Since this is caused by activist pressure on the payment processors, perhaps a grassroots activist campaign of our own could change their mind. Especially if we threaten to stop using their services in favor of any competitor that allows all legal purchases.
Hopefully you’re referring to Visa/Paypal, not Itch.
One place that comes to mind is Verotel. I barely know them, but supposedly one of their star attributes is their use for adult businesses. Likely someone else knows them better.
visa have similar restrictions… the issue is that payment processor, merchant, card network, issuing bank, and acquiring bank (and a few more) are all different layers to facilitating a transaction… there are very few card networks in the world, and essentially people pay online using mostly either just visa or mastercard
technically you could probably run a site that only accepts amex, diners club, jcb, discover, etc but it really wouldn’t go well: people want to whip out their card (often their only method of online payment) and just pay and go
you’d also need to find a payment processor that would be comfortable taking on the risk of facilitating transactions around mastercard and visa… they might just cut them off from access to their network. sounds like extortion? yeah welcome to the world of banking, where in any other industry it’d be called a cartel
making things even more difficult is that by law in the US payment processors must offer at least 3 (i think? it might be 2?) “routes” (these things aren’t always straight forward - sometimes there are multiple card networks involved), so you probably have to have a pretty mature payment processor because they’d have to accept several of the alternative card networks
oh and you have to push various stats to the federal reserve which is a massive back and forth bureaucratic challenge even above the technical challenge of interfacing with some pretty awful systems. it often takes over a year to get things sorted unless you’re a “too big to fail” type customer
there are a buuuuunch of other spanners that get thrown into the works, but i’m not sure where the NDA line hits so i’m gonna just leave it there and say trust me, payment processing (distinct from payment gateway) is an absolute nightmare mess
I’m not sure that works, like on a purely game theory level. If gamers start to apply pressure, threaten to stop buying games, the stores need to make a choice:
A. Risk facing the wrath of the gamers, sales are likely to drop. Possibly by a lot, perhaps 15-20%. That could keep up for months before stabilizing.
B. Risk facing the wrath of the payment processors, credit card sales will stop immediately, only alternative payment types get through. Sales drop by 80% overnight, over time some users will seek alternative payment methods, possibly resulting in only 50% less revenue than expected…
While both of those options are bad, one of them is totally fatal to their business.
Those numbers are of course only speculation, but that’s my best guess.
I find it offensive that the only effective way to combat this is to fight fire with fire and also make a big bitchy noise about this like the conservatives love to do. I have better things I would rather be doing with my life. But such are the times we live in I suppose.
In the short term, I think that collectively being Karens about it would be able to reverse the pressure, by steering the monopolists away from oppressing us. Because they are mainly motivated by money.
It absolutely is. We only encourage gun and violence culture in real life, especially by authoritarian figures and their representatives. Allowing such in virtual spaces where no one can actually be hurt or killed runs counter to our patriotic ideals.
It’s already expanded. It started as going after “rape and incest” but now it’s all adult games. But a bunch of lgbtq games have already gotten hit. I am beyond furious.
i don’t know if any source has caught up yet, but a few days ago it was indeed just taboo kink games that were being targeted, now it seems all of itch.ios NSFW games are disappearing
I think all games being hit is a temporary measure while they get some sort of new process in place. We’ll see where things land.
Either way, card processing companies shouldn’t be dictating what kind of art consumers can consume, even if I don’t personally agree with the content of some of the worst offenders. If it’s not outright illegal, they can fuck off.
Direct link to the game because the creator restricted who can view their posts on Bsky. Only viewable via a link or from their profile now, searching the name only returns a bunch of other dress-up games, but not this one, presumably because of the „Transgender“ tag.
It’s gonna stop once they hit a category that includes big AAA games. Once they start cutting into the revenue of Call of Duty or Assassin’s Creed the big developers should take a stance.
Capitalism is a global problem, its not contained to america. Replace neighbors being kidnapped with which ever country you’re in supporting a genocide and it still fits, and is likely accurate unless you’re like in Yemen.
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.
What I say is that basically any alternative crypto coin is way more efficient than bitcoin and thus it would be dumb to go for bitcoin compared to the trillion other crypto coins.
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
bin.pol.social
Gorące