Plan of Action and Complaint Template Regarding Adult Content Being Delisted from Itchio
Alright so as y’all may or may not know, credit card companies and other payment facilitators have put pressure on digital storefronts such as Steam and Itch.io to remove “adult content” recently largely due to lobbying by fringe radical organizations. It would be bad enough if it just affected actual porn, but you know to these people “porn” means “anything that even mentions a homosexual.” Several of my team’s projects including mini-expansions to Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy “The Fanservice Files” and “The XXX-Files,” as well as team artist @chaospyromancy’s personal side project “A Squad of Drow” have been delisted from itch.io as of last night though they are still available by direct link or from our main account page and you can still pay us for them for now but there is no telling how long they'll actually stay up. Many others have had their projects completely delisted or outright removed, and are having payments withheld from them. If you don't want to see us and other creators pushed under by this crap, you need to do something about it.
People affected by this far outnumber the people who lobbied to make it happen. These organizations are very vocal but also relatively small and very fringe, and since it is a policy decision that was created by complaints it may be able to be destroyed by complaints.
Here are the phone numbers of these companies and an email address I was able to find. We need to blow their phones off the wall and fill their inboxes with customer complaints.
Saying stuff like “sex work is real work” and “this affects black trans women,” while true, is not the kind of thing that is going to tug at the heartstrings of lib-conservative CEOs and board members and their PR teams. They’re mercenary. You need to tell them how this is going to hurt their wallets and make their customers very unhappy.
If feasible, you need to get your moms and dads on this too, and get them to get their friends on it, etc.
40-60-year old middle class white people high credit scores and stuff will have more sway with these corporations than any young adult trans person.
My team has put together a template for your phone calls and emails. Take the template and delete the [bracketed parts] that don’t apply to you.
“My name is [_____], and I’m contacting you about your recent decision to alter your user policies regarding adult content and thereby putting pressure on digital storefronts like itch.io and Steam to hide and remove adult content. By doing so, you're cutting off a significant revenue stream, [and as someone with financial investment in your company, this has me extremely concerned]
[I both buy and sell that blocked content, so this is directly interfering in my finances, and I will seek compensation.]
Products I paid for are no longer available to me, [and people are buying my products without the money going to me because of your interference with the payment processing.]
If you don’t want to lose customers and face potential legal trouble, these policies which pressure itch.io, Steam, and other digital storefronts need to be reversed.
You have changed these policies because of Collective Shout, a radical group from Australia that sent only a mere 1000 calls to destroy a significant revenue stream on your part and to interfere with my finances. This decision literally affects millions of people and millions of dollars, and so I expect a prompt response on reversing these policy changes and removing the pressure on itch.io and Steam to ban adult content on their sites. [As a cardholder, I worry that these new policies are responding to a vocal minority of customers, and I’m left doubting the reliability, versatility, and integrity of your services. I use these services to securely and conveniently make the transactions I see fit, and it’s disappointing to see legitimate, legal transactions be excluded.]
[I am furious that an American company would bend so easily to a lobbying group from a foreign country.]”
Unfortunately, what is happening to itch io at the moment is only a symptom of a bigger issue. Though I can move to a different platform, it feels like there are increasingly fewer places on the internet where creativity isn't limited by mindsets like this.
It is better to fight than to allow it to happen over and over until there's nowhere left to go.
I just did what I could. Reminder that this affects a large portion of our own beloved games that creators put crazy amounts of hours into for us to enjoy, and if this keeps up, it’s going to be difficult to FIND another reliable place to continue their games. This affects all of us. Please do what you can.
Drove up today and having a total beach day which has been amazing despite the heat. But it’s also giving me soooo many monster thoughts
Imagine you go up to one those boardwalk fortune teller machines and you think, ‘eh, why not. It could be fun.’ And it seems like the machine agrees with you as your jaw drops when you read the fortune. This tiny paper of fate claims that today you will get your world rocked by a creature out of this world.
First of all, how is a fortune like that even in there? Secondly, what the hell kind of fortune is this?! You look into the plastic eyes of the mystic woman and something within you says to believe her. To take this fortune seriously.
Turning to the beach just down the steps your eyes immediately fall onto the Tentacle Monster lifeguard, wondering if he’ll be the one to fulfill your fortune. His long tentacles curled around the high chair and you imagine what it would be like to ride him on top of it. To see the length of the beach while his tentacles reach deep inside you to places you’ve never been able to go.
Or maybe the pack of Wolf Hybrids down the way. Half of them playing volleyball on the beach and the other throwing around a frisbee. You imagine them passing you around, each of them having their turn with you as they fuck into your weeping holes, never letting you rest for even a moment as they cant get enough of feeling your wet heat suffocate their cocks.
A shiver passes through you and you quickly look away before you get ahead of yourself. And when you do your eyes can’t help but be drawn to the ocean.
Mermen popping their head up above the water. Hungrily watching the humans from afar. Your thoughts drift to swimming your way into the ocean and getting sucked under the waves. Before you know it a whole pod of them are swarming you, desperately stuffing their mouths, fingers, and cocks inside of you. Eager for your warmth to surround them and wanting to drown you in pleasure.
Perhaps other merfolk will join them. Shark Hybrids smelling your arousal from afar and using it to hunt you down so that they may feast on your flesh in the most toe curling way. Wanting nothing more than to devour you and make you cum harder than you could ever dream.
As you find yourself stepping toward the ocean, drawn to the temptation of what could be, your foot knocks into a cooler. An apology falls from your lips as you step back, only to see a suspiciously pale man hidden completely under an umbrella. And suddenly you know you won’t find your average drink in that cooler.
Your mind spins up the image of the Vampire man snatching you under his umbrella with inhumane speed. Dragging your body beneath him and ravaging you mercilessly. Preferring to get his blood from the source instead of his cooler. And as his fangs sink deep inside you, so does his cock. Both working to bring you to new heights of ecstasy, your mind growing foggy as he draws blood from you in time with the furious pumps of his hips until you can’t help but cum. Your release making your blood taste that much sweeter.
You quickly snap out of your thoughts, your chest quickly rising and falling with your panting breaths. Arousal gushes out of you, soaking your panties and bringing a wave of heat throughout your body.
You shift uneasily, hoping it isn’t too noticeable. Hoping they can’t smell it. But as each of them slowly turn to look at you, your hope fades away into nothing but more arousal. Not slowing yourself to second guess this, you walk closer to the ocean.
heheheh I don't know what else to put here but enjoy reading!
You were awakened by the sound of knocking at the front door at….5am?! Who the hell was up right now? You groaned, rolling over and trying to pull the pillow over your ears in hopes that the person would go away or maybe it was a branch hitting against the door. It didn’t though. You cursed under your breath as you pulled yourself out of bed groggily and slowly walked down the hall. The knocking persisted and you opened the door quickly, ready to tell off whoever decided to come around at this time. “What do you-!”
You quickly stopped talking when you recognized the person at the door and you remembered what you and Simon had talked about while you guys had brought in the boxes.
“So…..What exactly will the landlord look like? I never saw a picture of them on the website or anything and I wouldn't want to try and beat them up if they scared the shit out of me like you did.” You asked, picking up one of the last boxes while Simon did the same. “O-Oh….uhm…p-purple hair, and they’re q-quite pale.”
He hadn’t given you much information probably due to him being nervous but it was enough for you to double take right now and forced a smile on your face to seem perfectly sane and like you weren’t ready to cuss somebody out. The figure standing at the door was pretty tall and pale, light purple hair tied into a braid and it went down to their hip, he wore a dark purple shirt along with the whole fit. Gold glasses adorned his face which she pushed up slightly with a pale hand before speaking.
“You’re [Y/N], correct?” They asked with a calm smile. You nodded your head quickly, hoping to make a good impression in case they happen to be like your last landlord that would raise rent over the tiniest things.
“Oh, uhm, yeah, that’s me.” You mentally yelled at yourself for not sounding confident while you rubbed the sleep out of your eyes. The person (?) smiled and put their hand out for a handshake, you took it and looked down and was a bit surprised. Simon said that they were a bit pale but you weren’t expecting this.
“Nice to meet you, I’m Mr. Ritza.” They said calmly before speaking again, his face looking a bit worried. “Real quick though, is anything broken or anything? The lights are all working, correct?” They asked as her calm face started to morph into a somewhat nervous one as he looked past your shoulder and into the house.
“Uhm….Yes? I’ve only been here for a couple hours now so I haven’t really had the chance to look all around the house.” You responded hesitantly, confused about why they were so concerned about the….lights? But hey, at least he’s giving a damn about the house unlike your last landlord.
Mr. Ritza nodded and her smile slowly came back. “Well that’s good, But if anything ever does come up please contact me immediately and I’ll get it fixed right up.” He said softly as he stopped looking behind you and instead at you now. “Sorry for waking you up by the way, this is about the only time I can come out right now.” They apologized before starting to take a step into the doorway. “Simon had told me you wanted a tour of the house? It is quite big after all.”
It was true that you had been wanting a tour of the house but it was 5am and nobody wanted to do all that at this time of the morning. Not wanting to be mean, you smiled at them and shook your head.
“Not right now preferably, I’m still really tired but I’m sure I can do it by myself in the morning.” You responded, although the cold air outside was slowly waking you up.
He nodded his head before reaching into their back pocket and handing you a piece of folded paper. “I understand, although here’s a layout of the house just in case.”
You nodded your head and took the paper from their pale hand and unfolded it before taking a quick glance at it. You chuckled a bit as you folded it back up.
“Thanks, now hopefully I won’t get lost here.” You joked and they gave you a small chuckle in return before he started speaking again. “You’re welcome, I’ll leave you so you can go get some sleep now. My phone number is on the back of the paper if you need anything from me.”
You smiled at them and waved them goodbye. “Alright, thanks I will.” You replied and turned to set the paper down on the small table in the hallway next to the door. You were lost in thought for a moment before your thoughts were interrupted by the sound of….a bat? Your turned around quickly towards the door, Mr. Ritza was gone and you could faintly make out a chubby purple bat flying away. You stared for a few moments, trying to make out what happened before shrugging it off. It was probably just the fact you just woke up getting to you. You set the paper down and then went to bed for the night.
When you finally did wake up for the day it was about 11pm, the sun was already shining through the curtains, giving the room a welcoming glow. After going ahead and freshening up for the day ahead in the bathroom and a new pair of clothes just in case somebody popped by again, you went into the vestibule and got the paper off of the table that Mr. Ritza had given you before you started going through the house, starting with the first floor.
There were at least 3 floors from what you could tell on the outside and looking down at the floor plan you could see that there was also a basement and an attic that you would have to check as well….Maybe you should have taken up that offer last night but oh well. You made your way into the first floor kitchen, notepad in hand to take some notes on things you would find. Just like the rest of the house, the kitchen was very clean and shiny like someone who would wake up every morning to wipe down the cabinets and counters to make sure the place stayed in tip top condition.
There was a large cabinet right across from you against the wall filled with porcelain plates with what you could see through the glass on it. Walking up to it you pulled on the handles of the double doors only to find it a bit stuck which made sense since those plates had not been used for probably over 50 years. You huffed before pulling on them once more, nothing. Pulling once more there was a soft crackling sound coming from the two doors as they finally separated. You took out one of the plates from the cabinet and examined it.
You ran a finger across the plate and was pleasantly surprised to see that no dust or dirt came up on your finger when you checked so you wouldn’t have to go through washing all the dishes. They were slick almost like glass and were white with a blue flowery print all around the side of them in a circle and it was truly beautiful. You remembered how one of your few friends back home always had a thing for vintage stuff like you and you guys would have long rants back in high school history classes whenever you talked about victorian times. She would surely love to see this.
You went to go grab your phone in your back pocket to take a picture, your grip only slightly loosening up on the plate as you did so. It was dead silent in the house except for the sounds of you walking around and doing stuff. That was suddenly interrupted by a loud sound coming from somewhere else in the house, almost like the sound of music. You jumped and in the process the plate fell out of your hands and to the floor into smithereens causing you to yelp and jump back again to avoid and spare glass pieces cutting into your foot since all you had on was socks.
You had to take a moment and take a deep breath before he reached down and picked your phone up off of the ground, you turned on the screen and sighed in relief when you saw that the screen had cracked but you had a bigger problem to worry about. You could still hear the sound of music coming from somewhere in the house and you couldn’t tell where. Did Simon sneak in and was trying to scare you? Maybe he wasn’t as sweet as you thought he was….
“Tch, asshole…” You grumbled as you started to walk around the house to figure out where it was coming from exactly, going to the next floor upstairs you noticed the music got a bit louder. It almost sounded like it was above you? You reached into your back pocket as you looked up at the ceiling and took out the floor plan Mr. Ritza had given you before looking down at it.
You looked around for the entrance to some type of attic of something but it seemed that it had been erased from the floor plan. The music was still playing and you knew it wasn’t your mind playing tricks on you by the way you could pick out pieces of words in the song.
“Daisy…….give me…………..half crazy.”
It sounded crackley in some way, it was clearly one of those old songs by the way. Your face contorted into a confused look…..How could Simon have made it in here if you didn't even know there was an attic before? You felt a bit of fear come up inside the pit of your stomach but you pushed it down and told yourself that everything must have an explanation. You searched around the house for a little while, your footsteps being slow and wary now that you were unsure of what it was. It took a few minutes but as you walked towards the end of the hallway on the right side of the third floor you could hear the music clearly albeit it was muffled.
You looked up at the ceiling for any type of attic door that pulls down and noticed the string hanging from the ceiling. You pulled it down, ignoring the way your hand trembled when you did so. It fell down, the ladder with it, nearly smacking you right in the head if you hadn’t moved away just in time. A wave of dust came down with it as well and you covered your nose with your shirt and coughed into it.
“Daisy…Daisy, give me your answer do.”
The music was now clear as day, you were able to hear the lyrics and make the song out clear as day now. The room seemed to have a red glow to it. Swallowing down your fears you shakily climbed up the ladder and into the attic. You found that the red glow that filled the room was from a glass stained window of a rose and when the sun shined down on it, it filled the room with the light through the rose. It would have been comforting and gorgeous if it hadn’t been for the situation at hand.
“I’m half crazy…all for the love of you…”
Once you were finally inside of the attic you immediately started to search around for the source of the music and it didn’t take you but about 15 seconds of scanning the attic till you found a gramophone sitting on a small desk against the far wall playing the music.
“It won’t be a stylish marriage….I can’t afford a carriage…”
You shook your hands a bit to try and get rid of the feeling of paranoia and brushed it off by the creepy ass song making you afraid and walked over to the desk to go ahead and put all this shit to an end and probably go interrogate Simon to see if he had decided to mess with you like you originally thought.
“But you’ll look sweet, upon the seat of a bicycle built for two…”
The song came to an end before beginning to start over again. The begging cords started to play again and you huffed and reached for the stylus to take it off and stop the music when suddenly the record player scratched and started glitching almost and jumping all over the place, almost piecing parts of the song together.
Your heartbeat raced and you didn’t waste another second and pulled the needle off the record quickly and stopped the music. ….The only sound in the attic now was the sound of your heavy breathing as you slightly bent over and took a moment to collect yourself.
You mentally slapped yourself for letting such a little thing scare you so badly, what were you? Nine? You sighed and stood back up, and stared at the gramophone for a moment and remembered Mr. Ritza’s words about calling them if anything broke or acted up and went to grab your phone out of your pocket only to feel nothing there.
“Oh fucking come on-” As if things couldn’t get worse today. You started to walk back over to the ladder to see if your phone was laying in the hallway somewhere when you were suddenly blinded momentarily by a bright light right in your eyes. You instinctively covered your face before looking over at the source and saw something metal on the floor, the sun shining down on it through the windows and reflecting right onto your face.
Walking closer to whatever it was and bending down you saw that it was a ring. It was a beautiful golden one with diamonds adorned on the top giving it a nice sparkle to it. You carefully picked it up and turned it around in between your fingers and examined it. Running a finger around the band on the outside to feel the details and then doing the same on the inside of the ring, you were surprised to feel engravings on the inside of the band. It was somewhat dark since you had found it under the table so you stood up, holding the ring up to the light so you could see it better and you started to read it out loud.
“With you always….Eter-” You started to read it outloud until there was the sound of footsteps behind you.
“-Nally yours and mine…” A charming male voice spoke with a British accent right behind you as he finished his sentence.
—-------------------------------------------
HAHAHAHA GET PUT ON A CLIFFHANGER-
Zachary belongs to @clrdgaze
If you made it this far and finished it thank you! I really enjoy writing this and already working on chapter three :>
You feel light-headed and don't remember clearly how you left the school's party. The boys sure as hell offered you a little too much beverage. Somehow you feel sore all over your body.
What time is it now...
(1) Next
You open your eyes to... whatever this shit is...
...Now what?
(1) Try to go back to sleep | Willpower: ??? | ++Stress
(2) Escape the room | Athletics: Challenging 5%
(3) It is what it is... | Promiscuity 5 | +++Love | +++Lust