How It All Started: The Collective Shout Campaign and Payment Processor Pressure
The current controversy began in mid-2025 when Collective Shout, an Australian activist group, initiated a campaign to pressure payment processors like Visa and MasterCard into severing ties with games featuring certain adult themes on Steam. The group’s focus was on removing what it deemed “extreme fetish content” such as incest, rape, and simulated child abuse, claiming moral responsibility in protecting users and vulnerable populations.
Initially struggling to gain traction, the group’s movement took a drastic turn when payment processors complied—forcing Valve to begin delisting adult-themed games in large numbers to preserve its global payment infrastructure. By mid-July 2025, over 400 titles had already been removed from Steam’s storefront, igniting a firestorm of backlash across social media and forums.
But what began as a relatively niche campaign quickly sparked a much larger resistance. Gamers, developers, and digital rights advocates viewed the move not as a step toward safety, but as a slippery slope toward broad censorship and a fundamental violation of creative freedom.
Petition Explodes in Response, Tripling the Reach of Pro-Censorship Campaigns
On July 22, an anti-censorship petition titled “Stop the Censorship of Legal Adult Games on Steam” was launched by a user under the pseudonym Zero Ryoko. It called out what it described as hypocrisy from both activist groups and payment processors—arguing that digital content featuring fictional characters was being unfairly targeted, while real-world exploitative industries faced no such scrutiny.
The petition’s core message emphasized that fiction is not reality, and that artistic freedom and market choice must remain protected in democratic societies. Within just ten days, the movement skyrocketed past 224,000 signatures, dwarfing the impact of Collective Shout’s four-month campaign.
“These ‘activist groups’ do not speak for everyone,” the petition states.
The petition’s momentum hasn’t slowed. As of August 2, it continues to grow, bolstered by widespread support from game developers, community moderators, streamers, and even a few notable journalists. Users have flooded social media with messages expressing outrage, while some are calling for boycotts against Steam and its partners.
Visa and MasterCard Under Fire for ‘Selective Morality’
A major focal point of the petition is the alleged double standard by payment processors. Petitioners argue that Visa and MasterCard are applying morality selectively—blacklisting legal adult games on Steam while continuing to support industries like real-world pornography, which arguably involve more ethical complications.
The implication, as outlined by Ryoko and echoed across Reddit threads and YouTube comment sections, is that these corporations are enforcing cultural censorship through financial control. Since Valve relies heavily on Visa and MasterCard for global payments, the pressure put on the gaming giant leaves little room for resistance without significant operational consequences.
Meanwhile, alternative platforms like Itch.io have also been forced to respond. The indie-focused storefront has hidden adult games from its search results and initiated manual reviews in fear of similar repercussions. Itch.io has also announced plans to seek new transaction partners who won’t impose morality clauses on legal content—a move that highlights the broader industry’s discomfort with the current state of affairs.
Valve’s Silence Fuels More Rage as Co-Op Games Dominate Charts
Despite the growing backlash, Valve has not issued an official statement on the censorship issue, choosing instead to quietly remove titles from the platform. In the meantime, Steam’s trending games list has seen a sharp shift, with co-op and multiplayer titles dominating the charts in 2025. While unrelated to the censorship saga directly, some gamers believe this shift is also part of Valve’s effort to avoid adult-themed controversy and promote more mainstream, socially acceptable content.
Developers of affected games have expressed frustration over vague communication, unclear moderation policies, and lack of support. Many have reported that their games were delisted without warning or explanation, while others claim they were told to “tone down content” without knowing what threshold they allegedly crossed.
A Watershed Moment for Digital Rights in Gaming
This movement represents the largest anti-censorship push in Steam’s history, with over 220,000 signatures and counting. For many, it’s about more than just adult games—it’s about where the line is drawn, who gets to draw it, and what kind of creative control companies should be allowed to surrender in the face of financial coercion.
The outcome of this standoff may have long-term implications not just for Steam, but for how digital platforms handle legal but controversial content under pressure from external forces. For now, the message from the gaming community is clear: they will not sit quietly while their content is erased by silent corporate decisions and opaque moral standards.
