Itching is a bastion of “tag” developers, and now they are not sure where to go

A few weeks ago, livelihoods were in balance when thousands of works were freed from the itching.

Itch hosts the work of developers, artists, writers and Zinesters. It is (and) the home of taboo porn, garden groceries, video game memoirs and game jam crumbs. Over the past five years, it may be known for hosting causes such as massive charity bundles, supporting Black Lives Matter, Ukrainian war relief and Palestinian liberation. These bundles feature small projects from amateur creators, as well as big blows from professional developers. When payment processor forces itch to index thousands of games They threatened all these pathways of artistic expression and financial income after a stressful movement from right-wing anti-fairy tale groups.

Nathalie Lawhead is a developer and artist who has been working on itching for years. Their game, everything will be fine, is part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. But despite its acceptance of the main hub of mainstream art culture, their work is still struggling to find a home in the video game world.

Strictly speaking, Lawhead’s work is not “Gamey.” They describe everything as a magazine, and the upcoming game Blue Suburbs as an interactive poem. Lawhead's words and their work reflect a broader truth about itch: it is a fortress of weirdness and eccentricity.

For Lawhead and many other developers, large-scale shedding represents a threat to this weirdness, regardless of whether their work is NSFW or not. In our conversation, Lawhead stressed: “We are slowly creating such a work.”

Other developers are concerned about the impact of these bans on their thinking process.

“I almost put sex scenes into the game spring gothic game, but if I put the sex scenes there, it would be eliminated,” Castell, a visual novel developer and critic, said on the phone. “I don't want to think that way. It's self-censorship.”

For Olivia Nenmyx, founder of Howling Angel Games, their freedom to approach sensitive topics is tough.

“I have a lot of religious or psychological introspection around me,” they said on Zoom. “It takes a lot of therapy and encouragement to start writing porn.”

It is this experience that makes them determined to fight for the right to express, but they are also afraid of the meaning of this precedent.

“I know directly how much pressure can be in the fall. I see a lot of people avoiding or not expressing themselves in controversial ways,” Nenmyx said.

From a species perspective, Kastel sees the dangers of trying to oversee more taboo work.

“Executives, they really don't care whether the job is SFW or NSFW. These are terms that creators and players decide,” she said. “In the end, payment processors are deciding everything and have their own paradigm.”

In addition to these concerns, canceling indexing has also caused a lot of Confusion and error messages. The media and players quoted people would consume me and rinse my mouthwash as an example of the affected games, but for irrelevant reasons, the itch actually canceled both games before receiving the pressure from the payment processor. These confusions have caused some developers to strongly criticize the itch, claiming that the storefront should do more to protect developers and warn them about what is going on.

However, Lawhead believes itching should be the benefit of doubt.

“They don't have the resources to a place like steam,” said Lauhead. “They are as independent as me. itch.io also. ”

But the question remains: how and where should independent artists share their work? Just as “people who have tried all possible alternatives” and “very voiced about the alternatives there,” Lawhead admits they are skeptical and there are real alternatives. Indeed, there have been no obvious new options in the weeks since this policy changed the itchy landscape – although the dust is still stable, it is unclear what will be preserved in the consequences, or whether the itchy policy will change. However, threat payment processors pose a greater job to marginal work than itching or even steam. Real options can be hard to find.

Some developers have planned to strip. While Nenmyx wants to stay in relationship with itch, they are actively looking for alternatives and adding storefronts to their studio’s website.

“I will continue to host free demos on itch to try to bring people to my website, but I don't think I'm hosting paid content on itch in the future,” they said. “Although it's not stone.”

Kastel believes that if you come back, trust will be slow.

“Even if it survives, people are worried that their game will be started,” Keitel said. “The best way to do this may be to clog on the itching, but mirroring can also be uploaded elsewhere, such as Internet archives.”

But when individuals scramble to seek potential solutions, The wider battle is still high. For Lawhead, the fate of itch may set a precedent to affect our online lives in various ways.

“Given how companies and monopolies have put everyone in these walled gardens of significant control, these gardens now occupy our daily online life, and even the way we developers can distribute software…I don’t think anything can come back.”

It's hard not to understand what they mean, because Britain threatens the country to obtain Wikipedia Or Steam eliminates games like Vile: Digging. But Lawhead did not give up.

“We need itch.io to live,” they said. “We need our own precedent.”