The world's largest crowdfunding platform, Kickstarter, has confirmed that the background behind its sudden declaration to ban mature content was driven by its payment processor.

On the 19th (local time), Kickstarter officially announced that it would withdraw its recent restrictive guidelines regarding adult content and return to its previous policy. Sean Leow, the COO, issued a statement apologizing for the confusion and anxiety caused to creators by the new standards, and announced the return to the existing policy.

The new guidelines for adult content announced by Kickstarter were prepared in the process of attempting to reflect the legal and compliance requirements of its payment processor, Stripe. This is because there has been an increase in cases where projects approved by Kickstarter were suddenly suspended by Stripe during funding over the past few months. Accordingly, Kickstarter attempted to unify its guidelines to prevent harm to creators caused by the discrepancy in regulations between its platform and the payment processor.

However, this resulted in the introduction of overly strict regulations, which led to a fierce backlash from users and creators. Consequently, Kickstarter decided to completely remove the controversial new guidelines and return to the existing regulatory system that only bans pornography and illegal content. While adult content is permitted, the policy of banning content with clear illegal potential, such as child sexual exploitation material, remains in place. COO Sean Leow explained, “While the restored regulations are not perfect, they are the best temporary measure to protect the rights of creators amidst the gap with the payment system.”

As a result, the risk that payments could be suspended by Stripe even for projects approved by Kickstarter still exists. To mitigate this issue, Kickstarter has added a link to Stripe’s guidelines on its information page so that creators can be aware of external regulations in advance. In addition, it has distributed a guide that summarizes elements that may cause problems during the review process.

Meanwhile, similar censorship moves by card companies and payment processors have already occurred on various game platforms such as Steam and itch.io. At the time, Valve drew attention by directly mentioning that it was an inevitable measure due to pressure from financial institutions such as card companies. In response, users protested against the vague deletion criteria and launched a petition, which saw a fierce backlash with the number of participants surpassing 190,000 in a short period.