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I think it’s hilarious we allow stuff like Postal or Soldier of Fortune without a question, where the whole focus is on going crazy and murdering a whole bunch
by Aeolun 1y ago
I think it’s hilarious we allow stuff like Postal or Soldier of Fortune without a question, where the whole focus is on going crazy and murdering a whole bunch of people.
But try to show a sensual human body, instead of one that’s ripped into small pieces, and oh my god, this is going too far!
- deadbabe 1y agoI think this is a bit of a strawman. The market for people who get addicted to gruesome gore and are willing to pay money to see it is several orders of magnitude smaller than people willing to pay to see porn or OnlyFans. There is simply far more risk with adult content as a result and a lot more chargebacks from disatisfied customers with a post nut clarity.
- edoceo 1y agoAre you saying porn buyers regret and that gore buyers do not? (As a broad generalization). Are you also asserting that's built in to risk-profole that payment gateways have?
- johnebgd 1y agoI don’t have time for o look at the stats and provide quotes / cite sources but it does seem from what I’ve read on the topic that the more people play gore games the less violence there is in society. If that’s true, maybe it’s also true that the more people have access to adult content the less babies we create as a society. A society shrinking causes a number of issues.
- achenet 1y agoCorrelation is not causation. The US had more TVs per capita than Congo, and a higher life expectancy. Sending more TVs to Congo probably won't do much for their life expectancy though. Similarly, I suspect the increase in violent video games and reduction of actual violence is just a side effect of an increasingly technology driven society.
- Nevermark 1y agoSo grotesque violence appeals to fewer people, but banning gets focused on material more people find acceptable, even desirable? This really is a culture/posture driven issue. It is not as if many people think (emphasis on "think", as in being honest, reasoning carefully and being scientific about evidence) that banning sexy curves in a video game is going to impact the prevalence of sexy curve imagery, or "save" anyone from anything. Imagine if financial companies required their employees to sign a legal statement committing to not "use porn, escorts, blow ... or spicy video games!" So strange that they don't do that!! Financial companies like to make a show of having "high standards" when it comes to "controversial" segments of the market, or unfortunate individuals who don't fit the mold, when that gets them a lot of showy theatre for being hard asses to their audience of regulators. While keeping very quiet, and not looking into things too hard, when it comes to tens of billions of sketchy dollars going through their systems associated with very high net worth criminal actors, organizations and corrupt governments. Epstein did not lack for financial services.
- deadbabe 1y agoWhat a gross endorsement of Jeffery Epstein.
- cindyllm 1y ago[dead]
- Nevermark 1y agoPerhaps re-read with more care? There was no endorsement of Epstein. There was a callout of multiple types of bank hypocrisy. Contrasting bank's "concerns" about small time erotic material vs. their lack of concern about employees use of erotic material, and the blind eyes they turn for major criminals, include prolific trafficking/pedophilic billionaires.
- simpaticoder 1y agoThe GP highlights a classic observation: America's nearly unique cultural contradiction, where nudity and sex are considered highly offensive, while gore and violence are widely accepted.
- winchester6788 1y agoThis holds true in most other countries as well. Gore/ chopping of appendages is happily accepted and enjoyed (in movies, games etc) by all of India, whilst a simple kiss can be a taboo/ issue.
- Jach 1y agoJapan has some of the weirdest/inconsistent rules around this stuff. Black lines or mozaic partial censorship of genitals, incest/stuff with minors widely available, and then you have some pretty violent uncensored movies, manga/anime, and games (though while it's mostly a China thing, sometimes the blood gets censored to be white instead of red which doesn't actually make it better (also sometimes done for urine)), GTA5 is as popular there as anywhere, but game franchises like Mortal Kombat are banned. And of course, even in America, we tend to like our violence and gore more over-the-top and simulated. Most people didn't care for liveleak type content, even fewer for not so hard to find footage from ongoing wars.
- numpad0 1y agoJapan runs custom scratch-built implementation of ethics reverse engineered from Western cultures. That's all. Consistence is key, but it's consistent only with itself, and nothing else, and explicitly not aligned to Christian religious scripts. Nothing Japanese is compatible with anything unless and until it is the sole dominant standard, like Sony storage media or Apple hardware. Always has been.
- arrowsmith 1y agoThis really isn't unique to America.
- zulban 1y agoYou must be American if you think very violent games are not extremely popular.
- the_af 1y ago> There is simply far more risk with adult content as a result and a lot more chargebacks from disatisfied customers with a post nut clarity. Do you have any evidence to back this wild claim? I've never heard this argument about chargebacks made before. I don't think it's about this at all. I think it's about policing content, but then the observation of GP's comment applies: why is violence ok, but sex is not?
- tptacek 1y agoYou could just ask, "why do payment processors pressure content vendors not to offer this kind of content". You're starting from the premise that there's some weird puritan thing happening, but there's really nothing puritan about American business culture. There are other explanations! You can get a long ways just by assuming that the people involved in these transactions are utterly amoral.
- dilyevsky 1y agoIf by “people involved” you mean folks who consume this kind of content then id totally agree. As soon as you offer crypto or even mildly sexual content your cc abuse rate goes through the roof. Which i suspect is the sole reason for processors getting upset in this case
- Ayesh 1y agoIs that not a similar or higher percentage for games with loot boxes or other sorts of gambling?
- dilyevsky 1y agoI bet it has higher chargeback percentage too and they probably pay higher fees. iirc if merchant is getting close to 2% fraud to sales ratio, they can get banned for life. It's probably different rules when you're the size of Valve though...
- bryanrasmussen 1y agoOK well this is interesting information, what are the connections between crypto or even mildly sexual content exactly that create this phenomenon? I mean they do not seem to be related - if you said crypto or drawings of currency I would say huh, well they are sort of related, but the graph connection between crypto and even mildly sexual content would seem to me to be about as tenuous as that between crypto and meat eating. So why do these two things cause credit card abuse to go through the roof? Furthermore if it caused the credit card abuse to go through the roof wouldn't Valve just remove it of their own accord - at some point the abuse would mean money was taken away from Valve right? Finally the article doesn't give this as a reason why it was removed - it said "violate the rules and standards set forth by our payment processors" - which sure, that may mean "high rates of credit card abuse were reported", but I doubt it. Anyway, a link to studies of this phenomenon? ps: I would probably believe credit card abuse increase under crypto, due no doubt to my innate prejudices.
- thallium205 1y agoAdult content is considered a high risk merchant category - meaning it is susceptible to high chargeback and fraud rates. This is because after someone pays for and consumes adult content, a certain level of "clarity" overcomes them resulting in the execution of chargebacks against the merchant. It has nothing to do with any sort of puritanical premise.
- boredatoms 1y agoThey should instead charge a higher transaction fee on those items to cover that risk
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- delusional 1y agoThat sounds like a reasonable argument. We should force them to make it publicly with data. Maybe even force them to release aggregate statistics every quarter going forward.
- GrantMoyer 1y agoI don't think that can explain why they're only targeting certain sub-categories of porn, and it's also contradictory to the public statements by Valve: > We were recently notified that certain games on Steam may violate the rules and standards set forth by our payment processors and their related card networks and banks Individual games violating "rules and standards" doesn't really fit with prohibiting a category because of high rates of fraud.
- creer 1y agoThat seems disingenuous. (1) in this case, this is a not a tiny fly-by-night wannabe game company. (2) which is good for paying back (or never seeing) the money of chargebacks. For a new company, the risk of chargebacks might rest on a credit card company (for a little while anyway). But not for a long established one.
- JimDabell 1y ago
- tempodox 1y agoSame with movies. Piles of dead bodies are OK for children to watch but naked skin would be highly damaging.
- scott_w 1y agoI mean, these films usually get rated 15 or 18 in the UK, so I’d not say it’s “OK for children to watch.”
- k1t 1y agoI think that's the classic US/UK culture split though. US is strict on language and nudity, but comparatively lax on violence (except blood). UK is lax on nudity and language (comparatively), but very strict on violence. UK being the country that considered the word "ninja" too violent for children, for example.
- ashoeafoot 1y agoViolence is pretty okay in the middle east, which makes it socially acceptable by inheritance in the uk.
- scott_w 1y agoI’m pretty sure GTA has never been rated below M which, as I recall, is 17+. Not a massive difference between that and BBFC’s 18 rating…
- TheOtherHobbes 1y ago[flagged]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- philwelch 1y ago> Republicans literally argue it's better for the country to have school shooters and for survivors and parents to live with PTSD for the rest of their lives than to limit access to military-grade weapons. Can you quote any Republican who has “literally argued” this or are you just spreading lies that make it easier for you to vilify and dehumanize people who disagree with you politically?
- lofaszvanitt 1y agoMastercard and Visa needs some serious competition. How come a payment company decides who to partner with and dictates what people use their system for. Ridiculous bullshite. At the same time those "games" that were affected, well, who on earth pays for that seriously fucked up crap? People need to get a grip. I'd rather send a psycho team to evaluate people who pay for these games... note: PCGAMER the epitome of games journalism. They didn't even checked which were the affected banned games.
- johnb231 1y ago[flagged]
- DecentShoes 1y agoI hereby declare that everything you like should be banned.
- johnb231 1y ago[flagged]
- simion314 1y ago>Implying that you like the idea of fucking your own children. You have just exposed yourself. You imply that people that play shooter games like the dea of killing people, and people that play GTA like the ideas of being criminals and killing cops and innocents, do this people also exposed themselves? Do you also imply same things for movie watchers and book readers ? And metal listeners are Satanists right ? If we let the Christian extremists ban something without any proof then they will move to the next thing and soon enough they will ban your favorite video game because it gives you the option to be bisexual. (I read about such extremists moving from Texas to Ruzzia since Texas is not Christian enough, it did not end well)
- MrMetric 1y agoBad-faith argument. Incest can also be between adult same-age siblings or cousins (and not everyone considers the latter case to be incest). Also, I don't insult or look down on sick or disabled people. Why are you?
- oatmeal1 1y agoGender of who is murdered has a lot to do with it too. I don't think you'll find a video game where you predominantly kill women. The most infamous scene of murder in video games is the Call of Duty mission "No Russian" where you optionally commit terrorism at an airport. If you pay attention you'll notice they kill much more men than women, and made sure that despite pleasant weather none of the women were wearing dresses or skirts. Murder of men is a lot more digestible.
- bfg_9k 1y agoThis genuinely baffles me. Who cares! It's a video game. It's pixels on a screen. True crime podcasts and movies are a-okay but when its a video game that's where the line is drawn?
- ronjakoi 1y agoI think it's about the simulation and agency that video games afford the consumer.
- josephg 1y agoI suspect all new frontiers are like this. There was probably a similar outcry over violence in films. And maybe violence in fictional books too. Both long lost from living memory. It does feel different in a video game, because you're the one pulling the trigger. I played that CoD mission when the game came out, and I felt a bit sick in my stomach playing that mission out. But I'd probably have exactly the same feeling from violence in films if I wasn't so desensitised to it after growing up watching american movies and tv shows. Its just new.
- ashoeafoot 1y agoNow i imagine control concerned mothers rallying against papyrus which ruins the youth for healthy outdoor activities like warfare, sieges and murder.
- 0xcafefood 1y agoThere are still taboos even for pixels on a screen, even for video games. It's a good thing. There should be. Perhaps you're just saying that you're mostly comfortable with the depiction of some forms of violence in some contexts. But what about other scenarios though? Would you feel the same about a game where the player runs around raping women, or capturing and lynching escaped slaves? It's just pixels!
- johnb231 1y ago[flagged]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- northhnbesthn 1y agoTo be fair, Postal and SOF haven’t been relevant in almost 20 years, though your point stands. I wonder how a modern implementation of these two games would look given the vast visual improvements since then. I assume UE5 or 6 already comes with a Ghoul-esque framework ready to go. Though I hope they would feature a curmudgeon caricature of Jack Thompson.
- masklinn 1y agoTBF that’s US media culture going back several decades.
- philwelch 1y agoThis isn’t about “trying to show a sensual human body”, it seems to be about incest porn specifically. There are still plenty of pornographic games available on Steam, even absurdly offensive ones such as the multi-part “Sex with Hitler” series.
- pipes 1y agoThe difference I see is that the player is getting sexual pleasure from what is being simulated in porn type games. I.e. they are trying to simulate the feeling of doing that in real life. Where as in violent games like soldier of fortune I doubt most players are trying to achieve the feeling of brutally killing another human being.
- aaaja 1y agoYes and often with pornography it involves the abuse of women and girls, and depicting this as a positive action. It's probably not the main reason why payment processors are banning and restricting purchases, but it should be.
- hulitu 1y agoI also find it hilarious. Killing people in movies and video games get a lower age rating than sex. And religious groups talking about protecting children (while raping them) is hypocrisy at its finest.
- martin-t 1y agoI agree with the fact there is hypocricy. I disagree that either should be banned. (Maybe you didn't mean it that way but somebody with us the argument that way) If group A wants to control group or person B, they should prove with very high certainty that group B's behavior is harmful to someone who is not B.
- ErigmolCt 1y agoIt's like we've collectively decided that digital gore is fine for teens, but a boob requires a Senate hearing. The irony is, one actually mirrors real-world trauma a lot more closely than the other