Statement on the shadowbanning and removal of adult content on Itch.io
Hello, papaya here.
A few hours prior to this statement’s release, the only storefront we currently share our games and bonus content on, Itch.io, suddenly and abruptly began to shadowban and even outright remove uploads tagged with “adult” and “erotic” on the site. As of right now, the versions of our side story collections with R-18 content are still available, but shadowbanned.
First thing’s first: we are preparing for our uploads to get hit. If you have purchased one of our R-18 collections and have discovered that you are no longer allowed to download your purchase, contact us immediately through support@milkplus.moe with proof of purchase and we will give you a far more permanent copy of your purchase in an attachment. If you have been wanting to purchase any of our R-18 content, we encourage you to not purchase through Itch, but Patreon, as Patreon will still allow us to pay out even in the event of our R-18 posts getting taken down. And if you’d like to maintain far more consistent access at the cost of single-purchase convenience, please subscribe to us through Subscribestar, a creator support platform that focuses primarily on adult content (meaning the risk of things getting taken down is lower).
The second thing we’d like to address is the future of POLYCHROMANIA. As has been known since its initial announcement, POLYCHROMANIA is slated to be an adult title with violent content, with these aspects tying into its overall themes. While its development is still paused to make way for 7388, and we cannot possibly know what the Internet landscape will look like by the time its turn comes around, we must unfortunately consider the possibility of having to heavily modify its contents in order to be able to publish it and actually turn a profit. We plan on reaching out to publishers experienced with releasing adult content when it’s time for POLYCHROMANIA’s development to restart and will defer to their advice first before taking such extreme action. I wish to do everything I can to keep POLYCHROMANIA as untouched by censorship as possible. The world is cold and colorless without a place for the hurt to vent.
If you have had enough of Visa and Mastercard’s attacks on adult content, if you want to stop this from escalating to queer content as a whole, there are still ways to fight back, even if you’re a consumer.
If you are American, there is an ACLU petition that has been around for a while and is now getting much more traction. You can sign that petition here.
If Visa and Mastercard operate in your country, you can directly call their phone lines and make emails. This is part of what the groups trying to remove adult content have been doing to pressure them. Let’s do it in reverse. A list of numbers for Mastercard is here and a list for Visa is here.
Above all else, support people whose livelihoods are in danger. As we do not primarily focus on adult content, we are nowhere near as at-risk as other creators. If you see a NSFW creator struggling in the wake of this tragedy, see if you can send them some money their way.
Thank you for reading.
