Holy fuck why did Collective Shout go full nuclear and go behind the platforms’ back and straight to the payment processors. Like they could have at least talk to the Itch.io people.
If they wanted any games banned all they had to do was talk to the Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC) in Australia, where they’re based. Any of the games listed would have likely been added to the ‘Refused Classification’ list and thereby banned from sale and import in Australia. If they wanted them pulled from Steam or Itch entirely they could have talked to those platforms.
But they didn’t want to raise objections through appropriate preexisting channels, they wanted to push their Christian-based ideology on the whole world by going Karen on the social media of all the payment processors.
For the sake of data preservation of NSFW works: check out F95zone
Pages may contain free links to the data, but they should all contain social media links to the developers and creators as well so that you can actually purchase or contact.
I don’t get it. Do payment processors want less money? Do they hate being entrenched and bringing in revenue just for existing? Do they want us to try and find alternatives to them?
this bullshit is surely coming from the recently intensifying family friendlinessification of the internet, but why the fuck do payment processors care? i have no idea. are they taking a cut of advertising revenue? do all ceos just want to appear as massive prudes? do they see children as an untapped market to exploit? or maybe they’re just fucking stupid? what is actually going on
Capitalism is creating a level of censorship that exceeded what the US government was ever able to do after the Warren court. Parts of this have been there for a long time. You can drop f-bombs on cable TV all you like; the FCC can’t do anything about it since it’s not over public airwaves. They generally don’t do that, because advertisers don’t like it. Capitalism set the rule, not the government.
YouTube has put this idea into overdrive. You can’t make a straightforward, monetized video about the Holocaust anymore, because the language you would have to use would violate YouTube’s written and unwritten rules. Meanwhile, actual fucking Nazis have had little issue using YouTube to spread their bullshit.
Credit card companies have had issues with porn sites in terms of fraud reporting. Not necessarily because of actual fraud–if the site you use is under CCbill, it’s fine–but because some guy’s spouse sees the card transactions, asks what this particular line is for, and he lies and says it’s probably fraud and he’ll call it in. Get more than a few of those, and the processor will always be flagged for review.
They do outright stop some of the more fringe porn. Bree Mills (of Adulttime) has said that they get limited by the credit card industry far more than the government. All the faux-incest videos go out of their way to mention in dialog that everyone is a step family and over 18. You won’t find scat on Kink.com, again because their payment processor won’t allow it.
That’s been the situation for a few decades, but it has gone beyond that in the last few years. They tried it on OnlyFans, and the company maneuvered things to show why that’s an incredibly bad idea, and then the card companies backed down. But they’re trying again elsewhere, and they’re starting to be successful. I severely doubt they had any significant fraud issues on Steam or itch.io, NSFW items or otherwise.
Ultimately, this stuff is a tiny slice of their revenue. If they want to shut it all down on a moral crusade, they will barely notice the hit to their numbers.
On a side note, I’d like the advocate that you should pay for porn if it’s within your means. You’ll often find better quality stuff at sites that properly run their sets with consent. If you like queer porn or unconventional body types, there are a lot of sites for that which just don’t show up on PornHub.
I think someone once told me its about charge backs. People will pay up for hours and hours of content (more for addicts) and then issue a chargeback, or otherwise say their card was stolen (how dare you insinuate I’m into that fetish! Type shit) and because there is no physical product to seize, the company is left with repeatedly eating investigation costs into fraudulent porn addicts.
E: I’m not judging anyone’s porn content, idgaf what you smack or flick to. Merely an observation of people not realizing how much they will charge their CC until statement time, and freak out and then chargeback, making the company susceptible to puritanical influence because “those damn porn users” keep costing the company money.
They make money hand over first for doing practically nothing… They’re perfectly happy with their current situation and the most important thing to them right now is not rocking the boat.
I mean, they have no problems offering transaction services to obvious scams like “find sex in your region” and other scammy find relationship websites.
This will never go away. Payment processors make life easy for most consumers, people like them. And as long as we have them, they hold all the power around how money can be used. And they will always be limited by governments and local laws.
If you don’t like the situation, use cash. If that’s too inconvenient Bitcoin is essentially your only other option.
Not even… They have the power because you gave it to them. States can take it away, but that’s worse, you don’t want that.
But it doesn’t really matter, it’s all connected. The payment processors control how money can be used and the state controls how they’re allowed to let you use it. And you let it all happen by voluntarily using a credit card.
Reist reviewed the controversial Netflix film Cuties (2020) for both her ABC Religion & Ethics column[20] and for the Christian newspaper Eternity.[21] She described the film as “a social critique on what happens when we allow misogynistic, violent, exhibitionist internet culture to ravage girls – training them to wield their immature bodies as currency.”[21] Reist related the film to the activism of Collective Shout: “In the past 10 years at Collective Shout, we have met many girls this age, who have felt the same pressures. Some have taken inappropriate pics and shared them, sexualising themselves either out of a sense of obligation, or because they have believed the lie that self-objectification is empowering or liberating.”[21] However, regarding certain scenes in the film, she wrote that “the complexity here is that in trying to make a serious ethical point about girls and sexuality, the girls may have been used unwittingly — but still inappropriately — to a noble end. The scene could have been filmed differently[.]”[20]
Yeah. As a society we seriously need to get on the same page about morality, but for my money it can’t come from a religious group tinkering with the beating heart of commerce. They may have points to make but it’s fruit of the poisoned tree.
Stuff like this is the strongest argument for a decentralized payment option. Hopefully some day crypto will not be so much a tool of monetary speculation and we can use it for that without having to have the same experience as the guy who bought a pizza with Bitcoin.
That’s what I always wanted “DeFi” to be, a systematic replacement for the legions of evil old banks who have happily collaborated with the worst institutions of the last several centuries.
You can thank Advance Australia for that. Huge think tank that likely bank rolls all this nonsense and more.
Also, down with Collective Shout! As someone who suffered child abuse, I condemn these cookers crusading under the guise of child protection. FFS, they were patting themselves on the back for stopping sales of plastic heads on Temu.
If it’s any consolation, I’m sure the American versions (Focus on the family, alliance defending freedom) are right there with them.
Props to them for figuring out a real way of imposing colonialism on impoverished countries and former colonies alike. Now their ideas and laws are spreading worldwide, like someone with diseases shitting into the local water supply. Ugh.
I have a terrible feeling that the people they duped won’t figure this out for 30 years or more, with some trappings lasting for 50+ years.
This probably has a lot to do with Texas’ new ID requirement law. These companies don’t want to have to collect IDs and be responsible for maintaining that database of PII.
not really. Collective Shout is a powerful collective that targets violence, adult content and i think also gaming in general even in contexts that make sense,
out of their sense what is right and wrong (which I and a lot of others dont agree with)
How do platforms like Patreon and OnlyFans circumvent this? I know OF had issues with payment processors in the past but I’m not sure what changes they implemented to stay compliant. There must be some way for itch.io to keep these things on their platform while not pissing off the payment processors (who can go fuck themselves btw, this is completely unnecessary)
Porn sites are categorized as high risk at these payment processors. So probably itch has to fall into the high risk category and incur higher fees or remove all porn content. If you fall into the high risk category the payment platform will probably audit you more often and thus charge higher fees.
OF probably had these same issues because they didn’t start as a porn site.
I don’t think OnlyFans had to do much of anything in the end. There was just enough media stink about it to make it go away.
Credit card companies don’t have to make a consistently applied set of rules the way a government of laws does. They can make it all up for each individual site if they wish. Capitalism can create a censorship regime that’s stronger than nominally democratic governments are willing to do.
I began playing Runescape in 2007. I watched it go through so many changes over the years. The original game is now almost completely unrecognisable from the way it used to be!
I dipped in and out of OSRS for a few years as well. I no longer play it, but I logged into my account a few days ago. Here’s the stats I had before I quit
I also recently started playing osrs again. I highly recommend using the Runelite client! It has a lot of extra plugins that will both make the game look better, run better and help you with quests. You can choose how much help you want too. That plugin is called QuestHelper. Runelite is also acknowledged and accepted by Jagex so no worries on that front, the majority of osrs players use Runelite.
I can see how it can be confusing, let me shed some context:
I’m not against grinding, though that’s not exactly what I was looking for right now;
The last final fantasy I truly enjoyed was FF-X, which I bought on launch. That was more than 20 years ago;
Final Fantasy games can be REALLY grindy if you want to kill the ultra bosses but not if you just want to follow the plot. You can kill everything in Final Fantasy 8 without gaining a single level (it’s actually easier that way…);
My tastes in gaming have changed quite a bit over the years…
I loved Dark Souls 1/3 and just couldn’t enjoy Elden Ring any more;
I recently-ish tried Final Fantasy 6, which is widely regarded as the best, and didn’t click for me;
Random battles in particular became a big turnoff for me
I mean, I tried FFX and once I got to the Seymour Wedding I dropped the game because I was apparently too low level (I do absolutely zero grinding in games, I hate grinding and random battles the most from JRPGs). There was some gauntlet of multiple forced battles one after the other I think with flamethrower guards and my party was on low HP, had no healing items, and I had to save state scum just to pass it. I think I was around level 20? Maybe 30? I dont remember. I just remember the fight with the flying dragon on the ship was very difficult and the fight with Shiva (which also is not explained very well in-game to the point I had to look up what to do just to find out Shiva was added as an Aeon) was also veey difficult, both requiring save scumming.
Then the cutscene where Yuna just completely gives up on everything she believed in as a character up to that point and that was kinda the straw that broke the camels back. That scene, combined with the few cutscenes right before between the thief girl and Waka just felt absurdly out of character to me. I didnt appreciate what was going on and up to that point I wasnt loving the game either so I dropped it.
Also didnt like Blitz Ball. Played it for the tutorial and the forced tournament, but never played it outside of those forced moments.
Mostly I kept thinking how much I would have preferred if the main character was Jecht. Less annoying voice actor and better visual design than Tutus IMO. His story seemed to be way more interesting too.
I never played Breath of Fire, so I can’t say much on it. But I did play a bit of Legend of Dragoon. It seemed cool, but my save file got corrupted and I havent wanted to start a new game.
Could also try Koudelka, which combines true Survival Horror elements with strategy/tactical RPG combat.
Seymour battles can be very challenging but there’s always a gimmick or gear to mitigate their attacks. It’s up to the player to figure it out. The only fight I did have trouble in one of my (too many) runs was in Mount Gagazet, that one can be tough if you don’t have zombie ward or a way to inflict poison.
Unless you’re going for the Dark Aeon’s you can totally skip Blitzball. If you don’t enjoy it you’re not really losing anything. I did like the concept of Blitzball in general, at first I thought it was fun. However, the matches become brain-dead easy really fast and each match lasts 10+ minutes, which is wayyy too long. It’s a huge time sink and the rewards are absurdly bad for the invested time (An ether, seriously? A single ether?)
I have to somewhat agree with you about Jecht. Instead of FFX-2, they should have done a FFX-0 where you follow Jecht’s pilgrimage instead. I’d play that!!!
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