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This VTuber Just Raised Over $780 for the ACLU. After Steam’s New Content Policies? Her Anti-Censorship Message Is Urgent (
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Furries, Steam, VTubers, payment processors, and the ACLU. It’s all connected. Even if it doesn’t feel like it at first.
By
Ana Valens - July 17, 2025
I’ve been thinking a lot today about
Steam’s new changes to its
Steamworks Documentation guidelines. According to reports published yesterday, Valve now suggests “certain kinds of adult only content” should not be published on Steam if they violate the “rules and standards set forth by Steam’s payment processors and related card networks and banks, or internet network providers.” While Valve’s updated documentation is vague,
data from SteamDB suggests certain NSFW games dealing with taboo themes were targeted by payment processors recently.
At risk of angering the Google overlords that decide the material I can and cannot report on, I suggest
reading PC Gamer’s article on the matter for more details. Adult content creators and gamers on social media point to anti-porn group
Collective Shout as the responsible party for pressuring Steam’s payment processors to censor certain NSFW material on the platform.
Steam has been on my mind since yesterday, because this is the
second time a payment processor has been cited as the cause for a content crackdown over the past month. On June 23rd, Fansly sent a Terms of Service notification to its creators, citing a series of changes made “to closely comply with our payment processors.” This included a ban on furry content, stronger guidelines against hypnosis-oriented material, and limitations on adult material “featuring alcohol, cannabis/marijuana, or other intoxicating substances.” Fansly is one of the most popular NSFW-oriented fansites used by English-language VTubers, and the company’s new ToS changes sent sent shockwaves across the ENVTubing community. Many VTubers were forced to scramble, made to review their content before the ToS changes went into effect in a matter of days, or otherwise move on to other sites due to Fansly’s stipulations.
Giant woman, giant free speech issue
Fansly’s changes were particularly impactful to a friend and colleague of mine in the VTubing sphere,
EmberTalks. Ember and I both create ASMR material in the “voretuber” content niche. In particular, we both roleplay as giant women who consume our viewers. It’s a steady, growing lewdtuber (or adult VTuber) field, partly because vore ASMR provides an oddly soothing and relaxing experience to our viewers — and also because
vore and giantess fetishes are growing in popularity within the U.S. However, voretubers and giantess content creators are always at risk of online censorship in our own right. Last year, Ember was forced to adjust some of her ASMR material available on YouTube; I myself lost my YouTube account because of kissing and licking sounds in my audio roleplays.
https://x.com/EmberTalksVT/status/1934710069675073625 (
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Sudden ToS changes are an undeniable burden on any lewdtuber, drastically impacting a VTuber’s production schedule and revenue stream. But it wasn’t our shared niche that ended up affecting Ember. Rather, it was Fansly’s ban on animal-like anthromophoric characters. Ember has been a member of the furry fandom for over 15 years, and she has a model redesign on the way that includes “furry feature toggles.” For her, the Fansly ToS change was an “alarming” decision by payment processors to “go after subject matters in NSFW media that are not just kink themed, but also regulating creative designs of fictional avatars.”
While Ember has elected to stay on Fansly, she also created a SubscribeStar account for crossposted content and exclusive furry material. But instead of simply promoting her new fansite and calling it a day, Ember, a full-time VTuber, offered to donate her new platform’s initial subscriptions to the American Civil Liberties Union.
100% of her SubscribeStar subscription revenue from June 24th to July 15th was sent to the ACLU. As a result,
she raised $786.40 for the non-profit.
https://x.com/EmberTalksVT/status/1945535021369950552 (
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“I want to bring awareness and let everyone know that as anti-democratic movements and censorship movements become more and more popular and trendy, that things like furry content, or even vore content may become more restrictive in the future as a result,” Ember tweeted when she announced her ACLU fundraiser. “Please do your part to fight against censorship and let people in your community and advocacy groups know, and if anyone calls you a gooner for speaking about this, let them know that these precedents strongly imply further speech bans and will not simply stop at just pornography. They are simply coming after the easiest target first.”
For gamers, an important message about change at any scale
Over $780 raised for the ACLU is no easy feat. But it doesn’t hurt that Ember is practically a household name in the voretubing world. She’s
a Twitch Partner sporting a CCV over 100, along with more than 15,000 subscribers on
YouTube. Ember has a platform, and I was proud to see a friend of mine use it for good. When I chatted with her about the money she raised, she explained that the Fansly furry ban “really shows that payment processors will not stop at just porn, and that they fully intend to go after anything that they don’t want to see supported financially on the internet.”
“I was thinking about what I could do about this situation, as with the growing rise of censorship, and oppressive purity culture movements gaining steam, it’s all a bit overwhelming for someone like me who just wants to create kinky stuff for a cozy ASMR community,” Ember told Waypoint. “But I remembered the ACLU, and their reliable and historied past of pushing against internet censorship, and advocating for a free internet. It’s something that they have been doing for well over the past decade, and are one of the few organizations who really stand for free expression on the internet, and they have specifically called out oppressive payment processors in the past for doing these exact sorts of moves.”
Screenshot: RedNotArtist x EmberTalks
Ember and I tend to have differing perspectives on navigating the challenges we face in VTubing, even though we share the same goals. Traditionally, I tend to shoot first and ask questions later: Highlighting potential causes for concern against adult creators, and raising the alarm as soon as I get a whiff of an issue. My hope has always been that by amplifying the message quickly and aggressively, someone will come in and start making change. Even if a false alarm slips in the mix now and then, being a rambunctious watchdog can sometimes deter harm.
Ember tends to take a more level-headed and solutions-based approach. Is there a step toward fixing the problem? Is there a way to feel like progress is being made to move forward, like supporting pre-existing anti-censorship work? Or, if more hands are needed to solve something in the long-term, is there a path that she can take here and now to help comfort and support her community? Ember’s vibe has always been careful and considered, keeping an eye on the long-term instead of panicking about the present.
As you can imagine, Ember and I don’t always agree on how to approach the shared issues we face, but that’s okay. Diversity in opinion is one of the greatest strengths VTubing provides, as it challenges creators to explore new perspectives they never would have considered. Case in point, I’m not usually the type to host fundraisers or charity events for non-profits. But Ember’s successful ACLU run has changed my mind, encouraging me to slow down and look for solutions to support the legal minds working for our community. It’s important to use your platform to show people there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, that there’s a way to move forward and change things for good.
“I think a lot of people these days get carried away about all the bad things that are happening, without taking into account all the actions that we can take, even small ones, that carry a lot of weight to generating that domino effect of positive change,” Ember told me. “We see bad things every day on our social media feeds, and yet don’t spend nearly enough time talking about what can be done to help our communities in a tangible way. I think for ASMRtists and lewdtubers who want to fight censorship, the best thing you can do first and foremost is provide a sanctuary for your community — continue to provide a sense of comfort, and escape to your audience, while ALSO addressing real life issues that affects you & your viewers in a way that is productive, and not just spiraling about the bad or stewing on what’s being said on social media.”
Steam and VTubing are interconnected on Censorship, even if it doesn’t feel like it
Steam’s content policy changes have obviously upset a lot of game developers, publishers, and gamers. If a store is willing to offer a product, and a customer wants to purchase a product, why should MasterCard, Visa, Bank of America, or PayPal step in and disrupt that transaction? In my eyes, it’s the digital equivalent of purchasing a Big Mac at McDonald’s and suddenly having your order denied because the cashier thinks you should eat a salad. The food I eat is not the cashier’s business. If I want a Big Mac, and McDonald’s sells a Big Mac, then give me my damn Big Mac.
No doubt, gamers, it might be strange to connect Steam to VTubing. But for VTubers who are also prolific gamers, this week feels like the second shoe has dropped. First it’s furries, then it’s video games. And who’s next? Talking about her ACLU fundraiser, Ember stressed that it’s important to use one’s platform for good in today’s day and age, because politically charged issues will inevitably fall on your doorstep.
“I think it’s not realistic anymore to be ‘apolitical’ as someone in a field that’s so tied to these puritanical campaigns, it does not mean that you have to talk politics for content, but it does mean that you will come across situations where politics affects what you do, and you have to come up with ways to spin that around in a way that sends a productive message,” Ember told Waypoint. “We need to be motivated, and energized to change things for the better, not discouraged and demoralized on social media doom spirals.”
Gameplay from “HuniePop 2: Double Date.” I fear for a world where payment processors force Steam to remove games like this from its storefront. Screenshot: HuniePot
To the same extent, it’s important not to spiral around Steam’s payment processor policy. Rather, we should all follow in Ember’s footsteps and look to see what we can do to change things in the here and now. Fansly’s ToS change was about more than VTubers and furries, and Steam’s new guidelines are about more than NSFW games. Everything is interconnected, as it’s always been. During our interview on her ACLU campaign, Ember pointed me to the non-profit’s petition demanding
MasterCard end discrimination against sex workers. She also shared an August 2023 ACLU article,
“How Mastercard is Endangering Sex Workers,” that features a friend of mine from the “fleshtuber” side of sex work on the cover: Vanniall. What’s happening in lewdtubing today is directly connected to
censorship seen on
Steam in the 2010s. And both walk hand-in-hand with a long history of institutional discrimination against sex workers of all stripes, anime avatar or not.
In other words: This problem isn’t going to go away. The only way to fix it is to work for change, whether it’s raising money for a good cause, or demanding politicians step up and stop payment processors from limiting our right to free speech and free trade. Go ahead, chat with other gamers. Chat with other VTubers. Find a way to make a stand. And make it happen.
“I did this to shift gears to something solution-focused, so that [my community] can be empowered to do SOMETHING, whether that be donating, informing their communities, etc and sending the message that it DOES make a difference doing those things,” Ember told me. “I would say it would be very humbling to me if other creatives were inspired to do good by what I did.”
