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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

#931

Post by ninetyninenine »

xigoi wrote: post #929
ninetyninenine wrote: post #926

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think about it this way. If porn didn’t exist your will power to do the real thing would balloon. You would scale mountains to get it. Like your sex drive would amp up to the point where you would spend the effort to ride the space ship.

> You would scale mountains to get it. You say that as if it was a good thing.

it is a good thing. Ironically hard effort leads to happiness. A life spent scaling mountains is happier then a life spent on the couch.

It's just where you are right now, the happiness part is not apparent. It's because it's a long term thing.

If porn or computers or TV or junk food didn't exist, you'd have nothing better to do then for mind numbing self improvement. Miserable, but in the long term you end up building something that makes you happier and more fulfilled. You build up resistance to the short term pain. And eventually depending on your case, the pain disappears completely. You start to enjoy scaling the mountain.

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

#932

Post by xigoi »

ninetyninenine wrote: post #931
xigoi wrote: post #929

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You would scale mountains to get it. You say that as if it was a good thing.

it is a good thing. Ironically hard effort leads to happiness. A life spent scaling mountains is happier then a life spent on the couch. It's just where you are right now, the happiness part is not apparent. It's because it's a long term thing. If porn or computers or TV or junk food didn't exist, you'd have nothing better to do then for mind numbing self improvement. Miserable, but in the long term you end up buildi…

With sex specifically, the results are inversely proportional to the effort. Putting a lot of time into seducing a woman is seen as desperate and creepy. The men who are getting laid the most just walk into a bar and women throw themselves at them.

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

#933

Post by shepherdjerred »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #858
shepherdjerred wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They popped up for me a few times without any prompting. It was weird.

The lack of an opt-out filter was an issue that Collective Shout supposedly campaigned for that went through Steam Labs and was them implemented for everyone circa 2020.

I feel like I saw this for the first time a year or two ago, and I had to toggle it on since it was off by default

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

#934

Post by gs17 »

GoblinSlayer wrote: post #901
gs17 wrote: post #756

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the reality is that adult oriented businesses deal with massively higher rates of fraud and charge-backs This gets repeated, but it's not the real reason. If it were, Visa/MasterCard would be fine with a store like Steam offering those games as e.g. crypto-only purchases.

Found an explanation: the reputational risk they're talking about is 2022 pornhub case. Most likely some saudi dude didn't like it and threatened to pull. That's why they don't talk about it: because it's literal sharia exported around the world.

Wouldn't surprise me, gotta follow the money.

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

#935

Post by ramesh31 »

zbentley wrote: post #781
ramesh31 wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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,…

>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?

They do all of the above. There are obviously an endless number of niche payment providers who serve the segments. And they are... expensive and unreliable. Not suitable to a huge business like Valve that derives the majority of their revenue from mainstream products.

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

#936

Post by ahmeneeroe-v2 »

creer wrote: post #625
ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly, if you don't like something, you shouldn't have to sell it. Or host it. Or process payments for it.

> you shouldn't have to sell it [etc] Until you abuse your market power. See Apple store vs adult content, see credit card companies vs an endless list of obsessions.

Sorry no. No amount of "market power" should compel you to engage in behavior you find immoral.

Also "credit card companies" are not a monopoly for any reasonable definition of monopoly. There are four major ones. That's like saying Ford, GM, Stellantis, and Tesla are a monopoly.

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

#937

Post by true_religion »

drdeca wrote: post #533
true_religion wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gay conversion therapy, which has an entire society backing it, failed consistently despite trying pairing it with torture and social ostracism. This seems to suggest that broad sexual preferences are remarkably stable.

I would imagine that it is probably easier to make someone find something sexually exciting than to make them no longer find a thing sexually exciting? When a river had carved a canyon, it is hard to redirect it. That doesn’t mean the canyon was always there.

By that logic, one would think that gay people would at least also be heterosexual because they're drowning in an ocean of heterosexual material.

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

#938

Post by true_religion »

Saline9515 wrote: post #541
true_religion wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gay conversion therapy, which has an entire society backing it, failed consistently despite trying pairing it with torture and social ostracism. This seems to suggest that broad sexual preferences are remarkably stable.

Why is the pornography served to each generation more violent then? It's one thing to be homosexual, it's another to be into the most extreme acts that some homosexuals perform. Do we really need porn that scenarizes incest?

It's kind of interesting that you're claiming a slippery slope argument, when the words we use to describe incest Oedipal and Electra complex come from wildly popular pre-CE fictional accounts of incest.

As for violence, that's because such acts on film were illegal. Pornography was tightly regulated before this era of free speech. Even now the UK, is constantly trying to maintain BDSM porn as criminal [1] and Australia has similar tight restrictions [2]. This is to say nothing of the countries where pornography is completely banned: China, North Korea, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkmenistan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Iceland, Iraq, Kyrgyzstan, Malaysia, Malta, Myanmar, Sudan, Thailand, Turkey, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Yemen.

So if the question is why do you see more of Y in XXX, it's because it is now allowed so content is created to satisfy needs that were already there.

[1] https://reason.com/2014/12/02/uk-bans-fetish-porn/ [2] https://www.kptlegal.com.au/resources/knowledge/pornography-...

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

#939

Post by immibis »

drdeca wrote: post #923
mandmandam wrote: post #673

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The purpose of sexuality is for relations with one’s spouse That's not actually true. That doctrine has been used to guilt-trip people and control their lives for many hundreds of years - but it isn't true. People are complex. We're not self-replicating machines whose sole purpose is to breed.

Where did I imply that our purpose was to breed? I don’t believe that. I didn’t even say that the relations were specifically to be reproductive.

Why do you believe the parts you believe but not the other parts?

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

#940

Post by ninetyninenine »

xigoi wrote: post #932
ninetyninenine wrote: post #931

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it is a good thing. Ironically hard effort leads to happiness. A life spent scaling mountains is happier then a life spent on the couch. It's just where you are right now, the happiness part is not apparent. It's because it's a long term thing. If porn or computers or TV or junk food didn't exist, you'd have nothing better to do then for mind numbing self improvement. Miserable, but in the long term you end up buildi…

With sex specifically, the results are inversely proportional to the effort. Putting a lot of time into seducing a woman is seen as desperate and creepy. The men who are getting laid the most just walk into a bar and women throw themselves at them.

They get rejected too. They become numb to that pain. Eventually they get laid.

Part of the pain is getting seen as desperate and creepy. The goal is to become numb to this. To not care.

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