I don’t choose a payment processor over their morality standards. I choose how to spend my own money, not them. They shouldn’t have a say in that matter.
Time to start lobbying governments. EU/USA legislation stating that outside of legal violations, a payment processor is not allowed to refuse a legitimate legal transaction.
Apparently payment processor. Singular. Stripe. Visa/MS never changed it’s policy and still allows NSFW content, they’re not even a payment processor. It feels a bit bonkers now that internet bombed them when they weren’t even involved with this mess and it was just Stripe. On the bright side, itch.io already announced they’re ditching them and are in talks with other payment processors.
Another side note - If it was Visa/MS themselves, they could not switch to other payment processor as all card payment processors work with visa/ms.
Steam is awfully silent, but that’s pretty normal of Gabe, transparency has never really been the strong side for Valve. Then again, steam never mentioned Visa/MS. In fact, they never mentioned any company names, only itch dared to do that, but seeing as both got hit at the same time, you don’t need to be a genius to figure out steam has likely the same problem as itch.io
True, but what did Valve actually delist on Steam? I frequent the AO section and everything has appeared to be business as usual in there. I had honestly not even heard about the pressures on Steam until I saw the stuff about Itch.
The extremist group that convinced the payment processor is already targeting horror games next. They will not stop until they can dictate every media choice available
For anyone who wants to help stop them, reach out to their partners who fund them. Most of the orgs would not be happy to know they’re financially supporting a LGBTQ hate group.
These are Australian companies, and are not used to any sort of serious pressure from the public. They will drop CollectiveShout quickly if it looks like bad press for them.
Why the actual apeshit are people giving them death threats??? That won’t solve anything… as much as I hate this group of extremists, that’s the wrong way… open letters, publicity, etc.
I expected potentially shitty management of next gen Valve employees to ruin Steam, not this.
Worst case scenario if it get worse, what will the alternatives be in the future? Since most stores use these processors, would a store need to open up without them, or can the current ones decided to stop using them? I assume Steam won’t pull out even if they could, since it sounds like financial suicide when most of the customers are there for convenience.
Is there any way to see a list of whats been removed from both platforms? I know a lot of archiving is going on for Itch, but is there any site that’s popped up to show what’s been removed on both platforms?
It was only a matter of time. Well now what are we waiting for ? Let’s go after the easy target, CollectiveShout & end them & then use the example to “convince” payment processors to back off while simultaneously constructing alternatives
And here we go… the inevitable conclusion. If you deviate from a fundamentalist ideal of the norm then your existence is pornographic by its very nature.
If you read the article, it does not say there has been a second wave or something targetting LGTBQ+ games. It is one person saying their comic was SFW and was delisted.
We should definitely fight back regardless, don’t get me wrong, but as of yet there has not been LGBTQ+ targetting.
The author of the SFW comic should contact itchio and ask why their game was deindexed, since itch did MASSIVE removal of all “adult” and NSFW content beyond what their payment processors asked, as to evade any issue and then reindex according to them.
Again, we should be alert, and we should monitor their firther actions closely, but it’s not time yet to cry wolf with the LGBTQ+ targetting.
At least in the US, it’s full of regulatory red tape that was designed to pull up the ladder behind the current large payment processors.
Even Musk and his ample bribe money, under the most corrupt administration in decades, hasn’t managed to get full approval for his “X Twitter Money” payment service.
Steam can 100% enter any market they want, especially something entirely digital like online payment processing. That’s pretty closely related to what they do already. They just have to have a reason to want to do so.
Steam makes a reported $3.5 million per employee from commissions alone. Possibly as much at $19 million per head across the board. To put that into perspective, Facebook, one of the most profitable companies on the planet, averages a net income of $780,000 per employee, and Apple at $476,000 per employee.
Steam may not be as large as those companies, but they’re so effectively streamlined. So much of their profits come from existing systems that only need minimal maintenance as opposed to needing to constantly develop new products. It is a well-oiled money printing machine at this point. And nothing they do is based on any sort of speculation bubble threatening to burst at any point.
This is BS. Whatever payment processor they develop will need to interact with all of the major credit card processors: VISA, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express. All credit and debit cards use these four brands as the backing network. There is no way around it.
Nobody is going to add a new credit card brand, not even Steam. Amazon doesn’t do it. Twitter doesn’t do it. Ebay doesn’t do it. Nobody does. If they did, they would face immediate retribution from the VMDA empire. Their payments would cease, and Steam would collapse overnight.
That’s almost surely a result of how Valve works internally for approving projects. They operate with a flat management structure. With no bosses or managers, the employees themselves choose which projects to work on. The philosophy is that Valve only hires the best, and they should operate at their best doing what they enjoy instead of simply being told what to do.
Every employee at Valve is given the freedom to join whatever project they choose, or to create a new one. They are encouraged to work on what they feel if the most important project to the company and what will have the highest direct impact on their customers.
If the Valve employees wanted to make Half Life 3, they would. At this point the joke is that Valve simply can’t count to three. It feels like they want to keep that joke going more than make another Half Life game. Half Life 1 and 2, them Episode 1 and Episode 2, Portal 1 and Portal 2, Team Fortress and Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike and Counter-Strike 2. Several of these have had other interim releases, especially Counter-Strike, but those were always based on the previous game and not a totally new game from scratch, much like the Half Life Episodes.
Should be feasible, many of my bills allow it. If there’s an issue w/ lag, they could always allow it only for wallet top-ups and people could use that.
But I think the issue is that if they accept these payment processors at all, they need to comply w/ their policies. Completely cutting them off could significantly hurt sales.
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