Chapter 3 Early Launch and The Current Situation

Hey folks,

I had hoped that the next time I would be writing one of these would be for the wider release of chapter 3. Life, clearly, has had other plans. This specific chapter is one near and dear to my heart that reckons with the topic of 'illegal art' and its profound importance. In light of the circumstances, the decision has been made to skip the usual paywall. You can download it for free here. Given the paywall being waived we are happy to honor any refund requests for the month, please reach out directly here or in Bluesky DMs.

THE SITUATION

There has been a recent surge in online platforms regulating adult content, and specifically adult content deemed problematic under a nebulous and ever-shifting criteria. These include Steam banning (adult) incest, Fansly going out of their way to ban furries entirely, and the current situation on Itch.io. These changes have been driven primarily by payment processors such as Visa and Mastercard acting under the advocacy of radical conservative groups such as Collective Shout and Exodus Cry.

At present, projects tagged with certain topics (the full extent is not currently clear) have been disabled entirely on Itch and every adult project has been deindexed or 'shadow banned' pending individual review. This means that projects will not show up in search or in recommendations, though they still have individual pages accessible by external link.

Aside from the projects that have been fully removed- which is an outrage no less in need of correction- these steps are devastating for the growth of current and future adult projects. UNDER | HEAVEN has the privilege of being a game that screenshots well and I've done what I can to engage in fairly vigorous marketing through other channels; over the past 30 days, approximately 90% of all traffic has come through the Itch domain itself, likely through these methods.

Further, based on Itch's historically poor response times for support requests (ask me how I know) and the massive backlog that's just been created, the timeline on reinstatement looks grim. Assuming, of course, that Itch's current intentions pan out; we didn't expect to be in this situation yesterday, and it's difficult to know what situation we'll be in tomorrow. This extends beyond Itch and to other platforms, which will be addressed at further length below.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Most importantly: call- email, too, but call- the relevant Visa and Mastercard lines for your country and file a complaint. Be polite to whatever rank-and-file worker you're dealing with, but push to have your grievance recorded.

Likewise, if you're in the United States: call your elected representatives and raise this as a grievance. If you are or know any major content creators or influencers, try to get them to advocate for this cause.

Last, and not last, please do what you can to individually support other projects during this time.

WHAT IT MEANS FOR UNDER | HEAVEN

At present, UNDER | HEAVEN is deindexed as described above. To the best of my knowledge, it does not have any of the attributes that have brought down outright deletion, but of course the situation is rapidly evolving. Until this issue is resolved, growth for the project is likely to be severely harmed. UNDER | HEAVEN is a project early in its life that both has a relatively small patreon audience at present and targets a high production value. It is extremely expensive to make out of pocket. Like many if not most furry VNs, it was unlikely to ever break even- we're all generally doing this because we're sickos- but there was certainly significant hope that it would subsidize itself slightly more as time went on through the sort of growth afforded by Itch.

I want to make this absolutely clear: as long as I am alive and capable, UNDER | HEAVEN will be finished and it will aim for a bar of quality at or exceeding what has been delivered so far. What the 'worst case scenario' looks like is finding alternate distribution methods and- if things truly go south on multiple fronts- potentially slowing production so the impact on my personal finances can be spread out further.

NEXT STEPS

With respect to UNDER | HEAVEN specifically and not the situation at large, the biggest thing I would advocate for is following across multiple platforms. We are currently in a very uncertain environment where things are shifting rapidly without clear direction. Any account could face any sanction at any time, but it is at the very least unlikely that they'll all disappear at once. If you have us in at least two places, you'll always have a fallback.

Pursuant to this strategy, there is now a Subscribestar available here.

We are, of course, on this Patreon account; even if you don't intend to back, you can always follow this account for free.

The Itch page- for whatever it's worth at the moment- can be followed here.

We can be found here on Bluesky. (We also have a placeholder twitter account here though things would have to be truly grim to actually use it).

And, lastly, we have a Discord here.

Until such time as the Itch deindexing is resolved, we will not be delivering new builds through Itch. 'Major' updates on Itch such as new chapters normally give significant boosts to visibility and are the primary means for the project to grow, which is essential as described above. Pushing an update under the current circumstances would, basically, be wasting one of the most important 'shots' we have at visibility. Public builds will continue to be delivered on time, but at present they may be made available through other means such as download links in the Bluesky or Discord. Patreon builds are, for now, unaffected.

If you've managed to read this far, thank you. It is a very strange time to be making art; I am and remain grateful for your advocacy, your support, and simply your kind words

See you around (because I'm sure as fuck not going anywhere),

Faintly

UPDATE: At the time of this writing, Itch has now permitted projects to be reindexed if they disable monetization. I've done so for UNDER | HEAVEN and will resume posting builds on Itch on the previous schedule. Thanks for your understanding during this time, and please don't stop pressuring payment processors to drop these arbitrary and harmful restrictions once and for all.