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Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

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Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#231

Post by pchangr »

p_ing wrote: post #58
cedws wrote: post #50

I'm glad the Mastercard-Visa duopoly is finally getting some attention, these companies shouldn't be allowed to exercise the financial control they do. Payment infrastructure is not a free market - you can't just choose to pay via some other processor if they turn you down, they ARE the processors. Therefore, they should be under intense scrutiny when they refuse.

There's no meaningful attention, here. Until it is on the US Gov't radar, this 'attention' is just a collection of upset redditors furiously posting forum messages which will fissile out in a few months, at most. Besides, it's not like you can boycott Mastercard or VISA.

Germany actually uses their own card system .. or cash. They are very much against visa/mastercard due to their “high commission fees” and “privacy concerns”

Girocard charges a 0,3% fee vs visa/mastercard 3%

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girocard

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#232

Post by master-lincoln »

polytely wrote: post #216

I wonder if Valve could (threaten to) become their own payment processor if this becomes too big of a threat. They are one of the few companies on earth with enough money to attempt it. If I remember correctly a big part of Valves heavy investment into linux was Microsoft wanting to lock windows down more, and now in 2025 gaming on linux is a viable alternative to windows.

What would that change? The assumption here is that payment processors need to comply with MasterCards rules. So would Valve if they would become a payment processor, no?

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#233

Post by Rodmine »

cedws wrote: post #50

I'm glad the Mastercard-Visa duopoly is finally getting some attention, these companies shouldn't be allowed to exercise the financial control they do. Payment infrastructure is not a free market - you can't just choose to pay via some other processor if they turn you down, they ARE the processors. Therefore, they should be under intense scrutiny when they refuse.

[flagged]

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#234

Post by sofixa »

pwillia7 wrote: post #176
delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's not like you can boycott Mastercard or VISA In many countries, if you pay locally, you absolutely can. China's UnionPay, India's UPI, PayNow in Singapore, PromptPay in Thailand, PayPal, Cash App, and more.

You need the government to cajole the market to create safe and free inter bank transfer programs. We're not going to do that in the USA -- no one's buddies would get their kickbacks!

> You need the government to cajole the market to create safe and free inter bank transfer programs

We've had that in EU/eurozone for years, SEPA.

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#235

Post by master-lincoln »

harvie wrote: post #140

There already was a time when Steam managed to free people from need to use funny pieces of plastic in their lifes... They've done that with CDs, they can do it again with Cards.

Yeah, that was when Steam freed the users from actually owning any game and instead gave the users limited licenses for using games.

I am looking forward to the day when they shutdown and everybody realizes this.

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#236

Post by projektfu »

littlecranky67 wrote: post #100
koonsolo wrote: post #12

If only we had some kind of decentralized internet money system.

And this is not the first time this happens. The exact same thing happened to PornHub - their premium subscription model got cancelled due to Visa/MC not liking some "questionable" content. Even though PH purged 60% of its content (basically every video uploaded from an unverified account), they are to this day still not accepting CC - probably as they are still banned. Instead they accept Crypto and SEPA payments in…

It's a strong case for, perhaps, Algorand[1], but Bitcoin can no longer play this role properly. Transactions are too difficult and slow and the network is too expensive. And Lightning is not a real solution.

1. Specifically a stablecoin running on the network

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#237

Post by morkalork »

otherme123 wrote: post #63
yreg wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this story, Itch and Valve are 10x more trustworthy than the card processors.

The fact that Visa and MasterCard are the primary payment options for OnlyFans, makes this story a mess. Some time ago Visa and MasterCard very vocally banned Pornhub (at least) from using their cards, 100% sure this comes from them.

You mean like this?

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/aug/19/onlyfans-to-...

Ultimately the ban was undone in exchange for onlyfans limiting the type of content available on the platform. So effectively, payment processors dictate which type of sexual activities, performed by consenting adults, are OK to depict and sell. Why? Why do they have that power?

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#238

Post by 8n4vidtmkvmk »

polytely wrote: post #216

I wonder if Valve could (threaten to) become their own payment processor if this becomes too big of a threat. They are one of the few companies on earth with enough money to attempt it. If I remember correctly a big part of Valves heavy investment into linux was Microsoft wanting to lock windows down more, and now in 2025 gaming on linux is a viable alternative to windows.

I don't know how that helps. PayPal and stripe are the payment processors, no? Visa and MasterCard are the payment network. Steam can build their own Stripe probably, but are they going to make their own credit card network too? Probably not. They can maybe try taking money directly from your bank though, like Wise. But if you've ever tried it, that looks like such a shit show. Every bank and every country does it a little differently, has its own limits and fees, and the authentication is really ghetto.

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#239

Post by sofixa »

Herz wrote: post #152
ginko wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I hope this comes under the EU's radar.

EU is already working on an alternative: Wero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wero_(payment) Honestly, I'm really critical towards EU, but this is one of the few things that EU does well. When the market is stagnating, it's better than nothing to propose an alternative or some kind of benefits in order to change the market a bit. Like the Roaming in EU. Regarding the rest, the EU is mining competition with the obsessio…

> Regarding the rest, the EU is mining competition with the obsession of regulating everything.

Like with DMA/DSA that force gatekeepers to open up? SEPA that mandates free immediate bank transfers? Caps on credit/debit card transaction fees? The million infrastructure projects? Ensuring that AI can't be used to make life or death decisions if it's decision making can't be explained (which the AI act boils down to)? Ensuring there is competition on e.g. railway operations?

It's such a common refrain that EU is just stifling competition with "regulating everything", but quite oftne EU regulations are actually forcing competition where none was possible before.

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#240

Post by digitalsushi »

Rodmine wrote: post #233
cedws wrote: post #50

I'm glad the Mastercard-Visa duopoly is finally getting some attention, these companies shouldn't be allowed to exercise the financial control they do. Payment infrastructure is not a free market - you can't just choose to pay via some other processor if they turn you down, they ARE the processors. Therefore, they should be under intense scrutiny when they refuse.

[flagged]

why cant we? are you self-censoring because there's some policy forbidding us to talk about something clandestine here?

i dont have access to the joke, or inside club, or inner sanctum, and maybe theres other people like me that want to know more and if the mystery is self-imposed then i might respectfully push back that we cant talk about it

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