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

pcgamer.com

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

#871

Post by SJC_Hacker »

miiiiiike wrote: post #356
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

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 t…

If you have a central authority which is keeping track of the ledger, they always have the ability to disallow any given transaction at their discretion or at the behest of some more powerful organization, e.g governments

This is one of the problems that crypto was attempting to solve (if implemented properly and used correctly). There is a third party(the "network"), but its decentralized and at least for "proper" networks, no one organization has a controlling interest in the network

Now any given miner/producer does not necessarily have to accept any random transaction. In practice however, for mature networks such as Bitcoin there are so many different miners/producers, its unlikely they would all conspire to disallow certain accounts or types of transactions.

Now this is certainly possible for a crypto exchanges and therein lies the rub with cryptos - if you want to get the cryptocoin, you generally have to buy it with good old fashioned hard currency. Conversely if you want to convert the cryptocoin back into hard currency. And exchanges nowadays are facing increasing regulations from governments. Which means practically you are still largely under the thumb of those powerful organizations without some real gymnastics involved, such as trading crypto for cash with a real person in a back alley somewhere, or vice versa

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

#872

Post by SJC_Hacker »

miiiiiike wrote: post #468
xboxnolifes wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats not exactly a credit card at that point. And with a credit card, you're explicitly not spending your money. Though i agree with the idea of a debit card that doesn't allow chargebacks, but without so many annoying restrictions.

Yeah, a "Freedom Card". Our money, they move it, no moralizing. We don't need crypto to fix this, just common sense legislation. No company or individual should be denied the right to receive funds digitally without due process. Companies should be free to transact with or exclude anyone, but there should be neutral infrastructure that facilitates the flow of money, with multiple players each with differing rules and…

> just common sense legislation.

I think you underestimate just how much governments like the ability to control financial transactions within their borders, and in some cases (cough US) outside of it

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

#873

Post by lmz »

mango7283 wrote: post #522
lmz wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) They already have that (Unionpay). 2) I don't think they are less prone to censoring things.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c056nle2drno China would never! /s

There's also the gaming time limits[1] and the proposed(?) spending limit[2]. Probably a good thing, if you ask me...

[1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58384457

[2]: https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-issues-draft-rules...

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

#874

Post by xcrunner529 »

Ancapistani wrote: post #870
xcrunner529 wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no unique dna at conception. I know this is fun to repeat but it really shows you ignore science. .

I didn’t say there was?

So no new life is created at conception like you said.

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

#875

Post by Dracophoenix »

maxbond wrote: post #345
Dracophoenix wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That changed with Hatred in 2015. There have been a number of them since. It seems that anything that gives Valve bad press is on its shit list, even if the premise theme has been done before by a bigger or more well-known company stateside. If the upcoming Grand Theft Auto game has full frontal nudity and realistically depicted sex scenes, I doubt Valve would give it a second look.

That was ten years ago, there have been tons of really objectionable games on Steam in recent years. Eg I just checked and the game where you roleplay as Kyle Rittenhouse shooting protestors is still on Steam. Per Wikipedia: > [ Hatred ] was shortly removed by Valve from their Steam Greenlight service due to its extremely violent content but was later brought back with a personal apology from [Valve's co-founder] Gab…

The fact that it was removed at all was a sea-change from Valve's previous stance. Temporary or not, it set a precedent for other removals. For example, Valve had unceremoniously prevented the publication of Super Seducer 3 and retroactively de-published its prequels as a result of a campaign launched by a group of British feminists. (https://happymag.tv/super-seducer-3-steam/)

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

#876

Post by aleph_minus_one »

9dev wrote: post #527
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And the idea that physical money primarily aids social fraud, money washing and other illegal activities is pretty well established. They even killed the 500€ bank note, because it was almost exclusively used by criminals and most normal people never even touched one, much less used one for legit transactions. At least in Germany in particular older people prefer to pay cash if possible - this gives the banks also…

> Since many people in Germany neither trust the banks nor the government anymore, acting this way is very rational. Speak for yourself, this is either heavily overstated or a fringe opinion, luckily. Most people definitely do trust both government and banks to a sensible degree, even if they don’t like some decisions. Some people like you apparently also don’t appreciate the immense freedom of SEPA transactions. Sur…

> Speak for yourself, this is either heavily overstated or a fringe opinion, luckily.

I know quite a lot of people in Germany who think this way. In particular during the time when there was a risk of negative interest on savings (when this topic was brought up by politicians and banksters) these people were much more open in shouting out their political opinions.

Also the anti-corona measures separated the population into two groups:

1. Those who were in favour of the anti-corona measures also became more open with respect to paying with cards (well, to help avoiding the spread the virus)

2. Those who were against it became much more distrusting towards politicians (for obvious reasons) and banks afterwards. Why also banks? Because various groups at that time brought up idea that anti-vaxxers should be de-banked.

So, I am quite sure I'm not overstating. But if you only hang up with specific groups of people, it is in my opinion eather easy not to get in contact to those who think this way.

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

#877

Post by Marsymars »

kelnos wrote: post #843
ghaff wrote: post #839

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pretty common in the US too though the cash balance is usually in the form of a check. Historically you'd often get a cashier's check from your bank but I was surprised the dealership accepted a regular personal check a couple years ago. I guess there are control systems in place these days that provide assurances for places like dealerships.

For a dealership I feel like there's less risk; they can do a quick background/credit check on you before accepting the personal check, and it's probably easier for them to track down someone who gives them a bad check. They also have better ability to absorb the loss, in the worst case. I'm sure they've modeled everything and have decided that taking personal checks is worth it financially to them. (I remember readi…

When I’m selling a car I insist that we finalize the transaction at a brick and mortar bank, where I can watch them either get a bank draft or withdraw cash.

(In Canada, I’ve never actually seen a certified/cashier’s cheque used for anything. My house downpayment and vehicle purchase were both done via bank draft.)

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

#878

Post by rockskon »

To all the people saying "fraud" is the reason - think that through.

Do you really, really think fraud and chargebacks for games covering specific fetishes on Steam have even the tiniest iota of relevance here?

Steam readily offers refunds for a multitude of scenarios!

Valve is also large enough to make itself known to payment processors to not be erroneously lumped in with seedy merchants.

From my understanding, VISA and Mastercard have relatively vague rules that payment processors must follow and payment processors must interpret that based on their own risk tolerance of adverse action being undertaken against them by VISA and/or Mastercard for not following the vague rules in the manner VISA/Mastercard interpret them as at a given point in time.

This is how you end up with situations where both payment processors and the big credit card networks point at each other when politicians ask "why are you withholding financial services from (insert company here)?" and, technically, both entities are correct at pointing the fingers at each other.

There's other factors with respect to contract law in a global economy spanning varied jurisdictions that add additional wrinkles, but I'm skeptical they're the culprit in this specific case

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

#879

Post by achenet »

johnebgd wrote: post #315
edoceo wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying porn buyers regret and that gore buyers do not? (As a broad generalization). Are you also asserting that's built in to risk-profole that payment gateways have?

I don’t have time for o look at the stats and provide quotes / cite sources but it does seem from what I’ve read on the topic that the more people play gore games the less violence there is in society. If that’s true, maybe it’s also true that the more people have access to adult content the less babies we create as a society. A society shrinking causes a number of issues.

Correlation is not causation.

The US had more TVs per capita than Congo, and a higher life expectancy. Sending more TVs to Congo probably won't do much for their life expectancy though.

Similarly, I suspect the increase in violent video games and reduction of actual violence is just a side effect of an increasingly technology driven society.

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

#880

Post by splaysx »

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'm more curious why PCGamer did not publish the name of the games that were removed. There are some incredibly perverse titles in there and if they are advocating to normalize this kind of content, they should have no shame doing so.
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