The Australian game development industry is nervous about overreach by distribution platforms, following calls to censor games.

This was triggered by a campaign by the Australian not-for-profit group Collective Shout aimed at preventing the “pornification of culture” by lobbying against sexualised depictions of women in games.

The campaign targeted games featuring representations of sexual violence against women, as the organisation argued their existence may fuel real world abuse.

Academics have expressed concern that the flagging systems used to purge games from platforms could disadvantage developers making games that deal with adult themes.

Some people within the industry have expressed concern the platforms’ automated flagging systems could make it harder for new games to reach the market.

On July 11 Collective Shout published an open letter on its website addressing multiple credit card processors including Visa and Mastercard.  They called for the removal of a game called No Mercy that featured rape as a primary form of gameplay. Collective Shout had previously launched a public campaign to facilitate its delisting. The letter concluded with a request to the credit card companies to cancel customer purchases of No Mercy and similar games from the digital platforms Steam and Itch.io.

Days later both Steam and Itch.io posted new policies explaining that they would delist games featuring certain content catered to adults, at the request of payment processors. The changes allowed for the removal of paid content from consumers’ accounts, including the game No Mercy.

Curtin game design academic Skye Ogden said: “It was a carpet bombing of anything with terminology on their list of questionable flagged language.”

Monash University academic Phoebe Toups Dugas explained in a Conversation article that as a result of Steam’s new policy games that did not contain the subject matter targeted by Collective Shout’s public callout were being removed from the platform without warning. Despite the campaign originating as a movement against mature content, games featuring LGBTQIA+ elements were caught in the crossfire and removed.

According to third party online database SteamDB, out of about 146,000 games listed on Steam, nearly 15,000 are tagged as containing sexual content.

Mr Ogden said: “Games, like many other art forms, can and do touch on topics such as abuse, verbal or physical, mental health, suicide, abortion, death, etc.”

The new restrictions resulted in vocal dissatisfaction from game developers and consumers, including the creation of a petition on change.org to revert the policies which gained around 200,000 signatures before it was removed. Questions of whether payment processors were overstepping boundaries were raised by both players and developers. 

Several other petitions have appeared on Change.org since the first one was taken down, including one launched in late July by Ethan Bruwer that included this call to action: “Gamers! Our time to act as a collective is here. If we do not stop the efforts of Collective Shout, PC gaming will die. It is time that we, as players and developers making this content that is getting banned, put a stop to the censorship being forced upon us.” 

Following the delisting of games from both platforms, members of Collective Shout received public criticism for raising the campaign. Members of the organisation received threats of rape and death for the actions performed by Steam and Itch.io.

Earlier this month WA member of parliament Kate Doust condemned the harassment of Collective Shout and praised its work protecting women and children.

She said: “I applaud the women involved in Collective Shout for having the courage to stand up and continue their work to try to clean up the online gaming industry. I am not saying that all games should go—there are some really great online games and we have a thriving industry in Western Australia—but we need to get rid of the ones that promote harm, damage, violence or acts of mutilation, rape or death.”

A Western Australian Games Industry Council representative said local developers were not likely to be impacted by the new restrictions because of the tighter restrictions surrounding game distribution in Australia in comparison to other countries.

All games sold in Australia by law require an assessment by the Australian Classification Board resulting in an age rating.  In the case of a game not to receiving a rating, it would be banned from sale.

Although this extra level of regulation stops the sale of offensive content, it does not fully prevent already cleared games from being taken down from platforms at the request of payment providers.

Last month Collective Shout launched another campaign again another gaming platform called Roblox, warning that it is failing to protect children and teens from harmful content and grooming.