One GOTY 2024 Candidate Just 'Disappeared,' But Not for the…

2024 might not have had quite as many games that were as universally beloved as 2023's GOTY contenders, Baldur's Gate 3 and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, but it was chock-full of high-quality titles regardless. The year not only saw the release of critically-acclaimed platformers like Astro Bot and Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, but also the debut of several RPG behemoths, such as Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and Metaphor: Refantazio. Among all the AAA games that were released in 2024, however, there were a handful of niche indie titles that managed to gain mainstream recognition, as well. One such title was, of course, the Wrong Organ-developed horror adventure game, Mouthwashing.

Unlike Resident Evil or Silent Hill, Mouthwashing is a game that doesn't feature a lot of jump-scares, combat, or supernatural threats. Instead, it uses its expertly-written script and low-poly, surrealist aesthetic to instill fear into the player. Mouthwashing follows a group of crew members who become stuck on a freighter spaceship after a mysterious crash and are doomed to a slow and painful demise. The game, which features a nonlinear narrative and is only a few hours long, has received widespread acclaim from players and critics alike, in part due to its uncompromising originality. Sadly, however, it has been removed from one popular PC storefront, but not for the reasons that some might think.

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By Rachael Phillips

Mouthwashing is Currently Deindexed on Itch.io Due to an Unusual Reason

Mouthwashing's Deindexing Was Falsely Attributed to Itch.io's Recent Change in Store Policies

A few days ago, Martin Halldin, a composer and sound designer at Wrong Organ, reported that Mouthwashing had recently been deindexed from Itch.io. This meant that, although the game's store page was still accessible, it no longer appeared in search results when looked up online. Halldin attributed this seemingly sudden delisting to some recent changes that Itch.io made to its store policies, in response to demands from payment processors.

For those who haven't caught up with the news, many of the NSFW video games on Itch.io and Steam have been removed from sale in the last few days, without the approval of their publishers and developers. These games, the majority of which contained explicit sexual content, were delisted due to ongoing pressure from advocacy groups, like Collective Shout, who objected to their portrayal of women and/or sexual abuse. Despite being a very mature game, Mouthwashing had zero sexual content in it, so it struck many people as odd that the game was deindexed as a result of this purge of NSFW titles.

Mouthwashing's Removal from Itch.Io Was the Result of an Oversight By Its Devs, Not Censorship

After the news about Mouthwashing being deindexed came to light, many fans of the game took to social media to decry Itch.io and Collective Shout for their unnecessary censorship. It turns out, however, that the game's removal from Itch.io had nothing to do with the recent change in store policies. In the comment section of Mouthwashing's official Itch.io store page, an employee from Itch.io revealed that the game hasn't actually been indexed on the site since October 2024. The game, they said, didn't meet Itch.io's indexing criteria, since Wrong Organ used a download button as a link to Steam, instead of letting players purchase the game from Itch.io outright.

Itch.io clarified that, just because Mouthwashing was deindexed, it didn't mean that the game broke any of the storefront's rules. Although developers can use Itch.io as a portfolio to display games that are hosted on other platforms, their work will not show up in search results if they can't be bought directly on the site.

In response to Itch.io's statements, Martin Halldin wrote a message on Bluesky apologizing for the "inaccurate assumption" that he made. He stated that he falsely thought that Mouthwashing was delisted "as part of the recent delistings of NSFW games on the platform," and that he felt sorry to both Itch.io and the "people who feel like they've been lied to." In the end, the confusion behind Mouthwashing's removal from Itch.io was all the result of a misunderstanding, and not because of any deliberate acts of censorship, as some had suspected.

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