your comment it immediately gets flagged by their system and refuses to let you post. (Easy for you to test, just try posting a comment with just that one word in it...) If you do a search of their site by keywords then a search for "subliminal" will give you hundreds of videos but "subliminal hypno" or just "hypno" by itself results in a "we're sorry no videos match that". If you scroll through their list of available tags when making a profile on their site they have thousands available... but not a single one with the root word "hypno" in it. You can use a lot of tags that include the word "forced" but not a single tag with the word "hypno" in it. You can choose a tag for "consensual non-consensual roleplay", tags with "slave" in them, tags with "abuse" in them, and tags with "breaking" in them, along with an even longer list of other dubious consent tags.
But, despite all of that being available, you are never given a chance at the "hypno" tag. Ohh, but you can use the tag mental control or subliminal..! Because obviously neither of those have anything to do with the use of hypnotism... >_>
XHamster is not alone by any means. One porn star actually put together a spreadsheet and published it to the public showing a bunch of the adult hosting sites from her personal experience that ban the word or use of hypno content (and yet it is nowhere near complete as it neglects to list a lot of famous porn sites which I know from personal checking ban it such as PornHub or the previously mentioned XHamster). Dozens of sites actively block "hypno" but still allow things like "rape fantasy", "forced", and "slave" content.
I think my point here is this... I can't prove "why" the word hypno has been banned. But I can easily prove that it has been. I also can't prove that my theory that it is all based on the u.s. laws regarding practiced hypnotism, and how I believe companies made the decision to boycott to prevent lawsuits and charges. But I can easily disprove their usually used excuse when they attack any hypno content of it being because it is forced content. I can also quite easily prove that all of these banning movements only started happening after those laws went into place.
So my question is this... if my theory is not correct (that they ban to prevent risk of losing money or lawsuits) then why do they do it when they don't ban other "forced" things yet use the excuse for hypno content being "forced" when they ban just that?
If anyone does not believe that I have proof of these weird bannings of hypno because it is "forced" but not other forced content then please say so.
(Assuming the admins here will allow me to post outside links to these sources...) I will be quite happy to point you to published articles written by various people since 2014 when the bannings roughly first started. I will happily point you to dozens of porn sites and tell you to search for hypno and then search for the various forced sex acts and do a comparison of what they host. I will be pleased to forward you to the mentioned porn star's own site which includes a link to that spreadsheet I mentioned which shows what content that is banned at various sites. I will quite gladly point you to posts by people stating that Patreon had written them a removal of content notice because of their content depicting hypnotism - this includes artists, game developers, and musicians among others.
