Probably because it’s a hell of a lot easier than trying to figure out how to manage payment processing without those processors. Visa and Mastercard are extremely large, and by-and-large the only way to pay online in the US. Add in Paypal and Stripe’s limitations (which are also notoriously shitty) and you don’t really have many options left, so it’s really not worth it. I know the EU has better options, but Steam isn’t based there and I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t want to find a way to jump through those hoops.
What goal do the payment processors have for doing things like this, is it just that they like knowing that they have the ability to control what you are and aren’t allowed to enjoy? I ask this because normally, when services change their policies, it’s done to improve profits. But from what I can tell, the payment processors can only lose money because they are eliminating potential revenue sources.
I will admit that I have no interest in any of the games that were removed, I’ve never even heard of them before today, but I don’t agree with payment processors having the ability to sensor content over some schizo bullshit.
Porn-related transactions have a higher than average rate of chargebacks. Maybe post-nut clarity motivates people to say “wait hold on I shouldn’t have spent that money, I must’ve been hacked.” Or maybe it’s people saving face when confronted with a transaction log from their spouse or other family members. Or maybe it’s just the type of transaction that actual card fraudsters gravitate towards, so that there really is a higher percentage of unauthorized transactions.
Gambling-related merchants also have a similar problem with payment processors. For many of them, it’s just straightforward business concerns, not any kind of ethical issue in itself.
The problem with that is that, at least with PayPal, they charge a fee to the service provider (Steam, in this case) for chargebacks. And, from what I’ve heard, that fee is significantly more than the original cost.
Every credit card company charges large fees to the service provider for charge backs. It’s standard practice. This is also leads to service providers straight up perma-banning customers who initiate charge backs instead of resolving a dispute with the provider.
It could also be the result of government pressure. Which government? No idea, but it may be easier to implement it system wide than try to build a regional filter to ban payments in one country but allow it in others.
Excited to see a new game from the Mario Odyssey team, and excited that this one seems to have turned out well! I wish i had anything else to say about this game, but it literally just came out today. I usually don’t play new releases and I never buy a console in the first year of release, so…I look forward to playing this on a Switch 2 or emulator in 5 years. lol
Tap for spoilerCOMPLETELY BIGLY FAKE STORY THE EXAMPLE IS LITERAL FAKE NEWS TO SHOW AN EXAMPLE NEWS STORY of what CHILLING CONSEQUENCES THIS COULD HAVE (so don’t get mad at me if you can’t read)
After the CEO of Visa met with President Trump, Visa has announced that they will no longer allow payments from gaming storefronts that host “obscene” content and media content that run afoul of the vision that the Trump Administration has for America. As such all games that feature LGBTQ, DEI, and “anti-american sentiment” will be removed from sale on Steam. Visa CEO says that “we need to be better as a collective whole” and that “this filth” has no place in being in circulation.
He added that “we look forward to working with the Trump Administration to make America and the rest of the world great.” Trump added on Truth Social that “I am working with Visa to make sure that DEI and WOKENESS ARE NEVER ACCEPTED AND DON’T COME BACK TO OUR GREAT NATION. WOKEISM IS NOW DEAD WITH VIDEO GAMES…” He also said the "radical left in Hollywood would “be next.”
Thousands of independent game developers including award winning games such as Celeste and “Undertale” have decried on X and social media that these “chilling” policies as some said this are “pure authoritarianism of free thought”
i really hope this won't affect yaoi and sapphic visual novels they're not really p*rn but given the way governments are using censorship to crack down on lgbtq communities and spaces i'm worried.
So what you're saying is we need a religious themed sex game? I think I follow. You have to fight your way through the 12 apostles and then you and Jesus bang. Its like Mortal Kombat, but with sandals and a lot of baby oil.
I think it’s not that easy. From what I understand, the payment providers enforce that for the whole store, otherwise they don’t want to be involved. Quite shitty, but they have enough weight to pull shit like that off.
You can literally just “buy” stuff, and put whatever your currency is, in your wallet. so the transaction was already made, to no specific product. How are they able to track that, is utter nonsense. This is just the companies forcing them to do their bidding. I mean if those games have questionable content (and by that I mean pedophilia or zoophilia), I do agree with that, and I feel that is a responsibility from Valve itself, not other companies.
The problem isn’t that they’re private, the problem is that there’s not many to choose from. Visa gets to throw their weight around, because they have a stranglehold on a huge swath of banks and businesses. MasterCard has another big chunk, and the rest go to AmEx and Discover.
If there were more providers to choose from, this would be a non-issue, but that wouldn’t be very capitalist (/s), and I doubt the big names would simply allow new competition.
The reason there’s so few is because people don’t want to have to figure out beforehand whether or not they can use the payment provider they have at the store they want to go to.
I’ve seen this happen multiple times especially in Japan when the barcode payment craze started. There were like 13 competing payment providers and now there are 2. Because people don’t want to have to carry around 13 different types of card or payment types and have 13 different types of payments. They want one that works everywhere.
It’s why there needs to be sovereign digital payment systems that are legally enforced.
Yeah, like what need is there for these intermediaries in the first place? I get that there was probably a need once upon a time, but that seems superfluous now
In Germany we usually use Debit bank cards for payment (if something like a credit card isnt included).
The GiroCard is standard across all banks and usually every shop accepts that method.
Problem is: They don’t work on the interwebz.
where do we think we would be at at this point if electronic payments were handled by government entities? Not trying to defend Visa or Mastercard, just genuinely curious what others think.
We’d be in the same place. It’s not any better or worse for a private versus a public entity to do harm.
Also, the government is already part of this. If the DOJ told Visa, “hey, stop fucking around with that, you don’t need to be trying to control legal agreements between parties, that’s our purview” (or if they even thought the DOJ might), they’d drop this behavior in an instant. They are doing this in large part because they believe it is in line with the government’s ideology. Preemptive compliance.
Every company is headquartered somewhere, or has some market that it cannot afford to withdraw from, and that makes them all ultimately subject to said governments. No business decision is made free from pressure when it comes to governments.
Again, the issue is this is an American company setting American content policy internationally.
Storefronts and brands can set up local branches and sell through those using the local digital payment provider without getting in trouble with their headquarter’d country. They can’t do that with a private entity that’s decided to set their global content policy to align with America’s.
Again, the issue is this is an American company setting American content policy internationally.
That is not the issue. That may be the subset of the issue that you have a problem with, but the actual issue is a payment provider setting purchase restrictions period. That it is happening in the US is not uniquely bad; it would be equally bad happening anywhere else.
Interpreting the international impact to be “the issue” would mean that if this were only affecting Americans, this would be fine, which is absolutely not the case.
Storefronts and brands can set up local branches and sell through those using the local digital payment provider without getting in trouble with their headquarter’d country.
To set up and sell in that country, they then have to comply with the local payment providers. Which shouldn’t be deciding whether people can purchase something, just as Visa shouldn’t be.
Wed probably be in a similar place, but the advantage of a private entity being that it can bridge the already existing digital payments, so if a store big enough like steam had the option to, they could integrate with that country’s digital payments directly.
At the workplace if anybody says “we’ve always done it this way” during a meeting where we tackle a problem, that means it’s time to change the hubris because it clearly doesn’t work for us anymore.
Right. It’s a system of economic exchange, not a moral position. There are ways around this system, but they’re time consuming and annoying to accomplish. So the vendors tend to take the path of least resistance when setting their internal policies. You were taught about Free Markets as this perfect, frictionless vacuum of interactions between buyers and sellers, but it doesn’t work that way and never did.
For some reason, people seem to confuse being naive and gullible with being moral and upstanding.
Did PayPal actually make valve remove them or did PayPal just say they didn’t want to provide payment processors for them and valve couldn’t be bothered to come up with a solution?
I can’t see why Paypal would care one way or the other if the games were available on the platform as long as PayPal don’t have to process the payment.
Luckly I. can buy anime porn games straight from source dev. Just checked and my Treasure Hunter Claire is still in my library, so guess this affects only unbought games? But I also bought the game direct too.
I don’t care about incest specifically, but I have to wonder where they’re drawing the line and why. If the games are depicting consenting adults, and only adults can download them, I don’t see the harm.
Did they target incest because it’s “icky?” What if they decide other perfectly legal things are icky? Shouldn’t legality be the line?
It’s not illegal to depict incest, the same as it is not illegal to depict many types of acts that many would consider immoral or even acts that are explicitly illegal, like bestiality, necrophilia, or rape. There might be an argument for regulating content that depicts illegal acts on the grounds that it normalizes or potentially glorifies these acts, but that isn’t likely the reason for this. I think it is mostly a corporate choice and partially a legal issue.
I am against this partially because it is arbitrary but mostly because I don’t like a precedent set towards banning things on moral grounds.
Right, that would be you arguing moral grounds. If you were to argue that Nazis are covered under hate speech, that is fine because hate speech is illegal. There’s the difference, right? Depicting Nazis isn’t illegal (in most places), and could be allowed, but hate speech is illegal.
Paypal and other payment processors are wellknown to set up arbitrary rules. They held the money of an 100% legal and fine erotica author hostage for months, for example. Incest games vanishing is just step 1 of their censorship.
And next they will come for other labels deemed “against the rules” without elaborating. Porn is the canary. You can “lol incest” but this is about taking down what folks cant argue with first then the next will be porn at all, then queer stuff, just like tumblr
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