In the aftermath of Github banning or suspending dozens of popular accounts, the erotic game modding community wonders if they should move to platforms like GitGoon instead.

Developers making mods and plugins for hentai games and sex toys say Github recently unleashed a wave of suspensions and bans against their repositories, and the platform hasn’t explained why.

Developers I spoke to said the community estimated around 80 to 90 repositories containing the work of 40 to 50 people went down recently, with many becoming inaccessible around late November and early December. Many of the affected accounts are part of the modding community for games made by the now-defunct Japanese video game studio Illusion, which made popular games with varying degrees of erotic content. One of the accounts Github banned contained the work of more than 30 contributors in more than 40 repositories, according to members of the modding community that I spoke to.

Github didn’t tell most suspended users what terms they broke to earn a suspension or ban, and developers told me they have no idea why their accounts went down without notice. They said they thought they were within Github’s acceptable use guidelines; even though they make mods for hentai games and things like interactive vibrator plugins, they took care to not host anything explicit directly in their repositories.

Archive: http://archive.today/eNOI1

  • ampersandrew@lemmy.worldEnglish
    31·
    2 days ago

    Exactly. Steam is so laissez-faire about adult content that removing one game, without elaborating, and allowing so many others sounds exactly to me like it violates or risks violating a law somewhere, and so they’re covering their asses, maybe even preemptively. I’m not a lawyer, but their advice is often to just shut the fuck up. Epic sure was excited to host it when Steam declined and then did the same thing. For all I know, the reason GOG can host it but the other two won’t is that maybe GOG doesn’t operate in a country where some law makes that game a problem for them.

    • atrielienz@lemmy.worldEnglish
      55·
      2 days ago

      They did elaborate though. They explained that the game had depictions of children with adults in sexual situations and the game developer removed one scene and paid some lip service about how they were just small adults. Steam didn’t buy into that and wouldn’t allow the game on the platform which is a reasonable take.

      Would you like to give the names of specific other porn games involving children in sexual situations? I would like to see that list because I’m pretty sure it violates the law in several places.

      You seem to be suggesting that Horses got treated differently for invalid or incomprehensible reasons and that isn’t true from literally every article I’ve seen reporting on the situation.

      GOG is based out of Poland, and I’m sure Polish law absolutely does cover children in sexual situations in media.

      But we also don’t know what the developer went on to change in the game since it was submitted to Steam with acception of the part highlighted by Steam specifically when they denied it.

      This developer may have gone on to change several things that clear the bar in Poland but not everywhere else.

      In any case you speculated that Steam might be trying to clear porn games from the platform in your initial comment (or inferred such) and one game doesn’t validate that claim.

      • ampersandrew@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        2 days ago

        In any case you speculated that Steam might be trying to clear porn games from the platform in your initial comment (or inferred such) and one game doesn’t validate that claim.

        Quite the opposite. The reason I suspect there’s something legal behind behavior like this is that it is so laser targeted to this game. Especially when it was immediately followed up by their competitor eager to host the game (which had already removed the content named in Steam’s initial reason) and then changing their mind at the last second.

        What I see in common between Horses and Github is that it appears that they see it as a bad idea to explain publicly why they’re doing what they’re doing, and that smells like a legal reason to me.

        • atrielienz@lemmy.worldEnglish
          33·
          2 days ago

          Microsoft went and changed the TOS for GitHub intentionally to remove this content. Valve hasn’t made changes to the TOS to exclude sexual content. They specifically never allowed sexual content that included minors in sexual situations.

          Those are not the same thing.

              • ampersandrew@lemmy.worldEnglish
                22·
                2 days ago

                Quite frankly, it doesn’t. This thread is about the removal of adult content from multiple different places that happens in suspicious proximity to the removal of other adult content, such that it sure feels like it’s all connected.

                • atrielienz@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  24·
                  2 days ago

                  That’s a conspiracy theory with a whole heaping of whataboutism.

                  And the other guy who I blocked can suck my left nut. I blocked you because you added nothing at all to the conversation and I wasn’t interested in talking to you.