Itch.io recently took down its entire library of NSFW games while it conducted an audit and revised its adult content guidelines after its payments processors put pressure on the game marketplace the same way they did to Steam prior. Now, Itch.io has officially posted an update to its adult content guidelines in its FAQ. Itch.io is taking the threat of a payment processor exodus seriously, making it clear that "Our policy is not an invitation to push the boundaries of what is acceptable. Violations that result in administrative action are permanent with no chance of appeal. Any funds on the account will not be eligible for payout. There is no second chance."

The new content guidelines are somewhat similar to what we saw posted when we covered the take-down, but they go into a little more detail about what is and isn't allowed on Itch.io. The new rules basically ban content that depicts sexualized images of real-life humans, AI-generated imagery meant to resemble real-life people, minors and suggested minors, and any content glorifying non-consensual sexual activity. Itch.io also invites developers on its marketplace to read PayPal's, Payoneer's, and Stripe's terms of service in order to make sure that they are compliant with the rules set out by the payment processors as well, since they go into a little more depth than Itch.io's rules. The marketplace says it will continue to review content reports on a case-by-case basis, and it has also clarified that "If you've collected money while in violation of terms, we may be forced to refund or freeze all pending transactions, as accounts that are in violation of our terms are not eligible for payouts."

Almost everyone who understands something about technology will have heard of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) (H.R.3261) currently being debated in the U.S. House. This is internet censorship legislation by any other name and anyone that doesn't have a vested interest in it like the big media cartels is against it. This is because it hands almost total control of the internet to powerful (read: money) special interest groups, allowing them to shut down websites at the mere whiff of an accusation of 'piracy', however small and however unfounded. This will easily ruin many legitimate businesses, all on the pretext of 'protecting copyright' from supposed 'financial losses' due to content 'theft'. It also does an awful lot of other things, all of them bad, which are fully detailed in the link above. Now, if anyone thinks that this is far-fetched, just look at how the current 'darling' of the internet, GoDaddy operates: they pulled the DNS records of weebly.com, because of one little complaint against the site and without even contacting the domain owner first to advise of the situation. Disgraceful. Give them SOPA and a webmaster doesn't stand a chance, regardless of their size.

Valve, a company that operates solely online, takes its security pretty seriously and has a good reputation in this area. However, at the time of writing, its Steam forums are down, having suffered a hack attack earlier today. Visit the forums now and you see a message saying "The Steam Forums are temporarily offline for maintenance. Your patience is appreciated." This attack was apparently done by hackers who want to offer free game cheats (but one should be wary of stealthy malware payloads) since before the forums were taken down, they had planted this message:

Ever wanted to dominate the servers you play on with guaranteed results, but you were too afraid to cheat because of ban risks?

The rest of the message then recommends a website where one can obtain all sorts of illegal game cheats, hack tools and porn. Some Steam forum users even received an email with this text, such as this NeoGAF user. There's no indication that any user's account information has been compromised. However, if you haven't yet set up Steam Guard, now is a good time to do so, along with changing your password when the forums come back online. Also, be sure to use different a password for every login. Of course, many other gaming forums have been hacked in the past and just this year saw many hacks against such big names as Nintendo, Sega, BioWare, Epic Games and of course Sony, which was hacked many times over in protest at their business practices, such as removing the OtherOS feature from their PS3 console.