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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

#581

Post by ses1984 »

louthy wrote: post #507
Jimerty wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 zealot…

Religion is a factor in Polish politics.

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

#582

Post by donatj »

Hamuko wrote: post #436
lrvick wrote: post #435

If there was ever an argument for the need of cryptocurrency, it is this. Dethrone the payment processors or they get to decide what is and is not allowed to be sold.

Seems like this could be easily solved with legislation without having to invent new currencies. Just make it a law that payment processors are not allowed to discriminate between legitimate goods and services. If the government thinks that sugary water or porn magazines are fine to buy and sell, why should MasterCard have anything to say about it? Payment processors are basically natural monopolies, so they should b…

If the last decade is proof of anything, legislation is far too fluid to be a reliable source of any sort of protection for anything.

We need real protections, that don't and can't change with the winds of political power.

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

#584

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

Tainnor wrote: post #575
williamdclt wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the idea that physical money primarily aids social fraud, money washing and other illegal activities is pretty well established I think that's very hyperbolic. In france most people I know carry cash and use it regularly (not as much as cards), the gen X and older tend to find it strange to pay for small sums (eg bread) with card. Germany is infamously almost cash-only. In many Central Europe countries, shops takin…

> Germany is infamously almost cash-only. Let's not exaggerate. While I am often enough exasperated at how often certain restaurants or bars will still only accept cash (or sometimes EC card), I'm still able to do about 90% of my transactions by card.

In the US, cash-only businesses usually attract auditors from the IRS (or did, until they gutted the agency).

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

#585

Post by legacynl »

9dev wrote: post #527
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And the idea that physical money primarily aids social fraud, money washing and other illegal activities is pretty well established. They even killed the 500€ bank note, because it was almost exclusively used by criminals and most normal people never even touched one, much less used one for legit transactions. At least in Germany in particular older people prefer to pay cash if possible - this gives the banks also…

> Since many people in Germany neither trust the banks nor the government anymore, acting this way is very rational. Speak for yourself, this is either heavily overstated or a fringe opinion, luckily. Most people definitely do trust both government and banks to a sensible degree, even if they don’t like some decisions. Some people like you apparently also don’t appreciate the immense freedom of SEPA transactions. Sur…

> And above all else, we have a working democracy and not an oppressive regime? This whole debate often feels very disconnected and overblown in Germany.

Well as you can see from the US currently, a country that is now free and democratic, might not continue to do so in the future. But once you've given up the ability to use cash because you didn't need it then, how are you going to get it back when you do need it?

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

#586

Post by londons_explore »

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…

Visa/MC still make a decent amount of money on chargebacks - the fee is $15 or so, of which the platform keeps a big chunk.

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

#587

Post by healsjnr1 »

miiiiiike wrote: post #468
xboxnolifes wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats not exactly a credit card at that point. And with a credit card, you're explicitly not spending your money. Though i agree with the idea of a debit card that doesn't allow chargebacks, but without so many annoying restrictions.

Yeah, a "Freedom Card". Our money, they move it, no moralizing. We don't need crypto to fix this, just common sense legislation. No company or individual should be denied the right to receive funds digitally without due process. Companies should be free to transact with or exclude anyone, but there should be neutral infrastructure that facilitates the flow of money, with multiple players each with differing rules and…

The problem that seems to be being missed here is that while fraud is one reason Visa has say over what they accept, the much much much bigger issue is ATF, Money laundering and Sanctions.

Cards like the Freedom card will never fly with either the Networks or the Issuing Banks as these kinds of payment instruments are immediately used to wash illicit funds.

Visa's stance with Steam is bollocks, and it is another example of the monopoly they hold over payment processing. They shouldn't have the ability to impact a legit merchants catalogue.

But the idea that we can have a Freedom card also doesn't checkout. The less known about what the money is spent on the higher the risk. And cost of complying with Suspicious Activity Reports regulations is really high (as the costs of you breach the requirements), so any attempts to create / run this kind of thing often don't stack up.

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

#588

Post by ChickeNES »

louthy wrote: post #507
Jimerty wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 zealot…

Yeah when I went to the UK and tried to view adult content using a prepaid SIM, it was blocked and required verifying that I was an adult, and this was done at the ISP level. And I know for a fact that the UK has much stricter limits on kink and BDSM in adult content as well. What gives with people claiming it's just the US?

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

#589

Post by MangoToupe »

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…

To be clear, these campaigns seem to be grounded in fear, not any sense of morality.

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

#590

Post by grues-dinner »

PicassoCTs wrote: post #503
herbst wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

> Turing hyper-focused on an enigma

I don't know if he had major active relationships specifically while working on Enigma (other than the short engagement to Joan Clarke in 1941), but Turing famously did have sexual relationships since the discovery of one eventually led to criminal prosecution of both him and his partner, his chemical castration and eventually possibly suicide.

Paul Erdős might be a better example, though I don't think he was deliberately self-denying and more just a huge oddball. Newton also never showed much interest, apparently, though an engagement was rumoured.

Many of the biggest and best-known brains in maths, engineering, physics and computing did marry: as a quick random survey: Euler, Chandrasekhar, Faraday, Maxwell, Watt, Babbage, Einstein, Dijkstra, Wiles, Hopper, Hamilton, Knuth, even Ramanujan and the Woz (4 times, even).

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