I don’t know about you, but I feel like these two companies caved in too quickly to Collective Shout’s demands, to the point it makes me wonder what else they’ll demand? Will they demand shadowbanning the God of War games because they depict non-Christian religions and ‘promote violence’? Will they shadowban Grand Theft Auto 5, or GTA VI when it eventually comes out? Will they redefine games and content that are remotely positive of the LGBTQA+ community as ‘adult’? Will they demand that both sites suddenly require IDs?

Give these Puritan fascists an inch, and they will demand a mile, all while screaming, “Think of the children! Won’t somebody please think of the children?” If Steam or Itch won’t stand their ground with groups like these, then the next targeted website needs to. Sure, sites absolutely need to regulate and have appropriate guardrails, but what groups like Collective Shout does is lump anything remotely pornographic or queer-related as ‘abusive content’. It doesn’t matter to these people if the content is labeled as purely for adult use, if the content depicted is between adults, is consensual, or meant to be satirical, or raise uncomfortable topics. These people, these sites, and especially the credit card and payment companies need to remember that there’s a stark difference between adult content and illegal content.

These religious conservatives shouldn’t be able to think it’s easy to force us to conform to their beliefs. Otherwise, it might be a matter of time until Collective Shout suddenly decides Patreon, SubscribeStar, or even FurAffinity should be next on their attack list.

EDIT: I agree with everyone in the comments that it's the payment processors we should be angrier with, and that they have the larger amount of influence over these companies, but I still think we should be displeased with Steam and Itch as well. They could've released a statement defending adult and queer creators while also reinforcing online safety. They couldn't ignored the overabundance of calls or done an investigation into each claim. Instead, they decided to swiftly comply with Collective Shout without any thought into the consequences. That shouldn't be ignored. It implies that they won't put up much of a fight under the tiniest bit of scrutiny.