Valve gets pressured by payment processors with a new rule for game devs and various adult games removed #Steam #Valve #Gaming #PCGaming
Valve gets pressured by payment processors with a new rule for game devs and various adult games removed #Steam #Valve #Gaming #PCGaming
Nice, now if they could do all the shitty rape/monster rape games. that would be great.
Payment processers shouldn't dictate what games are available. Even gross games have the right to exist.
I don't play or buy lewd games, not my cup of tea. But let people buy whatever the fuck they want on Steam. And I know it's not gonna stop here. They've set a precedent now.
Pushkin Industries and @financialtimes.com made a podcast together called Hot Money back in 2022 detailing this movement by the Card companies in episode 5. I really recommend listening to the whole season, but this specific episode talks about Mastercard.
It's now time to hold all payment processors accountable for their puritanical overreaching ways and to tax the rich and the churches.
Yuk.
I hope Valve takes the W like they always do and tells payment processors to screw off.
Only if all countries like brasil have own centralized instant indepedent payment system like PIX wich now is target of trump.
They're coming for Hotline Miami 2 next. Then Furquest after that. And games like Undertale and In Stars and Time beyond that. They'll not stop until every game we love is banned.
Yeah, no. Allowing some third party to decide what is allowed and what isn't, on a whim. Not only is that too much power, it's also too much power put in the hand of people that are control freaks.
Do these payment processors even have morals to begin with? Because I'm starting to think that they don't even give a damn about morality.
They have no issues funding all of our wars, so no, they don't
Same morals as the others: kill, maim, burn
All corporations exist to extract profit. There is no such thing as a moral corporation. Any moral stances they appear to take are simply to trick you into thinking they are moral so you will keep giving them money. I'm not saying we shouldn't care, I'm saying if you want moral companies, regulate.
The absolutely don't. No corpo does. Their only guiding principle is "make money number go up next quarter, everything else be damned."
Restricting purchases will make number go DOWN though
I never said they were smart :p
OH MY FUCKING GOD, MY MONEY IS MY MONEY! LET ME SPEND IT ON WHAT I WANT! ( As others have also outlined this is dangerous for the queer community but I don't have to repeat the same points)
Also the ban on futanari is very concerning because a lot of trans bodily often get confused with it
And intersex bodies* It's completely messed up.
Yeah I was about to add that, intersex bodice could in some cases maybe even be closer to futon than trans bodies
Omg I cannot write "bodies" bsky we need that edit feature
Plus Valve has their own rules for content already for obvious reasons. I may be depraved but there are still lines you don't cross.
oh no are they removing sex with hitler
I have them turned off and won't miss them, but I disagree with this happening. What comes next? Games with violence? Games that show various political stances in a bad light? Games that are 'woke'? You want lgbqt eradicated? Just call it sexual content. Feels like a slippery slope to me...
They've been calling any kind of LGBT content "sexual content" for a while, it's the reason given for multiple book bans in schools. Worrying.
That's why we Brazilians love pix. There's no motherfucking company behind it saying you can't sell your content
Payment Processors should not have ANY legal say in what's bought with OUR money.
Maybe people will finally start realizing payment processors are the problem and not jump for the throat of affected platforms for not resisting
It should be noted that the only thing actually removed are Incest games. Which you know are illegal by law in several countries and half the states on the USA. This is more a case of removing illegal content. That said yeah payment processors shouldn't have that power.
There is no such thing as an illegal video game, except poasibly ONE that used real live action video. You literally made that up.
Spelling error
Where does the us law say that?
☝️🤓
ANDY AND LEYLEY IS DEAD!!!!!!
depictions of incest are illegal?
Depends on where you are at. But as stated In several US states, and other countries it is.
The former legal counsel to our current president is married to his own second cousin ianal but...i don't *think* it's illegal?
It isn't federally illegal. but in a few states like Arkansas, depictions of are illegal. Even if it is unenforceable. Either way, I still agree with the main point payment processors shouldn't have that control. But in this case they are taking it being illegal in some places as a way to remove.
Bigoted bastards not wanting to handle money they perceive as impure.
Paypal is a horrendous unethical monster of a company. And they could actually ban my account for me saying this.
Payment Processors should have no say in what it's client's content is. Unless it's illegal, fuck off.
I would argue that the types of content that should be banned should be named, rather than what's illegal. Given the fact the States and elsewhere are trying to make queer people illegal. I'm being pedantic I know. I agree with the rest of the statement
I mean if its something like hate speech then yeah, ban it. Im fine with that.
Oh agreed for that
Unfortunately, that's one reason they still keep Obscenity Laws in the books, which can be super subjective and abused.
the amount of power they have is terrifying
Fuuuuuck payment processors!!!!
I honestly can't wait to see them go further, like denying payment services for shops both physical and online adult stores (Sex stores; Toys videos etc) and see the backlash on that. They can't exclude them out with their current path of choices they have done. There will be a breaking point.
Best we can do is sue the payment processors for violating freedom of speech.
That's not a thing. Free speech only restricts government actions, not corporate.
… oh god if this happens Deltarune and Undertale could definitely be affected.
Not the literal greatest ever games of all time!! Oh if the Fandon hears anout this, the banks can count their days lol
And interfering with the ability of consumers to enter into contracts
lgbtquia+ devs and their games will be the targets of this shit.
so much for free market. fuck the united lies of america
Obviously, this is bad news, but at least there's some leverage through these companies to stop fly-by-night "AI-Nudify" and "AI-Non consensual Porn" companies. Just trying to look on the bright side...
Payment Processors shouldn't be the ones deciding what we can and can't buy. Valve already has their own rules for things as there is obviously some material that shouldn't be allowed either way.
The other issue is even if Valve wants to fight it these companies have even more money. They live and breathe cash and could outlast them in an expensive legal battle.
Puritanical people need to be removed from society by any means nessisary
Violence is never the answer. It's a question to which the answer is sometimes, "yes."
Whew the interactions on this, who needs the social media site formerly known as Twitter huh.
I have that side of the store turned off on my account, when I saw some of the titles for stuff pulled tho
This is crazy. I can understand that they would block the purchase of specific files, but forcing to purge a marketplace is unacceptable. There is a strong need for an open standard for all card networks so they can be interoperable.
Thankfully this is only seemingly games with explicit incest, especially when slapped on the title. Hopefully they don't push for more and more NSFW content to get banned. Honestly why do they even get to dictate that kind of stuff in the first place? Aggrivating that this happens just in general.
Nevermind. I no longer stand by this. Don’t let them ban anything. Give them an inch and they’ll gun you down like a dog.
oh yeah this is being done en masse by a group of censorship psychos called Collective Shout who once tried to use their numbers and nuisance to ban… Detroit Become Human. of course. what a bunch of dumbasses
That is precisely the issue, they ALWAYS will start extending their reach, every time they get away with one thing, they start pushing for the next, and then the next, and so forth
Yeah, it’s the acceptable stuff first, everybody agrees, having incest porn on your storefront is bad. Then it’s furries, or futanari or something less wierd, then it’s all porn and then it’s everything they deem AS porn which of course means anything too gay for them. It always goes to that.
Eventually Street Fighter is banned cause Juri's feet at too sexy.
that isn't really a "thankfully"
This is seriously why we need European and Asian payment processors available to a worldwide audience...
I am this close 🤏 to turning my Visa card into confetti. I just need an alternative.
Other than debit cards and Amex, we ain't got none in North America. There are alternatives but i'm speaking on a GLOBAL payment platform.
This news came the same day that the USA started "attacking" Brazilian's payment processes. I don't think it's entirely a coincidence.
Not surprised. Since actual adult sites play wackamole with payment processors. But alas my heart goes out to those from Alabama as there seems to be a theme in the games removed....
this is wrong. this is criminalizing fiction by the same people who who said that Detroit: Become Human needs a ban in the united kingdom. Burning a painting of a forrest is not a forrest fire. this confusiong with harm with fiction is a political end to not help victims.
I'ma say one thing it's mixed cuz straight up porn that is deleted is good but the reason is bad
Just a reminder, groups like NCOSE are the reason why these payment processors are doing this.
Don't forget Exodus cry.
And garm, theyre all the same companies theyre just shells of each other
Can someone tell me in what way valve gets money from the payment processors? like do the banks get money through fees and pay that to valve or what?
Payment processors and ISOs provide the middleware between the bank and the clients. A while back it was easier to find 'high risk' ISOs to take payments others wouldn't, but they still answer to interchange systems & the aggregation of things in the industry makes that not really as viable anymore.
Not a fan of these particular types of games but as long as it's not illegal and only depicts adults I don't really understand the objective here
Hey I made a thread on how international schemes have become the de facto rules of the adult industry (with insane examples) you may be very interested bsky.app/profile/cent...
Trying to figure out a marketing angle here to stick it to them; wouldnt a payment processor that *does* accept these things have a monopoly in a world that *doesnt*?
As much as I want to slam Valve for this decision We all know the real villains are the payment processors for forcing this to happen despite all the protections in place on steam to prevent people from seeing and buying things they don't want or believe in.
Fucking hell not steam wtf
Now that it hit Valve, maybe we can finally get some backlash on this shit. This isn't new behavior. They've literally been using their power to censor Japanese products recently.
They're going to use this to eventually persecute developers of queer games of all stripes bsky.app/profile/enik...
Welp, back to shareware i guess :<
Yeah this is not great, bob.
Steam needs to stop being the go-to platform. I'm tired of them calling the shots, especially when it means hurting devs who need exposure the most.
This will happen on any platform that takes payment. It's not a Valve issue, it's a payment processor issue.
True, my rant was a bit tangential, but them being the only big non-console storefront still makes this issue even worse. Steam wishlists are seen as a marker of success, and devs have to beg for Steam reviews to keep their market presence going. This new rule isn't theirs, but the monopoly sure is.
Like itch.io has a lot of LGTBQAI+ friendly games. :/
Yeah, that's exactly why I don't like it. :/
Have any queer games been banned?
You're kinda dumb, huh
Sorry it's just I heard some game may have already been removed by this.
My bad, I misread the tone
It's the exact same attack they made in Patreon and then Subscribestar. They'll be forced to remove anything related to whatever the processor deems as amoral or grotesque, adult content is just the most obvious. Lesser obvious example, Trevor and the teddy bear boyfriend in GTA V is high risk.
So I really hope not all adult games are removed just some particular topics. There are some that really do need to be removed, but I don’t think all of them.
They forgot steam gift cards exists.
I believe its more of a problem that PayPal, Visa, ect are saying "oh you have content we don't like, get rid of it" rather than them just not allowing their service for some stuff. Sadly Steam Gift cards wouldn't matter in this case.
Well Crap. the least I can hope for is that Valve can try to converse with these payment processors, maybe explain to them why such approaches are usually bad ideas. But recalling from the controversy reguarding Mastercard and CrunchyRoll, It may take further convincing.
My only question is why not Nintendo? They don’t have the pure adult titles and as many but they do have some risqué stuff and is being marketed as a “kids” toy still. Well maybe not kids, more just immature. Either way this kinda sucks for people who don’t want to play just violent games.
Whilst I'm glad it's clearing up the glut of the most shovelware of games, it's definitely not out of the question to lump LGBTQA+ games into that too, what with companies becoming even more puritan in the states. Not to mention it shouldnt ever be up to a third party like a payment processor.
What happened to money being equal to free speech?? So now the banks can censor what I spend my hard earned money on now?! I saw make a class action lawsuit against Visa and Mastercard as both monopolies and violating our first amendment right under Citizens United.
I have to break it to you, but this has been the Christian conservative MO for decades, and these banks started doing this en masse starting back in 2012
Except Valve does not react well when you mess with them. When Windows started screwing with Valve, they pivoted to using Linux and making it game friendly. Now you can play steam games on Linux with better performance than on windows. Making their own payment processor is peanuts in comparison
So the damn Mormons are going after Steam now.
ughhhhhhhhhhh steam stop listening to stupid extremist christian groups...
Here's a article with more information about the group that lobbied for this "Collective Shout": www.pcgamer.com/gaming-indus...
The group that pressured payment processors to do this is actually a Baptist christian group masquerading as a Woman's Rights group. And many of the Co-Signers on it have been Christian religious groups as well. Christians have co-opted the language of feminism for their puritan purposes.
The freedom to assault children and the vulnerable as games. Whoop whoop that's what true freedom is.
It's kind of messed up that the payment processors are dictating what Valve and their customers buy. Slowly changing everything that capitalism touches. And won't be long before they start erasing games made by minorities (if they haven't already).
This isn't new. The reason you can't state on Paypal what you're paying for if you pay an artist for a NSFW commission is for the same reason. Visa/Mastercard have a puritan stick up their ass over porn. They've been interfering with multiple Japanese businesses for selling lewd manga.
Another reason they're envious of Brazil's Pix system of payment
Just because they're pressured, why are they OBEYING? Steam has HUGE industry power and they need to fucking USE it.
They have huge power in the gaming industry, but their influence is absolutely DWARFED in comparison to the power that these payment processors have on online transactions. If they don't comply, Steam would be crippled, while the payment processors would just see a rounding error.
I feel like there would be massive workarounds. Buy virtual gift cards for the price of games that can then be exchanged and that way you're not buying the game directly and such. Also, taking these processors to court for inhibiting freedom of speech.
I forget, does Steam let you use your card to put money in your steam wallet without buying anything? Like Nintendo? Cause if so, there's your loophole. Processors can'tcomplain about people charging up their steam wallets. At that point, what we spend our e-cash on is our business.
Yes, they can. People can also use cards or cash to buy Steam Wallet cards from physical stores (and not just gaming ones). However, processors have such power that they can dictate things to Steam generally by threatening to pull all processing, specific transactions and their path don't matter.
Tbh it sounds like they have as much power as we allow them to have. Let them cut their services from steam or anything else and watch as the customer base abandons them. They'll start using crypto to buy steam cards. Humans famously don't like their decisions being dictated to them.
AFAIK people can't choose their debit card's CC network, they're locked to it. Moving from one network to another does nothing with a duopoloy and both pull this shit. (Nevermind all the issues with CC hopping.) People will just buy steam wallet cards before even considering crypto lol
Well i would nrver fucking touch crypto. That shit is even worse than banks
Your not wrong. That said, when banks and card companies start telling us what we can and can't do with our money, people will do what they have to to resist.
Crypto aint the way imo tho.
It's not, I agree. I'm just convinced that people would use it if they felt that they had no other choice.
When there literally is the other choice to not buy things online anymore. You can still buy things physically and in person. Like boardgames and books. Clothes too. From local businesses. Itll brobably be a lot better for the economy.
That's true, but it's not quite the world we live in anymore. Tbf, its also not an option for people with disabilities who struggle to leave their homes. Online shopping from places like Amazon, or even just placing delivery orders from Walmart is a necessity for some people.
You KNOW thats not who i was talking about.
big reason for this is that adult content is very regularly charged back when it shows up on people's credit card statements for their spouses to see hopefully won't affect LGBTQI+ content but the world is very unpredictable as of late...
Games you buy on Steam don't show up as the game you bought. It just shows up as a total paid to Steam.
yes, but more broadly this is why credit card payment processors are going after adult content
no it is not, its because of o heavy lobby by right-wing religious organizations going back to decades ago
So once again, everything bad in the world is caused by biblefuckers. (I refuse to call them "christian". These heretics would have tried to deport jesus.)
Because you're a lying propagandist
Sounds exactly like what an actual lying propagandist would say out of the blue!
Say what you want, but only one of us is lying about the facts on the ground in order to save the reputation of a trillion dollar industry
Not sure what you are talking about and all of NCOSE, collective shout and Exodus Cry have pretty obvious ties to religious groups. If you want to make the distinction between good christians (idk? catholics and whatever protestant denominations) and posers (evanglicals I guess) fine, but be honest.
I mean, that's what I was trying to do to begin with.
i see where you're coming from, but calling them christians is saying how it is. Let christians fix their hearts or die.
I say that because I'M Christian and not a lonely one of these bastards actually follows the teachings of christ. Why should I let them wear the label when they voted the actual, literal antichrist into the oval office?
It's also not just Christians. It's also the sex negative feminists (specifically a group called Collective Shout). They're two groups that hate each other but both of them want to destroy porn. One is "Think of the Children!" the other is "Think of the Women!".
The lady at the head of CS is so fucked up (not even trying with the usual subtle concern trolling of these astroturfs) she's even against abortion man.
Collective shout is a front for exodus cry so, no, it is just christians.
why should we let you no true scotsman them when they are proud to use your religion to advance hate? they are christians.
And why are YOU trying to vilify me here? We literally want the same thing. To see these bastards removed from power. We're just coming at it from different angles.
because i don't care for christians who try to deny that the religion has been a source of evil for millennia
they are christians. refusing to call them christians is giving christians a special pass for allowing these people to be the face of christianity
hmm yeah I think you're right, it does seem like there's a lot of legal pressure on the payment processors to ensure they're not funding illegal content. I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't a combination of factors though.
This is what crypto was supposedly made to fix, instead it was co-opted by the same payment processors, and fuckwit day-traders jerking off over monkey jpegs and green candles.
I think the original vision behind crypto court still be powerful, but yeah, tech bros and wall street ruin everything
In Brazil we have a little thing called pix... It's free, there's no one saying you can't use it for this or that... And it falls into the Bank account in seconds.
Bitcoin isn’t co-opt. Study
It can still be used this way and is still used this way even with these bad actors.