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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

#891

Post by mango7283 »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #884
mango7283 wrote: post #868

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Why haven't they banned porn game X when they banned porn game Y? -> it's just a matter of time, they've already established that they can pressure to get game x banned, they'll get to game y eventually - also, note that it should be obvious it's much easier to rally support to ban "niche incest/non-con game X" than to rally support to ban "borderline mainstream harem game Y". This is what I was referring to speci…

How do you think activism should work?

Replying here since we hit the nesting limit.

Thanks for understanding.

I'm still looking at the thread and see people bringing up other titles that haven't been banned as if that's a gotcha and it just baffles me. Like what do they think the activists would respond if they were called out on it?

"Oh we don't care about that we only had a grudge on this game in particular"

Or more likely

"Thank you for bringing this title to our attention, we will certainly try to have it taken down as well as it too is against the values we are fighting for"

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

#892

Post by Aeolun »

tptacek wrote: post #333
Aeolun wrote: post #282

I think it’s hilarious we allow stuff like Postal or Soldier of Fortune without a question, where the whole focus is on going crazy and murdering a whole bunch of people. But try to show a sensual human body, instead of one that’s ripped into small pieces, and oh my god, this is going too far!

You could just ask, "why do payment processors pressure content vendors not to offer this kind of content". You're starting from the premise that there's some weird puritan thing happening, but there's really nothing puritan about American business culture. There are other explanations! You can get a long ways just by assuming that the people involved in these transactions are utterly amoral .

Utterly amoral people would need even more reason to not serve basically anyone. Since I know I don’t give a shit, the only thing I can assume is that it’s people that generally oppose what I think is perfectly acceptable.

Since the processors don’t actually care, they must simply believe that dealing with these annoying people is not worth the effort, compared to just not serving stupidly marginal markets.

But the thing is, the people upset about the sex aren’t upset about the killing, which I think is ridiculous.

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

#893

Post by rockskon »

vintermann wrote: post #538
terminalshort wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The leverage is that the activists will potentially be able to draw the ire of the government. Visa and MC get away with absolute murder in terms of the size of the fees that they charge in the US. Most developed countries don't allow that. The US government could easily regulate them (as they already do with debit card fees) or use anti-trust law against the obvious duopoly charging exorbitant prices. Because of thi…

Yes - and Japanese gay porn games are an easy soft target before they go on to ban things they really want to ban. We've been through this before in the 70s-90s.

The initial ban wave was against incest games.

Almost certainly won't end there without significant consumer pushback against the payment processor Valve uses as well as both VISA and Mastercard.

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

#894

Post by rockskon »

krick wrote: post #844
wat10000 wrote: post #824

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think it should be made illegal, it should be made impractical. One way would be to ensure proper competition in the payments space. If there were dozens of options then some of them would decide that it’s a competitive advantage to ignore the busybodies and cater to people who want to buy this stuff. We see this at work with hosting. There’s a multitude of options and it doesn’t seem like adult sites have mu…

It would be great if it was impractical, but I still think it has to be made illegal. I think it is not only "bad" because it's bad for Valve of whoever wants to sell or buy these games, this is "bad" on its own, because it is simply another elaborate form of blackmail. It is as close as it gets to violence without actually beating one up: you are forced to do something not because you are required by law or by natur…

I don't quite care about if a payment network feels it's fair to them when they can dictate what speech entire nations are allowed to engage in.

When it's the speech of the many vs the speech of the few, I'm going to err towards the speech of the many.

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

#895

Post by rockskon »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #285
morkalork wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't onlyfans severely limit the type of content creators could make and distribute through the platform, just like valve here?

> Didn't onlyfans severely limit the type of content creators could make and distribute through the platform, just like valve here? Well, this coverage identifies two restrictions that Valve is enforcing: (1) No video footage of humans. Animation only. (2) No incest. Onlyfans clearly hasn't implemented restriction (1). If they've implemented (2), that seems like much less of a problem as applied to onlyfans than to a…

?

Claiming you need to be pro-incest to support the existance of incest themed video games is as absurd as claiming you need to be pro-murder to support much of the entire Action movie genre.

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

#896

Post by rockskon »

fragmede wrote: post #284
ijk wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/01/visa-mind... Visa being responsible for CSAM isn't a theoretical lawsuit they're afraid about. (2022)

What relevance does that have to incest-themed video games?

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

#897

Post by Thorrez »

mango7283 wrote: post #629
Thorrez wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying the people who are petitioning Steam to remove porn games are playing the porn games themselves and simultaneously pretending porn games don't exist on Steam? That doesn't make sense.

It's possible he means people saying steam should not delist anything due to pressure from activists are tacitly condoning sketchy lolicon games.

Oh good point. "the people making a stink about this" could easily refer to people on either side.

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

#898

Post by JimDabell »

creer wrote: post #790
JimDabell wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That seems disingenuous. Why are you assuming bad faith? There’s no indication parent is being insincere at all.

> Adult content is considered a high risk merchant category > It has nothing to do with any sort of puritanical premise. But I have no problem with the parent poster. I'm here hoping for conversation. The argument though is one we hear now and then and like I point out, how can it make sense? Like many things, it looks more like a vaguely possible, plausible explanation or chain of arguments... which on closer look d…

> But I have no problem with the parent poster. I'm here hoping for conversation.

If you don’t have a problem with them and you were hoping for conversation, then starting out by accusing them of being disingenuous is a strange way of showing it.

> how can it make sense?

Why didn’t you ask this to begin with instead of assuming they were being deceitful? You know “disingenuous” doesn’t just mean “I disagree”, right?

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

#899

Post by denkmoon »

tavavex wrote: post #751
denkmoon wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sounds like the fix is counter activism to remove the leverage these interest groups have

The fix is legislation that ensures that payment processors aren't allowed to extra-legally moderate transactions based on "I don't like it". They need to be forced to process all legal transactions. Because these entities are nearly irreplaceable and are the cornerstone of many consumer industries, it seems like a reasonable compromise to me. Just pushing back is neither guaranteed to succeed nor last for any seriou…

Rather, we remove the leverage by doing what these activists threaten to do, without all the hysterics. If the exorbitant fees give so much leverage to activists, fix the fees. and you know, allow the market to be freer and all that.

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

#900

Post by vladms »

pqtyw wrote: post #788
vladms wrote: post #763

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how does the US deal with age restricted games? I find this much more related to actually willing to implement a rule, rather than having rules for the sake of it (like the US buying alcohol rule - it is forbidden for people under 21 to drink but 40% of the people between 18 and 21 drink ?! source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_consumption_by_youth_i... ).

Not sure I get it. And it's different in Europe? e.g. 20% of all 15 year old in the UK have at least one drink each week: https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/sta... Despite the legal age being 18. Also what does this have to do with anything? e.g. adult-only games are simply unavailable on Steam in Germany. It doesn't matter at all how old you are.

It means there is a law, and Germany makes a reasonable effort to apply it. Germany asks for Steam to use a different system than "Asking the age to the user" (which in my opinion is hilarious and obviously a joke), Steam decides to not sell the games. (source: https://www.heise.de/en/news/Steam-Payment-providers-force-V...)

It's not like "Germany wants to ban sex games altogether", which seems to be what some other private groups would prefer.

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