Two weeks ago, just before the Epic Games and Apple lawsuit began, Epic added the Itch.io app to its store. Itch.io is a competing storefront, so why would anyone want to go through one storefront to purchase a game on another?" As we noted at the time, this was a head scratcher. But under the circumstances, it was meant to be ironic, as it demonstrated Epic's willingness to embrace competition and share space with other sellers.

There was also an interesting development in today's trial, with Apple's lawyers going after Epic for enabling the sale of "offensive and sexual" content through Epic's storefront. Epic is quite selective about the content in its store, but Itch.io not, and currently has over 2,200 games tagged as "adult."

"There are so many games on Itch.io that I won't even read the names out loud, but they are both offensive and sexual," an Apple attorney said, as quoted by The Verge. The lawyer added that some game titles are "very offensive and we can't talk about them here."

At least in terms of titles, the adult section of Itch'io definitely has some dangerous games, so to speak: "Horny Chronicles," "Deviant Anomalies," "69 Days After," "Future Love Space Machine": Horny, "Deviant Anomalies", "69 Days After", "Future Love Space Machine: Adult SciFi Sex", and "Bukkake Mess Feeler". Some art is definitely dangerous to work with. But is it a cesspool of evil, as Apple's lawyers suggest? [Heather Alexandra, community manager at Double Fine, says, "Let's be serious. The games found there do a tremendous job of furthering the medium, and 95% of the reason it's being targeted is because it's a sex-positive, LGBTQIA-friendly store front."

In response to this inquiry, Steve Allison, vice president of Epic, stated that the company only hosts Itch.io, not the games themselves, and whether Epic would want to provide access to Itch on mobile devices He expressed doubt as to whether Epic would want to provide access to Itch on mobile devices. When asked if they would take any action now that they have a complete picture of what kind of content Itch.io handles, he replied that they would investigate when they come back.

Allison expressed support for Itch.io, stating that Itch.io is "a great community for developers that we fully support, and because it is an open platform, it has different moderation standards than the Epic Games store We do have different moderation standards than the Epic Games store," he said. However, when asked about "offensive and sexual content" being available on the storefront, he replied, "I do not support sexual content of any kind."

It was a gentle distancing on such matters, but still, after inviting Itch.io to the Epic store as a shield against Apple's claims, it is like a dirty pool. Nevertheless, to Itch.io's absolute credit, it took the issue very smoothly.

"Guys, I just got a call from Apple's lawyers. They said we need to turn off all games. The games are now illegal.

By the way, the game is not actually illegal.

Another interesting thing that happened today: it appears that Epic offered $200 million to Sony for access to their first-party games; Epic was also negotiating with Microsoft for a similar deal, but they didn't touch Nintendo. The company did not.