GOG Feedback on Fee Processors’ Steam Censorship

GOG sees the mounting stress from cost processors on Steam and different PC storefronts as a sport preservation problem, with an organization official saying as a lot in a latest interview. The comment affords a broader perspective on the Steam censorship wave that sparked vital controversy in latest months.

In July 2025, Steam removed hundreds of adult games from its digital retailer choices. Valve cited stress from cost processors as the only purpose for the transfer. The event sparked vital on-line backlash, directed at each cost processors and Collective Shout, an Australian activist group that took credit score for lobbying them, denouncing the focused video games as types of “sexploitation.”

Fee Processor Censorship Is a ‘Sport Preservation Subject,’ GOG Argues

In a latest interview with Automaton West, GOG Senior PR Piotr Gnyp known as the present squeeze a “sport preservation problem,” noting that any title delisted from a digital storefront for any purpose is doubtlessly misplaced endlessly. “It’s significantly worrying when video games are doubtlessly vanishing on account of exterior stress,” Gnyp mentioned. A conservationist’s perspective of this type hasn’t precisely dominated the latest discourse on the matter, however it is rather a lot in keeping with GOG’s broader mission to preserve “good old” games—the concept that impressed its authentic identify earlier than the acronym took over.

Whereas the censorship efforts have affected both Steam and Itch.io in latest months, GOG has thus far resisted such elements, not least as a result of it is a curated storefront fairly than a free-for-all platform. In accordance with Gnyp, the corporate makes alternatives based mostly on high quality and relevance, but additionally seems to people who align with its “values and viewers.” Whereas not everybody needs a platform to deal with curation for them, GOG’s pitch is compelling as a result of it facilities on DRM-free downloads and offline installers. Which means that even when the corporate have been to exit of enterprise, all beforehand bought video games would stay playable, supplied they’d already been downloaded.

Gnyp additionally stresses that GOG, Steam, and each different digital storefront are certain by legal guidelines in lots of nations that they function. Though these legal guidelines might not at all times be constant, they aren’t central to the 2025 censorship wave, at the very least indirectly.

It’s significantly worrying when video games are doubtlessly vanishing on account of exterior stress.

A number of anti-censorship petitions blew up in response to the recent wave of Steam game delistings. Nevertheless, not a single title caught up within the ban wave has returned to Valve’s storefront as of mid-September 2025. Most stay utterly unavailable for buy. Uncommon as these removals could also be, Gnyp says that delistings are “unimaginable to keep away from utterly.”