By During a period of doubt about the fate of unconventional games, these creators agree on one thing—to keep pushing forward.
By
Grace Benfell
on
Only a handful of weeks after thousands of titles vanished from Itch search results, creators realized their incomes were teetering on the brink.
Itch has long been the meeting point for developers, illustrators, writers, and zine makers. It shelters risqué smut, ordinary erotica, interactive memoirs, and the flotsam of game jams. During the past half-decade it grew famous for gargantuan charity bundles backing causes such as Black Lives Matter, Ukraine relief efforts, and Palestinian solidarity. These collections mingled weekend experiments with polished blockbusters. After right-wing anti-porn crusaders pressured payment firms, Itch erased thousands of titles, menacing every quirky avenue of creativity and revenue.
Nathalie Lawhead—artist-coder who has stored their creations on Itch for years—could lose wide access to their catalog. Their piece Everything is Going to Be Okay is enshrined in New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Yet mainstream video-game portals continue to shun what museums embrace.
“The uploads I share on Itch are the same pieces I once begged major storefronts to carry… I’ve lost track of how many times I was rejected over ‘faked crashes’ (my glitch art), for looking the wrong color to their templates, or for breaking their rules of order,” Lawhead wrote in an email.
Lawhead’s work rarely looks like a conventional game. They call Everything is Going to Be Okay a digital zine and describe their upcoming Blue Suburbia as a playable poem. Their words speak for Itch itself: a refuge for the oddball since day one.
For Lawhead and countless peers, the mass purge is an attack on strangeness, whether the content is adult or not. “Bit by bit, we’re being robbed of room to make this sort of art,” they insisted.
Other devs fret that the bans will distort their creative thinking.
“I nearly slipped a sex scene into Spring Gothic, but if I had, the game would’ve disappeared,” graphic-novelist and critic Kastel explained by phone. “I refuse to censor myself like that. It chips away at artistic freedom.”
Howling Angel Games founder Olivia Nenmyx fought hard for the right to tackle raw subjects.
“I was weighed down by spiritual shame around non-normative kink,” they told me over Zoom. “Therapy and encouragement finally let me start writing erotic material.”
Those battles make them determined to protect speech, yet terrified of the new precedent.
“I’ve felt how heavy the invisible hand can get. I see tons of artists stepping back from anything that might spark controversy,” Nenmyx lamented.
Kastel likewise argues the danger is not only in outlawing specific content.
“SFW and NSFW are labels dreamed up by creators and players. End of day, the credit-card companies call the shots,” she said. “Their value systems aren’t ours.”
Beyond the fear, the delisting birthed a fog of half-truths and misread signals. Media and gamers pointed to Consume Me and Mouthwashing as “banned,” though both had been hidden for unrelated reasons long before the payment-processor threats. The chaos has fueled outrage at Itch itself, with devs saying the platform should have warned them sooner or defended harder.
Lawhead, nevertheless, urges patience with Itch.
“They lack the war chest of a Steam,” Lawhead noted. “They’re as small as most devs. A single body-blow can knock them over… The only way out is solidarity, and yes, that includes Itch.io.”
Still begged the question: where can indies truly publish now? Having “tried every workaround” and “advocated endlessly for options,” Lawhead remains unconvinced replacements exist. Weeks after the policy quake, no obvious successor has arisen—though the ground is still trembling. The chokehold card companies hold over fringe art is larger than any one marketplace.
A handful of creators are already packing their bags. Nenmyx intends to keep ties to Itch, yet is shopping for fallbacks and has turned their own site into a storefront.
“I’ll leave free demos on Itch to pull traffic, but I’m unlikely to sell there again. Nothing’s final, though,” they said.
Kastel doubts faith can be rebuilt quickly—if at all.
“Survival won’t erase the worry that games might vanish overnight,” they said. “Best practice is probably host the jam on Itch, but always upload a mirror someplace like the Internet Archive.”
Meanwhile the broader stakes keep climbing. For Lawhead, Itch’s outcome will reverberate across the whole web.
“Corporations have herded us into ever-tighter walled gardens; now even game distribution hangs in that same gantlet,” they reasoned. “I’m not sure there’s a path back.”
That gloom is hardly paranoia: witness the UK flirting with booting Wikipedia or Steam quietly ejecting titles like Vile: Exhumed. Yet Lawhead isn’t folding.
“We need Itch.io alive,” they declared. “We need our own guiding light.”
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