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Weekly update - September 8, 2025 - Economic Anxiety
🕑 Added 2025-09-08 13:59:15 +0000 UTCHey everyone!
You might be thinking, "Hey! Been a while since one of these, right? Did I miss one?"
You didn't! I didn't write a post last week because I didn't want to write an update without something to report, and I kept getting distracted from doing work with worries about the future.
I'm sure you're aware, but to recap: a lobbying group from Australia called 'Collective Shout' pressured Visa and Mastercard to demand that online game platforms remove or restrict access to NSFW materials. Itch chose to do a very broad delisting, while Steam has been more selective, but is also restricting access to many games and restricting store features for the ones that remain. While Itch has backed off a bit, they are still not processing payments for nsfw games.
This basically blows up all my plans for the future! My plans were to put my games on Itch and Steam, and ideally make money from them. I can't do that now.
I deeply appreciate all my patrons. You all rock and are directly responsible for my ability to continue doing this, but right now, I don't earn enough money to live. I am burning through my savings, but I am doing so very slowly thanks to all of you. I have been able to continue doing this because I have been gradually building towards releasing on larger platforms. Those larger platforms will hopefully get me enough money to make my next game.
That's the whole idea behind "Is Trixie There?". I'm making that game as an advertisement for the games I was hoping to make and sell later.
The problem is that it won't work now. That avenue is closed. I could make those games - but I couldn't sell them. Visa and Mastercard do not want to process those transactions.
I am honestly shocked that Patreon has, thus far, avoided this wave of censorship, but the thing is - it could be hit at any time. There are people like 'Collective Shout' all over, and platforms don't generally warn people when they do this. You just wake up one day and all your income is gone.
The cold reality of this situation is that if I can't make enough money to live, I can't do this as a job.
What's so frustrating about this is that the anxiety I've been spiraling around for almost a month now, which has prevented me from putting my time and attention on the things I care about - this is what they want! Every minute I spend worrying about how I'm going to eat next year is a minute I'm not making the nsfw things they are so mad about. They are literally winning by causing me stress!
Collective Shout, and people like them, want people like me to be doing what I've been doing, which is freaking out about the future. They want all of us dirty smut-makers to look at our wallets and say, 'I can't afford to keep doing this!'
It infuriates me that I am doing what they want, but I'm unable to ignore the situation. I'm trans, and it's 2025, and being broke is very dangerous.
Even if Itch or Steam or both changed course tomorrow, it would still have to affect my decision-making. If this can just happen out of nowhere, if some Australian puritans can delete this whole industry in a few days, is it a reasonable choice to put a year of my life and my limited finances into making another nsfw game?
Does it make sense to do that?
I have spent literally hours every day, walking around my neighborhood with my little dictaphone, trying to think my way into some kind of project that does what I want. I have been trying to come up with an idea that lets me write the things I want to write for the people I want to write for - but one that won't get doors slammed in my face.
I have been told all my life that I'm clever, and I have spent so many hours doing this, but I haven't found one yet.
It's hard to put in as much effort as I should on Trixie - even though I really want that project to go well - when I know it won't amount to anything.
I wish I could say I know what I'm going to do in the future, but I don't. I wish I could be brave and defiant, but I have to eat and defiance doesn't buy bread.
This week, I'm going to work on Play Things. If I focus on that, I should have the draft of the next chapter written by the end of the week. If you're interested in being a beta reader, please check out the Discord.
For now, Patreon is here, and you're all here, and I am incredibly grateful for that. I don't know what the future is going to look like, and I'm going to try to stop worrying about it for this week, and just write some smut.
Somewhere out there, an Australian person will be very upset with me for that.
Comments
Marilith
For what it's worth, you're far from alone and while that means, yes, lots of people have problems, it also means folks are trying to solve them together. Have you seen Welcome Change, over at wechange(dot)me ? It's focused on comics but it's art and content along the same lines as the cool stuff you do here. If they could band together and make their own place after the paypocalypse, there's hope for games too! I don't know if they'd be open to bringing games in or maybe making a sister site, but you've got some kindred spirits out there and it's worth trying! The more folks use platforms like that, the more they'll become the accepted places to look for this sort of thing so we can all do our part there! Kagura Games has been playing the game with Steam where their NSFW games are stripped down, but playable on Steam, with an "official patch" on their site, often larger than the Steam version, with the good stuff to add it back in. I'm not sure if that's an option but it at least worked up to now there. You could try something similar with Itch, and publish just the name, a sanitized description and a screen shot of the title screen on the game's page there. Then, direct folks to Patreon or Discord for full details, trailers, etc. Hide the Patreon stuff behind a free tier maybe and pin a note to the effect of "If you're here from Itch, sorry for the inconvenience but yes, this is absolutely about censorship." if you like too. Itch gets their plausible deniability about the content and surely would love to still have you on there to take their cut so maybe that sort of a grin and wink method could work. We'll get through this, one way or another. As long as people like making this stuff and others like consuming it, we'll collectively figure out the way to make that happen. Don't give up!
radarcolorwall
That's a real rough position to be in. Obviously, I'll be disappointed if you move on from all this, but it'd be understandable for sure. Can only hope that we realize maybe allowing two companies to control all payment processing isn't a great idea, but with the current state of the world that feels like more of a pipe dream than anything.
