Itch.io Starts Blocking NSFW Creators in the UK Thanks to New 'Safety' Law

Well, it's starting. The chilling effect of the UK's vaguely terrifying Online Safety Act is beginning to ripple through the internet, and indie gaming storefront Itch.io is one of the first to flinch. Developers and authors of adult content on the platform have discovered that their creator profile pages are now completely inaccessible to anyone in the United Kingdom, a move the site says is to comply with local laws.

The Ban Hammer's Weirdly Specific Swing

This isn't a clean, platform-wide ban on adult material. In a move that feels both clumsy and bizarre, only the profile pages of the creators themselves are being blocked. Their actual games, books, and other content, as well as any bundles they are part of, remain perfectly viewable in the UK, provided you click through an age gate. It’s a bafflingly specific restriction that penalizes the creator's identity while leaving their work largely untouched.

Author Ela Bambust was among the first to raise awareness of the change over on Bluesky. When users in the UK attempt to view these pages, they are now met with a boilerplate disclaimer. "While we are currently unable to provide this specific content or service to users in the UK, we continue to evaluate our offerings and compliance framework, and we hope to make more content available in the future," the message reads.

The Chilling Effect of the Online Safety Act

This is the inevitable, messy fallout from the UK's Online Safety Act, which puts the legal responsibility on websites to ensure minors don't see adult content. Rather than implement robust, and likely expensive, age verification systems involving ID scans or selfies like Discord and Bluesky have, Itch has apparently opted for this strange, partial block.

This isn't happening in a vacuum, either. It comes at the same time that storefronts like Itch and Steam are facing immense pressure from anti-pornography groups to remove adult content entirely. As we've covered before, these groups, some with ties to political machines like Project 2025, have been targeting payment processors like Visa to force platforms into compliance.

Itch's move, as awkward as it is, feels like a panicked attempt to get ahead of potential legal headaches from a broad and poorly defined law. Blocking the creator but not the content is a weird half-measure, but it’s a concerning sign of things to come. This is how online censorship often begins: not with a bang, but with a series of confusing, frustrating, and ultimately harmful compliance updates.