Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

pcgamer.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

471–480 of 967 posts

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

#471

Post by globular-toast »

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…

Control. People get a kick out of controlling others and stopping them doing things that don't effect them in any way. It's like how being a practising gay was illegal or how using certain drugs still is.

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

#473

Post by globular-toast »

miiiiiike wrote: post #191

Look. Ignore the content. Why the fuck do we allow credit card companies have a say in how we spend our money? Fraud? Abuse? Fine, let me put cash onto a card and if that card gets stolen, oh well, my loss. Mastercard should have no say in what what speech is considered acceptable outside of their offices. We don't care what execs at a water company think? Why do we care about the people at Mastercard?

Well, credit is not really "your money". The danger of course is if this gets extended to debit cards and they become the only option (ie. no cash). Every time you use your card you are giving them the power to do this.

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

#474

Post by bloqs »

noduerme wrote: post #200
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…

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…

itch.io already serves this purpose no?

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

#475

Post by atemerev »

Jimerty wrote: post #460
atemerev wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

They sure do, just like there are different states in the US with vastly different attitudes to life and everything.

And yet, you can take an averaged vector of all US states and all European countries and meaningfully compare those. Or extract some things that are common through all Europe as compared through all US.

I had a privilege of living for some time in Italy, Denmark, Spain and Switzerland (I still live in Switzerland). They are all really different, and yet there is something common compared to the US.

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

#476

Post by 0dayz »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #391
raincole wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do that currently. Steam already supports the exact process you described: top up your steam wallet and buy games with steam wallet balance. Actually, there are things you can only buy this way (some in-game items, not sure if it's to workaround gambling accusation or just coded so for no reason). The issue is Visa/Mastercard/whoever is pressuring Valve isn't happy about the very existence of incest games. Th…

So are they banning erotic fiction books too or what? I guess the tradwifes actually secretly read that stuff though…

If you read the founder of the "feminist" group she thinks that 50 shades is the equivalent of the book of Satan but about raping women.

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

#477

Post by jibe »

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…

This boycott was run by Collective Shout, an Australian non-profit.

They aren't targeting all sex games on Steam, they were targeting rape, incest, and child abuse.

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

#478

Post by 0dayz »

const_cast wrote: post #330
amelius wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Violence is still considered ok in games, last time I checked. Which is possibly because violence is not as awkward to watch with your family as sex is.

Violence has no religious morality baggage - religions were extremely violent. Sex, however, has all the baggage from all the angles. Even if we aren't religious, it doesn't matter, religion still dictates huge chunks of our lives and our mindsets. It has thousands of years of inertia.

Abrahamic religion is prudish about sex none of the pagan or Buddhism is prudish.

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

#479

Post by ErrorNoBrain »

oatmeal1 wrote: post #366
Aeolun wrote: post #282

I think it’s hilarious we allow stuff like Postal or Soldier of Fortune without a question, where the whole focus is on going crazy and murdering a whole bunch of people. But try to show a sensual human body, instead of one that’s ripped into small pieces, and oh my god, this is going too far!

Gender of who is murdered has a lot to do with it too. I don't think you'll find a video game where you predominantly kill women. The most infamous scene of murder in video games is the Call of Duty mission "No Russian" where you optionally commit terrorism at an airport. If you pay attention you'll notice they kill much more men than women, and made sure that despite pleasant weather none of the women were wearing d…

and never children.

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

#480

Post by ErrorNoBrain »

0xcafefood wrote: post #388
bfg_9k wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This genuinely baffles me. Who cares! It's a video game. It's pixels on a screen. True crime podcasts and movies are a-okay but when its a video game that's where the line is drawn?

There are still taboos even for pixels on a screen, even for video games. It's a good thing. There should be. Perhaps you're just saying that you're mostly comfortable with the depiction of some forms of violence in some contexts. But what about other scenarios though? Would you feel the same about a game where the player runs around raping women, or capturing and lynching escaped slaves? It's just pixels!

I disagree. there shouldnt be any taboos for pixels on a screen

i mean, i can understand a child porn game would be disallowed but we already have anime games where characters that look like children are nearly naked

Post reply on HN