Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games • Hacker News Board

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

#751

Post by tavavex » Sat, Jul 19, 2025, 4:26 PM UTC

denkmoon wrote: post #531

terminalshort wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

sounds like the fix is counter activism to remove the leverage these interest groups have

The fix is legislation that ensures that payment processors aren't allowed to extra-legally moderate transactions based on "I don't like it". They need to be forced to process all legal transactions. Because these entities are nearly irreplaceable and are the cornerstone of many consumer industries, it seems like a reasonable compromise to me.

Just pushing back is neither guaranteed to succeed nor last for any serious amount of time. The ideological crazies can throw their entire existence at ensuring the fact that the "impure, corrupting filth" is squashed. People who oppose it might like the things that get censored, but none are religiously attached to the cause, not to an extent that would lead to a serious amount of organizing, anyway.

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

#752

Post by vladms » Sat, Jul 19, 2025, 4:27 PM UTC

johnisgood wrote: post #573

9dev wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would assume the metric isn’t number of transactions, but total transaction value. It’s really uncommon to pay for really expensive things (e.g., houses, cars, boats) in cash, and doing so almost always means that the duffel bag of cash came from shady means.

OK, but look at the original statement, that cash is mainly used for illegal activities. I do not think that is true. Now, check this out: > Cash was the most frequently used payment method at the POS in the euro area and was used in 52% (59%) of transactions, but the share of cash payments has declined. > Cash was the most frequently used payment method for small-value payments at the POS, in line with previous surv…

Not sure if "mainly" means in terms of total value, number of transactions or people using it. If I would be to guess it would be total value.

Now, these guys might be biased, but to quote: "The EUR 500 note alone accounts for over 30% of the value of all banknotes in circulation (1)." (https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/cash...).

That would suggest to me that at least 30% of the value of cash is used for "shady" stuff (I mean I don't know anybody that would use 500 eur bills).

The fact that cash would be used mostly for illegal activities by value (I don't know if it is really the case), does not imply that "people that use cash use if for illegal activities".

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

#753

Post by draw_down » Sat, Jul 19, 2025, 4:28 PM UTC

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…

[dead]

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

#754

Post by johannes1234321 » Sat, Jul 19, 2025, 4:31 PM UTC

atq2119 wrote: post #550

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…

> I am honestly surprised all the time that a lot of US-Americans who are so freedom-loving and distrust the government concerning the restrictions of civil rights are not in love of cash I suspect it's a combination of factors, one of them being that US cash has absolutely awful usability compared to the Euro.

> that US cash has absolutely awful usability compared to the Euro.

Euro bills differ clearly in color and size, which means they are quickly identified.

Also the Euro coins differ in shape and size quite a lot, which is easy to identify blind even when handled individually. More than U.S. coins which are more similar.

I don't know about an objective difference caused by the fact that 1€ and 2€ are coins and bills start only at 5€ whereas the one dollar coin isn't much used in favor of the one dollar bill.

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

#755

Post by johannes1234321 » Sat, Jul 19, 2025, 4:35 PM UTC

williamdclt wrote: post #515

sigmoid10 wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

COVID caused a major boost in shops adding card payments. Most shops now accept them even for small payments.

There are places which don't take cards, many of them also don't print receipts without asking, which might indicate than an tax audit might give interesting results ...

Some shops try to go towards "card only"

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

#756

Post by SpicyLemonZest » Sat, Jul 19, 2025, 4:36 PM UTC

boldlybold wrote: post #745

gmd63 wrote: post #707

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this assumption that crypto transactions are nobody's business. That's a feature of cash payments, which from what I understand can only be emulated in crypto by transferring control over a non-custodial wallet, which is cumbersome to the average person. If you're crypto banking with a third party that muddles your wallet's transactions you've already added one of the institutions you claim to be a…

We need to change this perception. Setting up a hot wallet on a phone only takes a few minutes and is perfect for holding a small amount of crypto. Projects like monero ( https://www.getmonero.org/ ) ensure privacy and fungibility of the crypto you hold. It should still be easier, but let's not pretend this is technology only available to those with deep tech experience.

The Monero download page requires me to choose my system architecture to get an installer, and insists that I absolutely must "verify the hashes" of the "archive". When I ran the installer, it first identified as "monero-gui-install-win-x64-v0.18.4.0" published by "Unknown", then as "Monero Fluorine Fermi GUI Wallet", and about 3/4 of the way through the setup my antivirus popped up to block it.

I don't think this is effectively available to anyone without deep tech experience, and any non-technical user who's willing to click through this kind of thing is definitely drowning in malware that will steal their crypto.

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

#757

Post by saghm » Sat, Jul 19, 2025, 4:38 PM UTC

parpfish wrote: post #643

saghm wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and then most of them left and came here, which the article cites as having caused a "radical" divergence: > Almost all Puritan clergy left the Church of England after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 and the Act of Uniformity 1662. Many continued to practise their faith in nonconformist denominations, especially in Congregationalist and Presbyterian churches.[2] The nature of the Puritan movement in Eng…

If you’re looking at the geographical distribution of their influence, isn’t it weird that the place where the puritans settled (“New England”) is arguably the least puritanical region of the US?

Nowadays, sure, but keep in mind that the "US" didn't extend beyond the east coast when the Puritans first settled here. You might be able to make an argument that there's no cultural influence from the colonial days that lasted until today (although I'd disagree with that sentiment), but otherwise, where would you expect any cultural influence in the rest of the US to have come from?

(To be clear, I'm not saying that there weren't existing cultures there before the US expanded out further west, but I imagine most people would agree that the US today isn't culturally as influenced by them as much as from the the colonies and pre-expansion US.)

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

#758

Post by mango7283 » Sat, Jul 19, 2025, 4:39 PM UTC

eddythompson80 wrote: post #98

Link for the petition and its signers. https://www.collectiveshout.org/open-letter-to-payment-proce... https://www.heise.de/en/news/Steam-Payment-providers-force-V...

From heise

"In 2020, following a complaint from the Hamburg/Schleswig-Holstein Media Authority, Valve blocked all titles that were labeled as “adult” and did not have an age rating. To be able to offer them, the US company would have to integrate a reliable age verification system into Steam in Germany. Because Valve has not yet implemented such a system, sex games remain blocked in Germany."

So, I hear Europe doesn't have these problems about puritanical censorship in games......

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

#759

Post by kbelder » Sat, Jul 19, 2025, 4:41 PM UTC

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #85

pazimzadeh wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because "anti-abortion/pro-life" removes a right from women. Trading the rights of a developed adult for the rights of a hypothetical future person. What does ancapistanism have to do with it? Is there a non-religious reason to be against the right to choose abortion up to 24 weeks of pregnancy?

> Is there a non-religious reason to be against the right to choose abortion up to 24 weeks of pregnancy? Of course there is. It's not hard to construct an argument to that effect either. For example: let's agree for the sake of argument that a newborn has moral rights, and that gametes do not. It doesn't make much sense to give the fetus moral rights only based on its physical location, therefore at some point betwe…

"For example: let's agree for the sake of argument that a newborn has moral rights, and that gametes do not. It doesn't make much sense to give the fetus moral rights only based on its physical location, therefore at some point between conception and birth the fetus gains moral rights. No matter what point n we choose, the objection "why is one day earlier any better" seems pretty persuasive. Therefore, by induction, the only point for assigning rights which can't be argued against in that way is at conception. Thus, we should disallow abortion so we aren't depriving the fetus of its rights."

That's roughly my position, as an atheist libertarian. although I don't back it up all the way to conception, just to a point in early pregnancy where it seems overwhelmingly clear the fetus has no attributes which could reasonably demand respect for rights.

Abortion has been conflated with feminism, like how, say, tariffs are conflated with Republicans right now, but there's no ideological necessity for that. Just cultural trends.

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

#760

Post by mango7283 » Sat, Jul 19, 2025, 4:41 PM UTC

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…

https://www.heise.de/en/news/Steam-Payment-providers-force-V...

Please explain.

"In 2020, following a complaint from the Hamburg/Schleswig-Holstein Media Authority, Valve blocked all titles that were labeled as “adult” and did not have an age rating. To be able to offer them, the US company would have to integrate a reliable age verification system into Steam in Germany. Because Valve has not yet implemented such a system, sex games remain blocked in Germany. "