Creators respond to Kickstarter’s new adult content ban

It’s not the best time to be a comic creator specializing in NSFW stories on Kickstarter. Earlier this week, the popular crowdfunder announced a crackdown on “Adult” comics, or the ever-growing industry of selling sex-fueled spicy comics through the website. Seemingly in response to pushback from Stripe, its current payment processor, Kickstarter will no longer allow creators to share sex-adjacent content on their campaign pages.

For the record, blatant nudity and sex acts have never been allowed on the platform—with creators being able to blur and censor the naughty bits. Now, new rules in place are set to prohibit implied nudity entirely, or even folks in scantily-clad clothing. According to Kickstarter’s Rules page, any art containing “implied nudity where the subject is wearing lingerie, fetish wear, or clothing that is see-through or very tight and shows human genitalia, the anus, or the nipple/areola of female breasts” will cause a project to not be allowed to fund on the platform. Furthermore, any attempt to blur, censor, or otherwise edit the image to cover is also a violation of the new ruleset.

Pat Shand, publisher of Space Between Entertainment and Cheeky Comics, one of the platform’s largest NSFW labels, says banning content such as implied or even suggested nudity is something that could inevitably bleed over into other contents labels such as language or violence.

“Many of the largest IPs in the world outside of comics – Game of Thrones, Euphoria, The Boys, and certainly any of the romance novels dominating traditional publishing sales… the list goes on and on – would be considered ‘NSFW’ if presented on the platform as a comic,” Shand tells The Beat. “Definitely a worrisome time. This isn’t anything exactly new to either comics creators or anyone even specifically in the actual adult industry, as banks and payment processors and credit card companies will deem a legal business ‘high risk’ at a glance without a deep understanding of what is actually being sold: which is stories. Fiction.”

Shand’s gut feeling proved accurate since in the days since, Kickstarter has been found to be denying campaigns because of use of violence. In one instance, a creator had their campaign page flagged because artwork on it showed two decapitated heads with bloody stumps. The platform flagged not just that, but another page that had no on-page violence and instead, showed a blood splatter in a panel.

In other instances, Kickstarter’s Trust & Safety team has reached out to creators and informed them their campaigns wouldn’t be able to be approved because its system flagged the campaign page of containing Generative AI. Because of that flagging, Kickstarter insists creators must inform their backers the project contains AI-generated content even if it doesn’t, otherwise they’d be unable to approve the project.

As many creators have started to point out, Kickstarter’s own rules seemingly contradict each other. They “allow spicy literature,” but only if creators don’t show it or don’t describe it. Russell Nohelty, another major crowdfunder, posted to social media he met with members of Kickstarter’s comics team on Tuesday, sharing bullet points of the rules discussed in his conversation with them.

• You CAN have sex in the book, but you can’t show it, even censored, on the page. You can even talk about having sex scenes on the page as long as it’s not lewd.

• You cannot show any sex in the book. You can have sex images in the book…but you can’t show sex images.

• You can’t even post images on the page that are censored. Completely tame images ONLY.

• If you have a question, you’ll have to send it to them to ask about it.

• This is not a Kickstarter thing, really. They don’t care, but Stripe and regulatory bodies are pushing back on them more and more. Stripe is the one who really determines whether the project will kick back, and they basically run it through an algorithm.

• However, if somebody complains, they have to investigate.

This isn’t the first time Stripe has involved itself in deplatforming adult content. Back at the height of the pandemic, popular adult content website OnlyFans announced it’d no longer be accepting adult content—which makes up upwards of 80% of the content on the site—because of restrictions put into place from banking partners and payment processors. After intense online backlash, OnlyFans executives reversed course and switched processors that allowed adult content to remain on the site.

It’s also not the first time sex-based comics content has been the target of processors and credit card companies. Just last year, Itch.io—once thought of as the last bastion of NSFW comics online—suspended adult content from its platform at the behest of the aforementioned corporations.

As some have noted, there have been instances where such bans of adult content then lead to attacks on both sex workers and the LGBTQ+ community, one of the handful of questions we’ve yet to hear from Kickstarter back on.

Though creators primarily into NSFW storytelling will likely take a massive hit due to the new rules, folks like Shand still plan to tell the same stories, just through different platforms.

“We are certainly going to host pre-orders on our own site in the near future, though. This is both in response to this change to Kickstarter as well as simply our company evolving toward fewer barriers between us and the customer,” Shand adds. “But regarding Kickstarter, our plan is to stay in communication with representatives of the platform and let our voices be heard in attempt to affect change.”

On that front, Shand says he feels Kickstarter as a platform has been more than understanding when approached. He tells us he feels like they’re taking any and all feedback seriously instead of allowing comments to go unheard.

“We were able to have a direct, face-to-face meeting with Kickstarter’s Director of Comics within an hour of these new rules being announced, so we realize that we are being given direct contact on what was likely a clusterfuck of a day for them… so we take that as a sign that we’re being heard, sure,” he says. “The true extent of how much the indie comics community matters to the platform will show in the coming months as we see if changes are made: either for the better or the worse.”

The Beat reached out to Kickstarter for context, but they did not respond by presstime.