GOG launched a new website Friday where users can claim 13 games that have been delisted from other online sales portals for free. In a press release, GOG wrote that with the giveaway, it and the game publishers taking part are “taking a stand against the quiet erasure of creative works from digital shelves.”
GOG’s giveaway–found at the URL FreedomToBuy.games, makes the games available for free to users for the next 48 hours. The titles are mostly sexually explicit and were recently delisted from other digital purchasing sites. GOG’s site also includes an email link for developers or publishers interested in offering their games for free “as part of the protest.”
“As an archival platform dedicated to protecting gaming history, we believe that if a game is legal and responsibly made, players should be able to enjoy it today–and decades from now,” GOG wrote in a press release about the giveaway.
“We launched FreedomToBuy.games to make a statement: when games are delisted today because of discomfort, reviving them tomorrow becomes exponentially harder,” it continued.
Sexually explicit games became the focus of controversy in July when thousands were abruptly removed from online game storefronts Steam and Itch.io. Those removals were the result of pressure on the storefronts from payment processors like Mastercard and Visa to remove games featuring sexual content.
Payment processors were in turn pressured by a campaign by conservative anti-porn organization Collective Shout, which released an open letter to payment processors on July 11. The organization said it targeted the removal of games about “rape, incest, and child sexual abuse, and asked its members to call and send emails to payment processors. As Wired reported, experts call this tactic “financial censorship,” using financial institutions to sidestep platform rules by risking a seller’s ability to do business at all. As a result of the campaign, hundreds of games were removed from Steam and, according to GameFile, more than 20,000 games marked “not safe for work” were removed from Itch. (Itch released a statement regarding the situation and has begun re-listing some NSFW games if developers choose to make them available for free.)
Backlash to the delisting began immediately, as many developers and players saw the situation as payment processors dictating to adults what content they were allowed to buy and play. Many developers also said that their games were caught up in the delisting sweep not because they contained pornographic content, but because they focused on LGBTQ elements and themes, or dealt with tough topics like sexual abuse.
Players and developers have taken to social media to put pressure of their own on payment processors to push against what they see as censorship. The International Game Developers Association released a statement where it called for “clear rules, fair warnings, and the right to appeal” in this and similar situations, and directed developers to contact Visa and Mastercard directly, and to petitions from the American Civil Liberties Union and Change.org pushing back on censorship from payment processors.
Both Mastercard and Visa have issued statements saying the companies do not make moral judgments about merchandise sold by partners, and both suggested there was an issue of potential illegality at the heart of the situation.
“Mastercard has not evaluated any game or required restrictions of any activity on game creator sites and platforms, contrary to media reports and allegations,” the company said. “Our payment network follows standards based on the rule of law. Put simply, we allow all lawful purchases on our network. At the same time, we require merchants to have appropriate controls to ensure Mastercard cards cannot be used for unlawful purchases, including illegal adult content.”
Visa made a similar statement to Polygon, saying it requires “enhanced safeguards” for merchants facing “an elevated risk of illegal activity.”
“We do not make moral judgments on legal purchases made by consumers,” the statement said. “Visa does not moderate content sold by merchants, nor do we have visibility into the specific goods or services sold when we process a transaction. When a legally operating merchant faces an elevated risk of illegal activity, we require enhanced safeguards for the banks supporting those merchants.”
No claims of potential illegality have been made about any games removed from platforms.
GOG’s FreedomToBuy.games website leads with a statement that could be seen as addressing the legality argument.
“Some games vanish. Not because they broke the law but because someone decided they shouldn’t exist,” the site reads. “For 48 hours, these games are free, because if a game is legal, you should be free to buy it.”
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