A Conflagration of Censorship
What had started out as a disparate group of self-righteous activists and bureaucrats has turned into a global conflagration of threats against free speech, which hasn’t been seen in a long time.
If one were to ask someone not too long ago what their thoughts would be on censorship, they may bring up the moral panics of yesteryear, the unethical hijinks that led to the original Gamergate in 2014, or some tidbit from the culture wars online. Yet nowadays, they needn’t have to look far to get a clear idea. What had started out as a disparate group of self-righteous activists in Australia pressuring video game storefronts like Valve’s Steam to be safe for women on one side and bureaucrats invoking the age-old “think of the children” line against “problematic” content on the other has turned into a global conflagration of threats against free speech, which hasn’t been seen in a long time. With the spectre of creeping authoritarianism transcending borders in more ways than one, it is at once familiar and disconcerting.
While it by no means came out of nowhere, what started out on July 11, 2025 had escalated significantly beyond what most gamers would have expected. With ongoing quagmire involving Australian activists, credit cards, British busybodies, and even affiliates of the World Economic Forum, it could all seem so daunting if not desparingly so. There’s more going on than meets the eye, however, and it’s not as bleak it appears at first glance. If anything, just as before, no one is taking this lying down. Not when the stakes go well pay what people are allowed to play.
Collective Silence and Payment Processors
Any discussion on the current malaise is nigh impossible without bringing up Collective Shout. Founded in 2009 by self-proclaimed anti-porn crusader and "pro-life feminist" Melinda Tankard Reist, it has gained a reputation for campaigning for restrictive policies in domestic affairs, from constant attempts to have concerts shut down (with members of Australia’s parliament joining in) because of verbal abuse to harassment against bakeries over supposed sexism. Its crusade against video games for perceived misogyny, rape, and harmful content (which includes getting Grand Theft Auto V pulled from Target shelves in 2014 and failed attempts at having Detroit: Become Human banned in 2018) has likewise been a long-running affair. While this in itself would not be too surprising, given the country’s notoriety for moral panic and censorship on an institutional level — being among a handful of Western countries where games that otherwise would be sold with little issue could be banned on principle for going “against the standards of morality, decency, and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults” — that campaign’s culmination in July 2025 would gain international attention and infamy.
In what could be best described as a victory lap, the organization and its leading figures spent the next several days not only claiming responsibility for having thousands of “problematic” titles removed (including titles that had nothing NSFW about them aside from exploring themes) but also boasting about its triumph on various social media sites, from Twitter/X to LinkedIn. In the weeks that followed, various affiliates and fellow travelers like the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) jumped on the bandwagon to grandstand while claiming that it’s for the greater good. All the while, attempts are made at gaslighting audiences with vague testimonies purportedly from anonymous gamers in support of their cause, even while framing any criticism, especially that from female gamers and commentators like Madam Savvy, as death threats coming from degenerate men, the credibility of which is questionable at best. This has only drawn more attention to their double-standards, as well as “mafia-like” attempts to stifle critics. Among other inconvenient details, its members and allies had notoriously defended the French film Cuties for having child actors in provocative situations (ostensibly in the name of advancing an anti-objectification message) despite calling for bans of creative media, while also having a hypocritical disregard for real women for not conforming to their repressive agenda.
On top of such counterproductive grandstanding, however, such behavior also put certain usual suspects back into the spotlight. As noted by Movement Operations Manager Coralie Alison in a July 28 post both defending the stance taken and providing its timeline of events, the push to have "problematic” content removed had been stymied for months by virtue of the likes of Steam and other storefronts refusing to answer to those demands. In response to this, and in a moment of frank admission, CS had approached payment processors and credit card companies directly — such as through a publicized “open letter” to them, citing VISA, Mastercard, and PayPal (among others) in an emotionally-charge appeal — to force online platforms into submission. By doing so, these activists had not only expanded their sights beyond Australia, but had also given those providing financial services a close-to-perfect alibi with which they could enforce their creeping censorship beyond just pornography, which in more recent years had been felt in countries like Japan without regard to their own laws or free speech protections, on a global scale.
Such an admission, perhaps, wasn’t necessary. Within hours of the first reported takedowns on July 16, Steam’s guidelines had been updated to include an extra rule on what wasn’t allowed, explicitly pointing to such processors. Meanwhile, after a string of botched responses — which included, albeit temporarily, delisting and denying access to all NSFW titles even to consumers who purchased them — indie storefront itch.io posted a blog update stating that paid mature items could not be sold due to Stripe being reportedly unwilling to support “content designed for sexual gratification.” Despite being all too reminiscent of what Japanese creators and websites had been experiencing, there were barely any responses from financial services at first. Yet within days, VISA began sending boilerplate emails, insisting that it’s compliant “with the laws of all countries” it does business with, while Mastercard made a brief press release the same day as itch.io’s own, making similar remarks in addition to repeating its stance against unlawful use of its services, “including illegal adult content.” That Steam’s owner Valve released a statement to various outlets (including Kotaku and PC Gamer) refuting such comments around the same time, only for PayPal on August 12 to later remove access for most currencies altogether at the behest of one of its “acquiring banks,” confirmed what had already been suspected.
One can’t fault locals and foreigners alike for being aghast that such an organization (itself an alliance of nominally progressive feminists and religious busybodies of the old “moral guardian” mold) would resort to such low measures. Nor could they be blamed for noticing how such actions have the support of government officials like Australian eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant and even special rapporteurs working for the United Nations. It’s also no coincidence, either, that Reist is also part of the Stakeholder Advisory Board for the body overseeing Australia’s trial run of its “unprecedented” and mandatory age verification system as part of the so-called Online Safety Amendment. A de facto social media ban for those under 16 years old, it gained significant controversy late last year over potential violations of personal privacy and the risk of broad authoritarianism, going well past just creative content and video games, in the name of protecting the youth should it be officially implemented. Those concerns would prove prescient, as a key inspiration behind the Australian experiment, the United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act (OSA), went into full effect on July 24, 2025.
Global Stifling
The Online Safety Act is the end result of a long-running campaign led by the Office of Communication (Ofcom) and the efforts of anti-porn activists such as Laila Mickelwait. It had been met with criticism from both local media outlets and free speech advocates since ratification in 2023, only to be seemingly ignored by both the outgoing Conservatives and current Labour Party. As highlighted by independent journalist Chris Middleton within a day of it being fully executed, however, it didn’t take long for the supposed claims of protecting children and making Big Tech more accountable to clash with reality. Almost immediately, social media was flooded with reports that not only is it no longer possible to view NSFW content or gain full access to messaging services like Discord without digital ID, but also the all-ages Wikipedia is not exempt, being forced to limit (if not block) access to comply. To say that the broad scope of what constitutes “harmful” content — including cartoon violence, footage of illegal immigrants, and anything that could be construed as “extreme pornography” — marks a flagrant erosion of personal freedoms is an understatement. To say nothing of an elite police squad being set up to monitor online speech for “anti-migrant sentiment” (classified as “illegal content” under the new guidelines).
These were not lost on the citizenry, given the existence of a formal petition — with over 517,000 signatures as of August 13, among the largest ones currently active — to have the law repealed. Yet in what could be best described as an echo of the late Mary “Video Nasties” Whitehouse, the official response on July 28 amounted to a nigh-condescending defense of those existing policies as being for the good of the children. That Labour officials supporting those policies had doubled down, be it MP Barry Gardiner admitting on TV that the aforementioned online policing was aimed at controlling adult speech or UK Secretary of State for Science, Innovation, and Technology Peter Kyle saying on social media that critics (including Nigel Farage) “are on the side of predators” and comparable with infamous sex pest Jimmy Saville for wanting to overturn them, did little to reassure the public. Ofcom’s “duty of care” mandate expanding globally (as insinuated in leaked emails) has also gone beyond pressuring foreign companies in the lead-up to the OSA going into effect. Whether it is the US-based Wikimedia Foundation’s lawsuit being dismissed while passing the buck over to the regulator, or North American video platform Rumbler being threatened with a subpoena for non-compliance despite Britain not even being a target market, the spectre of censorship is evidently not just an Anglo problem.
Indeed, the OSA is by no means the only one out there in the free world. In the United States, there’s the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) — re-introduced by Sen. Marsha Blackburn on May 14 after a prior failed attempt in 2024, with 41 co-sponsors as of July 31 — which would grant the federal government sweeping powers to push mandatory age verification (already present to some degree in 19 US states) and British-style policies if signed into law. In the European Union, meanwhile, “voluntary” guidelines for protecting minors were released on July 14 (with an age-based blueprint being tested in five EU member states) as part of an amendment to the 2022 Digital Services Act, itself controversial for the broad leeway granted to bureaucrats and cooperating tech companies to moderate content and combat hate speech. This even includes the Philippines, where an aborted attempt to introduce similar legislation, Senate Bill No. SB40, proposed on July 2 by Senator Panfilo Lacson, notably cited the case of Australia as a benchmark to follow in addressing online concerns for the youth. In practically every case, that recognizable refrain of “think of the children” keeps coming up, as are attempts at either dismissing concerns of encroaching authoritarianism due to the danger posed to kids, or gaslighting via pretensions to upholding freedom of expression, even while taking it away.
The fact that Ofcom holds the current chairmanship over the Global Online Safety Regulators Network (GOSRN) — made up of “online safety” organizations formed two years ago, with Australia’s eSafety Commissioner among its members and affiliates — coupled with the timing of such legislation globally has led to speculation that this has all been coordinated, whether by leftist technocrats or right-leaning politicians and populists affiliated with the notorious Project 2025. On the one hand, the World Economic Forum ties (particularly with both the lead British and Australian regulators being closely associated) and UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ grandstanding against “misinformation” on digital platforms in 2023 have certainly lent fuel to those claims, NCOSE’s consistent attempts to promote bills like KOSA in Congress and Reist’s own endorsement of such notwithstanding. On the other hand, support for such ideas transcends party and ideological lines, regardless if they be Republicans and Democrats or Conservatives and Labourites. Not to mention how the nigh-institutional clout of moral guardians and censorious activists in countries like the UK has cultivated an environment predisposed towards censorship since well before GOSRN was ever conceived.
Whatever the truth may be, this much is certain. Regardless if it’s pushed by private entities or with government backing, busybodies and opportunists have found a conflagration ripe for being exploited. For those who remember the moral panics of yesteryear and the stifling that ensued back then in the name of saving the kids, it would be easy to say that it’s an all too familiar story. Except that this time, it’s global, and simply waiting for this to all blow over won’t cut it.
What Next?
In the face of such threats, a common response has been anger and indignation. For some, however, this has also fostered a sense of pessimism if not outright resignation, perhaps best exemplified by Zach “Asmongold” Hoyt’s acceptance of age verification’s seeming inevitability and opting for a less damaging poison. At the same time, opportunists have jumped on the bandwagon as a means of regaining relevance — as Anita Sarkessian has done in siding with critics, despite her rhetoric being almost identical with the likes of Alison and Reist from CS — and exploiting the situation for their own pet causes, as seen with former VICE journalist Ana Valens using the sympathy garnered from being fired over opposing the censorship of itch.io to target those on those deemed “fascist” and Project 2025-esque collaborators. Then, there are those like Jon del Arroz outright endorsing such moves (including KOSA) as the ultimate answer to defeating their “woke” enemies and cementing institutional power, seemingly eager to snatch defeat. Whether it leads to apathy or ineffectual rage, the apparent blows over the past month alone can make one ask: What can be done? Is there hope? What’s next? To answer all of these, and then some, would require looking past the cacophony.
Gamers and developers alike wasted no time bringing it to task and archiving as much as they could before the activists involved could lock down their accounts. Madam Savvy, in particular, has notably gone the extra mile not only by keeping up the pressure on both them and payment processors, but also by helping draw attention to grassroots initiatives aimed at directly (yet anonymously) contacting VISA and Mastercard over unethical behavior. She’s by no means the only one doing so. Not only had word spread across borders — including Japanese and Filipino corners of social media — but these had transcended culture war divides, be it 4chan’s “Operation: Fight Fire with Fire”, a popular Change.org petition with almost 250,000 verified signatures (as of August 13), or the generally left-leaning-to-a-fault Bluesky being on the same page in putting financial censors to task. More than being a rare sign of solidarity, it’s proven loud enough to gain attention from major gaming and mainstream media outlets, with Mastercard’s brief press release (which Valve refuted off the bat) notably alluding to the volume of those criticisms. If anything, such momentum may likely have inspired other, smaller storefronts like Zoom Platform to brush off threats from the likes of PayPal and Stripe by refusing to delist their available titles. Evidently, this pushback was anything but mere slacktivism.
This extends beyond the realm of gaming or NSFW content, with potentially far-reaching consequences. In the UK, for instance, the OSA had not only become deeply unpopular among local right-wingers and inspired a large-scale adoption of virtual private network (VPN) suites to try and circumvent the restrictions — so much so that authorities are looking “very closely,” with the odds of banning VPNs up in the air — but also alienated a sizable portion of the establishment’s left-leaning supporters. The New Stateman (a long-running publication traditionally supportive of Labour) on August 5 outright decrying the law as humiliating them all. Even The Guardian, which had previously tried defending those policies in op-eds as misunderstood, had similarly changed its tune due to how they wound up undermining their own causes. Granted, this is not universal, given the double-standards at play in flaunting an activist protest against visting US Vice-President Vance yet silencing everything else deemed harmful to children. Yet noted by free speech lawyer Preston Byrne, there have been attempts by British think tanks to draft US-style First Amendment proposals as an alternative to an unsustainable status quo.
There are signs that the supposed "new normal" may not be so. Japan’s Fair Trade Commission announced on July 22 that it had sanctioned VISA (through its Singaporean unit) for violating antitrust protocol related to merchant fees, both a significant development (given the credit card’s significant market share in the country) and marking the first time a relevant national watchdog challenged an international payment processor. To say that the growing presence of free speech advocates in Japan’s Diet, whether it’s politician-turned-activist Zenko Kurishita or recently reelected MP Taro Yamada, suggests that censorship (financial or otherwise) is being taken seriously, and across borders, is an understatement. Elsewhere, not only had the United States officially singled out the EU’s DSA in a July 25 Congressional paper as an involuntary means of stifling liberties, but it also explicitly cited the UK’s policies as harming American companies and citizens in a damning August 13 State Department report, potentially influencing economic and diplomatic relations for the foreseeable future. Which is not to ignore an Executive Order signed by US President Donald Trump a week earlier aimed at addressing “politicized or unlawful debanking” and “reputation risk” through banking institutions, which, given the broad definitions for what counts as such, could have ramifications beyond its intended purpose.
More cynical critics like Bellular would be inclined to downplay such developments or dismiss them outright, and not entirely without reason. That vaunted Executive Order may turn out to be irrelevant, as some speculate, whether due to payment processors not being explicitly named among banking services or due to their penchant for hiding behind risk management (e.g., NSFW as “risky”) rather than “political” reasons to justify censorship. The continued doubling-down from British authorities, more websites like YouTube testing age verification in the US, and even CS using trite Gamergate slander in an attempt to win more clout from their Australian government-aligned allies further give the impression that things may get worse. Perhaps, or maybe such creeping authoritarianism is less a show of force and more an act of desperation. Still, there’s something reassuring about standing on familiar ground. Whether it’s against moral guardians of yesteryear or their successors today, gamers and creatives alike are no strangers to fighting back for the long haul. If history has shown anything, it’s that whatever happens, nothing is ever over.
All because their preferred way of life, whatever passes for one, proved to be brittle and dull and want to impose their standards to the rest of the world.