I settled on using the https://phtn.app/ front-end in a browser.

Have they said that queer stuff is inherently NSFW? I haven’t seen that said anywhere and don’t think it’s the case.

I just checked and the “LGBT” and “LGBTQIA” flags are 100% functional right now.

https://itch.io/games/tag-lgbt/tag-lgbtqia

Obviously if they did say that queer stuff is inherently NSFW that would be a big problem.

Itch.io just banned lgbt content at the reauest of payment providers

Do you have a source on this? Everything I have read from them so far about the news today makes this sound like a temporary problem that was out of their control.

This is a time critical moment for itch.io. The situation developed rapidly, and we had to act urgently to protect the platform’s core payment infrastructure. Unfortunately, this meant it was not realistic to provide creators with advance notice before making this change. We know this is not ideal, and we apologize for the abruptness of this change.

We are currently conducting a comprehensive audit of content to ensure we can meet the requirements of our payment processors. Pages will remain deindexed as we complete our review. Once this review is complete, we will introduce new compliance measures. For NSFW pages, this will include a new step where creators must confirm that their content is allowable under the policies of the respective payment processors linked to their account.

https://itch.io/updates/update-on-nsfw-content

I’m pretty confident they will get this sorted out. It doesn’t seem like they have any intention of banning nsfw content.

Edit: I’m responding here about NSFW content because I was confused. I don’t think Itch actually ever banned queer/LGBTQ content in any way. The recent drama has been over NSFW content specifically so I assumed OP was specifically taking about NSFW queer content.

Steam / Valve doesn’t care if you pirate games as long as you don’t involve their servers. This is a pretty known / accepted fact.

If you really are worried just install a different OS on steam deck and don’t use steam at all.

I don’t think I would personally really consider using windows for anything these days. Semi-ironic to be concerned about steamOS spyware when you are comparing to windows which for sure has spyware.