Kickstarter on today eliminated its new mature content rules and restored an earlier version of its guidelines, after a week of criticism from creators and a payments dispute that had put some campaigns at risk.

The company had added a prohibition on projects whose rewards could provide sexual pleasure, but now says the earlier rules again apply. Those rules exempt sexual wellness products that are not designed for insertion or penetration and are not marketed primarily for sexual gratification.

Chief operating officer Sean Leow said the updates were primarily driven by requirements from Stripe, the payments processor that handles transactions for many crowdfunding campaigns. Kickstarter said Stripe operates under its own legal and compliance requirements separate from Kickstarter’s own rules, and that the platform had seen a growing number of campaigns it approved suspended by Stripe mid-funding.

Leow said the company had advocated for creators directly with Stripe, because it wanted to keep projects alive after they were already live. He said the changes were shaped by the reality that campaigns had already cleared Kickstarter’s own review, only to run into Stripe later, a problem that left backers and creators stuck in the middle.

That shift came fast. A week ago, Kickstarter issued the new rules. Last week, it was already flagging the changes publicly. By today, the company had scrapped them altogether after, in its words, its community let it know “loud and clear” that the new rules were wrong.

Kickstarter said it was “going back to the drawing board” and would keep “continuing to push Stripe for flexibility, clarity, and consistency.” It also said it believed in the work and that creators deserved to see their campaigns through, underscoring why the reversal mattered so quickly after the rules were introduced.

The fight is bigger than one platform. Mature content has been tightly controlled by payment processors for years, and Stripe’s own rules are shaped by financial institutions that govern how money moves globally. Stripe says businesses cannot sell sexually explicit materials designed for the purpose of sexual gratification, leaving platforms like Kickstarter to balance creator demands against rules they do not control.

For now, Kickstarter has stepped back from the new restrictions and restored the older standard. The next test is whether its talks with Stripe can produce language that keeps campaigns funded without forcing creators to guess which projects will survive once payments are checked.