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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

#201

Post by ipaddr »

bdangubic wrote: post #121
1970-01-01 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its dying fast. The Late Show was just cancelled because it was a massive thorn to the POTUS.

I love a good “POTUS” conspiracy as much as the next guy but The Late Show cancelation is a simple money game, the show was bleeeding money. If the show was profitable the chance of it being cancelled are same as me dating Beyonce

It's both. A merger is happening in two weeks and this helps. It was going off of the air in a year or two anyways. Easy way to give Trump a win.

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

#202

Post by ggoo »

eddythompson80 wrote: post #189
superkuh wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, like a video game version of "Game of Thrones"? None of the payment processors had any issues with taking money for that series. And that was live action.

Yep, those games were exactly the same thing as Game of Thrones.

I mean by the content they were yeah. Precisely the problem with rules declaring what content is and isn’t acceptable.

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

#203

Post by devmor »

mulmen wrote: post #168
raincole wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Practically impossible. To replace visa/mastercard you need to have thousands of banks support ValveCard across the world. It's hard to imagine how it's going to happen. Players will not switch to another (probably foreign) bank just to buy Half-Life 3. They'll pirate it. By the way, Gabe has a very famous quote: > Piracy is a service problem. He knows it very well that if it's hard for players to buy something they'…

Why does ValveCard need to work anywhere other than Steam? Privacy.com manages to issue card numbers somehow. How does that work?

Privacy.com issues cards from the Visa and Mastercard networks.

You can’t run your own card network easily because you would have to convince all of the merchant banks that take card transactions to do business with you.

Digital money movement requires an operating agreement between at least two financial entities - but most of the time there’s a lot more. Depending on the type of transaction you may have two or more gateways, facilitators, processors, issuers and underlying banks involved.

It’s a very fragmented system that relies on many, many different entities all having agreements and contracts with eachother.

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

#204

Post by p_l »

mulmen wrote: post #168
raincole wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Practically impossible. To replace visa/mastercard you need to have thousands of banks support ValveCard across the world. It's hard to imagine how it's going to happen. Players will not switch to another (probably foreign) bank just to buy Half-Life 3. They'll pirate it. By the way, Gabe has a very famous quote: > Piracy is a service problem. He knows it very well that if it's hard for players to buy something they'…

Why does ValveCard need to work anywhere other than Steam? Privacy.com manages to issue card numbers somehow. How does that work?

They work with Visa and MasterCard to issue cards in systems run by both of them.

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

#205

Post by tptacek »

markdown wrote: post #185
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…

It's not just games. Payment processors ban many things that are completely legal, even foods and dietary supplements. It's ridiculous. They have too much power.

I have no trouble seeing why a payment processor would want to avoid doing business with dietary supplement companies.

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

#206

Post by devmor »

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…

Another factor is the board members and other investors of the institutions themselves.

I have been privy to two specific instances where pressure to either ban or reject providing support for specific content was handed down from beyond the executive level at a major financial network player that my client was doing business with.

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

#207

Post by jimbob45 »

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…

I suspect Valve is blaming the credit card companies for something they really wanted for themselves. Steam is a big store open to everyone and you’re going to scare away a big chunk of seniors, Christians, etc with stuff like incest, ageplay, and rape just so that a small minority uses you instead of…itch.io? Better to keep the big safe names like Being a Dik and Eternum on Steam and flush the rest so that you can have the best of both worlds.

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

#208

Post by maxbond »

tptacek wrote: post #205
markdown wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just games. Payment processors ban many things that are completely legal, even foods and dietary supplements. It's ridiculous. They have too much power.

I have no trouble seeing why a payment processor would want to avoid doing business with dietary supplement companies.

I mean I wouldn't do business with them, I think the supplements industry is infrastructure for grifters, quacks, and pyramid schemes to fleece the desperate, but what's the problem for Visa? Is it a brand safety thing? My presumption would be that payment processors are amoral and have no problem processing payments for Consolidated Baby Kickers if it were legal to do so, is that a misconception?

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

#209

Post by Am4TIfIsER0ppos »

arathis wrote: post #179
Am4TIfIsER0ppos wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I’d be pro banning of that shit.

How about GTA5 https://web.archive.org/web/20250122190645/https://www.colle... or Detroit Become Human https://xcancel.com/CollectiveShout/status/96466393143948083... ?
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