Danica Davidson
July 22, 2025 
Steam recently announced that the platform will reject “Content that may violate the rules and standards set forth by Steam’s payment processors and related card networks and banks, or internet network providers. In particular, certain kinds of adult only content.”
The issue of credit card companies refusing to do business with Japanese shops that carry any adult material has been a growing issue, but the credit card companies aren’t going to refuse business out of nowhere. Now an Australian group called Collective Shout has claimed that it was its efforts that got the changes made at Steam.
Collective Shout says it is “a grassroots campaigns movement against the objectification of women and the sexualisation of girls.” Its cofounder Melinda Tankard Reist also referred to people who don’t like their games being censored as “porn sick brain rotted pedo gamer fetishists so desperate to get their hands on rape-my-little-sister incest games.”
It’s not clear if Collective Shout got the changes made at Steam, but it is clear they’re boasting about it as their victory and that they have been heavily involved in trying to get games pulled. The group as a whole put out the statement: “Since we launched our campaign calling on Payment Processors to stop facilitating payments for rape, incest, sexual torture and child-abuse themed games on Steam, they have added a new rule to their policies + removed hundreds of these games.”
Steam already had it in place that any 18+ material had to be blocked from minors and you couldn’t show sexually graphic images of real people.
The group also claims credit for getting Target and K-Mart (specifically in Australia) to stop offering Grand Theft Auto 5, and that a petition they were behind got the game No Mercy taken from Steam.
PC Gamer, which covered this story, noted that Vice published — and then pulled — some articles linking Collective Shout and censorship at Steam. (You can check the report out on the Wayback Machine here.) The articles’ writer, Ana Valens, claims that Vice did this because the articles were controversial and not because they were inaccurate. She also said that there was an effort to reach Collective Shout so the group could give examples of the games that depicted the horrible abuse they claimed the games had. Collective Shout did not provide any examples.
Valens and two other Vice writers resigned, with Valens telling PC Gamer, “I believe that Collective Shout and its related organizations deserve further journalistic investigation by other reporters in the games industry. I hope more writers look into the clear and obvious signs of payment processor-based censorship that are occurring toward Steam, and have occurred against Pixiv, itch.io, DLSite, Gumroad, Patreon, and other sites.”
Source: PC Gamer
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Danica Davidson is the author of the bestselling Manga Art for Beginners with artist Melanie Westin, plus its sequel, Manga Art for Everyone, and the first-of-its-kind manga chalk book Chalk Art Manga, both illustrated by professional Japanese mangaka Rena Saiya. Check out her other comics and books at www.danicadavidson.com.
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