- Sep 7, 2025
- 112
- 246
- 43
uwuwoof, I hear you — and I actually appreciate that perspective. You’re right that some of the most interesting parts of a game live in those gray areas, and if I cut too much just to be “safe,” the game risks losing what makes it stand out. Your comment makes me want to sand things down less, not more. And if I'm being honest, the examples I gave, were actually some of the more mild-grey zone themes I initially had.
On the Itch.io point, for years, Itch deliberately gave devs space to publish without prejudice, and that wasn’t an accident. The truth is they only started enforcing stricter rules under duress, when payment processors forced their hand. So while the overreaching processor rules may have always been there, the real change only happened because of outside pressure, not because the platform itself wanted to crack down. I get that Itch is understaffed to analyze all the content manually — but I’m not sure it really should have to. It’s at least encouraging to see some governments beginning to question the kind of “rules” financial services should be allowed to impose. So imo Itch.io wasn’t wrong for choosing not to enforce rules that even governments are starting to question as unfair business practices.
That’s why I’m surprised by some of the reactions here — people saying “don’t be political” or “nothing has changed.” From my perspective, it has. I can’t separate this topic from politics while I’m developing a project like this. Like it or not, simply being an NSFW game creator makes you part of the debate — the groups pushing these extra rules would be happy if the whole NSFW game space disappeared altogether. My views are obvious in my project too ... I started creating NSFW content assuming that as long as I stayed within normal creative and legal boundaries, there would be viable ways to sell my work. Instead, I’ve found a layer of control I didn’t expect, and it’s hard not to see that as a major shift.
I get the “my house, my rules” reality, I suppose if I want to earn on these platforms I’ll have to adapt. But when I started this topic, my real question was whether devs have found any viable alternatives — new platforms, different ways of distributing, or even using self-hosted sites while places like Itch or Patreon are just for marketing. The discussion here has helped me understand reality a lot better, and even though the answers weren’t what I expected, the feedback was more useful than I realized. I can take something valuable from all the different perspectives — and I think I’m ready now to make the revisions I need, do what I need to do, and finally release my work within a couple weeks. So, thank you all.
On the Itch.io point, for years, Itch deliberately gave devs space to publish without prejudice, and that wasn’t an accident. The truth is they only started enforcing stricter rules under duress, when payment processors forced their hand. So while the overreaching processor rules may have always been there, the real change only happened because of outside pressure, not because the platform itself wanted to crack down. I get that Itch is understaffed to analyze all the content manually — but I’m not sure it really should have to. It’s at least encouraging to see some governments beginning to question the kind of “rules” financial services should be allowed to impose. So imo Itch.io wasn’t wrong for choosing not to enforce rules that even governments are starting to question as unfair business practices.
That’s why I’m surprised by some of the reactions here — people saying “don’t be political” or “nothing has changed.” From my perspective, it has. I can’t separate this topic from politics while I’m developing a project like this. Like it or not, simply being an NSFW game creator makes you part of the debate — the groups pushing these extra rules would be happy if the whole NSFW game space disappeared altogether. My views are obvious in my project too ... I started creating NSFW content assuming that as long as I stayed within normal creative and legal boundaries, there would be viable ways to sell my work. Instead, I’ve found a layer of control I didn’t expect, and it’s hard not to see that as a major shift.
I get the “my house, my rules” reality, I suppose if I want to earn on these platforms I’ll have to adapt. But when I started this topic, my real question was whether devs have found any viable alternatives — new platforms, different ways of distributing, or even using self-hosted sites while places like Itch or Patreon are just for marketing. The discussion here has helped me understand reality a lot better, and even though the answers weren’t what I expected, the feedback was more useful than I realized. I can take something valuable from all the different perspectives — and I think I’m ready now to make the revisions I need, do what I need to do, and finally release my work within a couple weeks. So, thank you all.
