Stripe Refuses To Pay Out On NSFW Kickstarter Material, Effectively Banning Degenerate Comic Projects

Deep Cover Studios: Anthology #1

One thing that’s been frustrating Kickstarter comic creators over the last few years is the prevalence of “NSFW” pornographic art masquerading as comic books. These projects often have a dozen or more variant covers featuring naked women in various states of hedonistic activities and rarely discuss the interior contents of the books themselves. Creators of real stories see these so-called books reach the top of the Kickstarter charts, making it harder for consumers to find real comics, and it becomes frustrating as it seems like anyone can put up a piece of pornographic art and make five figures or more. Now, Stripe is clamping down on these projects.

It's been a dirty secret of Kickstarter for a long time that pornography is the way to comic book financial success. It’s very difficult to get a project going unless you’re a big-name company or celebrity otherwise, which defeats the point of the Kickstarter system, which used to be to help creators figure out how to fund their early projects to establish themselves. Pornography, being such a huge industry, tends to creep its way into everything, and Kickstarter comics are no exception.

If you go to the comics tab and sort by “popularity,” a brief search will find that over 80% of the top comics listed are branded NSFW, 18+, or erotic in nature, and all of them seem to be wildly funding not because of their comic content but because of their offering dozens of pornographic variant covers.

AMORINI: AMATEUR CUPID #1 Cover Labeled "spicy"

Rumors have been circulating that ever since Kickstarter hired a new head of comics outreach, Sam Kusek, that they would be addressing the concerns of creators who are frustrated with an inability to be seen because of this process.

Fandom Pulse reached out to Sam Kusek, who graciously told us that there were no plans for Kickstarter to make changes to its platform policies at this time, though he had heard of the frustrations of creators who are trying to compete in a space where pornography is dominating everything. He further said that if Kickstarter does decide to make any kind of platform change, it would be announced via proper channels and creators would be aware of it.

However, some of these porn comics have been noticed not by Kickstarter proper but by their payment processor Stripe. Stripe has a standing policy not to be involved in transactions involving pornography, and it appears as if they’ve taken notice of what’s happened on Kickstarter over the last few years.

Deep Cover Studios: Anthology #1

On May 23rd, creator Steve Kupiszewski received a notification from Kickstarter after his project had closed that they were unable to process payment from backers. According to him, the message read:

“Thank you for your patience. We're so sorry about what's going on. We're working on escalating this issue to Stripe as appears there is a mistake over on their end. We will continue to advocate for your work and remind them that you've had multiple successful campaigns in the past.

Unfortunately, seeing as the project has ended, the project will need to be relaunched. Because Stripe has disabled the credit card transfers on their end, the errored payments will not process. We greatly apologize for this experience and we'll follow up as soon as we hear back from Stripe about what happened.

Best,
Kickstarter Trust and Safety”

His project, Deep Cover Studios Anthology #1, features two prominent images of covers featuring a woman in a state of undress, one bent over with her genitals facing readers like she’s about to be taken for fornication purposes. The interiors also show this woman running around naked through the entire book, making this clearly an erotic/pornographic endeavor.

Steve Kupiszewski received another email from Kickstarter later, confirming this was indeed the issue with the project.

“Hi again,

Just a quick update that Stripe has since informed us that your account was disabled as adult-themed comics are not supportable on their platform. Should you choose to launch a comic that is not adult-themed comic, you are welcome to re-launch on Kickstarter.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

Best,
Kickstarter Trust & Safety”

Kupiszewksi pointed out to his followers that there are thousands of projects on Kickstarter with pornographic images, so he doesn’t understand why his was targeted. Perhaps Stripe is now fed up with the number of these projects coming through the pipeline and just took notice, or perhaps someone reported his project. The events aren’t clear, and there have been no updates as of this writing.

However, what is clear, is Stripe has put down a line in the sand for what constitutes pornography and how far one can go. For now, it appears as if covers featuring nude women are not subject to this, but if the entire contents of the project appear to have nudity and if the covers are in more degenerate poses, the project may be in danger of not being able to fund.

With Kickstarter's policy of only charging backers at the end of a campaign, a creator can’t know whether Stripe will make this call until the funds are collected and the campaign is over. This is difficult for creators, but the best practice is to avoid pushing the limits as to what’s going to be considered pornography or not going forward.

What do you think of Stripe taking notice of pornographic Kickstarter comics and banning them? Leave a comment and let us know.