'Legality is not the defining factor': Anti-porn group that pressured Steam and Itch.io adult game delistings says it goes after games it doesn't like 'even when they are not illegal'

Ever since it claimed victory when payment processors compelled Steam to delist a number of adult games from its service, Australian anti-porn group Collective Shout has been relatively quiet, save for when its founder—pro-life conservative Christian Melinda Tankard Reist—popped up on X to denounce those upset about the delistings as "porn sick brain rotted pedo gamer fetishists."

Now, group campaigns manager Caitlin Roper has had a chat—via email—with TweakTown, explaining a bit more about the group's worldview, targets, and the response it's had so far. I suspect it will not help: "Legality is not the defining factor" in how Collective Shout chooses its targets, explains Roper, "it is about documented evidence of harm to women and girls.

"Our work focuses on combatting the sexual objectification and exploitation of women and girls, so we focus our energy there. That said, we call out this objectification and abusive depictions of women and girls even where they are not illegal." Indeed, when Itch.io deindexed NSFW games on its platform—regardless of the nature or legality of their content—Collective Shout boasted that it was its "27th win for the year."

That this sweeping blow had caught all sorts of creators in its net, women included, seemingly does not matter. "There is no greater removal of a woman's agency than rape," Roper told TweakTown. "Media that glorifies sexual violence against women harms all women, regardless of whether a few women participate in its creation or consumption."

That it seemed to have disproportionately impacted queer creators—against whom 'indecency' laws have historically been wielded as a cudgel—likewise did not merit a mention in Collective Shout's write-up. If anyone was caught in the sweep that should not have been, says Roper, the fault is with the platform responsible: "I would say that if Steam and Itch.io had been moderating their platform as they should have, there would have been no need to temporarily delist games to ensure they were not in violation of their policies."

Asked what the group thinks of claims that its campaign amounts to censorship, Roper said that, "Not being able to access rape games from popular gaming platforms is a minor inconvenience, not a violation of a person's rights. Payment processors get to determine if they do not want to host illegal content, including rape, sexual violence, incest, child sexual abuse and exploitation and bestiality, which they had already determined… I would ask those who view the loss of their rape games as censorship to consider if they are as concerned with women's basic human rights, and the glorification of male violence against women."

There is, of course, an issue here. In widening its scope to focus on legal content, and in pursuing its campaign by pressuring payment processors rather than elected government officials, Collective Shout opens the door to grim outcomes highlighted by Nier creator Yoko Taro last year: "The fact that a payment processor, which is involved in the entire infrastructure of content distribution, can do such things at its own discretion seems to me to be dangerous on a whole new level. It implies that by controlling payment processing companies, you can even censor another country’s free speech."

For many people angered by the delistings the problem is not that they wanted access to the games in question, but rather that the entire notion of payment processors unilaterally dictating what adults can and can't spend their money on feels entirely at odds with the very notion of a free and democratic society. For that, it seems, Collective Shout has no answer.