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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

#501

Post by soysaucy »

noduerme wrote: post #439
delusional wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it a little odd that Visa/Master isn't out there making that argument? Why would we assume them having the best of intentions of they aren't even willing to argue those intentions themselves?

They don't need to make an argument for anything. They tell Valve: "Hey, if 1% of your transactions are for smut and incur smut-level-chargebacks, we're going to just treat all your transactions as smut", and Valve says, "no problem, we'll pull those games." It's not like Valve stands to profit by holding the line for free speech here or something. Valve gives as little a shit about an indie porn game as it does abou…

But can't they just block buying those games with visa/mc and only allow using steam wallet credit? Some Japanese sites have been having these issues for a while and that's what they ended up doing (or just closing shop entirely).

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

#502

Post by irusensei »

peanut-walrus wrote: post #493
irusensei wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the biggest issue here is that somewhere down the line we gave payment processors the responsibility of policing for crime and terrorism. Our governments and regulators punish those institutions for "not doing enough" to prevent such things from happening. You might think I'm defending the multibillion company but here comes the catch: all of this is expensive so when you are doing something funky even though…

The responsibility ended up with payment processors and other financial institutions because otherwise they would be forced to give access to all their customer / transaction data to governments and law enforcement. I really wish we had a push for payment neutrality. Financial transactions are infrastructure and infrastructure should be dumb and neutral. Why does everyone have to suffer slow and expensive transfers j…

> and they're not actually caught, just mildly inconvenienced

I read somewhere that criminal organizations and individuals love KYC and AML because they have the resources to go around it and it makes their operations look legit.

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

#503

Post by PicassoCTs »

herbst wrote: post #456
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.

Sexual self-denial always was the driving force behind the western cultural success. You can not have hyper-specialization and rule of law, without some members of society sacrificing a "normal" life.

From the monk in the monastry to Turing hyper-focused on an enigma there is clear line. Its a ugly recipe, but its working, unlike all those other societies out there, who are currently eating themselves. A judge doesn't dress like a priest for no reason.

Sexual caste slavery or anarchy- thats the choices.

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

#504

Post by yupyupyups »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #82
kevingadd wrote: post #11

It's interesting that Valve sort of put themselves in this situation by opting not to police their store anymore. I'm personally a fan of fewer restrictions on content in video games and fewer "gatekeepers" but it's kind of inevitable that people would get upset when you chose to allow people to sell games like "Sex With Hitler" and "Pimp Life: Sex Simulator". Deciding to allow that content on your store and simultan…

What does "police" mean? They don't allow illegal content, that's policing no? You want more policing like morality police?

Yes, people have other moral values than yours and will act upon them.

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

#505

Post by abcd_f »

globular-toast wrote: post #473
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.

> credit is not really "your money"

Unless it's a prepaid credit card or a debit card, both of which are serviced by MC and Visa and fairly common in Europe.

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

#506

Post by jhanschoo »

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.

Sorry, I should clarify my question: does Valve actually face a significantly increased risk of chargebacks if it should be more liberal in its adult game rules.

I suppose that if consumer behavior is to have their adult game purchases and conventional game purchases on separate accounts, and the Steam platform allows for that, then that may be so.

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

#507

Post by louthy »

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!

Of course, it doesn't help anyone to generalise. Europe has a wide demographic. But, one thing that doesn't happen is its attitude to sex affecting worldwide commerce or other worldwide issues.

Here in the UK religion and sex are not part of the national conversation. A politician mentioning their love of god would seem weird to us. The only way it enters the national conversation are when right-wing religious zealots, from the US, try to affect our laws: I'm thinking of abortion laws and trans rights. These are entirely imported issues from US religious hangups. It's quite tedious, because mostly we were on a path of reasonable discourse with relation to sex, sexuality, relationships (marriage), etc. but with the advent of social media you see pockets of society being dragged into it.

I have friends in much of Europe (Sweden, Norway, France, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Croatia, Slovakia, Poland, Romania, Greece) and have travelled to those destinations extensively. I still can't speak for all of Europe, but I think when it comes to sex and religion we're kinda similar. The only one that stands out to me was the Greek Orthodox church used to have an out-sized role, but even that doesn't seem to be the case any more (I just came back from visiting friends in Greece a few weeks back and we discussed this).

So whilst we can't say all of Europe is the same, we can say that it's not causing global problems due to its sexual and religious hangups.

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

#508

Post by johnisgood »

sigmoid10 wrote: post #488
p0w3n3d wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Credit cards are much less heavily relied on in Europe than in the USA. Europe basically runs on debit cards that every kid can have and where the fees are minuscule. There are countless banks providing the service and everything is highly regulated. On top of that, Europe still curbed Visa and Mastercard several times for antitrust behaviour. And the idea that physical money primarily aids social fraud, money launde…

Where may I read about anything supporting your statement "cash is primarily used for illegal activities"? I highly doubt that this is the case, unless there are more illegal activities out there than legal ones.

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

#509

Post by stuaxo »

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…

Who runs Mastercard, are they linked to some American prudes?

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

#510

Post by mango7283 »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #415
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?

The people who care signed their names[1]. It's not a secret or anything. Most of the signatories are associated with Australian anti sex trafficking and exploitation groups, although there are several UK signatories and a couple Americans. A publication[2] by one of the signatories connects the dots. It's driven by the core idea: "Pornography Use Shapes and Changes Sexual Tastes"[3] which is supported by "In a surve…

It really should be obvious that the natural objection to "if they banned this then why not X" is "they haven't gotten around to it yet" and that the reason they can be more successful is also that they have put their money where their mouth is and also named themselves, something a counter petition will probably struggle with.
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