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People are in fear of the lack of accountability and respect of privacy because government is rarely accountable or respectable.
Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down
51–60 of 621 posts
Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down
#52The US has some clear laws against government controlling speech and, in the abstract, that makes it pretty much impossible to censor games. Various factions - exactly who it is difficult to pin down - have been working hard to set up a system where they can shut things down without ever explicitly instructing anyone to do anything. This appears to be the system engaging by accident because some crazy from Australia…
Say fuck on TV.
Apparently you can do that between 10pm and 6pm on broadcast TV, or on cable TV.
Which is a pretty messed up situation.
Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down
#53Yes, Mastercard didn't pressure valve and itch.io. They had an intermediary do it for them.
Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down
#54Lots of outrage at the card companies, but strangely, no outrage at the laws that actually caused this. One is the Australian law to remove that type of content and the other is the US law that says the payment processor can't participate in illegal transactions.
Do you have info on the US law? I am curious if it follows the same trend Russia set years ago with requiring them to put a large deposit and if they break the rules they get to keep all the money.
It doesn't go that far. These are part of the Know Your Customer type of law. These have increasingly been pushed as part of anti money laundering onto banks, investments, and processors. If a company is selling illegal things or things that even could potentially be illegal, then they get blacklisted. Similar thing to pot companies.
Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down
#55What's stopping a large, profitable company like Valve from starting its own payment processor? Surely the technology part of it can't be an impossible hurdle.
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 a tough business decision.
Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then they would just get removed in Australia, not worldwide.
My guess is that Steam wasn't able to adequately block the games in Austrailia. If people use a VPN to access the content, could Steam still be liable?
No, it hasn't been the case. The group in question, Collective Shout, has been pressuring Mastercard. Not Mastercard Australia, not Steam Australia: it's a concerted action to take down things they don't want. It's not a one time thing either: sex workers have been under attack by similar extremist catholic bigots. Furries, porn, anything they see as deviant is being attacked. And MC/Visa are happy to help.
Do I mind that MDMA Date With Hitler was taken down ? No, I don't believe it's a massive loss. However, the way it was done, through payment providers threatening to shut off access to the entire payment system because of their rules, is incredibly dangerous to the whole world.
Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down
#57What's stopping a large, profitable company like Valve from starting its own payment processor? Surely the technology part of it can't be an impossible hurdle.
Adoption. You'd have to onboard hundreds/thousands of banks and terminal providers so they accept/give out your card. I excpect the underlying technical stuff isn't that hard compared to getting people and companies to actually use it.
Aren't cards last century technology? I'm paying with my phone anyways. Seller can use phone as well. Why does it need to involve incumbent banks and terminal providers at all? If Valve started something like that the banks would bang on its door relentlessly just to not be left out of the loop.
Gaming is the business bigger than movies, music and books combined and Valve is Google of games.
Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down
#58I'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.
Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down
#59[flagged]
Tossing around "free speech" in this case is kinda silly. The first amendment only applies to the government, not some company.
Free speech can refer to two distinct but related concepts.
1. Free speech as in the US first amendment. This indeed is limited to the government.
2. Free speech as in the enlightenment ideal upon which western liberal societies are built.
It is usually obvious that people mean the second because it is the only one that is even relevant outside the US. Somehow the narrow-minded people who can not conceptualize that free speech is broader than the first definition think it is a big gotcha' to jump into conversations with this kind of "um achtually".
This is becoming tiresome.
Re: Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down
#60I feel like nobody cares really and none of the companies care, but are all worried because of the massive stranglehold 2 players have (and realistically each has almost entire control). Mastercard don't care you want porn, or games, or whatever. Neither does VISA. They like money. They want money and want people to move their money so they can siphon off some of it for their own pockets. Almost nobody is going to av…
>The only thing that impacts this really is chargebacks, which iiuc are much more common with adult stuff. I think this makes no sense, like "we makes less profits from adult stuff because of charge back, so let\s give up on this profits". Anyway this companies did not use this excuse so why do this old excuse is resufecing now if they did not use it.
They usually just charge a higher fee for the riskier category. If a particular vendor has too many charge backs, they could drop them for that. Obviously not the case with Steam.