GoG Announces “Freedom to Buy” Campaign to Fight Censorship

In light of the censorship going around the web these days, it seems that GoG is going the opposite direction.

When itch.io began censoring games at the behest of payment processors, it rightly sparked outrage. The move was a follow-up to Steam censoring games also at the behest of payment processors. The moves made it clear that payment processors ultimately hold a veto over what games should and should not exist, meaning your game could disappear from the storefront at any time without warning.

Sadly, this is all part of a broader trend to pressure large platforms to heavily censor content. This as some people and force their morality onto others, overriding their freedom of choice in the process. While the dictatorial efforts have experienced far less resistance than it should, apparently, there are still those out there who apparently still have this thing called “a spine”.

GoG has announced that they are releasing some of the censored games for free on their store front. The offer is available for 48 hours and is available here. The site makes it clear why they are doing this:

Censorship
is quietly deciding
which games you can buy.

We are fighting back.

Some games vanish. Not because they broke the law but because someone decided they shouldn’t exist.

For 48 hours, these games are free, because if a game is legal, you should be free to buy it.

The site lists the games they are able to give away that have been identified as the ones being censored. Here’s a list:

• Postal 2
• Agony + Agony UNRATED
• Leap of Love
• Being a DIK – Season 1
• Leap of Faith
• House Party
• HuniePop
• Lust Theory
• Treasure of Nadia
• Summer’s Gone – Season 1
• Fetish Locator Week One
• Sapphire Safari
• Helping the Hotties

Some gamers are, of course, looking at the games listed and noting Postal 2. The ESRB warning mentioned the game has sexual themes which is… pretty tame compared to what is being alleged about these games.

Leap of Love contains sexual themes and is definitely NSFW, but doesn’t appear to contain the content that has been part of the allegations (incest being one of them). Similar seems to be true for Leap of Faith, though it apparently does deal with darker themes of depression, apparently.

Honestly, if you are flipping out about “sexual themes”, then there are very obviously much bigger things to worry about in life (such as Trump sending nuclear submarines to Russia to name one example).

There is some confusion surrounding this list because a number of these titles are still available on Steam. The thing is, Steam wasn’t the only storefront censoring games lately. It’s likely that many of these games were censored on itch.io – which is why they got included.

Another point to be raised here is the fact that no one is advocating children to play these games, either. This is about allowing adults to access these games when others are saying that they shouldn’t be allowed to be sold to anyone period. That is a huge difference.

Over top of it all is the fact that the campaign to censor games like these is only resulting in their name being promoted – ala the ever famous Streisand Effect. While the offering does not include every game that was censored on different platforms, it is a sampling of what was censored somewhere along the line.

Either way, it’s nice to see someone out there cares about freedom of expression. This as others have decided that it’s better to just cave to the censorial demands of payment processors and government, appeasing extremists with dictatorial demands and bullies.

(Via NoisyPixel)

Drew Wilson on Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook.