The Vimeo Saga aka the dangers of adult game & mods reviewing.
On October 2, 2023 by beelzerog
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Originally Published on Tumblr on Oct 2, 2023
So, I thought I’d put this all in one place. I thought about making a short video, but, nah, not worth it. That would make it seem like I was more butthurt than I actually am. Because I have a mostly happy ending, so I guess the point is just to put information out there in case someone else decides to do something adult-adjacent like I’m doing.
To start off, I need to explain why I was on Vimeo in the first place. “Why not YouTube?” you might ask. Larger audience, better promotional tools, all of that. Yeah, well, but I’d have to censor my videos. There are other mod & adult game reviewers who place censored videos on YT. And they still have to worry about demonitization (which also buries your videos so unless someone subscribed or is specifically looking for them, they won’t be found) and videos being spontaneously removed. Even losing their accounts with little-to-no warning. I personally didn’t mind having to age-restrict my videos (even though that also buries them), but they could still get taken down, along with my account, with little-to-no warning.
And I felt the need to show as much as tell my potential audience about what I was reviewing. Not much fun talking about a nude mod or an adult game without showing it. While the censored reviews can give you some idea about the game, I personally found the uncensored versions on reviewers’ Patreons or on a site like Spicygaming.net to be much more informative.
I even tried Pornhub, believe it or not, figuring that I might as well go where a nipple wouldn’t get me in trouble. I created an account and uploaded my first episode. It was taken down very quickly because, according to the message “It wasn’t original content”. This happened right before the big Amatuer Video Purge of December 2020, so I guess it’s all in the timing.
Vimeo was looking like my best video hosting choice. There were a lot of nudist videos, a lot of artsy photography videos, quite a bit of T&A when you looked for it. So I created my account and started uploading. I got some traction, so I decided to actually pay for the lowest level account, which would give me the ability to upload HD versions of my videos. And things went pretty well.
The first offense
Fast-forward to 2023. I upload my 25th video, reviewing “Real Life Sunbay City“. It was probably the most explicit video I’d made to that point, just because of the amount of sex in the game. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, outside of getting probably the fastest I ever got likes on a video.
While checking the video stats a few days later, I suddenly to an error, saying my video had been deleted. OK, strange. After some run around, I emailed the company asking what was up. The e-mail response gave the reasoning.
“Specifically you may not upload videos promoting products and services of an erotic nature”
OK, I saw that in the TOS before and all of the examples they gave related to sex work. I wasn’t promoting sex work, as no living people were involved with these videos, so I figured I got dinged because of all of the explicit sex in the video, even though, again, all CG, no living people in the video. I uploaded it to Spicygaming.net, where I was already mirroring my videos at their request, albeit uploading them slowly as to not overwhelm their website with 25 videos of content.
Six days later, the second video gets dinged. Now “Roshutsu” is an exhibitionism simulator, though there is the ability to have the character masturbate in the game. This time the reason given was the same: “Reason: We do not permit content designed to advertise goods and services of an erotic nature.”
I was also told my account was now in trouble. I was looking at the terms and, honestly, I couldn’t think of a way to argue my way out of it. Adult video games are essentially “goods.. of an erotic nature” and they even included this little bit at the end of the e-mail.
“(Please be aware that Vimeo moderators take action as violations come to our attention. “I see other people do it” is not a valid explanation.)”
Well, ya got me. I saw all the other nudity & adult content in other Vimeo videos and thought I was gonna be OK.
Realizing the writing was on the wall, I contacted Spicygaming if it was OK to place the rest of my videos up there all at once rather than the once-a-week I’d been doing for the last month or so. I was told “no problem” and just uploaded all the remaining videos.
Nine days later, the final straw.
This one surprised me. Unlike the previous videos, “Mass Effect: Andromeda” has only nude mods, no explicit sex mods (though the nude mod does make the love scenes better, though I didn’t show those). I figured I was going to get dinged for the Fallout 4 video, maybe “Space Rescue: Code Pink” or “Bonetown: The Second Coming”. In the e-mail announcing the removal, this was included: “Reason: We do not permit content that is primarily focused on sexual stimulation, even if it is not explicit.”
Someone inform the videographers making bikini or fashion videos, ’cause I think they’re going to be in trouble, too. Or to quote Bill Hicks:
“Supreme Court says pornography is anything without artistic merit that causes sexual thoughts, that’s their definition, essentially. No artistic merit, causes sexual thoughts. Hmm… Sounds like… every commercial on television, doesn’t it? You know, when I see those two twins on that Doublemint commercial? I’m not thinking of gum. I am thinking of chewing, so maybe that’s the connection they’re trying to make..”
So that was that. My account was deleted. I spent a couple hours changing the embedded videos on beelzerog.com to point over to spicygaming.net, for which I am thankful. It does mean I’m no longer having to pay for my Vimeo account anymore. Seems that little factor never entered in the equation.
Why did Vimeo do this? I mean, other than the obvious. Well, in May 2021, Vimeo became a publicly-traded company. It has also been shifting its focus to being a business and videographer-focused platform, rather than simply a video hosting platform. Given anti-porn’s focus on going after companies rather than trying to enact laws, I could see where hosting videos about nudie video games would make shareholders nervous. I disagree with it, but I can make that logical leap.
So that’s where The BeelzeRog Show stands now. I am grateful to SpicyGaming for providing their platform, though I do get nervous about having all my eggs in one basket. If my SubscribeStar account actually had subscribers and not followers, I might be able to afford hosting my own videos. Meantime I’m looking around. I recently uploaded my “Date My Nude Mod Music Video” to Veoh as a test and they only gave me some flack because apparently I didn’t hit the right buttons to show it had nudity in it (I thought I did, but the interface is a bit flaky. My account avatar keeps disappearing, too).
If anyone else has some suggestions about where to host uncensored videos, I’d like to hear them so we can share them around.
