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Steam, Itch.io are pulling ‘porn’ games. Critics say it's a slippery slope

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Re: Steam, Itch.io are pulling ‘porn’ games. Critics say it's a slippery slope

#101

Post by xur17 »

righthand wrote: post #20
magicmicah85 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cryptocurrency is the only way I see this working.

Cryptocurrency is a nice idea but there are and have always been too many gas fees for anyone to sensibly use it. I want to buy something not support everyone that get their hands in my transaction chain. The US government can break up the duopoly and open up payments processing federally. That’s worth the investment than that pipe dream of a global, frictionless cryptocurrency.

This has mostly been solved. Bitcoin's lightning network, ethereum layer 2 networks, etc all have sub-cent fees.

Re: Steam, Itch.io are pulling ‘porn’ games. Critics say it's a slippery slope

#102

Post by KronisLV »

nonameiguess wrote: post #93
uncircle wrote: post #78

I know people here love to hate it, and it's a very very controversial topic, but this here, is a good use case for Bitcoin [1] Now that we have Lightning and hyperfast micropayments, can we have a good plug-and-play payment processor that uses it? The few services that allow Bitcoin payments still require an on-chain transaction, which is very user-unfriendly. In any case, despite what the haters say, this is the va…

It's not in this case. The payment processors were going to drop all support to these platforms if they didn't remove these games. Bitcoin could allow them to keep operating, but at the cost that now all users who want any games at all have to use Bitcoin. Mainstream platforms accepting Bitcoin as an option is fine and great, but few if any are going to want to only accept Bitcoin.

> Mainstream platforms accepting Bitcoin as an option is fine and great, but few if any are going to want to only accept Bitcoin.

For all of the talk (hype) about how crypto has the potential to avoid the exact type of meddling and manipulation and pressuring we’re seeing now, it surprises me that no equivalents to PayPal have really popped up - that best that can be done is apparently something along the lines of what Linux was on the desktop a decade or two ago. Basically, before Valve and others picked up the slack and worked on things your average person actually cares about - notably, gaming and simple(r) to use desktop environments and software stores.

Where’s the flagship platform for payments that’s built on crypto but lets you ignore the technical details, that’s trivial to implement as a merchant and is a download away on app stores? If there are a few of those, why would anyone bother with these puritan payment processors?

Re: Steam, Itch.io are pulling ‘porn’ games. Critics say it's a slippery slope

#103

Post by gs17 »

pdntspa wrote: post #82
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #60

My free speech red line is criticism of govt and leaders. Ban all the porn games ya want, I don't think they're very valuable. When did pornography become protected speech?

Since when has protected speech required being valuable? And who made you the pronouncer of said value?

> Since when has protected speech required being valuable?

For this specific topic in the US, it's necessary. The third prong of the Miller Test is "Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value."

Re: Steam, Itch.io are pulling ‘porn’ games. Critics say it's a slippery slope

#104

Post by delecti »

crooked-v wrote: post #80
delecti wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrongly assumed this was a D bill, and would die in committee. Turns out it's actually an R bill, with exclusively R sponsors, and now I'm wondering what awful shit is hiding in it. Though almost all of the sponsors are from almost 6 months ago, so it might die in committee anyway.

The text is on there and is very straightforward. As far as I can tell it's a basically good bill.

I agree that the text sounds good. I'm worried about the consequences I might not think of. What legal services are the Ds and Rs thinking of that currently have trouble with payment processors, and which are causing a lot of Rs to sponsor and no Ds? Because I'm sure it's not porn and video games.

Re: Steam, Itch.io are pulling ‘porn’ games. Critics say it's a slippery slope

#105

Post by can16358p »

What is wrong with these people who try to block certain content?

Don't like porn? Don't buy it. Simple as that. No one, including governments or payment processors, should be in the position to decide whether a platform can sell something or not.

I wish there was a payment processor who was brave enough to say a big fucking NO to censorship.

Re: Steam, Itch.io are pulling ‘porn’ games. Critics say it's a slippery slope

#106

Post by some_random »

renewiltord wrote: post #26

> Violence and dehumanization of women should not be acceptable outcomes of free speech. We also have to consider whose voices are being heard, and whose are being silenced. Does free speech apply to women, to survivors of rape and sexual assault? Do we have a right to object to speech that promotes and normalizes violence against us? Every time someone insists on an escape hatch, it is immediately abused. One could…

>Do we have a right to object to speech that promotes and normalizes violence against us?

Worth pointing out that their definition of "right to object" is evidentially identical to "right to censor".

Re: Steam, Itch.io are pulling ‘porn’ games. Critics say it's a slippery slope

#107

Post by the_af »

In discussions about this topic, in almost every place I see them, lots of people (against this censorship) are going "I don't play this kind of games" or "I don't personally care about tentacle fetish" (or whatever).

I don't get this. Let's say it openly: what's the problem with sex and nudity in games? Why is it so unacceptable -- that even people against the censorship must loudly proclaim it's not "their thing" -- but violence, guns, war, etc are not? Or not enough to pull from the stores, anyway?

What I don't care about are the finer points of whether this technically counts as "censorship", because in pratice it is. There SHOULD be a place to buy games which depict nudity and sex. The quality of those games is not and should not be the focus of conversation (e.g. "they are AI slop" or "badly made", etc), because that's NOT what bothers the people doing the censorship -- they'd also be against the best, AAA made, high quality games with sex and nudity.

Again, I ask: what is wrong with sex and nudity in games, that makes it worse than gore, violence and war? Why cannot whatever age-restriction measures taken for the purchase of violent games be also applied to sex games?

Finally: we all know they are not going to stop at this, right?

Re: Steam, Itch.io are pulling ‘porn’ games. Critics say it's a slippery slope

#108

Post by burkaman »

uncircle wrote: post #78

I know people here love to hate it, and it's a very very controversial topic, but this here, is a good use case for Bitcoin [1] Now that we have Lightning and hyperfast micropayments, can we have a good plug-and-play payment processor that uses it? The few services that allow Bitcoin payments still require an on-chain transaction, which is very user-unfriendly. In any case, despite what the haters say, this is the va…

If Steam dropped Visa and Mastercard and successfully got most of their customers to use a Bitcoin payment processor instead, wouldn't these organizations just pressure that processor? I don't see how it would be any different. If the problem you're trying to solve is that private payment processors can deny service to anyone they don't like, the underlying technology the processor uses is irrelevant.

Re: Steam, Itch.io are pulling ‘porn’ games. Critics say it's a slippery slope

#109

Post by gs17 »

BoxFour wrote: post #24
magicmicah85 wrote: post #3

This is an opportunity for an entrepreneur to create a censorship-resistant platform, though, I don't know how you do it profitably when CSAM and other potentially criminal content needs to be reviewed.

Even if you manage to sidestep the issues with payment processors mentioned elsewhere, you don’t end up as a “popular platform that just happens to take a principled stance and also hosts some controversial material.” Instead, you become the hub for that kind of material — and that reputation drives away more mainstream creators who won’t want their work associated with it. See also: Kick, Parlor, etc. Rather than bu…

One thing that might be a possibility for attracting developers of non-banned games is focusing on having lower fees than Steam's 30% or Epic's 12%, but Itch.io already does that (you can choose the split from 0 to 100%).

Re: Steam, Itch.io are pulling ‘porn’ games. Critics say it's a slippery slope

#110

Post by bluescrn »

some_random wrote: post #66
righthand wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may want to take a look at how feminist that organization actually is.

There is a huge sex-negative feminist school of thought, just because you don't like it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

These days there seems to be a fair bit of sex-inconsistent feminism.

With something like OnlyFans, where there's money to be made, the 'sex work is real work!' slogan comes out. And there's a reluctance to criticise big porn sites even after claims of links to sex trafficking etc.

But at the same time, scantily-clad videogame characters designed to appeal to the male gaze are deemed unacceptable/objectifying/regressive. And 'sex robots' are seen as a horrifying prospect.

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