Steam is cracking down on porn games, to keep Payment Processors happy.
Steam is cracking down on porn games, to keep Payment Processors happy.
33 comments
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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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It'll eventually be anything those in power deem contrary to their agenda.
And people still clamor for a cashless society, when such issues are already obvious.
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Visa continues to set the world's content moderation policies extra-judicially.
Go figure having all electronic payments be through private companies would have eventual consequences.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Slippery slope:
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"
Want that to be the future?
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I am the only one here thinking that Steam should have cracked down on incest themed porn games a long time ago?
Just to be clear, the title of this post is referring to porn games, but in actuality it is about games that literally feature incest (not the step-relative stuff that is so popular everywhere online). All major actual porn sites have rules against incest, but the biggest gaming marketplace on PC should allow it?
Just to make it clear, I find it detestable that this is done because of Visa, especially if this trend continues and suddenly other stuff becomes blocked, but in this case I feel it should have been done way earlier.
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but in actuality it is about games that literally feature incest
A couple of things:
- So what? There's probably all kinds of things out there you didn't agree with.
- This is where they start. First they came for...
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I guess I don't see an ethical difference between fictional "step" incest and fictional normal incest. In both cases it involves people that don't exist. Plus all the ethical issues with incest carry over to step siblings anyway. The idea that one is ok and the other isn't seems really silly to me.
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I'd hope it only refers to actual porn games. Would hate to see a game like RDR2 taken down because there's a heavily implied incestuous relationship in the game.
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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.
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It 100% will
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queerness has been explicitly targeted
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Why is Steam removing them entirely? They should just remove the option to pay from that processor.
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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.
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So. How hard is it to create a payment processor? Asking for a friend.
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Was thinking the same. If I want to spend my money to commission goblin titties to an artist, it should be only my fucking business and nobody else's
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Additionally, all of these adult themes need their own filterable genre tags so that they can be included or excluded when you browse by filters.
33 comments