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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

#341

Post by gs17 »

flumpcakes wrote: post #319

They are targeting incest/rape games. I wouldn't call that 'LGBTQ' like some people seem to imply. If Itch and Steam don't want to police their store fronts _before_ the law gets involved, then I am not surprised that other businesses such as payment providers will choose not to work with them. Visa and MasterCard are in the business of making money, they're not doing this for fun.

> _before_ the law gets involved

There's no law (as of now). If there was a law, Valve would happily de-list these things. For example, a recent custom map for Mount and Blade that was banned in South Korea: https://automaton-media.com/en/news/valve-cooperates-in-bann...

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

#342

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

flumpcakes wrote: post #319

They are targeting incest/rape games. I wouldn't call that 'LGBTQ' like some people seem to imply. If Itch and Steam don't want to police their store fronts _before_ the law gets involved, then I am not surprised that other businesses such as payment providers will choose not to work with them. Visa and MasterCard are in the business of making money, they're not doing this for fun.

I think I missed the part where Valve or these games were in violation of any laws.

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

#343

Post by johnnyanmac »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #71

The bitter truth is that the tech world's libertarian allergy to collective action is exactly why stuff like this keeps happening. Predictably, we get another round of "free speech on the internet is sacred!" polemics. Hate to break it to HN, but Visa and MasterCard aren't reading Hacker News, and they don't care about constitutional takes or appeals to values or consistency. Legal arguments won't do squat here. Ther…

>If you want to fix this, you actually have to organize and go after the payment processors, because it's not going to be solved by writing essays in the comments or waiting for Steam to suddenly develop a spine.

Okay. If you have any wisdom or ideas, I'd love to hear them. But as is, this comment is about as effective as mine on fighting Visa/Mastercard. "Just come together and yell at Steam!"

I'm not opposed to activism, I'm ignorant of it. The big issue of the internet is that we are all scattered very wide and that makes it harder to collect ourselvves under one goal. And as of now, I'm a laid off tech worker (who doesn't live in SF) who has no real capital to contribute to such a cause. I feel powerless.

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

#344

Post by simion314 »

broof wrote: post #317
simion314 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those games are legal, also in some USA states you canmary your cousin so why the fuck don\t this puritans do not go for incest inreal life first then handle virtual stuff.

One of the example games that was banned was “daddy twins incest BDSM” and similar titles.

>One of the example games that was banned was “daddy twins incest BDSM” and similar titles.

Next you will ban games where you are killing people instead of focusing on real killers? I would prefer we have laws for what is legal and not let religious extremists decide what music we are allowed to listen, what type of books and games should we play, I guess there is no evidence they can bring to ban this content so they push their FUD around.

So please either make it illegal or stop focusing on virtual crimes, maybe focus on real crimes or use those money religious people have on helping real people.

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

#346

Post by jrflowers »

kreco wrote: post #312
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when you see something that you think is harmful to society, what determines whether or not it's moral and appropriate to advocate for and work towards its abolition Evidence. If you think something is harmful to society, you have a hypothesis. The next step is to test it. Not assume it's true and ban everything. I have seen zero evidence that any of these games are harmful. If I had to hazard a guess, and this is…

This is not the correct way. If cigarette was banned from the beginning, we would still see people getting mad without much evidence. The truth is the evidence is coming half a century after when everyone got cancer. Precautionary principle should always prevail. That's why we just don't go full GMO, and you would still not wait for any proof that "it's harmless". You also don't use a random pesticide, unless you hav…

> Precautionary principle should always prevail.

This makes sense. If anybody at any point thinks that something might be bad, it should immediately and permanently be prohibited for everyone. We don’t need a mechanism to check this because people are never mistaken or misled, and there is no such thing as a bad actor.

Since the principle should always prevail, it applies to people as well. If anybody thinks that another person could do harm in the future, they should be allowed to kill them in order to protect society from harm.

A system where the only rule is “every person gets to make the rules for everyone else” isn’t the stupidest imaginable thing because

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

#347

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

flumpcakes wrote: post #331
danielvaughn wrote: post #260

imo nothing wrong with a platform deciding what content it wants to host. But there’s also nothing wrong with allowing this type of content. Who wants to help me build an uncensored game distribution platform? We could call it Steamy.

Incest rape simulators, zoophilia, lolicon? I think this stuff has no place on 'normal' store fronts like Steam and Itch. It should be on an 18+ only store front at the very least.

The movie rental stores, back when they existed, used to have a room behind a curtain that adults could access.

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

#348

Post by pbhjpbhj »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #247
bko wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you have to be Puritanical or particularly religious to realize that some content is generally not good for people. I've seen this destroy lives, drive addiction and lead to other forms of destructive behavior. Religion and taboo often exist for a reason, because endless self gratification does not lead to flourishing. You don't have to agree that it should be banned, but you can at least concede it's n…

>Religion and taboo often exist for a reason, because endless self gratification does not lead to flourishing. So then why aren't those activists going after Instagram, TicTok, X/Twitter, etc. you know, the OG spyware, brain rot and anxiety inducing companies, because that would actually benefit society and not too many people would mourn their loss. Why are they instead going after a dozen random horny video games n…

It sounds more strategic than performative. Surely if they can set precedents against weaker opponents then they stand more chance against stronger opponents.

Though Steam is not weak. But small-time game devs probably don't care to fight unless they're making bank.

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

#349

Post by gs17 »

pyuser583 wrote: post #340
gs17 wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it was about potential for money laundering, they'd have gone after the Steam item marketplace way before random adult games. Valve has had to take action against it in the past: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/valve-block-counter-strike-... , but AFAIK it's hard to actually solve.

Not so much the potential for money laundering, as actual money laundering. Is there actual money laundering going on in Steam's item marketplace?

Yes, at least back in 2019, from the link:

> However, worldwide fraud networks have recently shifted to using CS:GO keys to liquidate their gains. At this point, nearly all key purchases that end up being traded or sold on the marketplace are believed to be fraud-sourced. As a result we have decided that newly purchased keys will not be tradeable or marketable.

Many users still suspect it happens, although it's hard to prove.

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

#350

Post by anonym29 »

trothamel wrote: post #286
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.

Collective Shout, which organized this, claims to be an Australian feminist organization. (Admittedly, this may be an act.)

"Protecting women" is an incoherent excuse for pressuring websites to pull romantic games that feature consensual, loving, respectful homosexual male-male relationships, with no women even present in the game.

The real motivations seemingly have nothing to do with protecting women, which appears to simply be a palatable facade for the true intention to suppress all depictions of sexuality, including the depictions that offer good-faith representation of historically marginalized groups.

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