The Tea is Piping Hot: GOG is Choosing Violence
Okay, so grab your popcorn, because the digital storefront drama just went from zero to one hundred, real quick. In what might be the most chaotic good move of 2025, GOG is clapping back at the recent wave of game delistings by… well, by giving away a bunch of the games that got the boot. For free. We are living for this rebel era, honestly.
In a direct shot at what it calls “the quiet erasure of creative works,” GOG launched a campaign called “FreedomToBuy.games.” For the next 48 hours, they are giving away 13 NSFW-tagged games that were recently yeeted off other platforms. This isn’t just a sale; it’s a statement. And let’s be real, we love a little corporate spice.
So, what’s in the free-for-all bundle? It's a whole mood, featuring titles that range from edgy classics to indie darlings that other stores suddenly found too spicy to handle. Here’s the list:
- POSTAL 2
- Agony + Agony UNRATED
- Leap of Love
- Being a DIK - Season 1
- Leap of Faith
- House Party
- HuniePop
- Lust Theory
- Treasure of Nadia
- Summer’s Gone - Season 1
- Fetish Locator Week One
- Helping the Hotties
- Sapphire Safari
Honestly, seeing POSTAL 2 on a delisting-protest list is iconic. The internet comes full circle.
So Why the Sudden Purge? The Payment Processor Overlords
This whole mess kicked off when platforms like Steam and itch.io suddenly went on a massive delisting spree in July, removing or hiding thousands of adult-themed games. At first, everyone was confused. A bug? A weird policy update? The reality was way more boring and way more dystopian: it was all about the money.
Basically, financial giants like Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, and PayPal decided they were also the new morality police. Pressured by an activist group, these payment processors threatened to pull their services from any storefront dealing in what they consider “high-risk” adult content. For a digital store, losing your payment processor is like a coffee shop losing its espresso machine. Game over.
So, Steam caved, removing hundreds of games and updating its rules to ban anything that might annoy their financial overlords. Meanwhile, itch.io was forced to “de-index” all NSFW content, making it impossible to search for. The founder basically said they had to do it to protect the platform’s ability to even exist. Yikes.
A “Chilling Effect” is an Understatement
The fallout from this has been, to put it lightly, a total mess. Critics are calling it a “chilling effect” on creative freedom. If a developer making a game about complex, mature themes has to worry that Mastercard might randomly decide their work is problematic, why would they even bother? It’s a recipe for bland, safe, and boring art.
Worse, the automated bans and vague rules seem to have disproportionately nuked games from LGBTQ+ creators. Not me being shocked that a vague, puritanical content purge disproportionately hurt queer artists. 🙃 This is clown behavior, truly.
Enter GOG, wearing the main character cape. The company’s stance is simple and, not gonna lie, kinda based: “if a game is legal and responsibly made, players should be able to enjoy it today - and decades from now.” It’s a bold move from the DRM-free advocates, and it inserts them directly into a conversation about who really controls the games we buy. Is it the players, the devs, the storefronts, or the credit card companies?
So, while the whole situation is a massive L for game preservation and developer freedom, GOG’s spicy response is a small win. Go claim your free games, support the devs who got screwed over, and maybe let your voice be heard. Your library should be your choice, not your bank’s.
