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

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

#551

Post by noduerme »

soysaucy wrote: post #501
noduerme wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't need to make an argument for anything. They tell Valve: "Hey, if 1% of your transactions are for smut and incur smut-level-chargebacks, we're going to just treat all your transactions as smut", and Valve says, "no problem, we'll pull those games." It's not like Valve stands to profit by holding the line for free speech here or something. Valve gives as little a shit about an indie porn game as it does abou…

But can't they just block buying those games with visa/mc and only allow using steam wallet credit? Some Japanese sites have been having these issues for a while and that's what they ended up doing (or just closing shop entirely).

I guess that would be the logical thing to do. There's probably some synergy at work. If these games could be widely promoted, maybe their average value to Valve would be $10k each or something. Instead, they probably net 1/10th of that before they drop off the radar completely. Building in a sub-system that guarantees that certain games can only be bought with certain methods of payment seems like a pain in the ass. However, they could do it. And that sort of argues against the idea that you'd be building yourself any kind of moat by setting up a game platform for just the XXX stuff.

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

#552

Post by noduerme »

bloqs wrote: post #474
noduerme wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is it's simply a chargeback risk. It's the reason casinos and adult sites have trouble getting credit card processing and are charged much higher basic rates, even under the best of circumstances when the casino or adult site is operating entirely within the law in the jurisdictions it allows. Punters run a lot of chargebacks on casinos, and people whose spouses catch a XXX video or game on their card statem…

itch.io already serves this purpose no?

I guess so. I haven't spent that much time checking out the darker corners of it. I wonder what their situation is with the credit card companies.

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

#553

Post by littlestymaar »

ijk wrote: post #183
maxbond wrote: post #161

Why do payment processors do stuff like this? Is there some regulation that requires them to? I get that they don't want to process fraudulent transactions, but I'd think the response to a higher percentage of fraud from some industry would be to charge them more. It doesn't make sense to me why they would be concerned about the content of games, as long as everything is legal and the parties concerned aren't subject…

One factor is the ongoing campaigns from number of moral crusading groups who lobby them to cut off payment processing for things they don't approve of. NCOSE has been working for decades on the project, and targeting credit card companies has been a successful tactic for them for a decade or so. [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/visa-and-mastercard-ar... [2] https://www.newsweek.com/why-visa-mastercard-being…

As usual, the actual “cancel culture” comes from the conservatives.

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

#556

Post by schappim »

irusensei wrote: post #487
maxbond wrote: post #161

Why do payment processors do stuff like this? Is there some regulation that requires them to? I get that they don't want to process fraudulent transactions, but I'd think the response to a higher percentage of fraud from some industry would be to charge them more. It doesn't make sense to me why they would be concerned about the content of games, as long as everything is legal and the parties concerned aren't subject…

I think the biggest issue here is that somewhere down the line we gave payment processors the responsibility of policing for crime and terrorism. Our governments and regulators punish those institutions for "not doing enough" to prevent such things from happening. You might think I'm defending the multibillion company but here comes the catch: all of this is expensive so when you are doing something funky even though…

> we gave payment processors the responsibility of policing for crime and terrorism

Mirrors what Marc Andreessen said on Lex's podcast.

The problem isn’t just regulatory overreach, it’s delegated enforcement w/out accountability.

Financial institutions are now playing judge and jury, not because they want to, but because the cost of scrutiny or punishment is too high.

It’s soft censorship by infrastructure...

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

#557

Post by Am4TIfIsER0ppos »

Neil44 wrote: post #554

The discussion seems to be mostly about the moral issues, but it seems likely that the titles being a 'magnet for scams and chargebacks' is more likely the cause.

Nice excuse but we can see who censors behind this are and how they are gloating. https://xcancel.com/CollectiveShout

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

#558

Post by mrkramer »

noduerme wrote: post #248
atomicnumber3 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the problem though. The risk means the market for those riskier credit transactions is literally categorically not a great market. You think JP Morgan gives a shit about Japanese titty games? Hah. No. They care that these games get charged back way more often. If there is a market opportunity, it's probably in a processor for debit-based transactions that are harder to reverse. But then that makes fraud harder…

I wouldn't scoff at the leftovers. You're talking about maybe a trillion dollar industry that struggles to find payment solutions. This is why I gave up on credit card processing for my startup casino in 2010 and just went to taking Bitcoin and other crypto. I originally planned to just take Visa. I wasn't looking to skirt the law. Card companies are looking out for themselves, and they don't really even need regulat…

>This is why I gave up on credit card processing for my startup casino in 2010 and just went to taking Bitcoin and other crypto.

And how many customers you lost in 2010 because of that? Probably more than 90%. Even now people are reluctant to use crypto but tbh crypto crowd is so big that you can perhaps succeed in opening crypto only business.

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

#559

Post by ACCount36 »

Neil44 wrote: post #554

The discussion seems to be mostly about the moral issues, but it seems likely that the titles being a 'magnet for scams and chargebacks' is more likely the cause.

No. That's an often-repeated bullshit excuse.

Payment processors have ways of passing some of the chargeback risks onto the stores, and it's not like Steam itself is chargeback central. If you just want free games, pirating them is extremely easy, and trying to abuse chargebacks gets you banned.

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

#560

Post by WhyNotHugo »

maxbond wrote: post #161

Why do payment processors do stuff like this? Is there some regulation that requires them to? I get that they don't want to process fraudulent transactions, but I'd think the response to a higher percentage of fraud from some industry would be to charge them more. It doesn't make sense to me why they would be concerned about the content of games, as long as everything is legal and the parties concerned aren't subject…

> Is there some regulation that requires them to?

There isn’t. Even worse, there’s no legislation prohibited them from doing so.

Payment processors (eg: Mastercard, Visa) are the ultimate deciders of whether you can sell something online or not, regardless of whether it is legal.

They haven’t just blocked adult content, they’ve also blocked non-profits with which they disagree in the past.

We need much stronger legislation around this. Private entities shouldn’t be capable of deciding that a given organisation can’t charge online. Only institutions which represent the public’s interests should have this level of influence.

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