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Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games

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Re: Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games

#261

Post by cogman10 »

mapt wrote: post #255
ijk wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One factor is the ongoing campaigns from number of moral crusading groups who lobby them to cut off payment processing for things they don't approve of. NCOSE has been working for decades on the project, and targeting credit card companies has been a successful tactic for them for a decade or so. [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/visa-and-mastercard-ar... [2] https://www.newsweek.com/why-visa-mastercard-being…

Targeting them with what? What could possibly hold enough leverage that Visa would jeopardize their sweet gig as an ideology-neutral, essential piece of American infrastructure siphoning 1-2% off of every dollar of consumer spending?

Threats of exposure and boycotting/blacklisting the card making room for competitors.

Plenty of religious groups have the money to be able to start the "holy card". And there's plenty of businesses that'd be giddy to accept Jesus card.

Consider, for example, companies like hobby lobby or Chick-fil-A banning visa and promoting Jesus card.

It also wouldn't take much for such a card to advertise itself as kid friendly.

Thinking about it, I'm a little surprised this hasn't happened already.

Re: Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games

#262

Post by pests »

AdieuToLogic wrote: post #237
manwe150 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought Venmo was trying the most with their card offers, as well as PayPal, Cash, Google Pay and several others too

> I thought Venmo was trying the most with their card offers, as well as PayPal, Cash, Google Pay and several others too I know at least two of the above used to use a specific US bank for the credit card transactions backing their payment services. For others, if service usage requires a verified credit card or debit card backed by a credit card network, they too use a processor owned/operated by a bank, bank subsid…

Cashapp cards for me, for example, are backed by Sutton Bank Ltd out of Chicago.

Re: Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games

#263

Post by FireBeyond »

TkTech wrote: post #251
0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am genuinely curious who can actually threaten Visa (I do not think it is Valve). Amazon, Walmart, Target and then increasingly unsure.

Any coalition of banks can. Replacing Visa is a daunting task, but rolling out PoS support and the technical challenges are peanuts compared to actually getting banks onboard. Visa itself was started by a single bank, and Mastercard was started by a coalition of banks. They can do it again. Interac[1] is Canada's debit system, originally created as a non-profit by our largest banks way back in '84, and these days is…

Zelle won't become that. Zelle was designed to offload liability onto consumers using the carrot of instant transfers.

Re: Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games

#264

Post by kwanbix »

cogman10 wrote: post #261
mapt wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Targeting them with what? What could possibly hold enough leverage that Visa would jeopardize their sweet gig as an ideology-neutral, essential piece of American infrastructure siphoning 1-2% off of every dollar of consumer spending?

Threats of exposure and boycotting/blacklisting the card making room for competitors. Plenty of religious groups have the money to be able to start the "holy card". And there's plenty of businesses that'd be giddy to accept Jesus card. Consider, for example, companies like hobby lobby or Chick-fil-A banning visa and promoting Jesus card. It also wouldn't take much for such a card to advertise itself as kid friendly.…

What competitors? You mean a "Jesus Card" issued by Visa or Mastercard? At this point, it's basically an oligopoly. The only other real player is Amex, and they're a very distant third.

Re: Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games

#266

Post by tptacek »

FireBeyond wrote: post #260
akerl_ wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cigarette purchasers aren’t filing chargebacks when their partner checks the billing history, claiming their card got stolen.

Are dietary supplement purchasers doing so?

Extremely, infamously, yes.

Re: Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games

#267

Post by numpad0 »

mulmen wrote: post #168
raincole wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Practically impossible. To replace visa/mastercard you need to have thousands of banks support ValveCard across the world. It's hard to imagine how it's going to happen. Players will not switch to another (probably foreign) bank just to buy Half-Life 3. They'll pirate it. By the way, Gabe has a very famous quote: > Piracy is a service problem. He knows it very well that if it's hard for players to buy something they'…

Why does ValveCard need to work anywhere other than Steam? Privacy.com manages to issue card numbers somehow. How does that work?

You have to offset negative ValveCard balances with USD in everyone's banks, and there's a convenient middleman called Visa who does exactly that by tying store accounts to bank accounts through the universally accepted membership card they issue.

Re: Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games

#268

Post by Retric »

cogman10 wrote: post #261
mapt wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Targeting them with what? What could possibly hold enough leverage that Visa would jeopardize their sweet gig as an ideology-neutral, essential piece of American infrastructure siphoning 1-2% off of every dollar of consumer spending?

Threats of exposure and boycotting/blacklisting the card making room for competitors. Plenty of religious groups have the money to be able to start the "holy card". And there's plenty of businesses that'd be giddy to accept Jesus card. Consider, for example, companies like hobby lobby or Chick-fil-A banning visa and promoting Jesus card. It also wouldn't take much for such a card to advertise itself as kid friendly.…

Let’s be real, Chick-fil-A banning Visa would likely result in its bankruptcy.

Starting a holy card that doesn’t work at gas stations etc is an extremely uphill battle.

Re: Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games

#269

Post by ggoo »

eddythompson80 wrote: post #217
ggoo wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean by the content they were yeah. Precisely the problem with rules declaring what content is and isn’t acceptable.

Exactly. By content, here is a book on Amazon[1] where the author openly tells stories of rape and incest and somehow it's all Ok. Pretty much the same as Game of Thrones and those Steam games. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Body-Keeps-Score-Healing-Trauma/dp/01...

Seems like we’re in agreement - I read your prior comment differently

Re: Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games

#270

Post by nullc »

maxbond wrote: post #161

Why do payment processors do stuff like this? Is there some regulation that requires them to? I get that they don't want to process fraudulent transactions, but I'd think the response to a higher percentage of fraud from some industry would be to charge them more. It doesn't make sense to me why they would be concerned about the content of games, as long as everything is legal and the parties concerned aren't subject…

> Why do payment processors do stuff like this? Is there some regulation that requires them to?

Generally no, but they exist in a regulatory morass where it's impossible to do what they do without arguably or perhaps technically being in violation of hundreds of regulations at any given time.

The US government then uses their power to selectively enforce the voluminous mess of bad regulations to coerce parties to undertake actions which it would be flatly illegal for the government to perform directly such as cutting off sexually explicit content from payment rails.

e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point

The practice isn't limited to payment processors but they're a particularly good vector given the level of regulation they're subjected to. Choke Point (and Choke point 2) are just specific examples of a general tactic to end run around the public's rights that has been used by the US government for decades. In most cases the abuse isn't so well organized that it has a project name you can point at.

Congress and the whitehouse leaning on social media companies to suppress lawful opinions on covid policy is another example of that kind of abuse that has received some public scrutiny. Most cases, however, go without notice particularly since the ultimate victims of the actions generally have no way to know the cause.

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