Yeah, a year ago 80-90% of the developers of NSFW games received an email saying they couldn't charge for their games on itch. Me included. I continued publishing the game for free here when the public update was released because not doing it would be punishing the players, and they aren't to blame. Here you have an excerpt of that email.
I tried collecting payments directly through Stripe, but I got a warning because they don't support NSFW content (the same has happened to other devs with Paypal). Payoneer doesn't work with my bank account.
So for a lot of devs, itch.io disappeared as a source of income. Some had even to close their games because the itch.io income was a big part of their revenue and couldn't keep doing it.
A player recommended me doing an SFW version of the game that could be patched into an NSFW version, so I comply with the site rules and I can monetize the game once again here.
I figure alot of site traffic will dry up for sites because of this decision. This was the best way for me to contribute to developers when I had extra money. Sadly, My issues with Patreon left a bad taste and has kept me from Subscribestar as well. I hope good results for you and thank you for your hard work. I'm still enjoying your game.
A lot of devs who received that dreaded email I talked to, still offer our games on this site for free (around 70% of the devs I asked). In my case, and others', so the players, who aren't the culprits, aren't punished. Other devs to get some promotion or for other reasons.
We can't monetize our work here because of itch policies, so only Patreon, Subscribestar and other minor platforms are left for us to do it (Steam isn't a viable option for a lot of devs). And I'm not talking about getting rich or even working on this for a living. I'm talking about covering the expenses. During 2023, only in Daz assets, I spent 36% of my Patreon and Subscribestar combined (raw) income. Add to that licensed music, taxes, hardware, internet, and professional services. Making a game, if you want to do it legally, is expensive.
I believe it is a combination of several factors, and not some itch policy against adult content. If they had a policy against adult content, they would ban you, like gamejolt did.
Yet here you are, and are even allowed to link to your other sources of income.
But there are problems with payments. Like you found out with stripe. The cheap payment processors that are available in most countries have some issues with adult content. Which is outragoues, since they are only parasites to real credit card companies that would even handle payments for real life porn.
Itch could step up to handle finaces different for adult content, but this would cost a lot of money. If you look at actual real life adult content, we are talking about taking half the money and having a minimum payout of over 100 bucks. This will not work for small time indie game payouts.
I hope they will offer some forms of additional optional financial methods of payment services. They need to take away some of the cake they let Patreon have at the moment. Patreon does have policy issues with adult content. They will ban you for content that is ok on itch.
A finished game might be released on places like Nutaku, gog or even Steam. But there are not many places for unfinished games - with payments for the developer.
By what I heard, it's one of the payment processors threatening itch.io because of adult games, and itch.io folding just months after they declared publicly they will support them.
Now there's no payments, so payment processors can't meddle into what isn't a business anymore. But also that's not what I would call support NSFW games.
Subscribestar have a minimum payout. And most of the devs there are indie like me. And I prefer they take half the money I earn than not allowing me to get any money through the platform. Besides, Steam, the biggest game platform out there, only takes 30% if you sell under 500k games, and that percentage goes down if you sell more. That's less than 50%.
Since Patreon is the "best" platform to monetize the game right now, most devs (me included) comply to their ToS to avoid getting banned.
If itch allowed something like Patreon with the restrictions of Subscribestar and allowed NSFW devs to monetize their games, I think they could take a big chunk of Patreon's customers, especially for games that update in long cycles. Some players could think "Why pay $5 monthly for 6 months without an update if I can get the game for $5 when it goes out on itch?". Yes, I know I'm talking about my interests, but I already have customers like that. They re-pledge to My Dorm's Patreon when there's an update and cancel after downloading it. That kind of customers should be itch target.
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"Due to a change in itch.io policies, Itch has decided NSFW games can't be paid through them"
What?
Yeah, a year ago 80-90% of the developers of NSFW games received an email saying they couldn't charge for their games on itch. Me included. I continued publishing the game for free here when the public update was released because not doing it would be punishing the players, and they aren't to blame. Here you have an excerpt of that email.
I tried collecting payments directly through Stripe, but I got a warning because they don't support NSFW content (the same has happened to other devs with Paypal). Payoneer doesn't work with my bank account.
So for a lot of devs, itch.io disappeared as a source of income. Some had even to close their games because the itch.io income was a big part of their revenue and couldn't keep doing it.
A player recommended me doing an SFW version of the game that could be patched into an NSFW version, so I comply with the site rules and I can monetize the game once again here.
I figure alot of site traffic will dry up for sites because of this decision. This was the best way for me to contribute to developers when I had extra money. Sadly, My issues with Patreon left a bad taste and has kept me from Subscribestar as well. I hope good results for you and thank you for your hard work. I'm still enjoying your game.
A lot of devs who received that dreaded email I talked to, still offer our games on this site for free (around 70% of the devs I asked). In my case, and others', so the players, who aren't the culprits, aren't punished. Other devs to get some promotion or for other reasons.
We can't monetize our work here because of itch policies, so only Patreon, Subscribestar and other minor platforms are left for us to do it (Steam isn't a viable option for a lot of devs). And I'm not talking about getting rich or even working on this for a living. I'm talking about covering the expenses. During 2023, only in Daz assets, I spent 36% of my Patreon and Subscribestar combined (raw) income. Add to that licensed music, taxes, hardware, internet, and professional services. Making a game, if you want to do it legally, is expensive.
I believe it is a combination of several factors, and not some itch policy against adult content. If they had a policy against adult content, they would ban you, like gamejolt did.
Yet here you are, and are even allowed to link to your other sources of income.
But there are problems with payments. Like you found out with stripe. The cheap payment processors that are available in most countries have some issues with adult content. Which is outragoues, since they are only parasites to real credit card companies that would even handle payments for real life porn.
Itch could step up to handle finaces different for adult content, but this would cost a lot of money. If you look at actual real life adult content, we are talking about taking half the money and having a minimum payout of over 100 bucks. This will not work for small time indie game payouts.
I hope they will offer some forms of additional optional financial methods of payment services. They need to take away some of the cake they let Patreon have at the moment. Patreon does have policy issues with adult content. They will ban you for content that is ok on itch.
A finished game might be released on places like Nutaku, gog or even Steam. But there are not many places for unfinished games - with payments for the developer.
By what I heard, it's one of the payment processors threatening itch.io because of adult games, and itch.io folding just months after they declared publicly they will support them.
Now there's no payments, so payment processors can't meddle into what isn't a business anymore. But also that's not what I would call support NSFW games.
Subscribestar have a minimum payout. And most of the devs there are indie like me. And I prefer they take half the money I earn than not allowing me to get any money through the platform. Besides, Steam, the biggest game platform out there, only takes 30% if you sell under 500k games, and that percentage goes down if you sell more. That's less than 50%.
Since Patreon is the "best" platform to monetize the game right now, most devs (me included) comply to their ToS to avoid getting banned.
If itch allowed something like Patreon with the restrictions of Subscribestar and allowed NSFW devs to monetize their games, I think they could take a big chunk of Patreon's customers, especially for games that update in long cycles. Some players could think "Why pay $5 monthly for 6 months without an update if I can get the game for $5 when it goes out on itch?". Yes, I know I'm talking about my interests, but I already have customers like that. They re-pledge to My Dorm's Patreon when there's an update and cancel after downloading it. That kind of customers should be itch target.