Collective Shout Provokes New Steam Censorship Rules
Shortly after Steam’s new moderation guidelines went live, Australian anti-porn activist group Collective Shout claimed responsibility. Collective Shout has cited payment processors (such as PayPal, MasterCard, and Visa) as primary targets in their campaign, which pairs with Valve’s confirmation that pressure from these payment processors played a role in their decision to ramp up content moderation.
Collective Shout co-founder Melinda Tankard Reist followed up with an inflammatory Twitter post, in which she referred to her detractors as “porn sick brain rotted pedo gamer fetishists”. It is difficult to read this statement and imagine it comes from someone who carries the best interests of the video game community at heart.
Collective Shout is a self-described feminist non-partisan organization, but has alleged ties with anti-trans and conservative organizations. The group has developed a reputation as a sort of puritan crusade that targets everything from Detroit: Become Human to Tyler, the Creator.
PCgamer article
Collective Shout, an Australian anti-pornography group, has claimed credit for Steam’s recent removal of a large number of sexually explicit games and new, stricter moderation guidelines regarding such material. In a statement to PC Gamer, Valve cited pressure from payment processors like credit card companies and Paypal for the move, while Collective Shout touted its open letter and consumer campaign targeting payment processors for inciting that pressure.
This was first reported by Waypoint, which has since pulled its two articles on the subject without explanation. The articles’ author, Ana Valens, has alleged that Vice’s parent company, Savage Ventures, removed the articles due to concerns over their controversial content rather than any error in the reporting.
Collective Shout began in 2009, co-founded by self-described “pro-life feminist” Melinda Tankard Reist. Collective Shout describes itself as “A grassroots campaigning movement against the objectification of women and sexualization of girls in media, advertising, and popular culture”. To date, it has been involved in:
- Unsuccessful efforts to ban Snoop Dogg and Eminem from Australia.
- A successful 2015 campaign to prevent Tyler the Creator from touring Australia.
- A successful 2015 campaign to pressure Target and Kmart to stop selling Grand Theft Auto 5 in Australia.
- A petition to ban the game No Mercy from sale, which ultimately led to the developers pulling it from Steam.
- An unsuccessful petition to ban Detroit: Become Human from sale in Australia
porn sick brain rotted pedo gamer fetishists
bars
MF DOOM line energy
the same corporations tryna ban the devil’s lettuces
I went to look at the tweet from that woman, and half the replies are calling her a leftist.
Incredible political analysis by gamer Chuds.
Saw a screenshot of “proof” that they were leftists:
One of the Collective Shout members posting years ago in support the Liberal Party.
…which is the major right wing party of Australia.
They’re anti abortion and have support from anti-LGBT church leaders, Swerfs and Terfs.
*one of the major right wing parties of Australia (Labor is also right wing)
A shocking number of Americans/Westerners just casually accept that leftist/socialist is shorthand for “evil”. Its definitely gotten better. To the point people like my dad are at least a bit slower to spout hitlerite thought.
That is assuming that this isn’t the average semi-aware rightie that purposefully does this crap.
Oh ok it all makes sense now, the credit card companies did this because there is this far right wing TERF organisation with ties to powerful Australian parties starting some puritanical moral panic against porn games as a means to encourage right wing censorship on steam. The card companies will listen because they’re scared of pissing off such powerful people who are ideologically aligned with the zeitgeist and can therefore do a lot of damage if they really ramp up their moral panic.
Oh hey cool, if this ends up causing me to lose my job and I end up homeless, not only do I know who to blame, but they even live in the same country as me. There’s absolutely nothing I can do about that information though.
Gooner game makers rapidly switching back to making 18+ Flash games on Newgrounds for ad revenue (the ads are all for Evony or Snorg Tees)
Steam is now completely infested with disgusting porn games. I hope this does not target stuff that’s 18+ but cool, like baldur’s gate 3.
You do realise that the *type of people spearheading this censorship operation are those who organise TERF protests attended by neo nazis and harass trans people on the street in major australian cities right?
This will 100% be used as a cudgel against media with queer representation more than all the gooner stuff
Yeah, you’re right. These people always use this language as a cover so they go “heh, :smuglord: so you agree the LGBT+ community is that”.
They’re disgusting people.
It already been use for that plus indie horror games like mouthwashing for example
That’s the real intention behind all this. They want to legally discriminate against LGBTQ+ people without saying so out loud. They can also spread queerphobia by conflating trans people with pedophiles who “groom children” before moving on to do the same to bisexual/homosexual people.
