Tag Archives: Censorship

Welcome to Video Games Weekly on Engadget. Expect a new story every Monday or Tuesday, broken into two parts. The first is a space for short essays and ramblings about video game trends and related topics from me, Jess Conditt, a reporter who’s covered the industry for more than 13 years. The second contains the video game stories from the …

Over one million people have claimed their freebies in support of GOG’s FreedomToBuy.Games initiative. In a limited-time campaign, the company is offering 13 NSFW games for free in protest after digital platforms like Steam and itch.io acknowledged a tightening of the rules around their NSFW content due to pressure from payment processors. On Friday, August 1, GOG issued a statement …

Great news, perverts/freedom enthusiasts: You have a bit more than 24 hours left to score some free “adult” games, whether for ideological reasons, or, really, any other reason you might want to play a video game where you do a Bejeweled-style Match-3 in order to get anime women to take their clothes off. This whole thing is going to take …

In partnership with developers, game marketplace GOG (Good Old Games) has launched a new website called FreedomtoBuy.games that’ll let you download select “adult” games for free. GOG believes the website takes a stand “against the quiet erasure of creative works from digital shelves,” a response of sorts to recent decisions from Steam and Itch to delist certain violent and sexuality-explicit …

GOG launched a new website Friday where users can claim 13 games that have been delisted from other online sales portals for free. In a press release, GOG wrote that with the giveaway, it and the game publishers taking part are “taking a stand against the quiet erasure of creative works from digital shelves.” GOG’s giveaway–found at the URL FreedomToBuy.games, …

Over the past few weeks, thousands of video games have been banned, removed and delisted from Steam and Itch.io. The justifications for doing so have been almost comically vague, and at least one highly anticipated title is now unable to be sold despite containing nothing objectionable. It started in early July, when payment processors including Visa, Mastercard and PayPal established …

Payment companies such as Visa, Mastercard and Stripe are facing public backlash, including from billionaire Elon Musk, for pressuring online gaming platforms to remove hundreds of games in response to a campaign from an Australian anti-porn lobby group. Itch.io, an independent gaming platform, last week removed all adult or not-safe-for-work (NSFW) games from appearing in its library in a hasty …

Image: Square Enix As a fight with credit card companies over adult games leads to renewed concerns about censorship on Steam and even on indie platforms like itch.io, a recent warning by Nier: Automata director Yoko Taro calling censorship a “security hole that endangers democracy itself” has become relevant again. I Hate This FF7 Rebirth Character’s Whole Vibe The comments …

Artist pulls show from National Portrait Gallery over censorship concerns  Axios Amy Sherald Cancels Her Smithsonian Show, Citing Censorship  The New York Times Artist Amy Sherald cancels Smithsonian exhibit, citing ‘culture of censorship’  ABC News Artist Amy Sherald cancels major Smithsonian exhibition, citing censorship  CNN Artist Amy Sherald cancels Smithsonian show over censorship  The Guardian Source link

Late in the evening on July 23, developers with games tagged as NSFW on Itch.io, a digital marketplace, began to notice something strange. Their work—whether it was a game about navigating disordered eating as a teenager, or about dick pics—no longer appeared in search results. “No notification or anything,” says former NYU Game Center educator and developer Robert Yang, whose …