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Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

pcgamer.com

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Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#451

Post by strbean »

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.

That article is XRP-pumping misinformation. Like almost 100% of content related to Ripple.

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#452

Post by khalic »

makeitdouble wrote: post #136
khalic wrote: post #130

Before getting all worked up, I would advise people to look at what games exactly were banned, and see if it’s a case of power abuse or simply a case of “we can all agree that rape and incest games are disgusting and have no place in an entertainment web site visited by kids”.

You should bark at Steam if you want more curation. What people are pissed at is a card payment network abused for moral regulation.

I don’t mean that I agree with the concept of corporate power abuse or the hypothesized source of the pressure. But I’m not spending one second of my life protecting this kind of content, and the fact that it’s being euphemistically called “Adult Content”, a very approximate description, shows that the source of the current outcry _knows_ it’s very bad looks to be defending any of the games that have been confirmed banned by steam.

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#453

Post by tdb7893 »

switknee wrote: post #389
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.

Bitcoin is so much faster than a credit card transaction that it's not even close. A lightning transaction is near instant, regular bitcoin transfers take in the order of 10 minutes. Credit card transactions take weeks before you get the money, and after that the money can be yoinked back for a multitude of reasons beyond your control as a merchant. The fees are often lower, too. Bitcoiners are for some reason oppose…

I'll have to look at the lightning transactions. My problems with crypto are generally less philosophical (I've known people who ran legal businesses that had trouble getting access to banks so I'm sympathetic to having ways around traditional banks/payment processors) but more practical, the times I've tried it in the past the experience just hasn't been good.

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#454

Post by agent327 »

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.

Just thinking out loud here, but if the government operated a bank they could apply some common sense to the whole system:

* Allow any legal transaction (so if another payment processor refuses you, you have a backup)

* Allow an account for any legal entity (so no more debanking)

* By setting rates for savings and mortgages, it would provide a soft range for other banks to move within

* The state would only have to guarantee its own bank. If other banks crash and burn it won't take down civilisation

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#455

Post by tcmart14 »

Arubis wrote: post #320
lesuorac wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, while I like the idea of using immediate electronic dispursement over the mail. I do find the ending of the EO pretty amusing. You're telling the agencies exactly what to do, how is that not impairing their authority? > Sec. 7. General Provisions. (a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect: > (i) the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereo…

You can be almost certain these EOs are composed in tandem with LLMs.

And its okay because the federal employees who need to know what these say will just ask their LLM what it says! /s

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#456

Post by ufmace »

stego-tech wrote: post #89

The payment processor censorship issue backs up a point I made elsewhere about companies being involved in politics: they shouldn’t be, and shareholders should be screaming with rage that these companies have inserted themselves into these discussions on purpose. They’re payment processors , for crying out loud. Their entire grift is taking a slice of every transaction processed, ergo, the only restriction they shoul…

It seems like it's difficult to really separate them these days.

You can always come up with something horrific enough that it seems reasonable, even necessary, for platforms to block it, like actual terrorism or child porn.

But then, there's always an activist group out there who really wants to ban something that most people feel is only mildly distasteful but not worth a platform-level ban and will abuse processes to do it.

And there's enough people for each of those cases who have incentive to obscure exactly which category things are actually in. More than enough for it to be hard for any platform to sort it out for sure.

So do we eventually end up with either an actual Government takeover, or everything banned that's more edgy than Mr. Rogers Neighborhood?

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#457

Post by jfyi »

immibis wrote: post #275
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> was Mastercard's rule, but any one of the companies in the payment network could have brought it up to Valve Did Mastercard threaten Valve? Or did Valve precomply?

As I understand it, Valve was threatened by a middleman because the middleman precomplied with Mastercard.

Both Valve and Itch use Paysafe and Paypall for processing. I'm glad someone is paying attention.

I feel I've been screaming at a wall for a week now. All this rage and it's all directed at the wrong corporations.

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#458

Post by socalgal2 »

ginko wrote: post #159
Herz wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't even think this is a problem of competition (although more is welcome). This is just Visa+Mastercard abusing their market position and the EU should come down on them like a ton of bricks. Incur heavy fines or break them up if necessary.

It is a problem of competition.

https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-s...

Go to Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Japan, Taiwan and see that there are 20-30 payment systems at every convenience store, electronics store, grocery store, etc... Then go to the US where there's effectively 2. The government claims this is because Visa and Mastercard have prevented competition.

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#459

Post by skeaker »

hexmiles wrote: post #299
dpoloncsak wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/emulat…

Definitely not all games, and for games that do have it cracking it is in most cases as simple as swapping out a Steam .dll (so very easy). It's primarily there as appeasement for devs who would be reluctant to engage with a platform with no copy protection, or in otherwords is mostly theater.

Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

#460

Post by jajuuka »

Classic passing the buck. "Well WE didn't say they had to take those games down. We just pointed some problematic games and that we might not want to do business with them if they weren't removed. We didn't take them down."

Unfortunately until some regulation is created to solve this problem Visa/Mastercard will continue throwing around their weight at the whims of whoever.

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