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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

#291

Post by messe »

hahn-kev wrote: post #265
tdb7893 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Bitcoin impractical for these sorts of transactions (slow, high fees, no privacy, etc)? People always say Bitcoin was designed to solve this sort of thing but whenever I've looked into it it's been fairly impractical for use in most day-to-day transactions.

Honestly buying a digital game is perfect. Steam can just give it to you right away, and if the transaction doesn't clear they can just revoke the game later.

Only in the presence of DRM—an evil I'd prefer to do without when possible.

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#292

Post by dmix »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #241
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.

I think the mint should maintain a payment processor, and the post office should maintain an official email address for everyone. these are basic things we need to exist in society, we should not be at the whims of private organizations.

How does that fix censorship concerns? The main issue is that political pressure campaigns has a lever over the entire payment processing sector because of cartel like behaviour. A public service could provide an alternative for sure but it'd have to be done very carefully and independent.

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#293

Post by kasey_junk »

benterix wrote: post #81
kasey_junk wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you believe Steam et al, the payment processors are bowing to the card networks in this. So being a payment processor wouldn’t help. You need to sidestep the networks. In the US that means either dealing with ACH at scale, which is a challenge, building a new card networks (which is hard) or only using alternative payment methods such as bnpl or crypto. Each of those will limit your buyers, which as a merchant is…

> In the US that means either dealing with ACH at scale, which is a challenge, building a new card networks (which is hard) Which is why someone has big interest in keeping it this way as in Europe practically every country solved this issue a long time ago and people do daily shopping completely omitting Visa/Mastercard. They try to fight back without much success.

Europe is not a monolith on this. You see utilization rates going as high as 75% in Europe for credit cards, so in those countries merchants would have similar choices to American merchants. That’s before accounting for debit cards which use the main network rails.

And most of the alternatives are either government controlled and thus subject to different censorship concerns or private (for instance bnpl) and subject to the same.

That is to say people seem to be dancing around there being some fundamental right to transact. Thats not one of the traditional rights and not one that is codified most places (anyplace?).

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#294

Post by dec0dedab0de »

egypturnash wrote: post #250
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the mint should maintain a payment processor, and the post office should maintain an official email address for everyone. these are basic things we need to exist in society, we should not be at the whims of private organizations.

Is a payment processor operated by the Federal Reserve good enough? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FedNow Well, it probably would be, except guess who killed it in favor of a crypto scheme? https://www.jitumaster.com/2025/06/us-president-signs-execut... I agree about the PO though. Social media shouldn't be a for-profit enterprise either.

I think the federal reserve is too close to the status quo to be effective for this. It is owned by the federally chartered banks, the same ones that all have longstanding relationships with the current payment processors.

A government organization like the mint should be in charge of the layer 1 of money transfer. Let the current providers adapt and sell their other services on top of it. It could be crypto, copy the existing systems, or be something new all together. It doesn't even have to be free, they could add in a small transfer tax or whatever. The point is that any person or business should be able to send money to any other, for any reason. At the very least within the country.

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#295

Post by mpalmer »

scotty79 wrote: post #187
mpalmer wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should maybe look up how paying with your phone works. And what in your mind is the thing banks will be begging Steam to be let in on? This reads like payment processing fan fiction.

I know how it works because connecting your bank account to your phone can be crappy and fiddly as it goes through Visa/Mastercard. But it works that way just to ride on customers of legacy systems. It doesn't have to work that way if you bring your own customers. It would have to start online of course and eventually move through phones to the real world. I don't trust Paypal, at all, because its brand is damaged be…

It seems like you're treating your personal knowledge and preferences as the basis for Valve to take on an entirely new source of revenue and risk. It's a fantasy.

Even if 100% of Valve's user base cared as much as you (they do not), why would Valve take on the massive risk of connecting to its users' bank accounts? Of having to collect on debts? etc.

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#296

Post by Ericson2314 »

Arubis wrote: post #256
egypturnash wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is a payment processor operated by the Federal Reserve good enough? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FedNow Well, it probably would be, except guess who killed it in favor of a crypto scheme? https://www.jitumaster.com/2025/06/us-president-signs-execut... I agree about the PO though. Social media shouldn't be a for-profit enterprise either.

Ugh, they killed FedNow too? That hadn’t hit my radar. Why a waste.

I don't think so?

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#297

Post by Ericson2314 »

dmix wrote: post #292
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the mint should maintain a payment processor, and the post office should maintain an official email address for everyone. these are basic things we need to exist in society, we should not be at the whims of private organizations.

How does that fix censorship concerns? The main issue is that political pressure campaigns has a lever over the entire payment processing sector because of cartel like behaviour. A public service could provide an alternative for sure but it'd have to be done very carefully and independent.

Actual government stuff is way more legally constrained than private sector stuff. It would be trivially to sue for freedom of speech if I was gov.

Public-private partnerships like chartered banks, and outright cartels like Visa MasterCard, are much more fruitful mechanisms for this sort of civil liberties abuse.

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#298

Post by guywithahat »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #241
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.

I think the mint should maintain a payment processor, and the post office should maintain an official email address for everyone. these are basic things we need to exist in society, we should not be at the whims of private organizations.

I cannot think of anything worse than an official post office email I have to maintain. Do you not remember how many government sites would simply shut down after business hours because they couldn't figure out how to do on-call? Have you ever used US-treasury direct?

This site would be slow, the code base would be unmaintained, it'd get enormous amounts of spam you have to sort through to get some important tax document, and it would be down all the time. Think the line at the post office but for server up-times.

Similarly if the mint maintained a payment processor then they'd just create a legal monopoly (like the USPS did) and ban new processors. Not only would they be worse than VISA and MasterCard, but they'd make paypal and venmo illegal. Don't forget the USPS bans competitors from being cheaper than itself, and this is exactly what would happen if the Mint had its own payment processor.

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#299

Post by hexmiles »

dpoloncsak wrote: post #289
master-lincoln wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can't I still just run the .exe of the game? Or DRM nightmares?

All (most?) Steam games have a very simple DRM that is extremely easy to bypass, and you can find examples on github.

However, a lot of games add their own DRM and/or protection scheme that complicates things.

EDIT: technically there are two distinct component: the actual DRM, called steamstub, and the steamwork library, that does not work without steam but it is not considered drm. Both can be easily bypassed/emulated.

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#300

Post by ambicapter »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #296
Arubis wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugh, they killed FedNow too? That hadn’t hit my radar. Why a waste.

I don't think so?

Here's the EO, I don't see where it kills FedNow, it seems like it just mandates electronic payments and disallows paper checks: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/mode...
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