You know it, I know it... but more than that, we all can feel it. Anybody who consumes media, especially narrative media, feels it. Every round of layoffs, every cowardly kowtowing to censorious bigots, every work suddenly made unavailable, every creator screwed over... there's a lot and it's happening so constantly that it's easy to forget that it didn't use to be like this. And it ain't like capitalism is anything new, but the system's never been so dead-set on eating itself like it has been the past few... I was going to say "years," but really, it's accelerated to an unfathomable degree over the past few months. We're going to need to stop and take stock of what's going on and what we need to prepare for, as both consumers and creators.
Did this whirlwind have a starting point, the flap of a butterfly's wing or the the first tightness in a coalmine canary's tiny chest? Certainly, the second Trump administration has brought a lot of this to a head - corporations are tripping over themselves to curry his favor and get merger approval. But a lot of those mergers are the result of these corporations sinking near-incomprehensible amounts of capital over the past few years into high-profile money pits or the ever-increasing wheels of enshittification that drive late-stage capitalism. Make impossible promises, charge more, deliver less... these would all seem to be at cross-purposes, but it's the tune we're all forced to dance to. Ultimately, it's because of an underlying shift in way economic drivers approach capitalism - even profit itself is no longer the ultimate goal, it's simply the preferred way to keep stock prices ever rising. Another comes from promised technological promises just around the corner as long as the investments are coming in. And another, as we've been seeing all too much in the electronic gaming space recently, is "streamlining" - or, as those of us whose lives are ruined in the process. These tend to follow massive buyouts of studios and publishers, who then find themselves being shuttered when it's impossible, even when successful, to recoup those losses. Again, it's not like we haven't seen that cycle before, though - it's essentially what finally brought down Atari and caused the video game crash of 1983. They spent so much money on the E.T. license that the only way to make it back would have been to sell more copies of the tie-in game than Atari consoles existed at the time. So that's what they did. After all, they were the biggest players at the time, and E.T. was a huge success. There was no choice, there can only be growth, forever. Everything else is failure, everything else is death.
So here we are, again. Even if it can't live up to impossible expectations, the growth has taken place, and through it, consolidation. Our media, the stories we tell, are gatekept by a tiny number of companies, who are just as open about screwing over the people who make their product as they are the people consuming it. (If you're looking for a butterfly flap, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 clearing the way for huge media monopolies is as good as any.) When it comes to electronic games, at least the monopolies have been kinder to the consumer (and even the creator) than other forms of digital distribution - just ask anyone who wants to legally read comics digitally. Valve essentially created the digital game distribution ecosystem with Steam, and even competitors owned by publishers themselves have to borrow from its playbook. But, whether or not you consider them a truly fair playing field, Steam has done more for indie games than anyone before it. Other services have had to follow suit, so even Sony and Microsoft had extensive indie collections from the initial launch of their console webstores. In making indie viable, Steam and its competitors, like the more consumer-focused GOG, opened space for even more creator-contolled services with lower bars to entry, like itch.io.
If you've been following the news lately, you know where this is going.
The quick summary, for anyone who needs it. Australian-based "anti-pornography" organization Consumer Shout, under the auspices of protecting women, pressured payment processors to issue ultimatums to gaming webstores: remove all NSFW games or risk being unable to do any business at all. Thousands of games were delisted or deleted. Itch.io, in particular, was hit hard because of the open-upload nature of their content. But it wasn't just games that depicted sex and nudity that were pulled: the definition of "pornographic" that includes any kind of LGBTQ content used by book-banning organizations and Project 2025 was broadly applied. This seems like a particular betrayal from itch.io, which has been something of a haven for queer creators and games. At least they're trying to find workarounds, but they've openly admitted that they're at the mercy of payment processors... it's the environment in which they're forced to exist.
For an example outside the world of electronic games, consider the recent fracas at DriveThruRPG where the game Rebel Scum was pulled not for it's "Star Wars with the serial numbers barely filed off" approach, but for being too "political" in it's likening of its Empire stand-in to modern right wingers... all while selling games brutally mocking the kinds of cliches of the left that permeate right-leaning media. At least the game remains available on itch.io (reminding us just how few distribution platforms there really are), but not every indie publisher will be able to go there... especially if they're at risk of being pulled at the whim of some international censor.
As consumers, well... I'm known to tear up at the idea of the "book people" that end Fahrenheit 451. As romantic as the notion is, it's still a decent metaphor for communal ownership. Share what you have, digital, physical, oral... all of it. We've mentioned before the idea of establishing a collective library among your social group, and it seems more important now than ever. Catalogue what you have, share it with your friends, make copies whenever necessary (if the creators are still active, try to find a way to get some money to them, of course). We can't let massive corporations be the sole arbiters of the stories we tell, share, and record. We were doing this long before they had a stake in it, and we'll be doing it long after they're gone.
- B
Send questions, comments, and lost RPG PDFs to neversaydice20@gmail.com.
