Collective Shout

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Collective Shout is an Australian activist group founded in 2009. It identifies itself as "A grassroots movement challenging the objectification of women and sexualisation of girls in media, advertising and popular culture".

Collective Shout

Basic information
Founded	2009
Legal structure	Private
Industry	Lobbying, Activism
Official website	https://www.collectiveshout.org/

The activist group became prominent in 2025 after their campaign against payment processors to cause Steam and Itch.io to delist hundreds of games, claiming that the games sexualise women. This action also affected countries outside of Australia.

Collective Shout has been widely criticized across social media for what many see as a push towards censorship and their usage of questionable methods.

Incidents

Protest against Grand Theft Auto V

In 2014, the group protested the game Grand Theft Auto V, stating that the game encouraged players to murder women for entertainment. The game was later banned from two Australian department stores that year.

Pressure campaign against payment processors

Main article: Valve complying with ISPs and payment processors

In July 2025, Collective Shout launched a public campaign "demanding credit card companies and PayPal block payments" for games on Steam and Itch.io.

Itch.io responded by de-indexing NSFW content on July 24. Itch.io re-indexed free NSFW content on July 31.

De-indexing of NSFW as well as SFW LGBTQ+ content continued on Itch.io reportet on August 10th.[1]

The group claims to have lobbied payment processors after sending 3,000 emails to Steam and receiving no response.

Alongside NSFW content, the group also expressed desire to remove content such as 'Detroit: Become Human' from gaming platforms, mainly for their depicted 'violence against women' alone.

The owner of a journalist website Vice allegedly instructed certain articles related to Collective Shout to be removed from their website, due to "controversial subject matter". The Author of the articles and several of her co-workers resigned soon afterwards in protest.

Critic petitions takedown

The group has also attempted to taken down various petitions critiquing their actions, claiming them to be defamatory.^{[citation needed]}

Defense of questionable child acting

Collective shout has stated the Netflix movie 'Cuties' did not harm children. The child actors were asked to dance sexually on camera. They claimed this "Empowered children."

See also

• Steam