What can be done to loosen card companies' grip on this? It has been a constant problem now for decades.
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"It doesn't personally affect me so I don't care."
Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games
51–60 of 967 posts
Re: Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
A couple of billion is an insignificant fraction of the $10000bn MasterCard processes every year.
which is relevant how exactly? merchants don't deal with mastercard, they deal with an acquiring bank of which there are hundreds no doubt one of which will be happy to take the business
Mastercard appears to be involved in the pressuring. You can't avoid them.
Re: Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
which is relevant how exactly? merchants don't deal with mastercard, they deal with an acquiring bank of which there are hundreds no doubt one of which will be happy to take the business
Mastercard appears to be involved in the pressuring. You can't avoid them.
certainly not explicitly mentioned in the article
and I very doubt it's the case, the card networks simply don't care, given you can buy adult entertainment from millions of websites
the acquirer will care if it pushes up their chargeback rate, but this is normally solved by the merchant by paying a couple of bps more
it's a negotiating tactic, nothing more
Re: Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Likely nothing. The simple fact is, Visa/MC don't want to deal with porn because the number of chargebacks and fraud from porn purchases is significant and a huge outlier compared to most other charges. Their crusade against processing charges for adult material isn't about purity, it's simply business.
I doubt it. If that were the case, I think they would only be complaining to Valve about the number of chargebacks issued from the Steam store. Not about genres-that-are-correlated-with-chargebacks-in-other-contexts. Given Valve's generous refund policies, and the fact that a steam store purchase on your credit card statement looks quite innocent, and that the credit card companies didn't complain to Valve about char…
> Given Valve's generous refund policies,
Their generous refund policy, and more importantly their very-non-generous chargeback policy. If you chargeback a Steam purchase, your account is locked.
Re: Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games
#55What can be done to loosen card companies' grip on this? It has been a constant problem now for decades.
Denmark has seen a trend where their national card network (Dankort, operating at the equivalent level to Visa and Mastercard) is seeing reduced usage. They're aiming to reverse that trend. https://cphpost.dk/2025-06-28/general/new-political-agreemen... Not all European countries still have these independent networks.
Seeing reduced use partially because only a few banks support using it in Apple Pay. And Google Pay can't support it at all currently
Re: Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games
#56What can be done to loosen card companies' grip on this? It has been a constant problem now for decades.
Use ACH/Zelle/Paypal/etc. The permanent solution is a federal government operated electronic money system operated as a utility with constitutionally protected rights.
PayPal has also been involved in this.
Re: Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Adult content has a high chargeback rate and high fraud rates so payment processing for adult content has higher fees.
The fact that these were specifically incest games makes me think a title was somehow involved in distributing CSAM, which is often why Visa/MC crack down on porn websites. But it is possible that Visa sensibly and correctly said "anyone who makes or purchases such a game is a despicable scumbag, and we shouldn't assume the financial risk of dealing with them."
That's a pretty wild idea for what someone would be putting on steam as a visual novel. And why would they need to be pressured into removing horrible illegal content?
Or you think one person did that and it made the credit cards decide any story with incest would be the same? That would be ridiculous on their part.
Re: Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games
#58The article calls out “certain adult games” which is vague. It is interesting to note that most of the delisted games were themed specifically around incest.
https://bsky.app/profile/steamdb.info/post/3lu32vdlsmg27
Wondering if this will be a slippery slope towards pulling more anodyne stuff.
Re: Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games
#59It is sad that in 2025 this needs to be repeated: fiction is not real.
This statement imply that:
* Simulated violence is not violence.
* Simulated sex is not sex.
* Simulated sorcery is not sorcery
Re: Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
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Why do you think it's fair/acceptable to strongarm niche sectors that want to process credit cards just like everyone else?
Because those sectors are particularly difficult for processors in terms of fraud and abuse. If your niche is so disproportionately problematic that cc companies don’t think it’s worth it to try to make money off you, then you should find a different solution.