In the aftermath of Github banning or suspending dozens of popular accounts, the erotic game modding community wonders if they should move to platforms like GitGoon instead.
Developers making mods and plugins for hentai games and sex toys say Github recently unleashed a wave of suspensions and bans against their repositories, and the platform hasn’t explained why.
Developers I spoke to said the community estimated around 80 to 90 repositories containing the work of 40 to 50 people went down recently, with many becoming inaccessible around late November and early December. Many of the affected accounts are part of the modding community for games made by the now-defunct Japanese video game studio Illusion, which made popular games with varying degrees of erotic content. One of the accounts Github banned contained the work of more than 30 contributors in more than 40 repositories, according to members of the modding community that I spoke to.
Github didn’t tell most suspended users what terms they broke to earn a suspension or ban, and developers told me they have no idea why their accounts went down without notice. They said they thought they were within Github’s acceptable use guidelines; even though they make mods for hentai games and things like interactive vibrator plugins, they took care to not host anything explicit directly in their repositories.
I haven’t really dived deep on this but my gut feeling is because they linked to the erotic games. I looked into this a bit in the past, but I may be getting it mixed up with Google’s policies on Docs now that I’m thinking of it, but maybe they have similar policies. The gist was that they weren’t as concerned with hosting legal artistic erotic content as they were linking to it. Like they didn’t want their platform to be used in a way to sort of advertise porn. I’m actually pretty sure I’m thinking of Google Docs though. I was looking for a way to publish erotic stories and considered GitHub Pages as well as Google Docs so it sort of blends together.
There’s a bit of merit to that. After a purchase, a lot of people are wary, and likely to magnify any changes that happen immediately. They need a period of stabilization to dissuade fears, and assure that “nothing will change in the long run”. Even this article is highlighting what happened around a month ago over a period of time, because it wasn’t apparent in the moment.
“Perhaps most frustratingly, all of the tickets, pull requests, past release builds and changelogs are gone, because those things are not part of Git (the version control system),” Sauceke told me. “So even if someone had the foresight to make mirrors before the ban (as I did), those mirrors would only keep up with the code changes, not these ‘extra’ things that are pretty much vital to our work.”
In theory you could make a bot that stores all of those things within git periodically. Maybe do something with git notes https://git-scm.com/docs/git-notes
The moment Microsoft bought it people should have started coding somewhere else. It’s just like everything Microsoft buys, it gets the Microsoft touch, survives for a bit, they make something to replace it and it’s gone forever.
Problem is when looking for a job. 3/4 of what I have been applying for asks for a github link to your projects and won’t accept something that doesn’t match ‘github.com’.
Let me preface with the fact that I know nothing about Git or GitHub. Could you just have one “project” and have the readme be links to your Codeberg/Forgejo/GitTea projects?
The question however is: where should one move then? I’m genuinely asking since moving away from Github is something I’ve been meaning to do for a while now but didn’t have the time to search for alternatives.
The only one I know about is Codeberg, which could work for most but not all of my projects (for now at least). Anyone here knows other tried and tested platforms worth looking into? Preferably free as I’m not in a position to pay for this stuff at the moment.
- Alternative Hosting Services:
Codeberg
SourceHut
- Self-Host (or join a group that self-hosts). A few options:
Forgejo
GitLab Community Edition (note, the GitLab Enterprise Edition, which is provided to the public on gitlab.com, is (like GitHub) trade-secret, proprietary, vendor-lock-in software)
SourceHut
Didn’t know about SourceHut though it would have to wait until I find a job. GitLab on the other hand could work. I’ll keep those in mind at least, thanks!
For anyone that needs to know: it’s criminally easy to set up git for multiple remotes, making a migration from GitHub a lot easier.
Remember that origin is just the default, and you can have any number configured you want.
View all remotes: git remote -v
Add new remote: git remote add $name $url
Push to another remote: git push $remotename $branchname
Pull from a specific remote: git pull $remotename/$branchname (note the slash)
Fetch from all remotes: git fetch --all
The first two are just one-time setup, and the rest just get bolted onto your existing workflow. At some point, you’ll want to use git remote move names around, possibly even making origin something other than GitHub. Cheers.
If only the forge parts were part of the spec like I believe in fossil for example. They are pretty much standardized already. All of the forges have issues, prs, releases. If there exists a git extension for this already, we really ought to spread that via word of mouth because at least I’m not aware of one. If not, I hope someone more familiar with the git spec could work one out and write helpful contribution guides to go with it. I, same as a lot of others I would believe, would be very much interested in helping build one.
This smells suspiciously similar to the stuff affecting adult content on Steam, like Horses. No one’s saying anything about any of it, which feels like that’s on advice from their legal counsel.
I think they are testing the waters of just open warfare against indie developers. Microsoft has no interest in platforming their competitors. They start with the adult games because no one is going to defend them. Once the precedent is set, they go after everyone else. They do the same thing with porn as a vehicle to attack free speech.
I don’t see it. Indie developers would comprise the vast majority of open source projects. Many of them add value to their own products, and they know it, which is why they’re largely a services company now. And the timing is so close to everything going on with adult content in other places.
What about the last 20 years of Microsoft make you think that adding value to their products has anything to do with their business model?
Tech companies don’t make new shit anymore and they haven’t done it for a long time. All they do now is steal our shit and sell it back to us. All Microsoft does now is remove existing features and put them behind higher paid tiers.
What about the last 20 years of Microsoft make you think that adding value to their products has anything to do with their business model?
The part where they tried to make an Apple app store and it didn’t take. The open ecosystem of Windows is the thing that allows it to continue to exist and dominate. And the open ecosystem of open source software actively enhances their ability to sell companies server infrastructure, which makes them more money than Windows does.
Go on then. Talk about it. Which other games besides Horses (the feature adult content) have been removed from or not allowed to launch on Steam? Because that platform is full of porn games and the Horses thing was about sexual themes involving minors.
Again. This wasn’t on steam it was on the literally payment providers who forced the issue. If steam can’t accept payment for your game, of course they’re going to delist it. That’s not what he said. He said steam is trying to clear porn games.
This smells suspiciously similar to the stuff affecting adult content on Steam, like Horses.
With this sentence you basically implied that Steam is removing or not allowing porn games.
You never in any of your comments mentioned payment processors. If that’s what you meant, that’s what you should have said.
You also claimed nobody was talking about it when literally everybody everywhere was talking about it when the news first dropped. So much so that Mastercard made a statement about it.
I said what I said. You decided my argument was something other than what it actually was. You decided to engage me about it in a bad faith argument. You’re fault not mine.
Exactly. Steam is so laissez-faire about adult content that removing one game, without elaborating, and allowing so many others sounds exactly to me like it violates or risks violating a law somewhere, and so they’re covering their asses, maybe even preemptively. I’m not a lawyer, but their advice is often to just shut the fuck up. Epic sure was excited to host it when Steam declined and then did the same thing. For all I know, the reason GOG can host it but the other two won’t is that maybe GOG doesn’t operate in a country where some law makes that game a problem for them.
They did elaborate though. They explained that the game had depictions of children with adults in sexual situations and the game developer removed one scene and paid some lip service about how they were just small adults. Steam didn’t buy into that and wouldn’t allow the game on the platform which is a reasonable take.
Would you like to give the names of specific other porn games involving children in sexual situations? I would like to see that list because I’m pretty sure it violates the law in several places.
You seem to be suggesting that Horses got treated differently for invalid or incomprehensible reasons and that isn’t true from literally every article I’ve seen reporting on the situation.
GOG is based out of Poland, and I’m sure Polish law absolutely does cover children in sexual situations in media.
But we also don’t know what the developer went on to change in the game since it was submitted to Steam with acception of the part highlighted by Steam specifically when they denied it.
This developer may have gone on to change several things that clear the bar in Poland but not everywhere else.
In any case you speculated that Steam might be trying to clear porn games from the platform in your initial comment (or inferred such) and one game doesn’t validate that claim.
In any case you speculated that Steam might be trying to clear porn games from the platform in your initial comment (or inferred such) and one game doesn’t validate that claim.
Quite the opposite. The reason I suspect there’s something legal behind behavior like this is that it is so laser targeted to this game. Especially when it was immediately followed up by their competitor eager to host the game (which had already removed the content named in Steam’s initial reason) and then changing their mind at the last second.
What I see in common between Horses and Github is that it appears that they see it as a bad idea to explain publicly why they’re doing what they’re doing, and that smells like a legal reason to me.
Microsoft went and changed the TOS for GitHub intentionally to remove this content. Valve hasn’t made changes to the TOS to exclude sexual content. They specifically never allowed sexual content that included minors in sexual situations.
This is just TOS enforcement, they updated their TOS in October. From the article:
Github updated its acceptable use policies in October 2025 to forbid “sexually themed or suggestive content that serves little or no purpose other than to solicit an erotic or shocking response, particularly where that content is amplified by its placement in profiles or other social contexts.” This include pornographic content and “graphic depictions of sexual acts including photographs, video, animation, drawings, computer-generated images, or text-based content,” according to the terms.
“But the plans were on display…”
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”
Not relevant. You asserted that the users weren’t told about the changes, when we both know they most certainly ignored some notification of said changes, be it via a popup or an email or whatever. How much fun the TOS is to read and parse has nothing to do with this.
I recommend giving the wikipedia page a quick looksie, especially the “Git Server” section.
Git isn’t a service like you may be expecting, but git servers can be. GitHub, GitTea, GitLab, SourceForge, and Codeberg are all examples of such services, all of which can be used with the git tool.
Yea, git is software that lets you manage repositories whereas github, codeberg, forgejo etc are websites that allow you to host those repositories. You don’t necessarily need any of those either, you can self host your own repositories if you wish, the only difference is how you can share and collaborate on repositories.
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I haven’t really dived deep on this but my gut feeling is because they linked to the erotic games. I looked into this a bit in the past, but I may be getting it mixed up with Google’s policies on Docs now that I’m thinking of it, but maybe they have similar policies. The gist was that they weren’t as concerned with hosting legal artistic erotic content as they were linking to it. Like they didn’t want their platform to be used in a way to sort of advertise porn. I’m actually pretty sure I’m thinking of Google Docs though. I was looking for a way to publish erotic stories and considered GitHub Pages as well as Google Docs so it sort of blends together.
It’s because they got bought out by Microsoft(currently microslop).
I really don’t think I need to expand on that.
So they waited 7 years to do the ban? You know that happened in 2018, right?
There’s a bit of merit to that. After a purchase, a lot of people are wary, and likely to magnify any changes that happen immediately. They need a period of stabilization to dissuade fears, and assure that “nothing will change in the long run”. Even this article is highlighting what happened around a month ago over a period of time, because it wasn’t apparent in the moment.
What can be done about this?
In theory you could make a bot that stores all of those things within git periodically. Maybe do something with git notes https://git-scm.com/docs/git-notes
Store your code away from Microsoft
If Github just kills repos without explanation, then using Github for anything is a mistake.
The moment Microsoft bought it people should have started coding somewhere else. It’s just like everything Microsoft buys, it gets the Microsoft touch, survives for a bit, they make something to replace it and it’s gone forever.
genuinely. it’s been 8 years, ya’ll have only yourselves to blame.
https://giveupgithub.org/
This! Codeberg, Forjego, Gitea, or bust at this point.
I’m OOTL. Why don’t people recommend GitLab?
GitLab is proprietary, despite being source-available. Forjego, Codeberg (based upon Forjego), Gitea and a couple others are all Free Software.
Forgejo is a fork of gitea, because gitea was heading to the GitLab model
I’ve stumbled upon plenty of projects that migrated to alternative platforms. If anything, this may just further accelerate the process.
Problem is when looking for a job. 3/4 of what I have been applying for asks for a github link to your projects and won’t accept something that doesn’t match ‘github.com’.
My answer to those is always “i code for money, I don’t code in my free time”
You can still have mirrors of your stuff on GitHub and push there, just have your primary forge be a different place.
Let me preface with the fact that I know nothing about Git or GitHub. Could you just have one “project” and have the readme be links to your Codeberg/Forgejo/GitTea projects?
Most big open-source projects have a GitHub mirror with a link to the real project.
Yes that can be done.
And now you know why Microsoft bought it. Nothing better than a captive user base.
Is this for real? That’s incredibly stupid.
Can confirm, both true and stupid.
The question however is: where should one move then? I’m genuinely asking since moving away from Github is something I’ve been meaning to do for a while now but didn’t have the time to search for alternatives.
The only one I know about is Codeberg, which could work for most but not all of my projects (for now at least). Anyone here knows other tried and tested platforms worth looking into? Preferably free as I’m not in a position to pay for this stuff at the moment.
I’ve seen many FOSS projects use gitlab. You can even self-host it. Also, from https://sfconservancy.org/GiveUpGitHub/ linked in another comment:
Didn’t know about SourceHut though it would have to wait until I find a job. GitLab on the other hand could work. I’ll keep those in mind at least, thanks!
For anyone that needs to know: it’s criminally easy to set up git for multiple remotes, making a migration from GitHub a lot easier.
Remember that
originis just the default, and you can have any number configured you want.git remote -vgit remote add $name $urlgit push $remotename $branchnamegit pull $remotename/$branchname(note the slash)git fetch --allThe first two are just one-time setup, and the rest just get bolted onto your existing workflow. At some point, you’ll want to use
git remotemove names around, possibly even makingoriginsomething other than GitHub. Cheers.If only the forge parts were part of the spec like I believe in fossil for example. They are pretty much standardized already. All of the forges have issues, prs, releases. If there exists a git extension for this already, we really ought to spread that via word of mouth because at least I’m not aware of one. If not, I hope someone more familiar with the git spec could work one out and write helpful contribution guides to go with it. I, same as a lot of others I would believe, would be very much interested in helping build one.
Rare Fossil win
https://codeberg.org/
damn. what a time to be alive.
Wait, did they remove buttplugio?
Just checked, it’s still up
https://github.com/buttplugio
This smells suspiciously similar to the stuff affecting adult content on Steam, like Horses. No one’s saying anything about any of it, which feels like that’s on advice from their legal counsel.
I think they are testing the waters of just open warfare against indie developers. Microsoft has no interest in platforming their competitors. They start with the adult games because no one is going to defend them. Once the precedent is set, they go after everyone else. They do the same thing with porn as a vehicle to attack free speech.
I don’t see it. Indie developers would comprise the vast majority of open source projects. Many of them add value to their own products, and they know it, which is why they’re largely a services company now. And the timing is so close to everything going on with adult content in other places.
What about the last 20 years of Microsoft make you think that adding value to their products has anything to do with their business model?
Tech companies don’t make new shit anymore and they haven’t done it for a long time. All they do now is steal our shit and sell it back to us. All Microsoft does now is remove existing features and put them behind higher paid tiers.
The part where they tried to make an Apple app store and it didn’t take. The open ecosystem of Windows is the thing that allows it to continue to exist and dominate. And the open ecosystem of open source software actively enhances their ability to sell companies server infrastructure, which makes them more money than Windows does.
Go on then. Talk about it. Which other games besides Horses (the feature adult content) have been removed from or not allowed to launch on Steam? Because that platform is full of porn games and the Horses thing was about sexual themes involving minors.
https://www.polygon.com/steam-visa-mastercard-paypal-censorship-project-2025-early-access/
Again. This wasn’t on steam it was on the literally payment providers who forced the issue. If steam can’t accept payment for your game, of course they’re going to delist it. That’s not what he said. He said steam is trying to clear porn games.
No, I didn’t.
With this sentence you basically implied that Steam is removing or not allowing porn games.
You never in any of your comments mentioned payment processors. If that’s what you meant, that’s what you should have said.
You also claimed nobody was talking about it when literally everybody everywhere was talking about it when the news first dropped. So much so that Mastercard made a statement about it.
“the stuff affecting adult content on Steam”
You filled in the rest. I didn’t imply that.
Sorry, let me try.
Oh. No, wait, you don’t sell games on Visa. Let’s try again.
Dammit! Stupid pedantry setting!
So, when pornhub had problems with payment processors it wasn’t pornhubs fault they had to remove content.
But when steam removes some content because payment processors won’t let them take payment for that content it’s steams fault. Have I got that right?
Man, your reading comprehension is really bad.
I said what I said. You decided my argument was something other than what it actually was. You decided to engage me about it in a bad faith argument. You’re fault not mine.
Exactly. Steam is so laissez-faire about adult content that removing one game, without elaborating, and allowing so many others sounds exactly to me like it violates or risks violating a law somewhere, and so they’re covering their asses, maybe even preemptively. I’m not a lawyer, but their advice is often to just shut the fuck up. Epic sure was excited to host it when Steam declined and then did the same thing. For all I know, the reason GOG can host it but the other two won’t is that maybe GOG doesn’t operate in a country where some law makes that game a problem for them.
They did elaborate though. They explained that the game had depictions of children with adults in sexual situations and the game developer removed one scene and paid some lip service about how they were just small adults. Steam didn’t buy into that and wouldn’t allow the game on the platform which is a reasonable take.
Would you like to give the names of specific other porn games involving children in sexual situations? I would like to see that list because I’m pretty sure it violates the law in several places.
You seem to be suggesting that Horses got treated differently for invalid or incomprehensible reasons and that isn’t true from literally every article I’ve seen reporting on the situation.
GOG is based out of Poland, and I’m sure Polish law absolutely does cover children in sexual situations in media.
But we also don’t know what the developer went on to change in the game since it was submitted to Steam with acception of the part highlighted by Steam specifically when they denied it.
This developer may have gone on to change several things that clear the bar in Poland but not everywhere else.
In any case you speculated that Steam might be trying to clear porn games from the platform in your initial comment (or inferred such) and one game doesn’t validate that claim.
Quite the opposite. The reason I suspect there’s something legal behind behavior like this is that it is so laser targeted to this game. Especially when it was immediately followed up by their competitor eager to host the game (which had already removed the content named in Steam’s initial reason) and then changing their mind at the last second.
What I see in common between Horses and Github is that it appears that they see it as a bad idea to explain publicly why they’re doing what they’re doing, and that smells like a legal reason to me.
Microsoft went and changed the TOS for GitHub intentionally to remove this content. Valve hasn’t made changes to the TOS to exclude sexual content. They specifically never allowed sexual content that included minors in sexual situations.
Those are not the same thing.
So why did Epic also remove the game at the last minute?
Tell me very specifically what that has to do with Steam?
GOTTA ASTROTURF THAT WEBSITE FOR ADVERTISERS BAYBEE. CANT WAIT FOR GITHUB POPUPS.
Sounds like advertisments are coming and advertisers want the platform squeaky clean. Either that or some lunatic group harrassed Github.
This is just TOS enforcement, they updated their TOS in October. From the article:
So they suspended users without telling them about the fairly recent TOS update? That’s just scummy behaviour.
I’m quite sure said users clicked right past a notification of the updated TOS, just like we all do, without even skimming it.
When has a TOS ever been user friendly?
Not relevant. You asserted that the users weren’t told about the changes, when we both know they most certainly ignored some notification of said changes, be it via a popup or an email or whatever. How much fun the TOS is to read and parse has nothing to do with this.
Oh please… As if you’ve read every single TOS update you’ve ever received.
Whether or not you read it doesn’t really matter and isn’t the point.
Since you seem determined to completely miss the point, welcome to my block list.
No shock Microsoft would do this.
https://giveupgithub.org/
Bet the people that warn us about Islamification of the West are cheering this on. Same shit different toilet.
sudo apt remove git && sudo apt purge git -y
To explain ur downvotes: git != github
lol! oh shit, thanks for reducing my ignorance slightly! lol, you got me. that’s terrible.
does git clone multiple things, not just github? fuck me, i have a lot to learn still…
Git is to GitHub as porn is to PornHub. Simple as.
I recommend giving the wikipedia page a quick looksie, especially the “Git Server” section.
Git isn’t a service like you may be expecting, but git servers can be. GitHub, GitTea, GitLab, SourceForge, and Codeberg are all examples of such services, all of which can be used with the git tool.
Yea, git is software that lets you manage repositories whereas github, codeberg, forgejo etc are websites that allow you to host those repositories. You don’t necessarily need any of those either, you can self host your own repositories if you wish, the only difference is how you can share and collaborate on repositories.