1. Followed/was a fan before the games and continued on through.
2. Discovered on Itch (browsing, search, recommendation)
3. Twitter/x post
4. bluesky post
5. e621 post
6. FurAffinity post
7. Other

I'm finally back into the swing of things on the dev side, but while I work, given what's been going on, I'd like to get some info on discoverability. I have some info already via analytics, but I'd like to dig in this way too. Of course, this has the potential to be somewhat biased, as only those who actually care enough to respond will show up in the data. But that's useful in its own way: the analytics tell me things about fans/customers in general, this will tell me things about the more "core" fans.

Also, I now have to pass a cloudflare check just to POST A JOURNAL ON FA. Despite ALREADY BEING LOGGED IN TO AN ACCOUNT. What a wonderful site.

For those not closely monitoring: Apparently sick of waiting for lack-luster legislation to pass, Trump has signed an executive order that may be of interest to you: "Guaranteeing Fair Banking for All Americans".

My, this is an interesting read:

"Sec. 4. Removing Reputation Risk and Politicized or Unlawful Debanking"

"The term “politicized or unlawful debanking” refers to an act by a bank, savings association, credit union, or other financial services provider to directly or indirectly adversely restrict access to, or adversely modify the conditions of, accounts, loans, or other banking products or financial services of any customer or potential customer on the basis of the customer’s or potential customer’s political or religious beliefs, or on the basis of the customer’s or potential customer’s lawful business activities that the financial service provider disagrees with or disfavors for political reasons." (Hello Collective Shout!)

" Within 180 days of the date of this order, each appropriate Federal banking regulator shall, to the greatest extent permitted by law, remove the use of reputation risk or equivalent concepts that could result in politicized or unlawful debanking, as well as any other considerations that could be used to engage in such debanking, from their guidance documents, manuals, and other materials...used to regulate or examine financial institutions over which they have jurisdiction. "


"The SBA shall, within 60 days of the date of this order, give notice to all financial institutions with which it guarantees loans under its lending programs, requiring that each financial institution that is subject to the SBA’s jurisdiction and supervision:

(i) within 120 days of the date of this order, makes reasonable efforts to identify and reinstate any previous clients of the institution or any subsidiaries denied service through a politicized or unlawful debanking action in violation of a statutory or regulatory requirement...

(ii) within 120 days of the date of this order, identifies all potential clients denied access to financial services provided by the financial institution or any subsidiaries through a politicized or unlawful debanking action in violation of a statutory or regulatory requirement...

(iii) within 120 days of the date of this order, identifies all potential clients denied access to payment processing services provided by the financial institution or any subsidiaries through a politicized or unlawful debanking action in violation of a statutory or regulatory requirement..."

This all happened, of course, because of payment processors playing the "reputational risk" card on conservatives, gun owners and so on. But the order is broad enough that it will probably (and should) apply to everyone, and kill "reputational risk" dead as a doornail.

Visa/Mastercard etc are indeed private companies, and can indeed "do whatever they like", within the law. But Visa does not exist in a void. It relies on banks to act as the end points, and processing points, in its network. Banks that are FEDERALLY REGULATED. And by this executive order, those federal regulators are now, seemingly, going to tell the banks no, and that they need to knock it off. Which means that Visa and Mastercards FEEEEELINGS are no longer relevant. Government says no. Government says "show me where it's illegal or will cause you clear financial harm. You can't? Great. Process the payment."

This is optimistic of course, there are still any number of ways this could end up not having teeth, or being to limited in scope. But conservatives have been pissed that this debanking crap was being pulled on them for a while now, and now that they're in power it looks like they've set on taking their revenge on the banks and card companies. Hey, more power to 'em. The world is strange, but in this case, I'll take it.

The enemy of my enemy is...well, I'm not going to stop one while they're curbstomping the other, that's for sure.

“A Merchant must not submit to its Acquirer, and a Customer must not submit to the Interchange System, any Transaction that is illegal, or in the sole discretion of the Corporation, may damage the goodwill of the Corporation or reflect negatively on the Marks.”

This is the EXACT, SPECIFIC rule in Mastercard's TOS, cited to Valve, that led to the bans on Steam. Mastercard is claiming they had nothing to do with any of this. They are lying through their fucking teeth. They do this almost constantly. Mastercard leaned on intermediaries, intermediaries leaned on Valve's acquiring bank, citing this rule, and that was that. Mastercard itself REFUSED ANY direct discussion with Valve, despite their attempts to do so.

This is the reason our freedom of speech, creative expression, and ability to do business is being torched. It hurt their feelings. There was a lot of expectation, speculation, assumption that this was the case, but now we have absolute, clearly documented evidence in black and white thanks to Valve's new statements. Mastercard didn't wanna anymore. That was literally it. The official terms of the card companies, now made completely clear, are that if you make them look bad, if you give them a little bad press for a brief period of time, you're out. This means that literally any and every business (to say nothing of polticial organizations) is potentially in the crosshairs, because ANYONE can get offended by, and raise a pressure campaign against, ANYTHING. Collective Shout previously tried to go after a BAKERY ffs. It's a fucking thunderdome free-for-all and everyone's invited!

Visa likely did the same, or would have. Their rules are equally opaque, and equally designed to be "we ban you whenever we feel like it, we don't need a reason." This is one of the reasons this bullshit has gone on for so long: the card companies pull this shit, hiding behind their partners and banks in the network and going "oh but it wasn't us!". And yes, banks do have their own standards as well. Doesn't mean this was somehow the banks idea. It wasn't. Nobody cared. Nobody thought it was an issue until Mastercard (and probably others) decided to make it an issue. THEY are the problem. Nothing else.

Details here, for those who haven't seen.

Also, again, apologies to those following all this stuff closely, to whom this is just repetition or old news. But I want to make sure some things stay clearly highlighted.

Since things seem to be stabilizing for the time being, I'm returning to posting once on Itch and linking that post from elsewhere. And here is that link. Take a look.

Going into this month, I had planned to share a progress update on Chapter 3 by the end of the month. I have a number of things prepared for this already, and a general idea of what it's going to look like, but despite trying to get it out yesterday or today, I just haven't been in the right headspace. Every day, for almost a week now, some new crisis has emerged, sometimes multiple on the same day. I've been trying to calm down and get back into making things again, but it's been difficult. I will try to have the update ready for everyone some time in the next few days.

Meanwhile, as some of you have probably noticed, Itch has done stuff again. FREE NSFW games are now being re-listed in search, and presumably in recommendations as well. I have temporarily turned off the ability to tip/donate on the first CS game as a result, and it is now appearing in search again. Itch has re-iterated that Stripe is gone, and that they are in the process of securing card processors willing to handle NSFW transactions. Presumably once/if they do, paid games will be re-listed as well.

This is a detail that a lot of people still aren't aware of, so I'll reiterate again: it's not just a matter of VISA/Mastercard setting policies. Transactions with a "Visa" card are still fundamentally transactions between banks, and those banks have their OWN sets of policies for what they're willing to do business in. NSFW/Porn "receivership"/merchant banks for cards have been a thing for decades; the problem is because the business is supposedly "high risk" their rates are higher, near double in many cases. Not for customers, but for Itch, which they will then directly pass on to creators, as they currently do. Plus side, maybe more durable to further challenges and harassment. Downside, more of creators income goes directly to the card companies that caused this problem in the first place. But we'll see how it all ends up.

I learned yesterday that Patreon requires two forms of photo ID to maintain an 18+/NSFW creator account on their site. They do not disclose this on signup, but wait to slam you with it like a jumpscare after you are already up and running and taking in supporters. They do a number of non-transparent things like this.


I was, and am, unwilling to provide this information. Thus, I applied, and was approved, to toggle my page there to SFW. The Patreon page will now officially be a SFW tip jar. I am in a unique position to do this, because I am already using the SubscribeStar, and was planning to use the Patreon, in a 90% SFW way anyway. Unlike most creators, I don't upload regular content to those platforms, NSFW or otherwise. The only exceptions were/are discussion of the game and the pre-release/sneak peak of the games. These will now be snipped from the Patreon. To be clear, on Patreon there will now be:

-No game discussion

-No game updates (not a loss, as they've always been freely available on itch anyway, and will be available other places if needed.)

-No game distribution or sharing.

-No discord

-Officially, tiers on Patreon no longer "entitle" you to anything. They are all purely for support.

Unofficially, if I wish to discuss and share things with people I know outside of the platform, who happen to be supporting on the platform, at times and for reasons that are my own, that's between me and them.

If this change doesn't work for you, you are of course free to cancel support there going forward. I was originally simply going to delete the account entirely and refund the money, that's the alternative. But we'll give this a try and see how it goes.

Also, although the discord for Patreon is nixed, I have been playing around with setting one up, with some help, and may eventually still implement a general server, as one more way people can check news on the game. A lot of people just hang out in Discord, so I imagine just having the game news right there on the left with the other servers might be a welcome convenience for a lot of people. Probably something I'll get up and running eventually.

And finally, ho boy has setting up Patreon been an experience. Allow me to share:

A list of nonsensical broken shit on Patreon:

-Member count does not update in realtime (lol)

-Subscribestar provides a clear, chronological feed of people as they join, with a link to greet them. Patreon groups and subgroups notifications, often doubling up or combining things so "new" supporters actually aren't, and makes it extremely difficult to actually get to the point of messaging them. It's one click with SS, vs like 4 with Patreon.

-For some reason it is not possible to type j or k into some of their forms (what the actual fuck). The only way to actually get meaningful text into these forms is to copy-paste from elsewhere.

-The onboarding process is barely communicated. Their quickstart prompt covers maybe a quarter of what you actually need to do to get a patreon up and running. I was able to find the rest on my own without too much trouble, but if you're going to hand-hold, do it all the way.

-As previously mentioned, frequent compliance jumpscares, rather than just disclosing all requirements at the start. "Now you need to do this!" "Now you need to do that!" I feel like I'm playing a roguelike.

-The new monochrome design is incredibly dour and depressing. This isn't a trivial thing: people tend to spend more when they're happy and excited and having fun. Coloring something like a funeral parlor isn't a good way to court sales. Imagine if you walked into a McDonalds and it was all blacks and greys (actually I think some of them DO look somewhat like that now, and it's fantastically stupid there too).

-Patreon is FULL of "Dark Patterns", UI designed to obscure, confuse, and hide things away from you while still TECHNICALLY having them available. Using SubscribeStar feels like hanging out with a bumbling and slightly sketchy but generally chill, ok dude. Using Patreon feels like you're in a relationship with an abuser who's constantly trying to gaslight you.

In short, the busted, running-in-someones-basement site that is SubscribeStar genuinely has a better overall user experience, despite its flaws, than the god-only-knows-how-many billion dollar industry leader. Amazing.

Apparently Itch updated their initial announcement on the ongoing situation yesterday. I was not aware of this, and only became aware because I decided to re-read/re-check the announcement today. For those like me that weren't aware, it's at the same address: https://itch.io/updates/update-on-nsfw-content. Scroll down to the addendum and take a look. My comments below:


1. They claim they mass-delisted because they have less direct info on games due to the laid-back nature of the site, and thus delisting was required pending manual review, unlike Steam.

Fine, whatever.

2. They're currently begging for the right to still exist as a company from payment processors:

"The situation is evolving as we await final determinations from our current payment processors, Stripe and PayPal. There are still unknowns that prevent us from providing a fixed timeline."

That explains what's currently ongoing at least.

3. But the begging is pointless, because it's already over:

"We have suspended the ability to pay with Stripe for 18+ content for the foreseeable future."

This basically means payment for +18 titles is dead on Itch. The only two options are Stripe and Paypal, and Paypal is FAR more skittish. If Stripe's gone, Paypal WILL follow.

4. They're trying to negotiate and set up 18+ friendly processors

"In the meantime, we are actively reaching out to other payment processors that are more willing to work with this kind of content."

Yeah, good luck with that.

Such processors DO exist, SubscribeStar proves as much. However:

1. This will now be credit card ONLY. Kiss any Paypal access goodbye.

2. The downside of "high risk" processors, high risk aquiring banks is that some other banks servicing people's cards just...refuse to do business with them because they're icky.

A lot of people don't realize this: it's not just Visa or Mastercard running things. If your bank doesn't want you to buy from a particular vendor, they can just say no. From experience, something like 5% of people with totally valid US cards just...can't do business with SubscribeStar. Likely, buying 18+ on Itch in the future will work the same way.

5. They claim they're not stealing games from people's libraries.

"Pages that are “deindexed” are still accessible if you own them. They have not been removed from your library or collections."

This is a very confusing and convoluted situation.

When No Mercy was first attacked, I bought in on Itch in protest. Its thumbnail is gone in my library, and of course the store page is gone. If I click "Download", there is nothing there to download. HOWEVER, if I do the same for another game that was banned and removed that I own, I can indeed still download the files. Likely, the No Mercy devs voluntarily removed their files after being banned, as they wanted to leave the site for good. This creates confusion however, because they're almost certainly not the only ones doing this. I'm sure a number of creators with banned games turned the downloads off, not considering that this would nuke people's libraries. I myself briefly disabled downloads on GT, because it was the only way to halt new sales. Users then see this and think Itch has removed the game.

The problem here is that the site is poorly designed. A creator shouldn't be able to disable downloads for games ALREADY PURCHASED. That should be a separate entity from the basket of digital goods someone gets when they purchase the game. There should be two separate bins: "The game stuff, as I purchased it" and "the game stuff, as it currently stands". Game creators should be able to ADD to "the game stuff, as I purchased it" as new files are added, but not subtract. But it was likely done this way for the sake of simplicity and to minimize the amount of hosting they would have to do.

6. They claim payouts will not be effected by this

IE, that they will still pay out money collected by creators regardless of whether their games are banned. The claim is that the mention of doing so in their adult policy is for the extreme circumstances of those aggressively abusing the TOS, uploading violating games and attempting to immediately cash out before being caught. They say this won't be applied to ordinary NSFW creators.

"The current situation is a special circumstance. We have no interest in withholding anyone’s earnings."

Great, hope that's true. Seems at least reasonably possible that it is. We'll see.

7. They may aspire to be the UK

"Our immediate focus has been on content classification reviews and implementing stricter age-gating on the site."

It is difficult to imagine any workable "stricter" age gating than what is currently on the site. You already have to be an adult to have a credit card. Itch already does "soft checks" requiring users to attest they're over 18, and requires 18+ games to be properly marked as such in their metadata. There is no "stricter age-gating" other than demanding photo id like every fucking other place on the internet decided to THIS YEAR. If that happens, I'm leaving Itch. I imagine a lot of other people will too.

Overall: When it comes to payment processor structure, I hope they have the balls to become SubscribeStar. Less than ideal, but workable. But probably they'll just become the UK, and then die, just like Tumblr died. This update is a weird mix of good news and complete hopelessness for the situation on Itch. But as before, all we can really do is wait and see. At least now I'm no longer dependent on Itch.

Melinda Tankard Reist, the head of Collective Shout (responsible for the recent censorship wave if you just woke up from coma), member of the board of Australia's new censorship system and sworn enemy of everything games, anime and sexy for nearly two decades, has a book:

"He Chose Porn Over Me"

To be clear, she's the EDITOR, but even so...one has to wonder. I know I'd sure be choosing porn over her if I was unfortunate enough to be married to...that. Maybe it's not the porn Ms. Reist. Maybe there's another culprit. Or several.

Also holy shit the blurb for this book is amazing. I for one certainly hope that I can one day find a man (or woman) "turbo-charged by pornography" and "intoxicated by sexualised power." One can only hope.

On a more serious note though, these people are clearly mentally ill, laughably, pathetically so. I don't see how anyone can read this blurb, let alone the book (god help them) and think otherwise. They preach normality and "healthy" ways of life to us, but even the most degenerate gooner isn't living in a headspace this deranged most of the time (and at least they enjoy it). It's amazing how much the most tired, threadbare cliches keep popping up true. These people are horrible and insufferable, miserable because of it (because no one can stand them) and they then export that misery to everyone else. As with so many of the world's problems, yet another that could have been solved if someone could have just managed to 1. Stop being a little shit and 2. Get laid.

No, you didn't miss a day, there was no post for day 4.

I had expected to make this post about how I'd finally hit the sub goal, and Patreon was coming, but a few days out. Instead, things are flipped.

A Patreon you can sub to and support the games at is now up. Please keep the following in mind however:

1. DO NOT SUBSCRIBE TO PATREON VIA MOBILE. Apple will eat all the money. Use a real computer.

2. Use Patreon as a last resort. Patreon's fees are higher (8% vs 5), they are a much less stable option, and (ironically given their two public images) Patreon is a much more sleazy and uncomfortable company to work with. Try to sub on SubscribeStar first.

But I know there are many, have been many for a while who simply can't, for a variety of reasons. Now, at least for a while, you have another option. You can sign up here. Eventually I plan to have a linked Discord, purely for content distribution, but it will take a bit to get that set up. Meantime though, the Patreon itself is open.

Second, sub goal. We are TWO AWAY. So close! Realistically, at this point I'll probably be fine in terms of immediate survival, especially now that the Patreon is a go. Some of those SS sub numbers are one-month subs, which is entirely fine, but also a number of people have subbed at $30, which effectively counts triple, so it more or less balances out. But I would still like to get as much of a margin as I can, given the uncertain nature of everything at the moment, and also, for the symbolic nature of it, I'd like to cross that threshold. Two more! We can do it! 100 new subs passed! Incredible thanks to you all. At least for now the unholy bunny porn complex will continue.

Also, for those getting a little sick of being bombarded with posts on three platforms...yeah, sorry. Again, unstable nature of things means I'm hesitant to trust any one place right now, so I'm doing some redundancy. As things cool a bit, I may go back to my previous method and just post to Itch with links to that from the other platforms. We'll see.

Guess I am still making daily posts for now.

I enabled download for the game for half of yesterday and through the night. Before downloads were disabled, on the night of the shadowban GT was downloaded 100 times. In the middle of the night, on a week night. After I re-enabled it, it was downloaded two hundred more. The period download was disabled doesn't even show up on the traffic graph. I'm glad I was able to help people get their copies up to date.

In the half-a-day-and-a-night that download was enabled, the game also sold five times. This happened despite the game being unlisted, despite a total lack of any network effect (at least on Itch), and despite the bold warning on the main page not to buy it. I'm not mad, this is just an observation. There are positive implications to this. And also worth noting that a lot of those (possibly all) were probably archival attempts from people who had always wanted the game but never got around to buying it off their "buy later" collection or whatever.

To state the obvious, we are on day 3 now and the game is still up. Due to continued demand and continued...non-nuking of me by Itch, I am tentatively removing my request to not buy the game, and the warning on the main page. If you want to buy it there, buy it.

This does not mean things are back to normal. Far from it. This is me putting my hat on a stick and poking it over the waist-high cover to see if it get riddled with bullets. The way I see it, if I continue on there, there is a 50% chance that if I get banned I won't see the money from say, the next month. That might sound bad, but if I keep downloads off there is a 100% chance I won't. The best way to support me is still via SubscribeStar, but I understand that's just not going to happen for many people. And some people just can't be bothered with all this nonsense, and just want to buy horni gaeme. I can't hate them for that.

So we'll see. We'll roll the dice and we'll see.

I anticipate there may be some sentiment of "Well what was the point of the SubscribeStar push then?!" which is understandable, but again, we're not back to normal. All this could still very well collapse tomorrow, or a week from now. But it's been three days, with no further news. A handful of games have been fully banned, but that number doesn't seem to be climbing much. All the big titles I think of when I think Itch NSFW are still up. We're in a holding pattern, and there's no telling how long it lasts. A week? A month? Indefinitely?

I braced for impact and there...wasn't one. Yet. I can still sell the game on Itch. So I'm going to continue to do so.

I would also say that while sales are, amazingly, still good, I don't expect this to last. My pages here have had HUGE traffic right now, understandably. That will eventually drop off again, and when it does, with zero search or recommendation visibility, I expect sales to drop to zero. No way of knowing though, we'll have to see.

In other news, I am probably going to eventually make a Patreon, for those totally unable to support on SubscribeStar. The chances of said patreon running into trouble are high, so once it's up I still urge everyone who wants to support to try SubscribeStar first, and only go over to P if they're denied. It's also less than ideal because I'll probably be doing it with a linked discord like many do, which will make it effectively inaccessible to those in the UK. But they probably wouldn't be able to view the Patreon in the first place.

In other other news, the SubscribeStar is now within 10 subs of hitting the extra 100 goal! Thank you all, and hopefully we can nail that soon.

Boy, this month really just keeps on giving huh?

My previous posts have grown very large and rambling, so I thought I'd make one as a brief update and a condensed summary of what's
happened so far.


Summary: (You can skip this if you've read the previous posts/been keeping up. But if you just walked in, or want a refresher:)

At/around midnight July 24th, Itch.io delisted all NSFW games without notice or announcement, removing them from search but keeping the individual pages up. A few hours later they confirmed via announcement that this was due to pressure from payment processors, which was in turn due to pressure from Collective Shout, a deeply conservative Australian activist group superficially using feminist language.

In April, the same group had gone after Steam, especially targeting a game called No Mercy. This resulted in a tightening of Steams' policies, the removal of many NSFW games on Steam, and a number of people buying No Mercy on Itch in protest. Collective Shout became aware of this, and targeted Itch as well. A few days later, No Mercy was completely purged from the site by Itch without explanation, including from the libraries of people who had purchased it. This seemed to be the end of the issue, until Itch enacted their July delisting, seemingly out of nowhere. It is unclear why there was a four month gap in-between.

Itch detailed this in their announcement, and said they would be manually reviewing the delisted games, restoring or permanently banning depending on adherence to new payment processor (credit card) standards. Some full bans, such as Max the Elf, came almost immediately.

Despite all of this happening in the middle of the night, the response was loud and unified. Itch's discord, forums, and twitter/x were all promptly set on fire by people rightly complaining about the incredibly damaging nature of the action (possibly an existential one for Itch), and very poor handling of it. Collective Shout's twitter accounts all went into "protected mode" fairly quickly.

Gradually, it became clear via shared screenshots that 1. Fully banned games were being removed from people's libraries, as was the case with No Mercy 2. Creators with banned games were judged "not in compliance" with the new rules, and thus not allowed to withdraw money paid for their games from Itch. Taken together, this meant Itch was stealing from both its customers, and its creators. Itch denied this repeatedly on X, and was repeatedly community noted into oblivion.

A new day dawned, and with it the drama/news youtubers. Cr1tikal, Muda, and a whole host of smaller channels all jumped on the news, and the coverage was incredibly fair. Nearly everyone covering the news understood the slippery slope implied by it, and said as much. Today weird porn games, tomorrow everything disliked by extremely conservative wack jobs.

The community of creators and fans meanwhile scrambled to figure out how they were going to deal with this massive disruption. A change.org petition, a similar one (more focused on sex work) at the ACLU, and references to a current bill, H.R.987 - Fair Access to Banking Act, were heavily circulated, though all felt like fairly dim possibilities. And thus we arrive at now.


Now:

I am doing everything I can to get those who can onto my SubscribeStar. Losing Itch meant losing half my income, and far worse in the longterm due to no more big "release" days. When all this started, I was at 154 subscribers on SS. I need to hit at least an additional 100 to make up the immediate monthly financial hole. I am currently at 73 out of 100 new subs, so there's a good chance we'll at least get there.

In general though, I am currently in somewhat of a holding pattern. As of now, my games still haven't been banned, and in fact quite a few other large titles haven't been either. I have been considering a number of additional steps: setting up a no-speak, no-chat discord as an additional news and distribution hub (perhaps a replacement for the itch library for those who already own the game, since I could potentially gate access to certain sections). Potentially even starting a Patreon for those who can't get their cards to working on Substar, as Patreon...doesn't seem interested in enforcing their own rules? And a number of patreons with banned content are still happily chugging along.

But all of that's on hold as I wait to actually find out what's happening with Itch, both on my games and in general. Despite everything, it's still an irreplaceable platform, and if I am somehow allowed to continue using it, I will. But there's no way of knowing how long their "review" will take. I won't wait indefinitely of course, but for the next few days, perhaps up to a week, I'm just going to wait to see what actually happens with Itch,
and this situation more broadly.

That said, I'd still say the chances of the games ending up being banned is high. So again:

Support on SubcribeStar if you can: https://subscribestar.adult/bitshift. If you already have, thank you.

If you have TRIED, but been unable to sign up at SubscribeStar, a question: are you able to use your card successfully on Patreon?

And keep an eye out. I'll share more news when I have it. A progress update on Chapter 3 was planned for the end of the month. I'll probably wait until the VERY end of the month, and then potentially give that depending on how things are sitting.

And for those worrying, no, I won't be making a new post every day/multiple times a day now. Things will probably slow a bit after this, unless something else crazy happens.

Updates: I am writing this immediately after waking up from four hours of sleep because I want it to go out to my itch followers while I still HAVE itch followers. There may be any number of developments that have happened since that I am not aware of. I'll have to get to them second. Please read the previous post for context first if you haven't.

Also: To the watchers here, I see you, and thank you. Especially those new to the site. I know it's very busted, thanks for going to the effort to sign up anyway. It's what we've got left.

Edit again: You know how I said the Internet loves a villain? Yeah about that. Lol. Lmao even. Looks like someone might have finally poked the hornets nest. And the dramatubers haven't even gotten their teeth into this yet. They might not have bothered, except Itch is now pulling the games it fully kills out of people's libraries as well, without refund, effectively stealing from their customers. So they now appear to be directly stealing from both their customers, and their creators (no payouts for you if your game is banned!). That's...one of the decisions of all time.

Edit more: Itch is now actively trying to gaslight the public, insisting they aren't denying payouts or removing games from people's libraries, despite many, many people being able to confirm just that with screenshots (myself included). Don't believe your lying eyes!


The game pages on Itch are still up, obviously. My account continues to exist. The shadowban continues.

There is no way to know for sure how long this will last, or what the verdict will be on my page, but I am operating off the assumption that it will be pulled, which I think is a fair estimate.

Which is why I will repeat the heading of this post: I need as many people as possible to subscribe over on SubscribeStar. Losing Itch means losing half my monthly income. Yesterday, before all this started, I was at about 154 subscribers on SS. To patch the hole, accounting for fees and whatnot, I need at least 100 additional subscribers. I'm currently sitting at 160, so 94 to go. This is at a bare minimum: I have "runway" as they say for a few months, but medium to long term I can't continue operating without at least this much.

However, it's worse than that. I basically had a two-mode financial/income model. First, support on SS and a modest but steady flow of continued purchase of previous games brought in enough to cover basics and have a little breathing room on a monthly basis while I was developing the next game. But second, like a farmer, I would (as far as this second mode was concerned) work for "no" money for a while, coax a crop to harvest, and then publish a game and get very large (for me) payoff over the course of a few months, which I would then squirrel away and slowly sip from in case of emergency as I worked on the next chapter.

Do you see the issue? Even if I can stabilize the monthly enough to survive, without itch there will be no harvest. I will release chapter 3 to...nothing. Subscribers get it for free, as they should.

And it's even worse than that. Half the point of Itch was its network effect. People would just be browsing and see a CS game. Not going to happen anymore. People would buy another horny game, see CS in their recommendations, and buy it too (I got a little bump any time any new nsfw game came out). Not going to happen anymore. I have built up a network of my own of over 4000 followers on itch. Followers that see update posts. Followers that show up when the game comes out and buy it. How many of those are going to follow me over to Furaffinity or here? Probably not all.

So, this boils down to one thing. I am going to ask all of you, if you have the money, to do something you should never, ever do.

I'm going to ask you to pre-buy a video game. (https://subscribestar.adult/bitshift)

If you want to play Chapter 3, "buy" it now by subscribing for a month. Because if enough people don't in the next few days/weeks, it probably won't happen. Tell any friends/enemies/family/etc you have that you know were also interested that they need to do the same.

And let me be crystal clear, I can't guarantee shit on this. Making games is hard, and it's going to be harder with this added stress. I'd put my chances of finishing at pretty high, 80-90%, given my motivation, character and previous experience. But life, including my life, is chaotic. All I can do is the best I can manage. That's why I've doggedly avoided any king of pre-buy in the past. But we're past that now. We're into slimy Kickstarter territory thanks to the hell that is 2025. If you want CS 3 to happen, "buy" it now. Simple as that.

And of course, if you can afford to stick around long term, even better! Again, I need at least 94 more of you.

How many people will see this? How many people will actually sub? No idea. But again, I have about 4k followers on here. Presumably they all want Chapter 3. If we're optimistic and assume only 1k of that is dead accounts, and of the remaining 3k 2k are willing and able to go through the process of signing up and subbing, that's $20k (a little less after fees), which should be plenty to secure the completion of the game. Maybe they won't show up. Maybe more will (I got much more than my subscribers buying GT on release). Tell people. Spread the word. Subscribe.

That said, I'd also like to outline my situation, and why this is all...a bit dire.

For at least five years now, possibly a bit more, I've had "fatigue." NOT Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, as far as I can tell, just a fatigue I can't pin down no matter how many things I have tested or lifestyle things I try to shift. It's physical, but triggered by certain kinds of stress in a really weird way. If you tell me "Hey, go dig a ditch in 80 degree weather for four hours", no problem (as long as it's alone and without any pressing deadlines). I actually was doing something similar to this earlier this year. On the other hand, if you shove me into a typical work environment with nightmare customers, boss, co-workers, constant fear of getting fired, rules that change every week etc, I struggle to last more than a few hours.

Five ish years ago when it started, pre-pandemic when I actually had two regular jobs, it was only a bite out of my normal working ability. Maybe 20% of the energy I could have spend racking up hours gone. But it's gradually become worse and worse, and it's at the point now where I'm not sure I could even work a normal "shit job" any more (retail, fast food, etc), which is all I can get.

I really, really didn't want to share this. I don't like talking about medical stuff in general, I was worried people would eye-roll as they often do ("what a baby, that's not a real thing, just stop being lazy"), I was worried I would hurt people's faith in my ability to finish the game. The games have been a godsend, because there are no co-workers (except for a few great people that help here and there) or bosses, and if I'm having a bad day I can just work less that day, and more the next. I'm fairly confident I can continue work on the game as I have been, assuming the money is there. And just in general, I didn't want people to think I was farming it, pity partying for cash.

But things are bad now. Gotta put the cards on the table. And we'll see where we end up.

NOTE: I have disabled download (and I believe purchase) of the game for the time-being. Itch is apparently refusing payouts on games deemed not in line with their new standards (luckily my regular one just cleared yesterday :P), so there's no reason to give money to "me" if I'll never see it. Super cool move on their part. Please do not buy either CS game until this situation is resolved, one way or the other.

I am still taking in what this means.

1. No communication went out to creators.

2. Some searches show some NSFW games, others have been completely cleared out. NSFW and Furry for example lists nothing now.

3. The games still appear in people's libraries, for now. They haven't nuked them entirely.

4. The game pages are still up, at least for now: https://bitshiftgames.itch.io/cruelserenade, https://bitshiftgames.itch.io/cruel.....de-guttertrash.

5. I can still access my dashboard and funds. Needless to say, I've requested a withdrawal of what's currently in their system.

This is...not good. Due to various health issues I don't like to talk about, it's become increasingly difficult/impossible for me to work a normal job. Itch and substar were a lifeline, a chance at putting together a future. Now that may be over.

Things are very bad.

Substar is still up. Feel free to sub there for a bit if you'd like: https://subscribestar.adult/bitshift. Itch was half the income the games made though. Will update with relevant info as I get it.

It seems like all NSFW expression and sexwork is going to be blackmailed off the internet by visa/mastercard the way things are going. Wouldn't be surprised if they even come for FA at this point.

Edit: There is no concrete evidence of this yet, but I would be very surprised if Collective Shout and you-know-who, the people behind the recent Steam purge and a bunch of other nonsense weren't involved with this, directly or indirectly.

Edit the second: They finally have an announcement: https://itch.io/updates/update-on-nsfw-content. And what a surprise I was right, collective shout. For context, these people are so wacko conservative they want to ban generically sexy AAA games, it isn't just niche stuff.

On the one hand, glad to have SOME word, and that itch isn't at least immediately dumping everything. On the other:

"We are currently conducting a comprehensive audit of content to ensure we can meet the requirements of our payment processors. Pages will remain deindexed as we complete our review. Once this review is complete, we will introduce new compliance measures. For NSFW pages, this will include a new step where creators must confirm that their content is allowable under the policies of the respective payment processors linked to their account.

Part of this review will see some pages being permanently removed from itch.io. Affected accounts will be notified via their account’s email address from our support address. You can reply to that email if you have any follow up questions."

They're going to say furry = bestiality and hypno = rape and that will be the end of it. A handful of the most generic hand-holding porn games imaginable will survive, but everything else will be a smoking crater. Perfect Home? Gone. Roksim's stuff? SUPER gone. All the stuff the Grove people have been doing, and countless others, gone.

Ironically there's a bill in the house and senate right now about stopping exactly this nonsense, preventing card companies from denying service unless something is illegal, sponsored by REPUBLICANS because of Operation Chokepoint, a supposed attempt to hit illegal activity that ended up being used to harass card companies away from doing business with legitimate gun stores, among other things. But the bills will never pass because not a single dem is on board with them. And no one's going to stand up and lobby for fucking porn and sex workers because it would be political suicide.


Edit the third: Also I want to be crystal clear: I've rolled my eyes at a lot of the decisions Itch has made over the years, and this one is real, real bad, but let's be clear, this is a hostage situation. Their choices are: 1. ban NSFW 2. Refuse, lose all payment processing, and be forced to shut down the site. I don't love the Itch admin, but they basically have a gun to their head here. Don't get it twisted, the villains are MasterCard, Visa, and Collective Shout. Let's focus the energy where it belongs.

Oh hey, I guess I can post journals at least right now. Just in case anyone didn't see, my latest progress update on the next chapter is up. Nothing too exciting, just sharing some status info, but you can find it here.

I almost never do these PSA things, and this is somewhat old news, but I was recently reminded of it and wanted to share that reminder. I am not on Patreon, for a variety of reasons, but many creators, furry and otherwise, still are. If you're supporting them there, DO NOT USE THE APPLE APP. Apple takes a THIRTY PERCENT cut on everything that goes through their ecosystem, meaning nearly a third of your money will never even get to Patreon, let alone the creator. Support and make your payments via the website, and if you want to check on a creator on your phone, use an ordinary web browser app (Android users are fine, but really you should avoid using "apps" as much as possible anyway. There's almost always a downside.).

Sorry for the soapbox though, promise I won't spam this kind of stuff often. And for those who just want to know how the game's going: it's going well! Not going to share much more until the next update, but progress continues.

You are out to grab an evening snack when two masked men appear from the shadows and grab you, throwing a hood over your head and dragging you into a nearby idling van. After several minutes of driving, you're hauled back out of the van. You can hear a door open and close as you enter some kind of building, then another. Finally you're shoved down into a chair, tied to it. The hood is yanked off.

The room is small, cement. A single bulb flickers overhead. Immediately in front of you stands an AV cart, with a large CRT television strapped atop it. On the shelf below a generic VCR waits, blinking 12:00.

One of the men steps forward, holding two tapes. He indicates that you must choose one, and watch it for the next 4 hours. Only them will you be allowed to leave.

The first tape is labeled:

"Garfield and Friends"


The second tape is labeled:

"Johnny Test"


Which do you choose?

Check it out over on Itch, some fun stuff this time (I mean always, but this time as well).

Since someone asked, I'll put a heads up here too: first progress update on Chapter 3 is up over here. Check it out!

And up on now on Subscribestar. Take a look over here for the details.

Just a heads up for those who were waiting. It's now live and ready to go, with a healthy batch of bugfixes as well.

 corbinbelasco made a bunch of very cool CS-themed cocktails, and since I don't drink, I figured I'd direct some followers over to him to give some (respectful!) feedback. Take a look! As for me, I just think they're neat.

And up on SubscribeStar! Take a look at the details over here.

As promised, the first content pack for Cruel Serenade: GutterTrash is now live on Itch, a free upgrade for those who've already bought the game. You can check out the details (and download the game) here.

After several months of work, the first major update for Cruel Serenade: GutterTrash is ready! Take a look at the details over here.