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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

#181

Post by the8472 »

mwill wrote: post #17
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.

These conservative groups aren't pressuring Steam and Itch directly, they're targeting payment processors. I don't think it's realistically viable to compete with Steam (or Itch) without access to Mastercard and Visa. (For anyone thinking crypto: we have a different idea of what it means to be either "realistically viable" or to "compete with Steam")

> I don't think it's realistically viable to compete with Steam (or Itch) without access to Mastercard and Visa.

They could not allow those games to be sold through those particular payment processors and require wire transfers instead. More cumbersome payment method, but better than outright banning them.

If the payment processors try to dictate what content these sites may host even when it involves competing processors that sounds quite anti-competitive practice.

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

#182

Post by gs17 »

elijahdl wrote: post #112
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?

Pornography is the canary in the coalmine of protected speech. When you give a group the ability to censor content on the basis of "obscenity", then that group and other groups can use this to label other subjects they don't like as obscene. LGBTQ+ interest topics are especially vulnerable to this, as it is often made the case that being gay or trans is only about sex. You don't have to consume pornography yourself i…

> LGBTQ+ interest topics are especially vulnerable to this,

Exactly, the Heritage Foundation doesn't define porn the same way a reasonable person might. From Project 2025's Mandate for Leadership: "Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children".

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

#183

Post by gqgs »

jacobsimon wrote: post #58
mwill wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These conservative groups aren't pressuring Steam and Itch directly, they're targeting payment processors. I don't think it's realistically viable to compete with Steam (or Itch) without access to Mastercard and Visa. (For anyone thinking crypto: we have a different idea of what it means to be either "realistically viable" or to "compete with Steam")

Maybe a silly idea, but here’s a solution to prevent financial censorship: make the game free. Or monetize via another way—ads, subscriptions, credits. There’s actually a lot of options for Steam if they aren’t being pressured directly to remove the content.

>Or monetize via another way—ads, subscriptions, credits.

All of those are still prone to censorship if the attacking group is motivated enough. Even crypto, which should be the ideal solution to this problem, is not ideal because most transactions are performed through centralized exchanges which can easily blacklist whatever transactions they want.

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

#184

Post by badgersnake »

Aurornis wrote: post #179
can16358p wrote: post #105

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.

When the Steam removals came up on HN, several people linked the list of games pulled. It looked more like they were targeting incest games (which is a genre I didn’t know existed) rather than the generic “porn games” that keeps showing up in headlines. There could be more developments or a different story for Itch.io, but last time this story was circulating it appeared that journalists were avoiding talking about s…

So what? Why does that make any difference?

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

#185

Post by baobabKoodaa »

some_random wrote: post #21
righthand wrote: post #2

More caving to the ultra-religious pearl grippers who just have nothing better to do than tell others how to live. All the hate speech trash and troll talk on the Steam forums is fine though. All the war games are fine though. Make sure people can validate genocide and what not but not see titties.

This is being pushed by an Australian Feminist organization, not the American Religious Right.

It's unfathomable that an Australian Feminist organization wields this much power in the U.S. and globally. It seems more likely that this is a front.

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

#186

Post by teaearlgraycold »

RankingMember wrote: post #115
can16358p wrote: post #105

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.

The Puritanical origins of the US reverberate to this day. While coming for "freedom of religion" sounds like a noble origin story, the context was that they wanted the freedom to practice a much stricter, restrictive form of religion than that allowed by the Church of England.

Quakers also came to the US early on to practice a peaceful an anarchistic form of Christianity.

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

#187

Post by kingkawn »

dzonga wrote: post #154
RankingMember wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Puritanical origins of the US reverberate to this day. While coming for "freedom of religion" sounds like a noble origin story, the context was that they wanted the freedom to practice a much stricter, restrictive form of religion than that allowed by the Church of England.

are you saying the puritans were the taliban equivalent of christianity. & want to bring back laws that sex would only be used to 'recreate' not recreation.

Yes that’s exactly what they were and are today

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

#188

Post by o11c »

can16358p wrote: post #105

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.

There's a lot of dishonesty relating to this. This really isn't about Puritanism, unless you're redefining Puritanism to mean having any morality at all.

Do you really want to compel selling access to pedo games?

Do you really want to compel selling access to rape games?

Do you really want to compel selling access to incest games?

Do you really want to compel selling access to domestic violence games? [this is the only addition that I wasn't aware of from previous investigations, but I still don't think it's valid to call it a "slippery slope" yet]

A lot of customers don't want to be shown such games in the first place (keep in mind that most tag systems are pretty bad at negative filtering, either due to platform limitations or due to not being used in practice).

We can argue about whether "it's better to sell pedos fake content rather than real content" etc. (keep in mind that some of these things are actually illegal in many countries even when no real people are involved), but if so we should be explicit that that is our argument, and not falsely claiming this is some attack on sex in general. (Also keep in mind that free games are immune to payment processor decisions.)

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

#189

Post by mkleczek »

burkaman wrote: post #108
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.

Bitcoin does not require any payment processor. That's its whole point: censorship-resistant, permissionless, p2p payment system.

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

#190

Post by crinkly »

qualeed wrote: post #177
crinkly wrote: post #143

The very idea of a store front for software needs to die. It’s a single strangle point that serves only to concentrate power and create a legal or regulatory target. There should be no platform to “abuse”. There should be no control point.

I'm curious, what do you imagine as the better alternative? I guess every publisher could just sell direct to customers on their own website, but that wouldn't address this issue at all (it would make it even easier for payment processors to abuse their duopoly), while also severely damaging the discoverability of games. And, considering that companies can already do this if they want but still choose to sell via a p…

Well we have a couple of problems on the table at the moment. Stop Killing Games is a good exemplar of one so I won't go there. But the other is "what happens if Steam goes evil?". Remember Google's old motto?

The only solution is you download stuff and it remains runnable and usable without any connection or authorisation to any service. The distribution of it can remain wherever and you can go via a side channel if you want. But being tied to a platform is utterly wrong.

If the payment processor shuts your revenue down you can move elsewhere. With Stream as the distributor, you can't. It's a single point of failure.

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