Payment processor Stripe has issued an apology and refuted the allegations that it has banned the purchase of LGBTQ+ goods.Developers and supporters of LGBTQ+ games have recently expressed concerns over the deindexing and/or removal of NSFW games on itch.io and Steam, with some creators sharing that even their SFW games featuring LGBTQ+ (often female-centric) content have been removed from search.Gamers have been contacting various payment processors en masse after being told they were responsible for the sudden policy shift and extreme correction. Stripe in particular became a big target of the efforts after Itch founder Leaf mentioned them by name.In recent days, multiple people have alleged that Stripe customer service agents have informed them directly that the company has recently restricted the purchase of all LGBTQ+ goods."twice today, when pressured, Strip operators have said, plainly, that i cannot use stripe for the purchase of LGBTQ content," wrote Bluesky user @dieselbrain. "not just adult content, but explicitly LGBTQ."@mostlycogent reported a similar experience, saying they were told that Stripe is, in fact, blocking "non-explicit, legal, non-adult LGBT content" because they're a "private company, we make our own rules about it." (@) The concern and outrage prompted a public response from Mark Jansen, the Head of Policy Communications at Stripe."Sorry for the confusionthis is not our policy," he wrote. "Stripe has no prohibitions on the sale of LGBTQ+ content or goods."The company echoed that sentiment in statements to several publications."We apologize: the information given by our support team was totally wrong," Stripe spokesperson Casey Becker told The Verge, repeating that they have "no prohibitions on the sale of LGBTQ+ content or goods."There are still a lot of questions and concern at hand, despite the company's response.As @dieselbrain pointed out, even if Stripe doesn't have an official policy against LGBTQ+ content, it's still extremely likely targeting adult content will disproportionately affect LGBTQ+ creators, as we have seen happen time and time again.