Collective Shout Provokes New Steam Censorship Rules
Shortly after Steam’s new moderation guidelines went live, Australian anti-porn activist group Collective Shout claimed responsibility. Collective Shout has cited payment processors (such as PayPal, MasterCard, and Visa) as primary targets in their campaign, which pairs with Valve’s confirmation that pressure from these payment processors played a role in their decision to ramp up content moderation.
Collective Shout co-founder Melinda Tankard Reist followed up with an inflammatory Twitter post, in which she referred to her detractors as “porn sick brain rotted pedo gamer fetishists”. It is difficult to read this statement and imagine it comes from someone who carries the best interests of the video game community at heart.
Collective Shout is a self-described feminist non-partisan organization, but has alleged ties with anti-trans and conservative organizations. The group has developed a reputation as a sort of puritan crusade that targets everything from Detroit: Become Human to Tyler, the Creator.
PCgamer article
Collective Shout, an Australian anti-pornography group, has claimed credit for Steam's recent removal of a large number of sexually explicit games and new, stricter moderation guidelines regarding such material. In a statement to PC Gamer, Valve cited pressure from payment processors like credit card companies and Paypal for the move, while Collective Shout touted its open letter and consumer campaign targeting payment processors for inciting that pressure.
This was first reported by Waypoint, which has since pulled its two articles on the subject without explanation. The articles' author, Ana Valens, has alleged that Vice's parent company, Savage Ventures, removed the articles due to concerns over their controversial content rather than any error in the reporting.
Collective Shout began in 2009, co-founded by self-described "pro-life feminist" Melinda Tankard Reist. Collective Shout describes itself as "A grassroots campaigning movement against the objectification of women and sexualization of girls in media, advertising, and popular culture". To date, it has been involved in:
- Unsuccessful efforts to ban Snoop Dogg and Eminem from Australia.
- A successful 2015 campaign to prevent Tyler the Creator from touring Australia.
- A successful 2015 campaign to pressure Target and Kmart to stop selling Grand Theft Auto 5 in Australia.
- A petition to ban the game No Mercy from sale, which ultimately led to the developers pulling it from Steam.
- An unsuccessful petition to ban Detroit: Become Human from sale in Australia
Steam is now completely infested with disgusting porn games. I hope this does not target stuff that's 18+ but cool, like baldur's gate 3.
This will 100% be used as a cudgel against media with queer representation more than all the gooner stuff
It already been use for that plus indie horror games like mouthwashing for example
Yeah, you're right. These people always use this language as a cover so they go "heh, :smuglord: so you agree the LGBT+ community is that".
They're disgusting people.
That's the real intention behind all this. They want to legally discriminate against LGBTQ+ people without saying so out loud. They can also spread queerphobia by conflating trans people with pedophiles who "groom children" before moving on to do the same to bisexual/homosexual people.
Yeah... You're right, unfortunately
You do realise that the *type of people spearheading this censorship operation are those who organise TERF protests attended by neo nazis and harass trans people on the street in major australian cities right?
I did not, in fact, realize that. That is fucking awful. As much as i don't want to see boobs simulator 3000 in steam, I want those people to go fuck themselves. I hadn't noticed the "pro-life feminist shit" oh no
Yeah it seems the only reason why they were successful at all is because they're backed by powerful right wing groups, both TERFs and Christcucks, its insane, they're powerful enough to get articles pulled from Vice, have a read of this wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melinda_Tankard_Reist
Yeah sorry, we can't have our cake and eat it too. If 'sex with Hitler 2' is taken down, it's a short path to BG3 and whatever else that features any sort of sexual themes are taken down too.
Better stand and link arms together with the gooners if you want cool and creative games to be made in the future
i think i can count on one hand the number of games that have sex/sexy content but are actually also games
Hunie Pop is actually a really good match-3 game that just happens to have booba
On one hand its been a ritual for me and my friends to laugh at the often awful sometimes just funny shit that gets put on the front page of the biggest gaming platform.
On the other, holy shit there does need to be censorship.
If getting rid of "give me money for saying the 14 words" would get rid of "out of respect, I won't repeat even the tame names of the average gooner game"... I guess I'd take it. I'd mourn for a peak into the funny part of human sexuality. But I think I'd survive.
Yeah but censorship coming from a bunch of right wing TERFs? Really? They won't get rid of the nazi shit or the more insidious actual American military propaganda that contributes to things like manufacturing consent for genocide. This is bad.
Tbh, the porn games have better graphics and gameplay than a lot of AAA titles.