17 ms·
Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down
- nottorp 1y agoWrong title. "Mastercard finds out there are a lot of gamers out there, makes an attempt at damage control." would be more appropriate.
- v3ss0n 1y agoWhy you care about whatever we do with do with digital pixels at our free time ? Gamers trying to save the game they play and Master card have no business banning the games we play on our own private
- crinkly 1y agoA classic tale. Finger pointing between merchants, card providers and banks. All of them: it was someone else!
- yreg 1y agoIn this story, Itch and Valve are 10x more trustworthy than the card processors.
- crinkly 1y agoOh 100% agree there. It's who they have to deal with who are the problem.
- otherme123 1y agoThe fact that Visa and MasterCard are the primary payment options for OnlyFans, makes this story a mess. Some time ago Visa and MasterCard very vocally banned Pornhub (at least) from using their cards, 100% sure this comes from them.
- duped 1y ago> Visa and MasterCard very vocally banned Pornhub Not exactly. Visa was named as a counterparty in a class action against Mindgeek for monetizing child porn on their website. They lost, and there have been subsequent class actions.
- morkalork 1y agoYou mean like this? https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/aug/19/onlyfans-to-ban-adult-material-after-pressure-from-payment-processors https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/aug/19/onlyfans-to-... Ultimately the ban was undone in exchange for onlyfans limiting the type of content available on the platform. So effectively, payment processors dictate which type of sexual activities, performed by consenting adults, are OK to depict and sell. Why? Why do they have that power?
- xcrjm 1y agoThe government historically uses the the financial industry to police crimes and behavior that it does not want to or that it is not expedient to police directly. Clearly they like the outcomes of the payment networks' rules and enforcement decisions and see no need for things to change.
- o11c 1y ago> Some time ago Visa and MasterCard very vocally banned Pornhub (at least) from using their cards, 100% sure this comes from them. That was because the government was prosecuting Pornhub for breaking the law (rape with real people, unlike these games).
- vintermann 1y agoThat also suggests they do not want to out exactly who pushed them to this, whether it was external or internal.
- amiga386 1y agoBut it seems fairly straightforward who it is. If it was indeed Collective Shout's pressure campaign that led to Valve and itch.io being told by their payment processors to remove games, then this is how it went: Collective Shout -> Mastercard -> Mastercard's head of brand risk (or equivalent role) -> Mastercard's business partners -> Valve and itch.io We know it was Mastercard who told the payment processors what to do, as the rule they cited to Valve says "in the sole discretion of the Corporation, may damage the goodwill of the Corporation" -- the Mastercard Corporation used its sole discretion to tell payment processors what to tell Valve and itch.io. The payment processors did not decide this for themselves. Mob bosses order hits, wise guys carry them out. The mob boss has clean hands. Keep the pressure on Mastercard. We need to stop these side-channel attacks on democracy. If a government deems some media lawful, you shouldn't get to de-facto ban it by going after publicity-averse private companies that provide hosting, payment processing, etc. https://protectthestack.org/ https://protectthestack.org/
- 2Gkashmiri 1y ago[flagged]
- phkahler 1y agoTossing around "free speech" in this case is kinda silly. The first amendment only applies to the government, not some company.
- mathiaspoint 1y agoFree speech the idea applies to everyone. Free speech the implementation applies to the state's delegation of power to the federal government via the constitution.
- SSLy 1y agothe concept is not limited to what the US constitution specifies.
- reactordev 1y agoIncorrect, it applies to companies too as companies are citizens according to citizens united ruling over a decade ago.
- criley2 1y ago>Incorrect, it applies to companies too as companies are citizens according to citizens united ruling over a decade ago. This doesn't even make sense. If a corporation is a person, then 1A Freedom of Speech means that the government cannot restrict the corporations political speech. The corporation is absolutely allowed to restrict their users free speech, including political speech, because A) the bill of rights only binds the government, not corporations and B) it would actually be against free speech to compell a private corporation to engage in speech it does not agree with. Should you be forced to post political or sexual content that you disagree with on your accounts or on a wall at your house? Of course not. Similarly, if you start a business, you cannot be forced to post political or sexual content you disagree with. Your freedom of speech as a business is what matters here. The idea that we have "speech anarchy" where all people can say anything they want and punish anyone who doesn't reproduce their speech is insanity.
- koonsolo 1y agoIf only we had some kind of decentralized internet money system.
- mananaysiempre 1y agoOr a legally protected right to transact, ideally with cash-equivalent anonymity. I’d take either one.
- zb3 1y agoBoth require repealing AML/CFT laws. But maybe that's the way and we should focus on the underlying crime instead..
- wongarsu 1y agoBitcoin (and most other crypto) unintentionally strikes an interesting balance here. Through the ability to trace blockchain transactions and impose KYC laws on exchanges you can in principle figure out who most money belongs to. That puts you in a position where if A wants to send B money you can't prevent that, but you can go after either A or B. That gives you freedom of payment, but after the fact you can still go after people laundering money or financing terrorism
- zb3 1y agoUntil the bank closes your account because it's deemed "high risk" and they're absolutely allowed to do that without explanations.
- anankaie 1y agoI'm feeling a little maximalist about this: How about both?
- ranguna 1y agoThe digital euro will be released in the coming years. It allows for digital offline transfers.
- roenxi 1y agoThe US has some clear laws against government controlling speech and, in the abstract, that makes it pretty much impossible to censor games. Various factions - exactly who it is difficult to pin down - have been working hard to set up a system where they can shut things down without ever explicitly instructing anyone to do anything. This appears to be the system engaging by accident because some crazy from Australia accidentally said the right thing to the right people. So I do actually believe Mastercard when they say this, but holding them accountable anyway is probably for the best. They're likely the single group with the most influence over the regulators.
- KingOfCoders 1y agoSay fuck on TV.
- rs186 1y agoApparently you can do that between 10pm and 6pm on broadcast TV, or on cable TV. Which is a pretty messed up situation.
- chrisrhoden 1y agoIn addition to the sibling comment about safe harbor hours, the FCC regulates not speech but the shared airwaves. Print is irrelevant, and that’s why you can do whatever you want on cable. Also, the FCC does not directly set standards and instead responds to complaints from the communities in which the broadcast is available. So it’s conceivable that in an environment where nobody cared, you could do this at any time of day.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- KingOfCoders 1y agoDidn't know the FCC regulates Youtube. Nevertheless, in a country with no regulations about saying "fuck" on TV, I get beeps on Youtube.
- 1y ago
- kmfrk 1y agoFull title that doesn't fit in the HN headline: "Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down, but Valve says payment processors 'specifically cited' a Mastercard rule about damaging the brand" (For the people who don't click the link to read the article.)
- petcat 1y agoThere are definitely a lot of links in this chain. Maybe leafo can chime-in and say exactly what happened with Itch.io. But I suspect that someone downstream of Visa/Mastercard anticipated that the payment card companies would not permit the transactions and relayed that back up to the merchants, and they shut it off preemptively. But it's hard to say. Mastercard is now saying that they never said or did anything. So where did the outrage come from? Someone must have done something.
- Shank 1y ago> But I suspect that someone downstream of Visa/Mastercard anticipated that the payment card companies would not permit the transactions and relayed that back up to the merchants, and they shut it off preemptively. It sure is tragic that benevolent and majestic Mastercard is having their name thrown into the mud over this. Coincidentally, it sure is convenient that they have a number of middleman scapegoats who can take the blame on their behalf.
- eastbound 1y agoAll Mastercard has to do is say “We ordered payment processors to let Valve sell their games”. It is sure convenient that they stop at “We didn’t say the opposite.”
- Mindwipe 1y agoFWIW Mastercard are simply lying, as anyone who has ever had to touch adult payment processing will tell you. There's even a (non-public) list of keyword banned terms.
- dude250711 1y agoAnti-monopoly laws are good, but how about some harsh anti-duopoly laws? Could also hit the iOS-Android bird with the same stone!
- dchest 1y agoExisting "antimonopoly" laws already cover unfair competition, market manipulation, etc. regardless of the number of entities.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- techpression 1y agoIt’s not even a duopoly, look at the majority shareholders of both Visa and Mastercard, Vanguard and Black-rock in both. So it’s effectively a monopoly.
- dublinben 1y agoVanguard and Blackrock are just asset managers. Public companies are owned by everyone with mutual funds, like pension funds and individual retirement accounts. https://factcheck.afp.com/doc.afp.com.34N76K4 https://factcheck.afp.com/doc.afp.com.34N76K4
- techpression 1y agoThanks, but ”just asset managers” feels a bit generous, from that same link; ”But large asset managers may help bring issues to the attention of boards.” Is that the case here, no idea (likely not), but I do find it strange that both Visa and Mastercard refuse to take part of the multi billion dollar industry that is adult content. I have heard that it’s a volatile market with a lot of cash backs and fraudulent transactions, but they are happy to participate in other such endeavors.
- akimbostrawman 1y agoHow many more trillion dollar of assets do they need to "manage" before people start realizing that for all intents and purposes the one moving money around has more power and influnce than the one that actually owning it. See ESG score
- turtlebro 1y ago[flagged]
- FeepingCreature 1y agoOf course it is.
- vincnetas 1y agoOne man’s (or woman’s) smut is another’s bread... to paraphrase. We should be free to choose.
- biuz 1y agoThis does not merely affect only smut but anything that "damages the brand". Today it's NSFW content, who knows where the landslide will lead us next?
- IncreasePosts 1y agoWhy does smut need to be "cleaned up"? Would you consider a woman in a t shirt smut? Well, more than a billion people in the world probably would. Should we make sure to clean that up too, or is it just what you consider smut?
- philipallstar 1y agoWell, it actually is an attack on free speech. But even if we all agree it sits outside of what we all consider free speech, a payment processor is definitely not who should be enforcing it.
- simion314 1y ago>Bewildering to see the outrage over this. Get real, cleaning up the smut is not an attack on free speech or democracy. Sure, religious fascists enjoy this now, next they will remove GTA and shooter games, metal music and Hip HOp and when some Rust fanboy extremist will complain C++ and PHP content will be removed for safety reasons. We need to complain so religious fascist content is removed too
- 1y ago
- IanCal 1y agoI feel like nobody cares really and none of the companies care, but are all worried because of the massive stranglehold 2 players have (and realistically each has almost entire control). Mastercard don't care you want porn, or games, or whatever. Neither does VISA. They like money. They want money and want people to move their money so they can siphon off some of it for their own pockets. Almost nobody is going to avoid using a bank because their card provider let some other people buy rude games on steam. The payment processors don't care. They want you to send money through them so they can take their cut. Steam doesn't care. The people making the games don't care. They all just want to sell stuff. The only thing that impacts this really is chargebacks, which iiuc are much more common with adult stuff. But payment processors can't guarantee what mastercard or visa will do, and players like steam (and they're huge, this is not about tiny store issues) can't guarantee what payment processors will do and given the potential downside - blocking all sales - people need to be careful. While I can see how these situations come up, it's also absolutely insane as an end result because I just want to give *my money* to someone else. I've ended up using crypto before for buying things, not for ideological reasons, but purely because I could buy them and then give them to someone else for the "flagged as risky" goods/services because I couldn't pay for things using my money and my card.
- giantg2 1y agoThis has nothing to do with charge backs and everything to do with the Australian and US laws.
- IanCal 1y agoWhat laws are stopping Mastercard taking money for adult games but not onlyfans or pornhub?
- giantg2 1y agoIt's not for adult games, but for sexually violent games in Australia. Also, Pornhub already appeased the payment processors when they purged a bunch of content. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banned_video_games_in_Australia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banned_video_games_i...
- logicchains 1y agoWhat's stopping a large, profitable company like Valve from starting its own payment processor? Surely the technology part of it can't be an impossible hurdle.
- ddtaylor 1y agoI mean they kind of do. Most of the time I would hand wave away any company offering gift cards or credits, but Steam has created an economy / structure that I think warrants mentioning here. I have sold a few items on Steam because I don't care about cosmetics in games. I'm also lazy and because of that "sat" on items for a while that appreciated. I mention this because Steam credit is very fungible: it can be easily converted. Steam also makes it very easy to redeem credit, gift, etc. I believe you can buy Steam cards at most places Xbox cards and similar are sold as well. Also in the early days of Bitcoin buying and selling of digital Steam assets was one of the most popular things.
- Hamuko 1y agoI know that physical Steam gift cards exist but I've quite frankly never seen them anywhere. Nintendo/PlayStation/Xbox cards are pretty ubiquitous though. I recently tried getting a Steam one from a grocery store but they only had the console ones.
- reginald78 1y agoI've definitely seen them. A quick search shows them available at BestBuy and Walmart at least.
- Hamuko 1y agoI'm not American so I've never stepped inside a BestBuy and Walmart. The last place I checked was a Lidl, where they only had the console ones.
- ascagnel_ 1y agoOn the other hand, I'm absolutely amazed some US states hasn't yet gone after Valve for running an unlicensed casino with no age verification.
- giantg2 1y agoLots of outrage at the card companies, but strangely, no outrage at the laws that actually caused this. One is the Australian law to remove that type of content and the other is the US law that says the payment processor can't participate in illegal transactions.
- Jensson 1y agoThen they would just get removed in Australia, not worldwide.
- giantg2 1y agoMy guess is that Steam wasn't able to adequately block the games in Austrailia. If people use a VPN to access the content, could Steam still be liable?
- ohdeargodno 1y agoNo, it hasn't been the case. The group in question, Collective Shout, has been pressuring Mastercard. Not Mastercard Australia, not Steam Australia: it's a concerted action to take down things they don't want. It's not a one time thing either: sex workers have been under attack by similar extremist catholic bigots. Furries, porn, anything they see as deviant is being attacked. And MC/Visa are happy to help. Do I mind that MDMA Date With Hitler was taken down ? No, I don't believe it's a massive loss. However, the way it was done, through payment providers threatening to shut off access to the entire payment system because of their rules, is incredibly dangerous to the whole world.
- Maken 1y agoThis so much. The problem here is not the content that was blocked, it's the completely unaccountable process that was used to block content worldwide bypassing any legal protection.
- 0983736882 1y ago
- zwnow 1y ago[flagged]
- Hikikomori 1y agoPeople that buy them? And slippery slope.
- logicchains 1y agoIt's the precedent it sets. One minute it's NSFW games being taken down, next minute it's any Pro-Palestinian media being taken down.
- jeroenhd 1y agoPeople like porn. Not everyone likes porn, and not everyone likes the same porn, but those games are there because there's a market for them.
- nottorp 1y agoBecause next they'll disallow for MAGA or woke content, whichever you care about. And then whatever the next loudest pressure group doesn't like.
- nemomarx 1y agoBarely even "next" - itch might have gone overboard out of caution, but they hit random non sexual queer stuff already, and it's not hard to see how "don't do anything that hurts our brand" coming down from MC/Visa would lead to that basically immediately. Lots of stuff could hurt a corporate brand. Maybe your product has some bad press so now it's removed from storefronts, etc.
- ddtaylor 1y agoFirst they came.
- soulofmischief 1y agoBecause they have the decency to respect other people's rights to exercise free speech and carry out lawful transactions. This is a basic expectation of a democratic citizen.
- cedws 1y agoI'm glad the Mastercard-Visa duopoly is finally getting some attention, these companies shouldn't be allowed to exercise the financial control they do. Payment infrastructure is not a free market - you can't just choose to pay via some other processor if they turn you down, they ARE the processors. Therefore, they should be under intense scrutiny when they refuse.
- p_ing 1y agoThere's no meaningful attention, here. Until it is on the US Gov't radar, this 'attention' is just a collection of upset redditors furiously posting forum messages which will fissile out in a few months, at most. Besides, it's not like you can boycott Mastercard or VISA.
- pjc50 1y agoI don't think having this on USgov radar would improve the situation. Since FOSTA/SESTA, and various state level age verification laws, it seems likely that government attention would simply bring a bigger hammer down on games. It's the US anti-money-laundering system that ultimately exerts a lot of financial control, after all.
- delta_p_delta_x 1y ago> it's not like you can boycott Mastercard or VISA In many countries, if you pay locally, you absolutely can. China's UnionPay, India's UPI, PayNow in Singapore, PromptPay in Thailand, PayPal, Cash App, and more.
- p_ing 1y agoThat's great to hear, but this is a US-centric complaint discussing US-centric companies.
- cubefox 1y agoIn principle, a service like this could be offered in the US as well, without any credit card companies acting as middle men: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FedNow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FedNow
- aussieguy1234 1y agoYes, Mastercard didn't pressure valve and itch.io. They had an intermediary do it for them.
- rs186 1y agoDumb question: what if Steam only takes cash or crypto payment for these games, and leave them on the market? Cash is loaded from debit card and can be used for buying any games, while crypto apparently always works for everything. Would they still be on the hook?
- unsigner 1y agohow do you "take cash" over the Internet?
- v5v3 1y agoMullvad VPN takes cash, you post it to them.
- Shank 1y agoThis realistically doesn’t work that well above anything like a micro scale. It’s also a crime to mail cash across many borders, so it only really works domestically.
- goopypoop 1y agoWhat about a system of agents who locally take cash then bulk transfer to Steam? Like some kind of middleman: a processor, if you will, of payments. Cash handling isn't really the problem with this suggestion
- roblabla 1y agoI doubt Mullvad has anywhere near the volume of transaction Valve does. And mullvad has plenty of other payment methods, so only a tiny, tiny fraction of their userbase likely pays in mail-in cash. I don't think Valve could feasibly implement this at their scale - especially if this method was the _only_ way to acquire the games in question.
- TehCorwiz 1y agoSteam sells physical gift cards. You can buy them at convenience stores, Walmart, etc. you can pay cash for them.
- zb3 1y agoIf there was a law that mandates that payment processors have to accept all transactions, then there'd be no reason to cite "brand damage" because Mastercard could just point out that they're not in control because of the law, and no other processor could censor that content either. Unfortunately, laws like EU AML law go the opposite direction, where banks are allowed to close accounts only if they deem them "too risky".. this is not good.
- stego-tech 1y agoThe payment processor censorship issue backs up a point I made elsewhere about companies being involved in politics: they shouldn’t be, and shareholders should be screaming with rage that these companies have inserted themselves into these discussions on purpose. They’re payment processors, for crying out loud. Their entire grift is taking a slice of every transaction processed, ergo, the only restriction they should ever have in processing payments is whether or not the transaction is legal under the law, full stop. If they don’t like processing payments for pornography or adult content (including games), then don’t be a payment processor. They’re a business, not a person, and therefore their “preferences” regarding content are irrelevant.
- 0983736882 1y ago> If they don’t like processing payments for pornography or adult content (including games) Pornography and adult content is fine—the real issue is that gaming storefronts refuse to moderate their platforms for child pornography and rape material and would rather kill their entire NSFW catalog, all while painting themselves as the victims. > If they don’t like processing payments for pornography or adult content (including games), then don’t be a payment processor. They’re a business, not a person, and therefore their “preferences” regarding content are irrelevant. Businesses are composed of people whose preferences matter. No business should be forced to serve pedophiles and rape fetishists.
- nemomarx 1y agoI'm pretty sure child pornography is actually illegal in all jurisdictions valve operates in, and they would be charged with real crimes for selling it. Maybe you mean anime characters or something? And is there any law about roleplaying rape? It's common in romance novels and online videos so I don't see how it could be illegal.
- shagie 1y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography_in_Australia#Illegal_pornography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography_in_Australia#Illeg... > Some types of pornography (both real and fictitious) are technically illegal in Australia and if classified would be rated RC and therefore banned in Australia. This includes any pornography depicting violent BDSM, incest, paedophilia, zoophilia, certain extreme fetishes (such as golden showers) and/or indicators of youth (such as wearing a school uniform). Fictitious violent fetishes and BSDM would likely be illegal in Australia.
- nottorp 1y agoBy the way: https://www.amazon.com/Streetcar-Named-Desire-Blu-ray/dp/B07T6S1CKR https://www.amazon.com/Streetcar-Named-Desire-Blu-ray/dp/B07... Why is Mastercard processing money for this movie that contains a rape scene?
- Freak_NL 1y agoIt's not targetted by pressure groups at the moment. MasterCard isn't acting out of its own moral convictions here, so don't expect these rules to be enforced wherever they might apply.
- baobabKoodaa 1y agoOh please. As if Mastercard is beholden to some grass roots movement from Australia.
- dpoloncsak 1y ago...So their quote "we require merchants to have appropriate controls to ensure Mastercard cards cannot be used for unlawful purchases, including illegal adult content." is just a lie?
- nemomarx 1y agoI mean yes, of course they're lying? the article quotes the actual rule here, which is "don't do anything that might make us look bad".
- wongarsu 1y agoStill waiting for Game of Thrones to be removed from all streaming services for gratuitous sexual depictions and on-screen depictions of rape
- philistine 1y agoDon't forget the beheading! Mastercard specifically mentions beheadings. I guess Ned Stark shouldn't have complained to every lord of Westeros that King's Landing didn't accept American Express.
- littlecranky67 1y agoI really hope Steam will start to accept Bitcoin (via Lightning possibly) over this. Due to its decentralization, it is censorship free by default. And if Steam accepts Bitcoin, that would be a massive boost for the liquidity aspect of BTC: You could basically sell your BTC to anyone who wants to make a Steam purchase, making it similarly fungible as Amazon gift vouchers.
- baobabKoodaa 1y agoDidn't Steam previously accept Bitcoin and then stop as no-one was using that option?
- littlecranky67 1y agoI learned that they did, but this was in 2017 before Lightning was a thing.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y ago> making it similarly fungible as Amazon gift vouchers This isn’t as accurate as you might hope. I can pretty much only buy hobby-related things on Steam but I can buy just about any non-perishable household item on Amazon.
- ranguna 1y agoNot sure about bitcoin, but maybe a stable coin would be interesting.
- cucubeleza 1y ago"you'll own nothing and be happy"
- khalic 1y agoBefore getting all worked up, I would advise people to look at what games exactly were banned, and see if it’s a case of power abuse or simply a case of “we can all agree that rape and incest games are disgusting and have no place in an entertainment web site visited by kids”.
- makeitdouble 1y agoYou should bark at Steam if you want more curation. What people are pissed at is a card payment network abused for moral regulation.
- aesh2Xa1 1y agoFurthermore, there's no public list of exactly which games were removed.
- khalic 1y agoNot sure what side this argument serves
- khalic 1y agoI don’t mean that I agree with the concept of corporate power abuse or the hypothesized source of the pressure. But I’m not spending one second of my life protecting this kind of content, and the fact that it’s being euphemistically called “Adult Content”, a very approximate description, shows that the source of the current outcry _knows_ it’s very bad looks to be defending any of the games that have been confirmed banned by steam.
- makeitdouble 1y agoI don't think most comments here or in the general discourse are protecting the content ? I'm trying to find a good analogy. Perhaps if someone in your town built a giant meat grinder in their backyard, and as a test run they requested the vilest and most heinous criminals to be sent to them, you'd still see a private entity getting to grind the people they want as a serious issue. Not wanting to spend a second on that issue, just because of who got sent there, would be quite a position.
- makeitdouble 1y ago> Mastercard's Rule 5.12.7 relates to "illegal or brand-damaging transactions," and states: > A Merchant must not submit to its Acquirer, and a Customer must not submit to the Interchange System, any Transaction that is illegal, or in the sole discretion of the Corporation, may damage the goodwill of the Corporation or reflect negatively on the Marks. I didn't expect they had such clear rules expliciting they can ban any kind of transactions they don't like or would make them look bad, regardless of the legality of it.
- Hamuko 1y agoI called MasterCard twice and both times they a) guessed that I was calling about content on Steam without ever mentioning Steam b) said that they only restricted "illegal adult content" and have "standards based on rule of law". Said absolutely nothing about protecting the brand. Also couldn't say if said "standards" were actual laws or MasterCard's own (legal) standards.
- loa_in_ 1y agoGood argument to record any calls with them and submit the recordings to the press
- Hamuko 1y agoYou don't really have to record the phone call. If anyone in the press wants to hear them saying that they don't block legal content, call them and ask about Steam. They have a ready-made PR response that they will read to you.
- harvie 1y agoThere already was a time when Steam managed to free people from need to use funny pieces of plastic in their lifes... They've done that with CDs, they can do it again with Cards.
- master-lincoln 1y agoYeah, that was when Steam freed the users from actually owning any game and instead gave the users limited licenses for using games. I am looking forward to the day when they shutdown and everybody realizes this.
- dpoloncsak 1y agoCan't I still just run the .exe of the game? Or DRM nightmares?
- hexmiles 1y agoAll (most?) Steam games have a very simple DRM that is extremely easy to bypass, and you can find examples on github. However, a lot of games add their own DRM and/or protection scheme that complicates things. EDIT: technically there are two distinct component: the actual DRM, called steamstub, and the steamwork library, that does not work without steam but it is not considered drm. Both can be easily bypassed/emulated.
- dpoloncsak 1y agoI see, but there is Steam DRM there. So, I guess as the other commenter was alluding to, if Steam goes belly up so does your collection, regardless of the dev studio's intention (Or atleast, locked behind a DRM bypass). I understood this in terms of Live Service games, but did not consider Steam's ability to shut down their own platform and kill my locally installed single player games with it (Again, I'm seeing its possible and seems easy to bypass usually, but the principle of the matter)
- 1y ago
- infecto 1y ago[flagged]
- TimorousBestie 1y agoIt’s not credible that Collective Shout actually caused some change in policy. They’re being used to deflect blame from Visa/MC, who in any case have done rolling purges of adult content creators’ accounts for decades.
- braiamp 1y agoThey should be allowing all lawful transactions, and if they can't, they should get broken up.
- infecto 1y agoPeople keep saying this but I don’t see any reason any administration would do this. It is that type of argument that feels good to think about but has no legal basis.
- notnullorvoid 1y agoIt seems to me like Visa and MasterCard controlling the payment processing market, and restricting the sale of legal goods would fall under existing antitrust laws. I don't think the current US administration has any desire to enforce antitrust laws though.
- shagie 1y agoThat would be a change from preventing illegal transactions. As it stands currently, the risk associated to the company for allowing illegal transactions is what drives their policy since they get brought into lawsuits for allowing monetization of illegal content in some jurisdiction. Changing it (world wide) so that payment processors are not subject to money laundering laws and cannot be held liable when a merchant sells something illegal would allow them to change their model to allow all lawful transactions and not have false negatives. Until false positives (allowing an illegal transaction) is not a risk for them, their policies are unlikely to change.
- numpad0 1y agoI kind of wonder if there had been misinterpretations as to the results of previous campaigns against Japan. English in Japan is more of a customer support tool than a language. Proficiency is improving in some places, but on decline at large, below already atrocious status quo. This means the size of English-speaking audiences for actually Japan-centric news is small and not the first priority, not small && more important. Extremely little of whatever happening in Japan appear on mainstream English social media, let alone regular mainstream media. If that much was not obvious to whoever pulling strings on this ongoing thing, I think there may be a chance that lack of observable responses after their earlier actions led to a misplaced confidence that gaming is a tiny top-down market and consumer resistance is nonexistent. The responses were significant enough that it elected an equivalent of senate for third term and got former PM Kishida make a hand-wavy assurance on video even just few days before this one. It was almost certainly just a lip service, but also not nothing. How would anyone interpret that as a situation safe to escalate further?
- polytely 1y agoI wonder if Valve could (threaten to) become their own payment processor if this becomes too big of a threat. They are one of the few companies on earth with enough money to attempt it. If I remember correctly a big part of Valves heavy investment into linux was Microsoft wanting to lock windows down more, and now in 2025 gaming on linux is a viable alternative to windows.
- master-lincoln 1y agoWhat would that change? The assumption here is that payment processors need to comply with MasterCards rules. So would Valve if they would become a payment processor, no?
- Null-Set 1y agoIt would allow them to negotiate directly with Mastercard, making the deflection in TFA impossible.
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 1y agoI don't know how that helps. PayPal and stripe are the payment processors, no? Visa and MasterCard are the payment network. Steam can build their own Stripe probably, but are they going to make their own credit card network too? Probably not. They can maybe try taking money directly from your bank though, like Wise. But if you've ever tried it, that looks like such a shit show. Every bank and every country does it a little differently, has its own limits and fees, and the authentication is really ghetto.
- f6v 1y agoWell, you can buy Steam gift cards for cash in underdeveloped markets like Germany. Can’t imagine how else would it work.
- ranguna 1y agoYou can't buy gift cards in other underdeveloped markets like Japan, Camboja, the US, Mexico, etc?
- xbar 1y agoMC/Visa wield a great deal of market power, which is bad because they become directly controllable entities. I can't believe I am about to say this: Bitcoin fixes this.
- TJTorola 1y agoSome other cryptocurrency fixes this, maybe (big maybe). But as long as _Bitcoin_ is seen primarily as an investment opportunity it can't really function as a means of exchange. For the same reason that we expect and need USD to lose value over time, people need to be encouraged to exchange their currency, not sit on it forever.
- nullc 1y agoSomething doesn't need to be perfect to be an escape valve. So for example, when backpage's speech was unlawfully suppressed by the US government via payment processors cutting them off in Operation Chokepoint, they successfully adopted Bitcoin. ... and then Kamala Harris aggressively prosecuted them for 'money laundering' for the evading the payment processor blockade, even though her own internal staff report said they were guilty of no crime and were a treasured asset of law enforcement in the fight against human trafficking ( https://reason.com/2019/08/26/secret-memos-show-the-government-has-been-lying-about-backpage/ https://reason.com/2019/08/26/secret-memos-show-the-governme... ). So aggressive was the prosecution that they caused a mistrial by flagrantly disregard of the court's orders, then prosecuted again leading the the suicide of one of the founders following a decade of vicious harassment by the state. uh ... so maybe not the best example. Or maybe it is the best example: The root cause in the abuse by payment processors is the US government leaning on them to abuse their subjective discretion to suppress lawful activity that the government is constitutionally prohibited in interfering with. This is both what underlies the schizophrenic response by mastercard, which likes money and would generally just prefer to process everything profitable, and is also why Steam would be taking a huge risk to route around them with alternate payment means.
- yupyupyups 1y ago[flagged]
- gs17 1y agoThe same group was targeting Detroit: Become Human and GTA. Will the card companies go down that path? Maybe, maybe not, but going after the easy targets is the first step.
- godshatter 1y agoIf someone has inclinations toward such things, I'd rather they get their release through playing a video game.
- 0983736882 1y ago[flagged]
- o11c 1y agoOkay, but if so, let's be explicit about making that tradeoff. Also, let's not pretend that "ban all NSFW games" either was asked for or would be acted upon. It's quite telling that there's a grand total of one (1) specific game people keep suggesting be unbanned. Given the number of games affected, a rare false positive is only to expected. (Apparently itch.io temporarily took steps against all NSFW games, which is only to be expected if they have no way to immediately know which games are pedo/incest/rape games since they've chosen to let them flourish for so long.)
- 0983736882 1y agoThis whole debacle is making a lot of people show their true colors. Grim.
- khalic 1y agoI think some are really afraid of the fabled slippery slope, but yeah, the gaming world is home to a very dubious bread of pro CP, sex obsessed (as in “every media I consume must make me horny”) and misogynistic punks. Edit: not making any claims regarding the size of that population, most gamers are just regular people enjoying some escape, like me
- lesuorac 1y agoDo people think USD being accepted at kink stores gives the USA a reputation risk? I just don't see the argument that a payment processor being able to process payments legitimately gives them reputation risk. I don't doubt that people write in to MasterCard to claim it does but people write about everything.
- shoxidizer 1y agoWhile I don't think MC's or Visa's reputation is at all close to being fragile enough to be harmed by use on any Steam game, the idea that these companies are almost like public utilities that shouldn't have a say in their deals is their reputation. And carrying large amounts of USD cash does have a negative reputation, even to the US government. Nevermind the reputation of cryptocurrency.
- mitthrowaway2 1y agoIf there were a law that MC had to be an impartial utility, like a phone or electricity provider, then it wouldn't hurt their reputation. But since there is no such law, they have the choice to deny transactions, which also means they can be blamed (by puritans) for allowing them.
- lesuorac 1y agoI'm not sure you need MC to be an impartial utility. IIUC, the problem here is the colluding behavior. Steam can't just "drop" MC and use Visa for the transactions as the banks must abide by MC's rules even when MC isn't the payment processor just to be eligible to be a bank for MC.
- revlolz 1y agoI believe the issue is Visa PayPal, and Mastercard are capitualating to interest groups bombarding them with complaints and then celebrating censorship on social media posts. I agree with your sentiment, it's ridiculous.
- cubefox 1y agoThere are so many middle men involved, it gets confusing. Apparently the payment goes like this: Game Buyer (Steam) -> Stripe/PayPal -> MasterCard/Visa -> Valve -> Game publisher That's at least three middle men, and presumably all of them collect fees. I wonder why in the year 2025 there isn't a more direct way to pay for things.
- jug 1y ago> Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down, but Valve says payment processors 'specifically cited' a Mastercard rule about damaging the brand Who in heaven’s name associates a credit card company with the image/ethics of the transactions it’s processing as long as the businesses are legal?? What I think of when I hear Mastercard? A plastic card with numbers on it, connected to my bank account and offering me some added protections/insurance.
- nick486 1y agoI mean, to be a bit of a devil's advocate, its not impossible. Bitcoin sort of has the reputation of being used to buy "shady stuff". Its not unreasonable for MasterCard to not want to be "That card company people buy edgy porn with". Which is why we need them to be legally required to process all lawful transactions, so that they cannot be singled out for it.
- aranelsurion 1y ago> Bitcoin sort of has the reputation of being used to buy "shady stuff". That’s because practically no one gets gas and buys groceries with it. All the porn of the world wouldn’t be a drop in the sea that is MasterCard.
- anonymars 1y agoHeh, ironically we do now, don't we?
- rob74 1y agoSo... Mastercard's statement is very clear: > Put simply, we allow all lawful purchases on our network. But their "Rule 5.12.7" is... not so clear: > A Merchant must not submit to its Acquirer, and a Customer must not submit to the Interchange System, any Transaction that is illegal, or in the sole discretion of the Corporation, may damage the goodwill of the Corporation or reflect negatively on the Marks. Well, which one is it now? All lawful purchases (pretty clear-cut) or only lawful purchases that will not "reflect negatively" on Mastercard in Mastercard's opinion (vague as hell)?
- efitz 1y agoWe need Congress to make a law here in the US that businesses involved in facilitating financial transactions in the United States are considered “common carriers” and must not discriminate against, cancel or disadvantage any customer or legal transaction, without a court order. We can write language to allow booting people for fraud, hacking, etc if “legal” + “court order” are insufficient.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- shagie 1y agoHow would that work with international money laundering regulations? Would that apply to Australian courts?
- alphager 1y agoIf the regulation is legally binding by an act of Congress, it falls under the legal umbrella. Same thing in AUS: If there's a AUS law, they have to follow it.
- shagie 1y agoIn those cases, what would a law... "that businesses involved in facilitating financial transactions in the United States are considered “common carriers” and must not discriminate against, cancel or disadvantage any customer or legal transaction, without a court order" provide? It might have prevented Visa and Mastercard from being brought into the PornHub lawsuit... in the US. It wouldn't have protected them from Australian laws weaponized by organizations such as Collective Shout.
- phendrenad2 1y agoThis problem is upstream of the credit card companies. How far upstream? Not much. It's their investors. Like Bill Ackman [1] and Blackrock. These companies live in a fantasy world where everything can be "Disney-ized" and made family-friendly. They see how negative press campaigns like Collective Shout can damage a brand's image. And their "solution" is to turn the world into a big Disney theme park where there's no sex, drugs, or rock 'n roll. You may not mind that world, hell, you may even WANT that world, but it's completely impractical and these investors are too stupid to realize that their initial success (pressuring Steam to remove incest-themed games) won't translate into long-term success. (I mean what do you expect, they are MBAs and CFAs. They've been trained to see the world as a series of clinical abstract charts, which is why anyone who can apply a sociological filter to the world runs rings around them.) [1] - https://archive.ph/zXKuD https://archive.ph/zXKuD
- man4 1y ago[dead]
- calibas 1y agoMastercard's rule is that they can ban whatever they want, whenever they want. > A Merchant must not submit to its Acquirer, and a Customer must not submit to the Interchange System, any Transaction that is illegal, or in the sole discretion of the Corporation, may damage the goodwill of the Corporation or reflect negatively on the Marks. Create amorphous rules, enforce them as you feel like, then blame others for breaking the rules...
- burnt-resistor 1y agoThis is due to under-regulation of these oligopolies and lack of non-profit interoperable alternatives. Some things are too important to be left to the fantastical "invisible hand."
- unstatusthequo 1y agoI realize the strong anti cryptocurrency sentiment on HN for reasons unclear to me, but this would be a great time for Steam and itch to accept cryptocurrency.
- ChrisArchitect 1y agoSome discussion on source 3 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44760843 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44760843
- udev4096 1y agoWhy are we surprised? A centralized payment system, especially a banking one, is bound to do something like this. Crypto solves this but the average normie is still stupid enough to rely on them
- carabiner 1y agoI wonder if valve could just become a bank or create its own credit card without these rules.
- jajuuka 1y agoClassic passing the buck. "Well WE didn't say they had to take those games down. We just pointed some problematic games and that we might not want to do business with them if they weren't removed. We didn't take them down." Unfortunately until some regulation is created to solve this problem Visa/Mastercard will continue throwing around their weight at the whims of whoever.
- gethly 1y agoAs a internet user on the business side of things, words cannot describe my hatred for payment card companies(ie. visa and mastercard).
- dang 1y agoRelated. Others? Clarifying recent headlines on gaming content - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44760843 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44760843 - Aug 2025 (24 comments) Visa and Mastercard are getting overwhelmed by gamer fury over censorship - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44713414 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44713414 - July 2025 (586 comments) Steam, Itch.io are pulling ‘porn’ games. Critics say it's a slippery slope - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44685011 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44685011 - July 2025 (890 comments) Against the censorship of adult content by payment processors - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44679406 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44679406 - July 2025 (250 comments) Games: No sex, please. we're credit card companies - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44675697 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44675697 - July 2025 (52 comments) Itch.io: Update on NSFW Content - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44667667 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44667667 - July 2025 (323 comments) Australian anti-porn group claims responsibility for Steams new censorship rules - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44636369 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44636369 - July 2025 (162 comments) Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44606184 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44606184 - July 2025 (905 comments)
- mitthrowaway2 1y agoThere's something really funny about the adjective "NSFW" being used to describe a video game, as though other video games like the Legend of Zelda are somehow "suitable for work".