Digital game marketplace Game Jolt has banned porn games, a new move announced by the company last week after users reports of games being delisted.
“For folks looking to host their porn games, we recommend Itch.io or Steam,” the company said in a tweet. “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.”
The most popular theory behind why Game Jolt has banned porn games is that the company is looking to hit full launch of their social media app soon. The Game Jolt Social Communities app takes a page out of Discord‘s book and lets users create their own servers (but hopefully it can avoid the rampant allegations of grooming and pedophiles).
Originally launched back in 2004, Game Jolt had a public account system, forums, a chatroom, and a database where developers could create pages for their games. It wasn’t until 2008 when an actual storefront was added, where developers could sell games made in Unity, Java, and Flash. Browser-based HTML5 game support was later added in 2013.
The above curt tweet from Game Jolt was in response to competitor Itch.io, who tweeted that Itch.io “is not for prudes” and that if you click one of their links “please be careful about what you might see.”
Indie developers have already begun reaching out to question what to do if their game gets pulled mistakenly, as there could be games flagged as such in error. Game Jolt noted that developers will have to reach out to get a game re-listed, as it seems the distributor is pulling games first and asking questions later.
A lot of Twitter replies from Game Jolt have left many current and probably-former users scratching their heads, as the company has taken to replying with snarky GIFs and/or snarky text responses belittling anyone not happy with the new policy.
The Discord-like platform Game Jolt Social Communities is currently in beta, but from this new move to “clean up” their digital store – they could be ready to fully launch soon. Game Jolt’s claims that Itch.io and Steam are both platforms welcoming of pornographic video games is not entirely true.
While Itch.io seems to embrace adult games, Valve’s relationship with them has been nebulous at best. Developers frequently have to release “all-ages” versions of their games and give players the option to download a patch to unlock the adult content later. Despite this, some games still get banned off Steam and Valve has taken big measures to gate off even borderline content.
In related news, China has reportedly blocked the global version of the Steam client, effectively banning all popular PC games on the platform for mainland Chinese users. The move was likely done in adherence to China’s new crackdown on video game consumption, and how much western media is allowed into the country.
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