Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

pcgamer.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 967 posts

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

#351

Post by delusional »

thallium205 wrote: post #337
Aeolun wrote: post #282

I think it’s hilarious we allow stuff like Postal or Soldier of Fortune without a question, where the whole focus is on going crazy and murdering a whole bunch of people. But try to show a sensual human body, instead of one that’s ripped into small pieces, and oh my god, this is going too far!

Adult content is considered a high risk merchant category - meaning it is susceptible to high chargeback and fraud rates. This is because after someone pays for and consumes adult content, a certain level of "clarity" overcomes them resulting in the execution of chargebacks against the merchant. It has nothing to do with any sort of puritanical premise.

That sounds like a reasonable argument. We should force them to make it publicly with data. Maybe even force them to release aggregate statistics every quarter going forward.

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

#352

Post by Retric »

AlexandrB wrote: post #314
Retric wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s be real, Chick-fil-A banning Visa would likely result in its bankruptcy. Starting a holy card that doesn’t work at gas stations etc is an extremely uphill battle.

Don't know about that. Costco banned Mastercard and they're doing fine.

They wouldn’t need to create a new payment processor if they could just swap to Mastercard. Thus it was also implicitly excluded by Chick-fil-A in their proposal.

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

#353

Post by raincole »

j_timberlake wrote: post #225

They went after no-name games instead of Summer Memories or Treasure Hunter Claire? Weak. They should have at least aimed at Living With Sister: Monochrome Fantasy.

They went after incest and non-con (for now).

But I don't know about the last game you mentioned... the "sister" part sounds sus.

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

#354

Post by GrantMoyer »

thallium205 wrote: post #337
Aeolun wrote: post #282

I think it’s hilarious we allow stuff like Postal or Soldier of Fortune without a question, where the whole focus is on going crazy and murdering a whole bunch of people. But try to show a sensual human body, instead of one that’s ripped into small pieces, and oh my god, this is going too far!

Adult content is considered a high risk merchant category - meaning it is susceptible to high chargeback and fraud rates. This is because after someone pays for and consumes adult content, a certain level of "clarity" overcomes them resulting in the execution of chargebacks against the merchant. It has nothing to do with any sort of puritanical premise.

I don't think that can explain why they're only targeting certain sub-categories of porn, and it's also contradictory to the public statements by Valve:

> We were recently notified that certain games on Steam may violate the rules and standards set forth by our payment processors and their related card networks and banks

Individual games violating "rules and standards" doesn't really fit with prohibiting a category because of high rates of fraud.

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

#356

Post by miiiiiike »

SJC_Hacker wrote: post #241
miiiiiike wrote: post #191

Look. Ignore the content. Why the fuck do we allow credit card companies have a say in how we spend our money? Fraud? Abuse? Fine, let me put cash onto a card and if that card gets stolen, oh well, my loss. Mastercard should have no say in what what speech is considered acceptable outside of their offices. We don't care what execs at a water company think? Why do we care about the people at Mastercard?

Because they are on the hook for fraudulent transactions, until they get to merchant to refund. Otherwise they wouldn't care. Which is why some merchants get effectively blacklisted if they have too many fraudulent transactions

No, I get it. Give me a "Freedom Card" or whatever that generates a one-time use number/cvv combo, backed by cash, that I'm fully responsible for. If I give a guy on the corner $5 cash and he walks off with it, that's between me and him. We don't need to resort to crypto. I don't care if there's a paper trail, I don't need to be anonymous. I just don't want money people to have any say in how people choose to spend their money.

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

#358

Post by zhivota »

lxgr wrote: post #300
SJC_Hacker wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they are on the hook for fraudulent transactions, until they get to merchant to refund. Otherwise they wouldn't care. Which is why some merchants get effectively blacklisted if they have too many fraudulent transactions

The card networks are never on the hook for fraudulent transactions (nor for any other type of chargeback for that matter). If anything, it's the merchant's payment service provider/card acquirer that absorbs the loss if the merchant can't pay.

True until the acquiring (merchant side) bank is insolvent. Then the network pays. Source: worked at Visa for years.

It's why it's so hard to become an acquiring bank on the network.

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

#359

Post by stale2002 »

tptacek wrote: post #333
Aeolun wrote: post #282

I think it’s hilarious we allow stuff like Postal or Soldier of Fortune without a question, where the whole focus is on going crazy and murdering a whole bunch of people. But try to show a sensual human body, instead of one that’s ripped into small pieces, and oh my god, this is going too far!

You could just ask, "why do payment processors pressure content vendors not to offer this kind of content". You're starting from the premise that there's some weird puritan thing happening, but there's really nothing puritan about American business culture. There are other explanations! You can get a long ways just by assuming that the people involved in these transactions are utterly amoral .

> You're starting from the premise that there's some weird puritan thing happening

Credit card processors don't have to be puritanical. Instead, puritanical people simply have to be smart enough to figure out that the best way to deplatform content that they disagree with is by putting pressure on their payment processor monopolistic vendors.

Giving in to a pressure campaign by ideological people can be a completely amoral and smart business decision.

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

#360

Post by lofaszvanitt »

Aeolun wrote: post #282

I think it’s hilarious we allow stuff like Postal or Soldier of Fortune without a question, where the whole focus is on going crazy and murdering a whole bunch of people. But try to show a sensual human body, instead of one that’s ripped into small pieces, and oh my god, this is going too far!

Mastercard and Visa needs some serious competition. How come a payment company decides who to partner with and dictates what people use their system for. Ridiculous bullshite.

At the same time those "games" that were affected, well, who on earth pays for that seriously fucked up crap? People need to get a grip. I'd rather send a psycho team to evaluate people who pay for these games...

note: PCGAMER the epitome of games journalism. They didn't even checked which were the affected banned games.

Post reply on HN