Florida attorney general James Uthmeier has filed two lawsuits targeting companies that make, distribute, and process payments for porn video games. Uthmeier announced on Monday that he’d filed lawsuits against both Lusty Heroes, which hosts a porn game of the same name, and its payment processor Segpay in one complaint and PornHub owner Aylo, which runs porn game platform Nutaku, in another.
Uthmeier claims in a news release that the companies are “openly violating Florida’s age verification law” that requires websites to ask users to verify their age using “a commercially reasonable method.”
These complaints follow Uthmmeier’s first lawsuit against a porn website that he says violates Florida’s age verification laws, which went into effect on Jan. 1.
“We passed strong legislation to keep kids from being exposed to harmful and toxic material, and instead of following it, these platforms ignored it,” Uthmeier said in a statement. “We are taking them to court to make sure they cannot continue bypassing Florida’s common sense safeguards.”
Aylo, which owns PornHub and Nutaku, said Nutaku (and a second website listed in the complaint, SpiceVids) comply with Florida’s laws, according to a statement provided to the Tallahassee Democrat. Aftermath has reached out to Aylo, Nutaku, Lusty Heroes distributor Gethins Limited, and payment processing company Segpay for comment. Aylo told the Tallahassee Democrat that Nutaku’s games with explicit content “represent less than the statutory threshold,” meaning that it’s in compliance because the law doesn’t apply. The threshold in Florida is that the law applies to websites in which more than a third of its content is “harmful to minors,” according to the Free Speech Coalition.
Nutaku obviously has a lot of porn games, but as the Free Speech Coalition wrote, the laws are vague enough that it can be unclear what meets the threshold. “Whether ‘content’ is defined as bytes, images, web pages, video files, or something else entirely is likely to have to be decided by a court if/when a lawsuit is filed against a non-compliant site,” it wrote on its FAQ page about age verification laws.
"We intend to vigorously defend against these allegations in court," Aylo told the Tallahassee Democrat. "These platforms are committed to ongoing compliance with applicable state laws. We look forward to presenting the facts through the appropriate legal process."
Uthmeier is looking for fines of up to $50,000 per violation in each case.
Nutaku is one of the more popular porn game platforms; as of 2020, it announced it amassed more than 50 million users. It uses a special currency when selling its games. Instead of buying directly, a customer purchases gold coins that are then used to buy games. To use a processor like PayPal or Apple Pay, gold must be purchased off Nutaku, through a third-party site. Nutaku hosts all sorts of free and paid games across genres. Lusty Heroes, on the other hand, is a singular browser game that is free to play. Segpay, which describes itself as “one of the most reputable adult payment processors,” is listed on the Lusty Heroes website as the “authorized sales agent for access to lustyheroes.com.” That is, presumably, why Uthmeier listed it in the Lusty Heroes complaint, though the exact connection beyond that is unclear; he says it “facilitates” the distribution of the game. Segpay is listed as a Florida business.
“SegPay has yet to be served with any formal complaint and maintains a policy of not commenting on pending or threatened litigation,” Corey D. Silverstein, who represents Segpay, told Aftermath.
More than 20 states now have laws requiring age verification for sites deemed to be harmful to minors, which has caused some websites, like other porn websites and social media platform BlueSky, to block access in several states. Credit card companies and payment processors have also played a major role in the censorship of adult content and games online, too, perhaps to head off litigation like the lawsuit now against Segpay. In July, independent video game platform Itch deindexed most of its adult content and wholesale removed others after “scrutiny from [its] payment processors regarding the nature of some content.” Valve similarly had recently removed a bunch of games from its platform, too, again citing regulations from payment processors, credit card companies, and banks.
The deindexing and involvement of puritanical anti-porn group Collective Shout, which says it’s campaigning “against the objectification of women and the sexualization of girls,” sparked a massive campaign to stop the censorship that flooded customer service lines of the likes of Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal.
Itch has since reindexed free adult games.
