Make your own payment processor, Gaben. It’s the way.
Just open bank in every country should do.
actually what you want is card network, but even then that won’t do it
i gave a whole big rundown of why this is all way harder than everyone expects here
payments is an absolute minefield with so many layers of BS that gets closer to arcane wizardry and back room deals the deeper you go
Then people would have to get specific cards or crypto or whatever that aren’t Visa/MasterCard in order to buy Steam games. That, of course, is if you can get banks to agree to carry “Steam cards”. Either that, or everyone would need to buy Steam gift cards as an exclusive form of payment.
All of these are much less convenient than keeping your existing debit/credit card to pay for Steam games, and less convenience means less sales.
They would have to roughly make their own form of PayPal, alongside their own bank.
If you didn’t know, PayPal technically isn’t a bank, it and Venmo use Synchrony Bank… which is an actual bank.
If they did something like that, it could work, but it would have to be at a similar scale as PayPal, that is to say, massive…
Because doing this would/could basically be the nuclear option:
MC and Visa and PayPal would/could drop them.
So, they’d have to basically develop a massive project, in total secrecy.
… Which is something Valve has arguably done a number of times, they are notoriously opaque as a company.
…
Sort of as you mention, they already have a barebones backend framework to scale up from the steam gift card / user gift card balance system.
I am… uncertain if their backend for that already does or does not include an actual legally defined bank though.
…
Problem is that this would necessitate a massively costly undertaking, as well as ongoing maintenance costs, and Valve is also notorious for basically running on what most other firms would consider a skeleton crew for the size and scope of what they do.
Or you could just transfer funds to a steam card, then with that, but all you want.
Yeah, but SteamPay is the future
Steam does not have to only accept steampay. Tho? You fear visa and mastercard will blaclist steam?
Steam removed games because visa and mastercard threatened to blaclist it, so yeah. That’s the whole point.
Is that kinda what PayPal is, or was intended to be?
Yeah but PayPal’s awful. They literally arbitrarily deny you access to your own funds. At least the banks have rules.
If someone wants to pay me something they can use it literally anything other than PayPal. I don’t trust them they’ve stolen money from me before.
There was an obviously fraudulent charge on my PayPal account and I submitted a request for a refund that got rejected by their automated system. I had to email back and forth PayPal support directly as well as the business involved, showing evidence of multiple address info change requests in quick succession and other strange things about the purchase. When things stalled I threatened to bring the issue to the FTC consumer protection bureau and finally that put the fire under their asses. Eventually I got my money back but it took considerable effort to get them to do the right thing.
Needless to say after all that I deleted my PayPal account.
they’ve actually paid me after I was scammed by fake stock broker. without fussing about it too. Really easy to get payments reversed.
Either way I’d be happy to also switch to another method of payment if it were an option.
Yeah because in your case they didn’t have your money. They’re only real pain about trying to get money back, they always support businesses never customers.
So if I pay for a product and never receive it PayPal always takes the business’s side.
Even Amazon has better customer support.
I don’t trust them they’ve stolen money from me before
Same. They stole a small amount (~10 USD), but at that time that was 2-3 days worth of groceries where I live (which would have helped a lot)
PayPal is almost as pornphobic as MastercardVisa
Yes
CC companies have a really easy retort in that they operate in jurisdictions where these things are illegal
And the easy retort to that is that they don’t apply Chinese censorship globally. Only in China. Regional laws only apply regionally.
They have regional pricing already, regional content bans should be easy enough.
The problem here being these payment processors are global.
Right, my point is that Visa shouldn’t care if an American is buying something that’s illegal in China, if the product is not allowed for sale in China.
But we have to oppose CollectiveShout as well, as in destroy them. They’re way worse than I thought
So, I wanted to see if I could find a list of games that were removed. I found this https://steam-tracker.com/ which is not specific to this event, but useful to keep track.
Need to petition Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, and American Express. I don’t think trying to get Valve to reverse these recent changes will necessarily be effective, since they are being pressured by the payment processors and they definitely aren’t going to risk not being able to effectively do business at all.
Under what arguments would we be able to push back on something like this? Most people would agree that these games where distasteful so arguing for them to be put back to not start a slippery slope isn’t that easy it seems.
See, THAT is not the slippery slope. STARTING to ban ANYTHING at all from legal transactions is the slippery slope. What happens when they decide R-rated films are distasteful? Or birth control?
Payment processors should have ABSOLUTELY no role in making ANY decisions about what legal transactions they process. Period.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1r5VtCUwPw
Show people that game that was delisted because of them. The idea that they only took down pornographic games is wrong, they went after things that didn’t fit their christofash narrative.
Mainly that the companies controlling nearly all digital financial transactions across the entire globe should not be the arbiters of what is morally acceptable. If they must exist at all, they should just be handling the transfer of funds regardless of what is being bought and sold*.
*illegal shit would not be protected.
*illegal shit would not be protected.
They can push for some law that makes certain groups or their depictions illegal. Then it’s their morals becoming a law.
If there’scorruptionlobbying, there’s a way for them to twist “immoral” into “illegal”, which is fucked.Yeah but that is a whole other can of worms. I am against legal bribery, as well as certain things being illegal. Like drugs. Or most porn. But I also think slavery, CP, bestiality, nuclear weapons, etc should be illegal to buy, sell, or even produce.
I would go further and say they shouldn’t have the ability to block any transaction consumers are making, regardless of legality.
I basically want them classified like utilities (or the Internet), and the money they’re processing should operate like digital networked cash. If I hand you a dollar bill, it doesn’t arbitrarily decide to stop being money if it thinks the transaction might possibly be even tangentially related to crime. That’s how you end up with these corporations becoming so invasive in the first place, with their overbroad policies blocking entire groups/categories from being in the economy.
Don’t think that I’m pro-crime – but only actual crime is crime. A transfer of funds itself is only sometimes a crime. You don’t see the federal reserve trying to foil small-time drug deals in cash, and for good reason – legitimate crimes should be investigated by law enforcement, not “prevented” at the whims of overeager corpos. It’s not the payment processor’s right or responsibility to prevent or they to predict crime, especially once they’ve built such a system as to become indispensable for most of us. If they are allowed to do that they will always do it the easy way – blanket bans with massive collateral damage to non-criminals.
These companies should be disbanded and their systems should be handed over to the public. Hot take, I know, but I’m of the mind that transaction processing (much like air and water) should not be privatized. You may think at this point that I’m a crypto-head, but not really. It seemed promising at one point and may be still, but now it’s perhaps permanently associated with unsavory types. I’ll use it if it fits the purpose, but expecting the general public to use it as money is insanity. Crypto brought us part of the way there, but such a system can’t really flourish in furtherance of the public good in the current environment – even disregarding the bad PR.
Honestly, I am kinda expecting that with the way that America is becoming, something like Monero could become legitimized. There wasn’t much reason for crypto to be a currency, so long as the world order remained orderly and useful to the everyday person.
Should the American Dollar collapse, there would be a howling void that must be filled - it could be Euros, the Yen, Monero, or something else entirely, but the opportunity would be there for currencies to change.
something like Monero could become legitimized.
And yet banks are moving in the opposite direction and forcing it being banned precisely because it’s a threat to their control, unlike Bitcoin.
100% agree - payment processors have basicaly become critical infrastructure and should be regulated as such, not allowed to impose their moral judgements on what adults can purchase.
Absolutely. I’d switch to other payment methods that aren’t those, if you can.
If they are dealing in US currency then the wording on the bill says it all. Legal tender for a debts public and private. When they print currency they don’t say, “and this one can’t be used for porn.”
Don’t give em any ideas
Most people would agree that these games where distasteful
Regardless, tasteless people have the right to pay for them and play, so… no?
This is about payment processors censoring shit just 'cos they can. They stick to handling money instead of dictating how that money is used.
Yeah, nah.
Petition these people:
https://www.collectiveshout.org/partners
Collective Shout is sustained by a small number of Australian partners. These are not big groups, and would quickly pull funding under any sort of pressure.
Collective Shout has a deep history with Christofascism and TERFs, so highlighting those angles is the way to go to get them pariahed. Once CS is out of the picture, we can work on undoing the damage they did.
It’s the height of stupidity to try to pressure collective shout.
You don’t tell the child to stop drawing on the wall for the 20th time and expect it to work.
You take it’s crayons away so it can’t anymore.
You fix the tool of abuse so it can’t be abused.
I think the idea is to pressure the partners of Collective Shout, per the url in the comment. Those might not necessarily agree with what they’re doing in this case, and if they see it’s making waves, reconsider their partnership.
Looking at the partners on that page, I think at least half of them are more than okay with Collective Shout’s actions.
This is incredibly shortsighted.
If you get Collective Shout to stop, another group might pick up where they left off.
The problem needs to be fixed, what you’re suggesting is just making the people currently abusing it stop doing so. That’s not a long term solution.
No it’s incredibly idiotic to do otherwise.
You don’t fight a fire while the arsonist is still setting it on fire.
Except they’re not fighting the fire here, they’re taking away the arsonist’s flamethrowser so he can’t continue making the fire. Without that flamethrower, the arsonist can’t do shit.
Fighting the fire would be petitioning Steam, but the target is the payment processors that pressured Steam on request of Collective Shout.
Petitioning people to do something that is against their entire purpose doesn’t seem like it would be effective.
Not only that, they’ll get louder claiming they’re being oppressed. Ignore them.
Go on about being harassed and doing “high risk work”
Archived page: https://archive.ph/Ttyr5
Just in case.
The petition is directed at Visa and MasterCard. I’m not sure why the article says it’s a petition directed at Steam, because it’s not.
deleted by creator
Kinda hard to stay at the top if you literally get blacklisted from doing financial transactions. Big as they are, they’re nowhere near the same level as the payment processors.
Valve is basically a small business one bad Monday from going bankrupt compares to payment processors.
Banks and payment processors are the single largest most powerful forces in a capitalist market.
You literally do NOT get bigger. Full stop.
No, Valve has something that MasterVisa doesn’t: being liked by people. If Valve stopped taking payments and yelled to the rooftops that MasterVisa was responsible, people from all walks of life will stop, listen, and then get their pitchfork. Through the platform of Steam, people browse through the things that make their days happier. If MasterVisa threatened to take that away, people will respond.
Also, Europe and other blocs will be inclined to oppose MasterVisa. It would be a very public case of where America is dictating how the people of other lands must live. That would almost certainly make systems like Wero take off, due to sheer nationalist fervor. America is easily painted as the enemy if it allowed MasterVisa to continue abusing people on such a huge and international scale.
Money isn’t the only currency a person has, their opinions and agency are even more important, if they acted on using them. History books are filled to the brim where motivation is the greatest driving force of all.
Also, Europe and other blocs will be inclined to oppose MasterVisa.
they’re already started, slow af as anything done by bureaucrats, when Trump 2.0 began his shenanigans.
Valve is basically a small business one bad Monday from going bankrupt compares to payment processors.
Few quick searches around the internet says that (measured by revenue) Mastercard alone is roughly 3 times bigger than Valve. So even if Valve is pretty big player it’s not even close on major payment processors. And they’re not playing on the same rules either, any payment processor can vanish payments for anyone with just ‘fuck you, that’s why’ -reasoning buried in their contracts. There’s almost no one who could afford to fight with them even in theory and much less in practise.
You realize three times bigger is barely anything right? Also their power per user is significantly higher considering almost everyone who uses it cares for steam but almost nobody cares about their card. If Mastercard tried using their blacklist power people are few more likely to switch card than platform.
Exactly, petitioning steam doesn’t help, their hands are tied. It’s the behavior of the payment processors that needs to change. If they wimp out over every complaint, then we all live at the whims of the whiniest prudes in the world.
We want our pron and we want it now!
What is a gooner that cannot goon? This is murder.
Give me the whole tiddy or give me death
pronpornSelf censorship is not appreciated here mate
I am ashamed, brother. Forgive me for I have sinned.
Petitions like this are meaningless unless they come with a viable solution to the duopoly in payment processing that is Visa and Mastercard.
It doesn’t matter what Valve agrees with, if they want to survive as a business they have to ultimately do what the only 2 companies that handle the payment processing tells them to do.
You’re missing the point. This is not aimed at Valve, but at Visa and MasterCard. They are businesses. They primarily care about profit, not censorship. Especially when that pisses people off. They made the mistake of listening to the vocal minority of Collective Shout, so we have to let them know that. This isn’t the 80’s anymore, gaming is mainstream and there are far, far more gamers than puritanical Quakers that get the vapors at the sight of anything mature or complicated. And worst-case scenario, they are not the only payment processors, just the most convenient ones for customers and businesses. For now…
Are you calling them Quakers as a derogatory slur or are they actually Quakers/Religious Society of Friends people.
A “slur”? No. But I was referring to the overly strict, hair-splitting kind of religious extremism that adheres to the letter of the law, not the spirit/intent.
So yes, you did. Quakers (used to be) quite progressive.
Okay…? Democrats used to support slavery.
They flipped their beliefs with Republicans. That’s a unlikely occurrence.
I don’t get either of those contexts.
When I read “Quakers”, I just recalled Quake III Arena and thought, “that doesn’t fit”.
Quakers were some anti authority religious minority (Christian) in Scotland/England. They were notorious for their lack of respect. E.g. used “thy” instead of the formal you. (English changed since then and the informal thy fell out of use)
Quakers were
Are. They’re still around. Still a relatively big minority Christian group in the UK.
Still everyone’s favourite Christian denomination. Cool bunch.
I do still wait for an answer.
It was 3 in the morning here. Relax.
Edit: Oh, you just wanted to argue. Definitely sorry I was late for that…
Consumers punting the accountability and responsibility of their demise to the next generation of consumers. I hate how feeble and weak willed we are all as a species.
we have been like this lately, but humans are definitely not weak willed or feeble at all.
shit, the right wing nuts are killing themselves over their beliefs rn.
Valve is a big enough company that they could conceivably start their own payment provider to bypass this.
Come on, Gabe. You know you wanna.
You do know what happens to Valve Time any time someone tells Gabe to hurry up, right?
For example they could sell adult games under credits only and take CC or PayPal for credits.
This way you’re not buying adult titles with CC at all. Same way AAA deal with gambling with lootboxes.
Can’t people do this already? Just load up your Steam Wallet, and then use those funds however you want?
Cant use the steam wallet when they delist the game.
Yes but the payment processors didn’t say “you’re not allowed to sell this game with our service” they said “you’re not allowed to sell this game period or we walk”.
There’s the bullshit right there.
I know it’s downvote central, but I’ve been on the “No Porn on Steam” train forever. Ever since the introduction to the service it has inundated so much of the “Top Selling” “New & Trending” etc. Steam is for games, porn is for porn. Super annoying to sift through it when I’m looking for a new game, and I have my age settings so I can see adult games like GTA/Dishonored, not “Super Hentai Bejeweled 3000”.
“I’ll know it when I see it” has gotta be the most vibes way to tell people they’re degenerates.
Certainly there should be better search tools and personal curation on Steam. If you don’t want to see it you should be able to easily filter it.
-
steam is for games… no, it isn’t really. steam has been distributing non game software for ages.
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porn games are games so even if steam is for games it should have porn games.
i don’t care for porn games but I’ve filtered them out so who cares what others do with their time
-
One of the biggest problems is “what is porn?”. Time and again a clear definition eludes us and it comes down to personal perception. What one group of people think is porn is not to a different group. Also something to think and reflect about, why are you okay with a store selling intense and graphic violence, but not sex?
Then we get to the fact that it isn’t Steam calling the shots on this, not really. It is payment processors. The real outrage here is that Steam is not getting to decide what they do and don’t sell, and it isn’t a legal problem either. It is an arbitrary choice by the middle man monopoly. And there is nothing stopping their rules removing your ability to buy GTA or Dishonored next.
I think the backlash would be a lot less if this was truly a Steam decision. There would be people upset still, but I don’t think to the same degree. The massive outrage is that stores all over, including as big as Steam, are being blackmailed into making these changes.
I believe this group tried to remove GTA V and Detroit become human.
They succeeded in getting GTA5 pulled from the shelves of two of the largest physical distributors in Australia.
Excuse me sir, but Super Hentai Bejeweled 3000 is one of the best games of our times.
/S
Just turn the adult stuff off yo.
… and I have my age settings so I can see adult games like GTA/Dishonored, not “Super Hentai Bejeweled 3000”.
The former belong to the M rated category while the hypothetical latter would belong to the Adults Only category. As others have pointed out, you can hide adult games and still see other games with violence and mature themes. Steam classifies M-rated games and AO-rated games differently.
Is it more about the porn or the shovelware for you? That is to ask: would you play a porn game that is sufficiently story-driven and acclaimed?
Ehat you said reminded me of Fate Stay Night, never played it, but the story was so good they made anime and manga for it, without the sex scenes of course.
Would I play a game that has sex/nudity in it? Yes. Do I want games that are specifically pornography on steam. No.
Do I want games that are specifically pornography on steam. No.
Well, some people do want that.
So, in compromise, Steam gives you the option of not seeing pornography. It even sets that option by default.
The only way you’re ever going to see pornography is if you specifically check the ‘Show Adult Only Sexual Content’ in the Mature Content Filtering of Store Preferences in your Account Settings.
Well, some people do want that.
There should be a separate platform for that, similar to how you wouldn’t go on YouTube expecting to see videos from PornHub.
There should be a separate platform for that, similar to how you wouldn’t go on YouTube expecting to see videos from PornHub.
Why should there be a separate platform? If Steam wants to sell porn games then why should payment processors have any say at all? Amazon sells porn and sex toys, should they be required to split off that part of their business because 50 puritanical christians in Australia can spend all day spam calling Visa and Mastercard? It’s nonsense, these people won’t stop here. Visa and Mastercard should have ignored these people
In any case, that’s just dodging the issue.
These games ARE available on other platforms, the Collective Voice group is targeting those platforms too.
Before you just shrug and say that it won’t affect you because you don’t play porn games. Collective Voice’s idea of obscene games that shouldn’t be for sale don’t stop at porn. They have also pressured the major retailers in Australia to not carry GTA5. They’d see Steam shutdown entirely if they had their way.
If they don’t want to see porn then Steam already takes care of that, no account has Adult Content enabled by default. Steam has parental controls ( https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/6B1A-66BE-E911-3D98 ) so parents can prevent their children from seeing any content that they don’t like. These people are not upset because they’re seeing porn, they’re upset because other people choose to see porn and they want to stop them.
That’s not how we do things in a free society. You can make choices for yourself, you can’t force your choices to apply other people.
As much as Steam is free to host what it likes, Visa and the others are free not to work with Steam. You could argue the options available to Steam would be significantly limited by that, but the same argument is being used against Steam now in the Wolfire lawsuit. The argument is that Steam violates antitrust law via illegal tying and other means, making it hard for a user who doesn’t agree with their content policies to switch to a different platform, like Epic, which has always prohibited porn games.
I don’t think a single person here is disputing the fact that they can legally do this. There’s a lot of things that are legal which are immoral.
It isn’t the payment processor’s place, ESPECIALLY one that we have allowed to have a de facto monopoly on credit card processing, to use that position in order to dictate morality.
From a pragmatic perspective, they’re playing with fire by giving in to small but vocal extremist groups. Public outcry on issues can result in laws and regulations which would limit how payment processors can operate. We could pass laws which make it illegal for a payment processor to refuse to process payments for otherwise legal transactions.
Or its sequel, Futanari Tentacle Schoolgirl 4000
So turn off the check box that shows you porn games…
You can disable showing adult games from the store in the store preferences.
https://store.steampowered.com/account/preferences
This setting is apparently disabled by default, so at some point you enabled it.
Yeah, I think he enabled it. It never showed porn games for me.
I completely understand wanting to fight Visa and MasterCards position in the market. That’s fine.
But for the love of God. Do not involve Steam and various porn games into it. That is not going to help your case.
I get the whole. “Just because I’m killing someone in a game, doesn’t mean I’ll kill someone in real life”.
But that’s not going to hold up as an argument here. Depictions of CP, even if it’s a drawing with crayons, is still highly illegal in so many places. Same logic can be applied regarding other depictions of illegal behavior in the same category (pornogrophy). Such as incest. I’m not saying that depictions of incest is illegal in many places. Because I honestly don’t know. But there would be a precedence for it.
Personally, I find it utterly disgusting that Steam even allowed such titles to begin with. I welcome their removal of them. But I wish it was because of other reasons than payment processors having an issue with it.
That’s the problem.
Valve already had a process to flag titles as illegal in specific jurisdictions, and as far as anyone can tell, was doing an okay job at that (not perfect, obviously), but they were forced to add an extra clause of, ‘oh, plus anything visa et al. don’t like’ the extra layer is adding minimal protection and is rife for abuse.
Additionally, let’s talk about what makes porn. Does “https://yakuza.fandom.com/wiki/Be_My_Baby” of Yakuza 2 count? Or does it get a free pass because it’s a large publisher?
What if players take the elements of the game to create something the developers didn’t prevent? Like if a map contains a baby on one side of a map and an orgy (in another office) on the other side of the map, is it CP if a player picks up the baby and brings it into the orgy room? Is this something you want the banks deciding? Couldn’t we - have therapists or other behavioral health development experts make this call?
Most importantly is the recorded history of how these systems are routinely shown to be used against smaller publishers, and assorted minorities (including LGBT people) have a woman show a boob, it’s polite adult fun, but if their twin brother shows a pre-op trans boob, now it’s magically porn.
What if players take the elements of the game to create something the developers didn’t prevent? Like if a map contains a baby on one side of a map and an orgy (in another office) on the other side of the map, is it CP if a player picks up the baby and brings it into the orgy room? Is this something you want the banks deciding?
I said I wish removal of titles would be because of other reasons than payment processors having an issue with it. So to be clear. The answer to your question of if it should be up to banks to decide, is “No”.
Additionally, let’s talk about what makes porn. Does “https://yakuza.fandom.com/wiki/Be_My_Baby” of Yakuza 2 count? Or does it get a free pass because it’s a large publisher?
We don’t need to talk about what makes porn. Though it may have been unclear, the titles I spoke of, was the ones Steam removed after PayPal wasn’t authorizing payments. The “Incest porn games”. I don’t know what the law says where you live. But in my part of the world. Incest is illegal. And I do not think games where incest is the goal and depicted as a fetish have any place on steam.
It’s ok if you want incest games on steam. That’s your opinion. I just said I welcome their removal. But wish they would have been removed due to other reasons.
They removed Detroit: Become Human, dude… That is not a porn game.
If I had to guess, it’s probably because of the scene with the lesbian android couple.
That’s great, not great that they removed it but a great example of something you can bring up that doesn’t hurt the case.
I just really wish people would leave actual porn games out of it. Because that is not going to be helpful to their case.
I dunno, I personally think respectability politics is garbage but ya know, To Each Their Own.
Could you elaborate on what “respectability politics” is? I’ve never heard that before.
Point is. Making a movement and using the removal of games that fetishize incest as the drop that made the cup overflow. Is simply not going to go the way you think it is. Unless you think it’s going to crash and burn. Then it’ll go exactly how you think it’ll go.
You can make at least 101 far better arguments against Visa and MasterCard using their monopolized position to morally dictate what people can and can not buy, than having to involve incest porn. Or porn at all for that matter.
Porn is art, there’s no compromising on that without throwing someone under the bus. Respectability politics == throwing people under the bus for not being “respectable” enough. It’s been a huge issue in LGBTQ advocacy for a really long time.
Porn is art, there’s no compromising on that without throwing someone under the bus.
Would you consider child pornography art as well? You don’t compromise, that’s what you said no?
You’re obviously just trying to twist my words. Porn has to be consensual, otherwise it’s just abuse material. Hence the term CSAM being advocated rather than CP these days.
Signed, thanks for the link <3
IANAL - Can credit card companies coordinate like this? This seems like price fixing but the other way around. Like one company wouldn’t do this alone cause it would drive customers away so they agree to do it together. Does that coordinated monopolistic behavior have president?
Yeah it seems to fit the description of a cartel… Not that it matters.
Yeah, I don’t expect the US Federal Government to do anything pro-consumer except to lower the cost of concentration camps and tear gas.
We knew in the aughts that this was going to be an issue when the charging companies defunded Wikileaks and Julian Assange¹ and were allowed to do so, defying public accommodations laws.
1. Yes, Assange is a git and a Russian asset (or at least has been before) but he did serve as a whistleblower against evil shit done by Bush and Obama administrations and the general aristocratic corruption at play in US federal politics. As with Chelsea Manning, he embarrassed politicians using their positions of power inappropriately, revealing that the state was not serving the public. Incidentally, ACLU in its early years was funded by USSR to cause trouble against the US state (which it was doing anyway and still does), which makes it historically (and debatably) a Soviet asset. Strange bedfellows and all that.
This is a tale that keeps repeating itself, and is why protections by the fourth, fifth, and sixth amendments of the Constitution of the United States have been carved out like a holiday turkey by the US Supreme Court. We found it easy to deny unreasonable search and seizure protections from major crimes suspects, only to find that every black citizen with a gram of cannabis now no longer has those protections.
So it is with monopolies that decide they can be selective with their accommodations.
If we can’t pressure the transaction services to obey public accommodation rules since they have monopolistic power, it may be time to circumvent the issue, and support black market tactics ( Archie comic and bag of sawdust, $20, comes with free incest porn! )
These days, when discussing the usenet alt.* heirarchy, its acronym ( Anarchists, Lunatics, and Terrorists ) is now considered a backronym, a joke. I was there, and it belied a serious point: The worst of us deserve free speech, as per Larry Flynt, knowing that Hustler magazine is legally published in all its (raunchy) glory means that whatever you’re releasing to the public is safe from moral guardians and critics because they have worse stuff to shout at.
But we’re in an era of book burning, which means those would-be moral guardians are emboldened to try to reshape society in their image, in contrast to the principles of liberty and free thought. And soon ICE will expand its POI list to include liberals and wrongthinkers.
It may be time for bricks in windows and direct action against high-ranking company officials, but such behaviors carry high risks of consequences. So be careful and thorough.
In the meantime, write petitions of your grievances and sign those others have written. And remind them at this moment the public presumes petitioning them for redress of grievances will be acknowledged and acted upon. And if that turns out not to be the case, the outraged public will not simply disappear and keep to its place.
The article is saying the petition is targeting steam, but the actual linked petition is addressing credit card companies. The text of the petition doesn’t mention steam or valve. I don’t know what the author of the article thinks is happening here, and they’ve explained it very badly.
As of July 16, Steam’s new guidelines state that game publishers should avoid releasing titles that may violate the terms and conditions of its payment processors. In other words, the storefront is asking creators to not only follow the platform’s rules but also submit to potential oversight from companies like MasterCard, Visa, and PayPal.
and from the petition
MasterCard and Visa have increasingly used their financial control to pressure platforms into censoring legal fictional content
Steam is enforcing MasterCard’s, Visa’s, and PayPal’s policies. From Steam’s Rules and Policies:
What you shouldn’t publish on Steam: … 15. Content that may violate the rules and standards set forth by Steam’s payment processors and related card networks and banks, or internet network providers. In particular, certain kinds of adult only content.
Point number 15 was not there in a Snapshot from February on the wayback machine. If anything, the solution should just be to remove the payment method for those games (which would still hurt the creators substantially).
There is a line that is confusing:
In response to this censorship, some fans have launched a petition on Change.org urging Valve to revert its policies
There may be petitions about reverting Valve’s policy, but it’s not the main petition against Visa and MasterCard (which is the one they linked).
Replying my same comment from elsewhere to you as well:
Yes but the payment processors didn’t say “you’re not allowed to sell this game with our service” they said “you’re not allowed to sell this game period or we walk”.
So yeah, being mad at Valve is stupid, people need to be mad st MC and Visa and probably also PayPal.
Being mad at Valve is shooting the messenger.
Fortunately the petition is at least correctly aimed at the payment processors.
But also…
If MC and Visa won’t budge on their positions, well, if Valve then makes an alt payment system for adult only games…
MC and Visa go, oh, hey, you’re violating our guidelines, we no longer support Valve/Steam, now no one can buy any game.
This is a MAD situation, Valve would have to come up with a comprehensive payment processing system for everything, in secret, and then deploy it all at once.
MC and Visa go, oh, hey, you’re violating our guidelines
No, that is not how that would work. People cannot buy games that violate MasterCard’s and Visa’s policies using MasterCard or Visa. If someone buys the game using a different payment method, crypto or a direct bank link, it would not violate MasterCard or Visa’s policies because they had no part of the transaction.
Being mad at Valve is shooting the messenger.
Being mad at Valve is reasonable, because they did not have to ban all games that their payment processors disagree with. They would need to remove the option to pay with those for certain games, and the process of filtering them out and deciding would take a lot of time, money, and labor. It’s easier for valve to just ban it outright, but it is not the right thing to do. Valve is not the reason it started, but there is reason to be mad at Valve as well.
No, that is not how that would work.
It is, actually, allow me to explain:
Visa and MasterCard have policies for who they do business with, ie, merchants and vendors.
The business they do with Valve is the business of processing online payments, Valve is one of their merchant partners.
They can absolutely shut everything down in the name of upholding their own moral / business standards, via deciding to no longer be a business partner with Valve.
If Valve uses an alt payment system for adult games, Visa and MC are still business partners with Valve, Valve is now in violation of their partnership guidelines, ergo, Visa and MC drop Valve.
Visa and MC are concerned with the reputations of the partners they have, in general, not so much with the exact transactions they actually process.
Being mad at Valve is reasonable, because they did not have to ban all games that their payment processors disagree with.
No, its not, and Valve did have to act in this way, see above.
Itch.io and Nutaku just did the same thing after Valve did, you can no longer buy any games that cost money, that have explicit sexual content, so by your logic, its Valve and Itch.io and Nutaku all being unnecessarily censorious, of their own accord, rather than the reality, which is that MC and Visa are strong arming all these digital market places.
EDIT: In itch.io’s case, they even delisted their totally free adult games.
I understand the principle but why do gamers always choose the worst examples of something to rally behind. The stop killing games petition rallying around The Crew, which lasted 10 years and was a very average game, and now this with getting behind porn games to protest censorship.
Is there really no better examples than those?
The goal is to stop them building up any momentum. If the credit companies get used to flexing their power like this, and steam gets used to folding to it, then things will escalate.
Right now it’s porn games. Who the hell would defend them. But it won’t end there. You honestly don’t think they would go after games that mock religion, or are trans positive?
Under the guidelines imposed by payment processors which were recently clarified by itch.io, Baldur’s Gate 3 would be banned, as it contains moments of non-consensual sex and bestiality.
would you rather them do nothing? realistically for the vast majority of people they don’t care enough to do more than this, and it’s atleast SOMETHING to get the ball rolling
"First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."
-Martin Niemöller, 1952
Obviously banning porn games isn’t comparable to the holocaust, but the principle of defiance is the same. If we don’t want credit card companies to ban stuff we like, then we should also oppose them when they ban stuff we don’t care about.
They didnt ban anything, they said they’d stop doing business with steam and itch. I dont want to force companies to do business with other companies.
After reading the article on gamerant.com, the many comments on here and looking at the petition, I really wonder if actually so many people are delusional and/or are just missing the core point here?! (Or it is just a small crowd with much noise?) IMHO, there are better places in the world to engage and petition for. (Local communities and regional politics, for example.) But if banning that little “funny” child incest game on Steam puts you up the tree, well, …
Are you really that offended? And why, on point? How in the world can you defend publishing (and selling) games - mostly targeted at young folks - which are quite disturbing, derangend and morally wrong in the name of “freedom” or “independence”? And call that blatantly censorship, when there are instead public guidelines by Steam and their partners? Don´t you wish for (young) people to develop good values instead of becoming delusional with child pornography, incest, violence, gore and such? What are your values here?
It isn’t about the actual games being targeted. It’s everything about the implications of having a private company dictate what content I can buy with my own money. If they cave to lobby group once, they will do it again. Next time it might be something you care about instead.
Alright, I understand your point. But I only partially agree with it. Hear me out: You want a free marketplace to buy whatever you wish, without any dictations? - But any market or shops you can think of has some regulations and dependencies, right? The one who offers the platform dictates what and how it is traded, as far as it has been. And even more if banks or transaction processors are involved, who also have a say. Not ideal, I agree, but the norm. How do you want to technically solve this? By their own transaction service, like some suggest here? Not sure if that helps, because you might create a new monopoly.
And at the same time, we discuss this here, people demand transparency and environmently responsability for all the delivery chains. Like for clothing or food. - Is that not what happens here? The banks as part of the service chain are pushing Valve to implement stricter rulings about critical content. For me, that looks like what people would ask for. Correct me, if I am wrong.
I think people are mostly upset about some bank telling them how they are allowed to spend their money (by restricting what is available for sale). What if those big banks decide that, say, R-rated movies are too much of a liability for them and demand retailers stop carrying them? I’m not sure what an alternative would be, but allowing a bank to decide what you can spend your money on is a bad precedent given that everyone is basically required to have a bank account these days.
It’s dictated by the law in my country. It’s either legal or it isn’t. The laws are decided through democracy and debated before implementation or changes. VISA doesn’t need to meddle. I have to follow the law, and so do they. We don’t need arbitrary whims on top of that.
Your last paragraph is a false comparison. There’s nothing transparent about what content is currently on the card companies hatelist and what they deem ok. Several LGBTQ related games got hit as well. The transparency in regards to food and clothing is about letting me take informed choices about the products I buy. Cards companies are still letting me buy clothes made by factory slaves and sold via Temu. They don’t care. I have to take that moral standpoint to buy more ethical clothing if I find that the morally correct thing to do. If I want cheap clothing made by slaves I can, with the blessing of my Mastercard. It’s certainly legal.
I’d probably rather buy a porn game made by someone who cared enough about it to make it as a passion project, than a AAA title made with the blood and tears of exploited, underpaid developers to fill the pouches of some overpaid ceo. If ethics is something to value, at least.
@cosmo@lemmy.world, you have solid good points here! - Yes, the laws are democratically set and don’t need extra intereference by VISA, Mastercard or else. It is just my opinion that Valve has been very liberal on his marketplace and not removing critical content themselves. I think, that is what led to the interference in addtion to lobbyist behind the payment processors.
Yeah, my comparison was flawed. But I got the idea across. Right, the transaction process is not transparent, especially not without publishing the “hatelist”. - Especially good point here with the ethical aspect! There seems to be some double standard by VISA etc. about what is acceptable and what is not. I disagree with that, of course, as I still believe in ethical values also when consuming games. ;-) So enjoy you porn game, als long as it has legal themes.
Actually, I am convinced. The article was bad and confused my inital kowledge about the issue. But thank you all for the (mostly) civil discussion. The petition unfortunately is outside my jurisdiction, so I can not sign. But I will keep an eye on the topic.
No worries! The article lacked a lot of important information, absolutely. What worries me a lot is that this activist group also isn’t friendly towards LGBTQ groups and has been trying to get games like GTA banned, as well as Detroit: Become Human, to give a few examples. I find it worrying when these kinds of activist groups gets a fot inside the door, because they sure won’t stop at banning incest games (whether it’s porn or a serious attempt to create a meaningful story about abusive relationships). No one really cares about the porn games that much, I think, but I don’t want potentially good games gone as collateral damage, because some games are trash.
Fully agree, that is worrying and they should not get a foot inside. Better if we would find some safe algorithm or independent moderation to filter the content according to law and ethics. And some independent payment service might also be helpfull, but no blockchain type, please. After all these years, I still don’t understand the hate against LGB… groups. But it surely looks like the hunting the witches, Roma or Jews in the past. The are a distinctive minority and thus a good target, unfortunately.
Don´t you wish for (young) people to develop good values…
Sounds like a fucking dog whistle for sure. Get off lemmy.
“Dog whistle”? Like for right wing talk? That is not what I am or what I mean. What is wrong about developing values? Being supportive to people is one value or finding moral standards, for example. That’s what I talk about.
An ml account wanting to have private companies decide what people are able to see and what not.
Guess you just want to live in an authoritarian world no matter who’s ruling
What does my account origin has to do with that? Please explain. No, I don’t want to live in an authoritarian world. But I appreciate businesses following certain moral standards, like banning child porn in every aspect.
Why not enforce these standards through legislation, then? Doesn’t the world’s payment processor, a political body you can’t appeal to when it fucks up, seem a bit heavy-handed?
You’ve got some good points here! These standards are usually enforced by law, just Valve/Steam is extremly liberal on his marketplace. But I fully agree, then the other bodies do not need to interfere, especially when they are so hard to be checked.
Edit: Still, in some way, I wish that companies throughout every service chain would implement and follow these moral standards and laws. And follow though, if they find negligence by other parties. (Kind of a “check and balance” thing.)
It’s about the danger posed by a monolithic government or corporation deciding what things get to be traded and sold. Like a fucked up capitalist version of that poem “First They Came”.
Oh, interesting! I know the poem. But I find it a harsh comparison to the situation about Valve’s new regulation. And I did not see it as such a highly-charged political topic. But apparently it is. To me it does not look like “a monolitic corporation”, as you can still buy games elsewhere. But I surely see the influence that the big banks/transactors have on Valve here. - But would you limit this? Any technical solutions? On the other hand, if Valve would have implemented stricter rules for critical games themselves earlier, we would not have that problem/discussion now. (Please also see my other answer below.)
To be clear, I’m talking primarily about Visa and Mastercard, the payment processors, not Valve. Those two companies have a pretty big stranglehold on the payment processing industry outside of possibly east Asia? I heard japan has their own payment processor, I assume it isn’t limited to just Japan.
Ok, yes. They are quite “heavy-wheight”. And I might agree with their action now, but maybe another time it might be problematic for me. Also, that’s how Capitalism works: The one with the money decide. But then, we should put pressure on them and not Valve! And the question remains: How would you solve that technically? (This is what the community is about. And I am looking for solutions, not problems here.)
The article mischaracterized the protest. If you read the change.org petition it’s about protesting Visa, Mastercard, and moral advocacy groups. The petition even goes as far as to point out the hypocrisy of the decision.
These same payment processors allowed platforms like OnlyFans to operate with minimal oversight, despite multiple credible reports and lawsuits alleging the presence of real sexual abuse content involving real-life minors. That is a criminal failure of responsibility. Yet, when it comes to entirely fictional depictions, these same companies act swiftly — shutting down creators, restricting access, and acting as global censors.
I wish I had a technical solution but I really don’t. As much as I can’t stand cryptocurrency in the way that it’s being implemented, this is the kind of problem blockchain technology could potentially eliminate. I think the bigger problem is social - people trust credit card companies because of things like charge backs and fraud protection. Shopping in a store is one thing but when you’re buying from a faceless digital store front people seem to want a third-party to secure things and protect their money.
There should just be a nationalized payment option.
I realize this sounds ridiculous given Trump’s government, but do keep in mind that Trump is the private sector. Ultimately, he represents credit card companies in this fight.
Is it a good thing that conservatives want to dismantle USPS? I don’t think so.
Maybe I’m wrong, but nothing about your side of this conversation seems like good faith in any way.
Just going to put that out there. Your comments reek of someone with zero intentions of challenging their pre-held belief, while pretending that’s not true.
No matter what evidence people bring up to you, you either ignore it or move the goalposts. Almost like there’s an agenda…
