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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

#441

Post by noduerme »

root_axis wrote: post #331
nerdsniper wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the CFPB under threat, there may be room for payment processors which don’t protect consumers from fraud. (Regulation is only as strong as its enforcement)

Not a wise business model. Enforcement can return at any time if the political winds shift.

Yes, and it's been tried before. LibertyCoin, I think.

Write a Steam knockoff platform that's trustworthy enough for people to download, and load it up with dirty games. Put the premium on the customers if they want to use credit card transactions, otherwise push them towards crypto payments. Maybe you won't be an oligarch, but you'll probably end up with a reasonably sized yacht.

[edit] hell, in a few years if the winds shift you might be DraftKings.

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

#442

Post by ashoeafoot »

k1t wrote: post #411
scott_w wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, these films usually get rated 15 or 18 in the UK, so I’d not say it’s “OK for children to watch.”

I think that's the classic US/UK culture split though. US is strict on language and nudity, but comparatively lax on violence (except blood). UK is lax on nudity and language (comparatively), but very strict on violence. UK being the country that considered the word "ninja" too violent for children, for example.

Violence is pretty okay in the middle east, which makes it socially acceptable by inheritance in the uk.

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

#443

Post by rtpg »

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?

Pressure campaigns could lead to laws regulating the card industry, self regulation prevents some of that (see movies and games ratings agencies, which avoid government ratings coming in and potentially connecting an 18+ rating with outright bans like we’ve seen in the UK and Australia in the past)

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

#444

Post by noduerme »

mafuy wrote: post #253
nerdsniper wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the CFPB under threat, there may be room for payment processors which don’t protect consumers from fraud. (Regulation is only as strong as its enforcement)

Might be a good idea. This is so curious. The US has a weird fetish with privatizing things that the government should handle, like consumer protection. If there were a reasonably robust infrastructure for this outside of payment processors in the US, there would be far less pressure on porn providers to comply with fucked up morals about porn. What we have here is an instance of late stage capitalism, and half the p…

I'm not sure about that. Late stage capitalism would involve the government bailing out credit card companies if there were fraud. I kind of prefer for them to deal with it themselves. And whether they deal with fraud themselves or the government does, they're going to classify certain types of transactions as riskier than others. My point was that this is probably not a "moral" decision, just a business decision. It would be a lot worse if it were the government mandating it, and worse still if they were mandating it because it conflicted with the moral code of some plurality of voters. That's not the case here, and I'm glad it's not. I wouldn't want the government to control consumer protection to the degree that voters in Texas could decide whether to protect certain consumers or not.

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

#445

Post by swinglock »

lawn wrote: post #14
bobsmooth wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin was supposed to solve this.

And you could indeed use Bitcoin on Steam for a while! But then the blocks got full, fees and wait times skyrocketed, and in response to the customer backlash Steam removed Bitcoin. Meanwhile Bitcoiners were (and still are) only focused on number go up instead of other, more productive, use cases. Such a waste.

They built the lightning network, it's meant for this use case.

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

#446

Post by Abishek_Muthian »

flimflamm wrote: post #438
Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #363

Payment processors(Visa, Master) , payment gateways(Stripe, Paypal...) and payment hosts (Patreon, Gumroad...) are a huge pain to deal with even when you're selling something which is legal and risk free just because their algorithm or employees are often overcautious, anything out of mundane they'll ban first and then ask questions(if you're lucky). I have a FOSS project called Open Payment Host[1] which removes the…

Have you looked in to "PSD2 and Open Banking regulation in Europe" ?

I haven't, I will definitely explore it. Quick read on it seems very promising.

Have you or anyone here any API in EU for getting payments directly to your bank account? I have started a discussion on this on OPH[1], I welcome any information on direct banking API in Europe in that discussion.

[1] https://github.com/abishekmuthian/open-payment-host/discussi...

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

#447

Post by Thorrez »

Hizonner wrote: post #89
nkrisc wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet it is possible to make simulations extreme enough I would not opposed to banning them. There are some things that should not be normalized in society. It shouldn’t be payment processors doing it unilaterally, I’ll grant that. But I’m not (and I’m sure a great many more of a silent majority) wholly opposed to the outcome.

> There are some things that should not be normalized in society. That attitude has recently become normalized, and I find it Concerning(TM).

Recently? Hasn't society always topics they thought shouldn't be normalized?

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

#448

Post by Thorrez »

Shekelphile wrote: post #254
cool_dude85 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the people who disagree: would you really be interested in seeing Child Grooming Simulator 25 on steam? I think we can almost all reasonably agree that at least this sort of content should not be sold on there.

there are already hundreds, if not thousands of anime lolicon porn games on steam. the people making a stink about this know this but are pretending that they don't because it would overtly out them as pedophiles.

Are you saying the people who are petitioning Steam to remove porn games are playing the porn games themselves and simultaneously pretending porn games don't exist on Steam?

That doesn't make sense.

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

#449

Post by baobabKoodaa »

Diti wrote: post #190
UltraSane wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Visa and Mastercard generally don't like anything with incest, rape, and/or underage participants.

But they are strangely okay with murder.

That's american values for you.

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

#450

Post by atemerev »

ijk wrote: post #183
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…

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…

The US obsession with sex (both positive and negative) is something else.

Here in Europe, sex is a normal part of human life. Not a center of everything, nor a sin to be avoided. Sex art is normal. Sex games are fine. There are no moral crusaders here, because sex is moral. We tell sex jokes at work and nobody faints. We are constantly perplexed why American culture is so different from other Western cultures in that regard.

People keep saying "Puritans" like it answers all questions, but Puritans were hundreds of years ago. We had our own share of people with peculiar attitudes back then. Today is 2025, not 1785.

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