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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

#451

Post by [deleted] »

jhanschoo wrote: post #272
noduerme wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is it's simply a chargeback risk. It's the reason casinos and adult sites have trouble getting credit card processing and are charged much higher basic rates, even under the best of circumstances when the casino or adult site is operating entirely within the law in the jurisdictions it allows. Punters run a lot of chargebacks on casinos, and people whose spouses catch a XXX video or game on their card statem…

Does Valve actually have a high risk of chargebacks? I was under the impression that moreso than other platforms, most Valve customers would rather go through Valve's own refund system. I understand that chargebacks is supposedly the reason for adult-only platforms.

[deleted]

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

#452

Post by baobabKoodaa »

ggoo wrote: post #269
eddythompson80 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You are not in agreement. The person you are replying to is being sarcastic. They feel that a HBO produced tv show with incest is art that needs to be protected while an indie dev game with incest is trash that needs to be censored.

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

#453

Post by SXX »

jrflowers wrote: post #326
supertrope wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Defaulting on their credit card bill. Or the account ends up having been started by an identity fraudster. Which also ends in default.

That seems backward. The people I’ve known that spend a lot of money on adult entertainment are exactly the group that pays their bills.

This. I dont know who do you need to be in order to pay for the porn that you can pirate for free. In case of games or music or movies there is collecting and convinience, but porn is pretty much opposite.

But at the same time chance of "oops it's not mine" charbacks likely much higher compared to other spending.

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

#454

Post by Ygg2 »

tptacek wrote: post #400
Ygg2 wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can get a long ways just by assuming that the people involved in these transactions are utterly amoral. Which begs the question. Why would amoral people decline cash?

Because, in expectation, they're going to lose money.

Sure, but why?

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

#455

Post by p0w3n3d »

terminalshort wrote: post #286
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?

The leverage is that the activists will potentially be able to draw the ire of the government. Visa and MC get away with absolute murder in terms of the size of the fees that they charge in the US. Most developed countries don't allow that. The US government could easily regulate them (as they already do with debit card fees) or use anti-trust law against the obvious duopoly charging exorbitant prices. Because of thi…

Tbh that's quite alarming what you've just said, and I'm not saying about government. I'm saying about an additional huge sales tax. I understand that wiring money or sending them in an envelope is the thing of past, but e.g. in my country and in whole EU the digital payment is promoted as the only righteous, because "cash is only used by gangsters and human traffickers" etc. And this is really playing against us and pushing us to the duopoly you've mentioned

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

#456

Post by herbst »

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…

Just one of the ways the US forces it's weird morals onto the world.

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

#457

Post by baobabKoodaa »

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.

Nothing you said here is true.

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

#458

Post by herbst »

markdown wrote: post #185
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…

It's not just games. Payment processors ban many things that are completely legal, even foods and dietary supplements. It's ridiculous. They have too much power.

There are or have been rules about which colours a dildo can have.

It definitely sounds like Christian morals being forced on us.

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

#459

Post by SXX »

cperciva wrote: post #218
maxbond wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean I wouldn't do business with them, I think the supplements industry is infrastructure for grifters, quacks, and pyramid schemes to fleece the desperate, but what's the problem for Visa? Is it a brand safety thing? My presumption would be that payment processors are amoral and have no problem processing payments for Consolidated Baby Kickers if it were legal to do so, is that a misconception?

"Not as advertised" chargebacks. That industry is also full of subscription scams (e.g. someone thinks they're ordering a supplement for $5.99, but they're actually getting signed up for $39.99/month...).

> That industry is also full of subscription scams

Visa / MC are the ones who enable subscription scams and benefit from them. They implemented "convinience" option of "updating" your credit card data with replacement card. So even if you cancel and replace card charges continue to pass.

They also totally able to see all the places where your card been tokenised, but they dont push banks to expose this to you.

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

#460

Post by Jimerty »

atemerev wrote: post #450
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…

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…

>Here in Europe

No, Europe is not a monolithic bloc, stop treating it as such, stop saying here in Europe or European here. You'd get annoyed if a yank generalised all of europe with a not take so don't do it yourself. State what country/countries you're talking about because social attitudes and norms vary massively across this continent!

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