Possibly the most frequently broken rule on /r/lewdgames was #2: No Piracy.
The context for that rule on Reddit and on Lemmy is not quite the same. However, I’d still like to keep the stance that we want creators to be comfortable posting to the community, and not have to worry that someone will direct people to a site with an unlicensed copy of the game.
To that end, I plan to maintain a whitelist of sites that are acceptable sources for games. To be on the whitelist, they would need to make reasonable effort to keeping unlicensed content from the platform. IMO, F95’s stance of “provide a copy of the game but link to the official patreon/itch/whatever” isn’t enough.
Right now, I would whitelist patreon, itch, steam, dlsite, and subscribestar, but I’m open to suggestions.
Reasonably, any site fully controlled by the developer of the game can be sourced.
I will admit that that leaves some gaps; fan translations tend to release free copies of the games they translate (often Japanese games that would be available on dlsite). I’m interested in community feedback, especially from developers, on this.
Lewd Mods should be able to be sourced from anywhere, so long as they do not directly pirating anything. This will probably require additional consideration in the future.
If the game is only available in a language through fan translation, I don’t believe it is necessary to curb “piracy”, as that isn’t a product that can be paid for.
I do think this post is straightforward and well thought. Redirecting to direct sources for a developer is almost always easy, and redirecting to a pirated source is more difficult. If someone wants to pirate, there is no reason to muddle up this group with it, as this would just be redirecting them elsewhere, anyways.