Close Menu
Technology Mag

    Subscribe to Updates

    Get the latest creative news from FooBar about art, design and business.

    What's Hot

    Matter and Form’s Three 3D Scanner Is Shockingly Easy to Operate

    August 9, 2025

    Gear News of the Week: iPhone 17 May Be a Month Away, and Sonos to Raise Prices

    August 9, 2025

    I went camping in a heat dome, and these five gadgets saved my vacation

    August 9, 2025
    Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram
    Subscribe
    Technology Mag
    Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram YouTube
    • Home
    • News
    • Business
    • Games
    • Gear
    • Reviews
    • Science
    • Security
    • Trending
    • Press Release
    Technology Mag
    Home » What’s a smut peddler to do these days?
    News

    What’s a smut peddler to do these days?

    News RoomBy News RoomAugust 9, 20257 Mins Read
    Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Reddit WhatsApp Email

    In the aftermath of itch.io pulling the sale of over 20,000 pages of adult content, the creators of that work are left feeling betrayed, exhausted, and fearful. The number of platforms that permit the sale of adult material is shrinking, and there’s no guarantee the ones that remain will still permit it in the future. But now, with their livelihoods at stake, many creators and their communities have begun to push back and search for new ways to thrive.

    “Before [itch.io], the NSFW comics community would grouse and complain and share feelings of anxiety,” said Brad Guigar, a smut comic artist. “This time around, we’re actually doing something about it.”

    For some, that means organizing massive call campaigns to pressure payment processors to reverse course and allow itch.io to host the content it had before. Others have decided to abandon the fickleness of platforms for their own websites. And yet others have decided that if they can’t sell their game directly, they’ll just make it free.

    To some creators, the most disheartening thing about itch.io removing thousands of pages of adult content is that it’s relatively unsurprising. The storefront is one of several in recent years that have embraced adult content only to shun it later when payment processors start asking questions. They’ve now found themselves booted from platform to platform, moving from Tumblr to Patreon to Gumroad, only to have the rug pulled out from under them each time.

    “This time around, we’re actually doing something about it.”

    When adult creators are regularly forced to find new places for their work, their business overall suffers. “I can never get ahead,” said PixelJail, a creator who makes BDSM and other kink-related comics and illustrations. “I have to stop doing paid work to set up new accounts, backlog posting, pay for new subscriptions or services” and other administrative tasks.

    PixelJail has now opted to set up their own websites. But even without the burden of conforming to a platform’s rules, having one’s own website isn’t a guarantee of absolute safety. In the UK, where PixelJail lives, the recently implemented Online Safety Act requires that online platforms have “strong age checks” in place to prevent children from accessing pornographic or “harmful” content.

    “I had to geoblock my websites in the UK, including my webstore,” PixelJail said, meaning they no longer sell their work in their own country.

    Laws like the UK’s Online Safety Act are slowly proliferating across the United States. The US Supreme Court recently ruled that age verification laws do not violate the First Amendment and many states are now requiring adult content sites to implement age verification tools, which can be expensive and subject to privacy concerns. Rather than comply, sites like PornHub have simply decided to cease operations in areas where those laws are in effect. Individual creators might have to make a similar choice.

    “I made my site years ago and didn’t use it much at first,” PixelJail said. “But it’s gradually become the only real place I can go to sell and even now, that’s at risk.”

    Gif: Cathryn Hutton / The Verge

    Creator platforms have repeatedly been forced to exile adult content creators. In 2017, Patreon tightened its rules related to adult content causing some of those creators to abandon the site with man choosing to set up shop with Gumroad, another e-commerce platform. Then, last year, Gumroad banned virtually all sexually explicit material, causing yet another adult creator mass migration. You can follow the line of adult creators hopping from platform to platform fleeing content bans all the way back to one website: Tumblr.

    “From between 2012 to 2018, there was a huge, and I truly do mean huge NSFW community on Tumblr,” said DieselBrain, a smut artist specializing in monster kink. For many of the creators I spoke to, the “Tumblr Purge” of 2018, where the social media site outright banned all adult content, was their first experience with having their previously accepted work suddenly prohibited. “This kicked the entire community off of there, and I’d argue that we never really recovered fully,” Dieselbrain said.

    It’s easy to see how. When porn creators move from one platform to another they bring their communities with them creating an influx of traffic that would please any website. Then, after reaping the benefits of all those new eyeballs (in addition to a portion of the transactions those new eyeballs make), sites dispose of the reason for its newfound success.

    This was almost the case with OnlyFans, which, in 2020, briefly flirted with banning adult content, the kind of material the website was universally known for. In every case, payment processors like Stripe, PayPal, Visa, and Mastercard were the culprit for these crackdowns. While all payment processors have guidelines prohibiting the sale of illegal material, many host platforms overcorrect, banning material that would ostensibly be permitted in order to avoid the increased scrutiny (and cost) hosting that content requires.

    “We have been asked to be more rigorous in enforcing our ToS and must comply,” Gumroad CEO Sahil Lavingia said in an interview with TechCrunch regarding its ban of adult content. Lavingia declined to name the specific company asking.

    To blunt the blow caused by platform disruption, creators often turn to their communities, both the ones made up of other creators, or those made up of their personal fans. They act as information networks, sharing news about where a creator may have set up shop and are more generally an avenue of commiseration and support. To help his fellow artists navigate the recent events with itch.io, Guigar, the NSFW artist, started a newsletter for adult creators called Uncensored Artists.

    The developer Cara Cadaver is leveraging her community to help support her game VILE: Exhumed. She made the game available for free on the Internet Archive after it was banned from Steam, which, according to her, was done under false pretenses.

    “There are a lot of intense visuals in VILE: Exhumed,” Cara Cadaver wrote. “But there is no uncensored nudity, no depictions of sex acts, and no pornography whatsoever – which is one of the justifications bad actors are using right now to censor games.”

    Though the game is free, there are options to support Cadaver directly through donations, half of which, she said, will be donated to charity. “This censorship of my work is a direct attack on creative expression and artistic freedom, and it will not stop with false accusations of sexual content,” Cadaver said.

    There has virtually never been a stable time to be an adult creator on the internet. To them, it feels unfair to have come to places like Tumblr, Patreon, Gumroad, and now itch.io, places that were tolerant of the kinds of work they did, only to have those places taken away, often without warning or recourse, leaving them with one less way to make a living.

    “Most of the creators I know are everyday people with bills to pay mired in late stage capitalism,” said Mesmereye, an artist who specializes in hypnosis kink. “When you have a body, a camera, and an internet connection, why shouldn’t you try to put the proverbial bread on the table with the assets and talents you’re born with?”

    Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.

    • Ash Parrish

      Ash Parrish

      Ash Parrish

      Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.

      See All by Ash Parrish

    • Analysis

      Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.

      See All Analysis

    • Creators

      Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.

      See All Creators

    • Entertainment

      Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.

      See All Entertainment

    • Report

      Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.

      See All Report

    • Tech

      Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.

      See All Tech

    Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn WhatsApp Reddit Email
    Previous ArticleSee 6 Planets Align in the Night Sky This August
    Next Article Aura’s Aspen impressive digital frame is the most affordable it’s been

    Related Posts

    Aura’s Aspen impressive digital frame is the most affordable it’s been

    August 9, 2025

    Nintendo’s new Hello, Mario! mobile app lets kids play with Mario’s face

    August 8, 2025

    How Wikipedia is fighting AI slop content

    August 8, 2025

    A decade later, Windows is still bringing Control Panel features to the Settings app

    August 8, 2025

    Instagram’s Map is here, and this is how you can turn your location off

    August 8, 2025

    Mini Ikea stores will be opening inside select Best Buy locations this year

    August 8, 2025
    Our Picks

    Gear News of the Week: iPhone 17 May Be a Month Away, and Sonos to Raise Prices

    August 9, 2025

    I went camping in a heat dome, and these five gadgets saved my vacation

    August 9, 2025

    Aura’s Aspen impressive digital frame is the most affordable it’s been

    August 9, 2025

    What’s a smut peddler to do these days?

    August 9, 2025
    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • Pinterest
    • Instagram
    • YouTube
    • Vimeo
    Don't Miss
    Science

    See 6 Planets Align in the Night Sky This August

    By News RoomAugust 9, 2025

    On August 10, six planets—Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune—will line up in an…

    The Vibes-Based Pricing of ‘Pro’ AI Software

    August 9, 2025

    A Misconfiguration That Haunts Corporate Streaming Platforms Could Expose Sensitive Data

    August 9, 2025

    I’m Attending 7 Festivals This Year. This Is My Must-Have Gear

    August 9, 2025
    Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram Pinterest
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms of use
    • Advertise
    • Contact
    © 2025 Technology Mag. All Rights Reserved.

    Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.