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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

#781

Post by zbentley »

ramesh31 wrote: post #520
mixologist wrote: post #467

This actually took longer than I thought. It is really weird that for all my adult content I have to go to a dedicated adult store, yet for games I can find them on Steam and gog where kids shop for games. You don’t get porn movies on Netflix or Disney stream. You don’t get adult toys in your local grocery store. Why do we sell porn on Steam? Why haven’t game stores just spin off separate store front for porn content…

>Why haven’t game stores just spin off separate store front for porn content? It is basically free, since they already have the infrasructure. Because the payment processing is unreliable and prohibitively expensive. For all the whining about "moral pearl clutching", the reality is that adult oriented businesses deal with massively higher rates of fraud and charge-backs. Visa and Mastercard couldn't care less about t…

Even if that’s true (and it gets repeated as a very general statement without general data to back it up, so I’m not sure), then why couldn’t payment processors either a) charge retailers in high-risk segments a higher transaction fee, b) charge merchants penalty fees if the number of chargebacks from their transactions exceeds some threshold, or c) compete with each other to serve higher-risk markets?

The answer is, I think, monopoly environments: they contain poor incentive structures for competitive differentiation, and encourage extreme risk aversion by the monopolists. Add to that the “it’s not really about chargebacks, it’s a culture war” agenda (which isn’t just lobbying pressure on payment processors; plenty of the calls are coming from inside the house there), and the outcome of de facto censorship is likely.

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

#782

Post by zbentley »

ramesh31 wrote: post #571
pfisch wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steam has been selling these games for years without ever saying there was a problem with this. So has itch.

>Steam has been selling these games for years without ever saying there was a problem with this. So has itch. Until now, when they did.

So why did this happen now as opposed to 5-10 years ago? What changed?

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

#783

Post by pstuart »

bobthepanda wrote: post #437
pstuart wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the claim is "this is damaging to society" There is some truth to that, but if one were to operate at that level then Facebook would be illegal. Porn is a convenient thing to weaponize anger in your constituents (just like babies not being born). It pushes emotional triggers and riles people up and then they're waiting to be told what to hate/attack next.

The real debate is which is worse to society, its existence or attempting to ban it. Banning porn is not going to do a whole lot. Pornography is illegal in South Korea and if anything they have some of the worst gender toxicity.

My comment about some truth was to specifically about:

  * It models unrealistic and possibly unhealthy notions about sexuality
  * It can be exploitive of its subjects (yes, sometimes empowering too)
That's kind of it. I don't think it should be banned at all.

I believe that "free speech" is critical to a well functioning society, but we need to recognize that it can have negative impacts. A key example is the right-wing Hate Industrial Complex: decades of right wing propaganda have conditioned tens of millions of Americans to consider their fellow citizens as non human.

I don't have an answer for how to address this, but you can't fix a problem until you recognize the problem and that it needs fixing.

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

#784

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

ivape wrote: post #456
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty wild that people think that porn is more damaging to society than censorship.

One can make a very strong argument that the manosphere stuff is rooted in poor sexual attitudes of men that only got worse with tons of porn. You only need to type any random sexual thing and find any explicit subreddit you want, that’s how pervasive the porn is on even an allegedly non-porn platform. Every other game has basically stripper-level female characters now days. We’ve literally gone crazy. Holistically,…

Your characterization of hip hop shoots the messenger. It's the stories of an oppressed people, if you don't like the violence in their stories, blame their oppressor.

It's the same with porn and the Christian Right. If people feel incomplete and try to fill that gap with a porn habit, the porn is an indicator of a problem, not the problem itself. Filling that gap with right wing propaganda doesn't address the problem, it just changes it into something that can be used for political advantage.

You're missing the root causes here.

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

#785

Post by MrGilbert »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #606
MrGilbert wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not agree on this one. Both is detrimental on children’s health.

One is more likely to directly cause a child's death than the other.

I‘m not arguing against that, but I'd like to point out that „death“ as a baseline is a pretty krass statement. Just my two cents.

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

#786

Post by the8472 »

mywittyname wrote: post #244
the8472 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think it's realistically viable to compete with Steam (or Itch) without access to Mastercard and Visa. They could not allow those games to be sold through those particular payment processors and require wire transfers instead. More cumbersome payment method, but better than outright banning them. If the payment processors try to dictate what content these sites may host even when it involves competing proce…

The impression I get is allowing them to be purchased at all is grounds for the payment processor to suspend their account. So this solution is a no-go. Probably the only way around it is to spin up a completely different corporate entity which only allows for payments via wire transfer, ACH, or perhaps some of the various payment apps available.

Like I said, that smell like anti-competitive behavior. It basically means the payment processor denies competitors a business opportunity for cases they don't want to service.

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

#787

Post by [deleted] »

atmavatar wrote: post #300
qball wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? Payment processors have done it to guns just as much as they've done it to porn, both under the Obama administration.

Because one of the goals of project 2025 is to make porn illegal. Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to First Amendment protection. Its purveyors are child predat…

[deleted]

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

#788

Post by some_random »

moate wrote: post #332
some_random wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not give a shit about people responding to speech with speech. I am arguing that responding to speech by using your authority over the speaker to hurt them, or by lobbying an authority to do so is something different than speech. Did you see the context for this thread? This is the rhetorical question I responded to: "Do we have a right to object to speech that promotes and normalizes violence against us?". I ho…

>>"objecting" is not the same as lobbying Visa/Mastercard to ban speech they believe "promotes and normalizes violence against us" Why not? Like, I'm a full on anarchist, but how do you create any sort of functioning society without out people being able to say "we as a group don't like that shit and are going to do things to stop it from happening"? Like if burger king comes out and says "We sell dogs here now" am i…

If the shit that you don't like is people talking and that causes your society to stop functioning, your society should not exist.

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

#789

Post by [deleted] »

can16358p wrote: post #105

What is wrong with these people who try to block certain content? Don't like porn? Don't buy it. Simple as that. No one, including governments or payment processors, should be in the position to decide whether a platform can sell something or not. I wish there was a payment processor who was brave enough to say a big fucking NO to censorship.

[deleted]

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

#790

Post by MBCook »

creer wrote: post #636
MBCook wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And as soon as people find out you exist, they get the payment processors to shut you down too as part of their crusade. Now what? If you’re visible, you’re a target. If you’re not, you don’t matter.

The suggestion is new start businesses that do not need credit card processors.

We’re back to chicken and egg.

If it’s not a credit card, it’s what debit? Different countries do it differently, so that’s a big hassle for the storefront. Sure you can use a payment processor, but look it’s someone to pressure to prevent you from taking money again.

Maybe Crypto? How do people buy that crypto? Probably want to use credit cards. Oops. Or debit. See above. How do you turn your crypto into currency to pay your employees? That’s an institution to pressure to block you again.

If your new system interacts with the old system at all there is an attack point. So unless you can bootstrap an entire alternate financial system where people can live without needing to access the old one you’re in trouble.

And if you do succeed, the law and the same groups will come knocking.

You can’t get away from the banking system. The only solution to this is regulation, and I don’t see that happening.

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