Indie store Game Jolt’s porn ban hits games without pornography
Earlier this week, indie hosting site Game Jolt unexpectedly pulled various games from its platform, telling developers in an email that it “has decided to no longer allow the depiction, solicitation, promotion, regulation or glorification of sexuality. , sexual solicitation and sexual conduct” violence. “
The site seems to have a fairly loose definition of what exactly “sex” is, and many developers find their games seem to be pulled for no good reason, such as Dreamfeel’s Curtain – a queer guy who explores sexual abuse and alludes to it game.While Game Jolt has revived Curtain and others like F2OGGY, The policy change has not been welcomed by creators, including adult creators who have hosted games on the site for years.
😐 I mean, I think “curtain” is a game about abuse, it’s a game that talks about it indirectly in hopes of helping people, and some porn games, but idk pic.twitter.com/RQrbMUgg24January 3, 2022
“Most sex workers and adult content creators live on salary,” developer Jennifer Raye told vice“So suddenly realizing that your revenue and user base platform is being swept away from you can be very serious.”
Game Jolt didn’t initially clarify its new policy, responding to much of the backlash with bizarre backhand tweet replies and snarky GIFs. It also treats deleted creations as “porn games,” encouraging people to seek them out from other independent hosting sites, itch.io or Steam. “Game Jolt is a platform with a huge audience of 13-16 year olds,” it tweeted. “Our users asked us to clean up, so here we are.”
For people looking to host porn games, we recommend @itchio or @Steam. Game Jolt is a platform with a large audience of 13-16 year olds. Our users asked us to clean up, so here we are. https://t.co/FgIVMqnNUSJanuary 3, 2022
Since the backlash, a follow-up email appears to have been sent to the developers, saying “We want to apologize for the way we’ve handled this process over the past few days, and we appreciate the stress this has caused you. While Game Jolt’s With its roots in hosting indie games, the site has actually grown into more of a social media platform for the next generation of gamers, and we had to make decisions around the direction and future of the brand that now includes removing hosted games with explicit adult content.
“Unfortunately, during this process, we did not consider or provide any opportunity for you to relocate your game and community elsewhere. Additionally, we misclassified some games and did not provide a transparent process for making this decision Appeal.
“Ultimately, we’re actually a very small team doing the best we can, but in this case, we screwed up the process – and again, we’re really sorry.”
Creators of delisted games now have 7 days to notify any users or take their games elsewhere. Users who purchased any delisted games have one year to continue playing those games before Game Jolt ceases hosting them.