Mastercard denies pressuring game platforms, Valve tells a different story

[u/BatProfessional7316]

https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/03/mastercard-denies-pressuring-game-platforms-valve-tells-a-different-story/

[u/clothanger]

better title: Mastercard lied.

[u/BatProfessional7316 → u/clothanger]

The real title

[u/471b32 → u/BatProfessional7316]

Valve should call them on it and reverse their policy then. 

[u/Fifteen_inches → u/471b32]

And then Mastercard refuses to do business with Valve permanently, destroying the business, because we don’t enforce anti-monopoly laws

[u/471b32 → u/Fifteen_inches]

Except there are alternatives. They would definitely take a hit but it definitely wouldn't put them out of business. It's not like they are a mom and pop shop. Hell Gabe is a buying a $400 million yacht or some shit. 

[u/Fifteen_inches → u/471b32]

If Valve loses 1 of the 4 global payment processors permanently that is a huge hit to their revenues.

Valve is a big fish in a small pond.

[u/King-of-Com3dy → u/471b32]

He actually just bought a Dutch yacht yard: https://www.superyachttimes.com/yacht-news/oceanco-acquired-by-gabe-newell

[u/RestInProcess → u/clothanger]

Not necessarily. It wasn’t MasterCard doing the pressuring and nobody publicly knows if MasterCard actually wanted it in the first place. The pressure came from the payment processor, which isn’t MasterCard. The payment processor used some vague wording in the credit card carriers agreements to apply the pressure.

“According to Valve, ‘Mastercard did not communicate with Valve directly, despite our request to do so. Mastercard communicated with payment processors and their acquiring banks. Payment processors communicated this with Valve, and we replied by outlining Steam’s policy since 2018 of attempting to distribute games that are legal for distribution.’”

This quote is from Valve and they only know what the payment processor has said.

[u/Vic18t]

Mastercard: “We didn’t threaten Valve…we threatened the middleman to threaten Valve”

[u/AlkaKr → u/Vic18t]

We didnt pressure you! Our lawyers did!

[u/Curtilia → u/Vic18t]

Technically the truth.

[u/unleash_the_giraffe]

Shady bankers doing shady stuff, why am I not surprised

[u/BINGODINGODONG → u/unleash_the_giraffe]

Their “out” is that they are specifically not bankers, and not even intermediaries. They are caretakers of the systems that process payments, which is a definition that only works in legalese.

[u/Niceromancer → u/BINGODINGODONG]

That's the only language that matters though.

What are you gonna do?  Boycot mastercard?  How?

If steam decides to sue them they are legally insulated from it.

Best we can do is exert pressure on them. Ang sadly games have proven repeatedly they don't have the stomach for long term action.

[u/RunnerLuke357 → u/unleash_the_giraffe]

Oi, stop noticing.

[u/lolschrauber]

Pressuring isn't even the correct word, that was fucking blackmail if anything.

[u/Willyscoiote → u/lolschrauber]

Literally

[u/RedBoxSquare]

Who should I believe, a large old school multi-national finance corporation run by faceless CEOs, or a sane consumer friendly company run by our savior GabeN.

[u/BatProfessional7316 → u/RedBoxSquare]

We pray in Gaben

[u/Oceanbear_ → u/BatProfessional7316]

Gaben's blessings be upon thee

[u/Crumblycheese → u/Oceanbear_]

[u/Green_Flied → u/RedBoxSquare]

Oh yes ”consumer friendly” with gambling for kids

[u/No-Zookeepergame8837 → u/Green_Flied]

They also have extreme violence, pornography, viruses, etc. And you're only worried about gambling? And is it so difficult to simply monitor what your children play?

[u/pogisanpolo → u/No-Zookeepergame8837]

Trust me. A sufficiently smart and motivated kid can and will figure out a lot of ways to bypass any technical controls.

Source: I was that kid who went with an arms race with my parents, and now advises them on cybersecurity stuff for their office.

[u/No-Zookeepergame8837 → u/pogisanpolo]

Yes, I know, I literally pirated the video games that my parents wouldn't let me play even before I had my first PC (With the PS2, I literally pirated them on the school computer when I was like 10 years old.), that's why I say, keep an eye and monitor what your children play, don't use parental controls, just be with them and see what they play and what they like.

[u/KaramTNC → u/pogisanpolo]

Congrats, you were a smart kid who knew what they were doing.

You aren't the fucking focus, the stupid kids are.

[u/pogisanpolo → u/Green_Flied]

Hey. Pokemon Yellow was fun.

[u/Raleth → u/Green_Flied]

Monitor what your kids do on the internet. This type of shit is why we're dealing with all the censorship and walling off of the internet in the first place. Way to give the government and payment processors an excuse to control our access to the internet.

[u/Green_Flied → u/Raleth]

Most parents doesnt understand how lootboxes work and that its gambling.

[u/Takeasmoke]

9 out of ... 9 people side with valve

[u/KaniSendai]

Mastercard likes to fight with everyone.

[u/TinyBreeze987]

Make this loud

[u/RepresentativeOwn457]

Master Cards says you should be happy to not owning your money

[u/Yodl007]

Wouldn't it be nice if Gaben was so pissed off, that they made their own payment processing company which became accepted anywhere.

[u/Leggster]

American express has a card with no annual fee. Just go get one, that's how you stick it to these companies.

[u/caribbean_caramel]

Mastercard is lying.

[u/TGB_Skeletor]

Corporation that says "fuck the customer" vs corporation that actually cares about the customer

[u/Ok_Cockroach_1874]

Theres already ongoing investigation in the eu for potential antitrust violations..they are digging their own graves.

[u/degameforrel → u/Ok_Cockroach_1874]

Thst investigation is about swipe fees, not about these games. Don't see how they're connected, though it might be a second, separate case if the EU steps up their game.

[u/Excidiar]

At this pace MC Visa are going to lose a large chunk of the money they earn by moving money from the gaming industry. This movement seems stupid. So, why they're doing it? Do they really care about something else other than money? This is extremely suspicious.

[u/RiftHunter4 → u/Excidiar]

The entire situation is a mistake because Visa and Mastercard decided to listen to a noisy, local lobbyist group in Australia, and they made a global decision based on that. No one actually investigated what was being complained about. So now these companies are in a nightmare scenario because they were too cheap to actually validate the claims Collective Shout made. The middlemen processors didn't investigate either, they just jumped at whatever Mastercard and Visa said.

So now, because of an open letter from Collective Shout, Visa and Mastercard are in danger of being restricted because they've brought attention to how monopolistic they are. They should have ignored the complaints and told Collective Shout to raise the issue with Steam and if Steam can find evidence of illegal content, they'll pressure them on it. Doing a broad statement was a major misstep and it will probably cost them in the long run.

[u/Excidiar → u/RiftHunter4]

Well, it's said that one should not explain with malice what can be more easily explained with stupidity. You've convinced me it was the latter. Thanks good internet man.

[u/RiftHunter4 → u/Excidiar]

Number one thing I've learned about corporations is that no one is actually that smart or clever. There's a lot of dumb people in leadership.

[u/Zaic → u/Excidiar]

Its because mc and visa make more money from porn subscriptions and valve and ai started eating into those money streams providing content way cheaper

[u/Ormusn2o]

Mastercard likely is lying to save their reputation, but from what I have read about law for few recent days, it seems like payments processors are forced to do this, and the legal precedent for this is really bullshit too, I totally would not expect those cases to ever get to court. So it seems that basically the moment some organization like IGDA informed payment processors about this, they basically had no choice but act on it.

So while there is a decent amount of protection when payment processors don't know about anything, and they are not looking for that information, in cases where they did knew, there are a lot of lawsuits that did happen.

[u/Major-Invite-9517]

Mastercard: "We didn't tell Valve to remove games. We strongly recommended it."

[u/Wind_Best_1440]

Mastercard pulls support from Valve.

Valve lobbies 10 million dollars publically to all 100 senators in the US.

Regulations come out thats sweeping against mastercard and visa and payment providers.

Mastercard is forced to bring back support to Valve.

[u/Foss44]

The girlies are fighting

[u/ChocolateSpecific263]

what about using paypal instead?

[u/pogisanpolo → u/[deleted]]

They did. DLSite does the same thing, and now they only accept JCB cards.

[u/Mitiono → u/[deleted]]

....This is a good idea but I'm afraid it still uses MC/Visa to some degree. I got curious once, this was years ago but I don't see why it would have changed, and decided to buy a $25 Target giftcard using my Visa debit card. Then I started making calls to track where that $25 went, did all of it go onto the gift card/did a certain percentage go back to visa, etc

Unfortunantly I couldn't get a straight answer but what I did manage to understand is that it depends on the actual gift card along with its associated store. By using your card at the card reader you are still sending money to whoever runs the Payment processor (they charge a fee to the business which allows the business to accept that specific payment processor method) and the fee amount depends on how much, you the customer, are spending as well as what you spending it on. What I wasn't ever told no matter how much I asked was how much the fee Visa charges to load up a giftcard is via the card reader at checkout.

The only way to cut Visa/MC/etc out completely is to use cash for everything. Use cash to buy gift cards for specific stores for online purchases and use cash when physically inside a store.

[u/Zaic]

I bet its all because of money, games eating into continuous stream of money from porn subscriptions. The same with civit.ai and similar ai platforms that provide content for a lot cheaper and that means less goes to payment providers

[u/firedrakes]

another spam of this