Steam’s new censorship policy affects dozens of games, and now the mastermind behind it all has revealed himself.

A few days ago, Valve removed numerous adult games from Steam after credit card companies put pressure on the company. According to its own statements, an Australian anti-pornography group is behind this move.

A few days ago, we reported that Valve had removed a whole range of games with questionable content from the Steam sales catalog and tightened its guidelines for distribution in the store.

It now states that games that violate the standards and rules of payment service providers will no longer be offered in the store. This mainly affects games in the Adult Games category. According to initial media reports, the move was prompted by pressure from major banks and credit card companies such as Visa, which do not want their payment platforms to be used for potentially illegal or problematic content.

An Australian anti-pornography group is now claiming credit for this success. The group, Collective Shout, primarily attributes the pressure exerted on Valve to a public letter they wrote and their consumer campaign directed at payment service providers.

This was first reported by the American Online magazine Vice.com reports, although the report in their gaming section Waypoint was later deleted. This happened, according to the author on social media, at the insistence of the publisher in view of the controversial topic. Author Ana Valens and two colleagues subsequently resigned from Waypoint.

Who or what is Collective Shout?

Collective Shout was co-founded in 2010 by self-proclaimed pro-life feminist Melinda Tankard Reist. The group describes itself as a grassroots protest movement against the objectification of women and the sexualization of girls in the media, advertising, and pop culture.

In the past, the group has unsuccessfully attempted to prevent Snoop Dogg and Eminem from performing in Australia and to ban the sale of Detroit: Become Human there. However, their campaign to ban GTA 5 from major retail chains in Australia was successful.

They also launched the Change.org petition that ultimately led to the 18+ game No Mercy being withdrawn by its developers in April after several countries had already banned it.

Back in June, the group in an update to the petition demanded that payment service providers such as PayPal, Mastercard, and Visa terminate their business relationships with Steam due to hundreds of rape, incest, and child abuse games. On July 11, a corresponding public letter from the group to the payment companies.

It is currently unclear whether this campaign really had any influence on Valve’s decision. However, it appears that Valve began deleting various adult games just four days later.

On July 18, Collective Shout also spoke out: Since we launched our campaign, they have added a new rule to their guidelines and removed hundreds of these games, the group wrote on Twitter. Co-founder Tankard Reist also wrote very polemically:

All these porn sick brain rotted pedo gamer fetishists so desperate to get their hands on rape-my-little-sister incest games they’re now exchanging clues on how to find them so that they don’t all die overnight

— Melinda TankardReist (@MelTankardReist) July 18, 2025

It is difficult to assess the extent to which Collective Shout and its agenda ultimately influence the pressure exerted by payment service providers.

However, former Vice journalist Ana Valens told PCGamer that there is a proven link between the group and the deletions on Steam: I have carefully reviewed the content of every article. […] I hope that more authors will investigate the clear and obvious signs of censorship by payment processors that have occurred on Steam and other sites.

Collective Shout, on the other hand, is likely to feel encouraged by its public success to control more content on Steam. The games removed from Steam in this first wave all had questionable content, but Collective Shout has shown in the past that its understanding of pornography and anti-feminist content is much broader.