Game Jolt, an indie gaming hosting and selling site that focuses on creating fan communities for users, has recently announced that they will no longer support games with NSFW content on their site. Since the site’s launch in 2008, Game Jolt has supported game developers by giving them a platform to publish their experimental games, many of which included themes of adult content. However, this all unexpectedly changed when Game Jolt decided to change their policy regarding NSFW games, as they will “no longer allow content that depicts, solicits, promotes, normalizes, or glorifies sexual acts, sexual solicitation, and sexual violence.”

According to Vice’s Waypoint, Game Jolt’s decision comes very unannounced to many users and game developers of so-called “porn games,” a term used by Game Jolt to refer to games that include NSFW or mature content, who learned about the policy change and the termination of their games at the same time in an email from the hosting site. Game Jolt told users on Twitter that their decision to remove adult content resulted from their user demographic, which consists mainly of users around 13-16 years old, asking them to “clean up” their site. Game Jolt also made an official statement regarding their decision to Vice’s Waypoint:

“While the roots of Game Jolt have been around hosting games, the site has grown to become more of a social media platform for the next generation of gamers. As such, Game Jolt recently implemented a policy that ensures games that feature explicit adult content will no longer be available. We are currently working with developers to make sure they have an opportunity to move their games to another platform, and are responding to any categorizations that may need to be reassessed.”

Not too long ago, Game Jolt received $2.6 million in funding to launch their social app and curated it to Gen-Z gamers, which could explain the sudden urge to wipe out all mature adult content as they’ll be catering to a younger demographic. However, Game Jolt has lost many supporters and talented game developers during their rebranding process.

Hey @gamejolt after your recent policy change disproportionately affecting queer devs and games that have to do with sex and sexuality, i will not be using your platform, and will be encouraging my network of gamedevs to do so as well unless something changes.

— daffodil (@daffodildil) January 3, 2022

During the purging process, many games that didn’t include sexual content were also removed without warning, including many games that feature non-heteronormative relationships. Curtain, a narrative game about two women in a Glasgow punk band who are in an abusive relationship with each other, has no sexual content but still was among the many SFW games that unfortunately got deleted in Game Jolt’s NSFW purge.

😐

I mean, I think there’s a difference between ‘curtain’, a game about abuse that talks about it indirectly in the hopes of helping people, and some porn game, but idk pic.twitter.com/RQrbMUgg24

— Llaura (@ldreamfeel) January 3, 2022

As a result, Game Jolt’s hasty clean-up and lack of thoroughly checking games for NSFW content resulted in terminating many games with non-heteronormative relationships and sexualizing them by claiming that they have or show adult content.

I’d go further and argue that GameJolt’s sex ban, like so many attempts to legislate sexuality in media, will serve to further marginalize certain identities/sexualities because they’re already understood as impermissibly sexual in a way that non-marginalized sexualities are not. https://t.co/utmnw9ft4V

— Vincent Kinian (@Video_Game_King) January 4, 2022

As Game Jolt plans to cater to a much younger audience and more game developers leave the site, who knows what the future has in store for the indie hosting platform.