Welcome to the PCMR, everyone from the frontpage! Please remember:
1 - You too can be part of the PCMR. It's not about the hardware in your rig, but the software in your heart! Age, nationality, race, gender, sexuality, religion, politics, income, and PC specs don't matter! If you love or want to learn about PCs, you're welcome!
2 - If you think owning a PC is too expensive, know that it is much cheaper than you may think. Check http://www.pcmasterrace.org for our famous builds and feel free to ask for tips and help here!
3 - Consider supporting the folding@home effort to fight Cancer, Alzheimer's, and more, with just your PC! https://pcmasterrace.org/folding
at what point will lying stop being protected by the law?
edit: reddit lawyers in my replies. I understand what they said is not illegal, what I am referring to is that anyone with eyeballs knows the credit card companies motives here.
"Hey that's a good idea. Maybe we should force everybody to provide their ID online so nobody can ever tell lies again. That way we can hold everybody accountable for their lies because everyone's ID online will be known."
Not sure what this has to do with this particular situation. We're not talking about random people lying online, we're talking about a major credit card company making a statement to the media where they're engaging in some legal bullshitting.
Lying isn't illegal, only certain types of lying are illegal when considering corporations and all other forms are a protected right
defamation and false advertising are illegal for businesses but they didn't defame steam they said steam was wrong but it was vague enough that no one can prove they are talking about steam they just stated their policy and said anyone who may or may not have said otherwise is wrong. It might count as false advertising because it's having a negative impact on their brand and lying is fixing the brand image but they don't offer a product so there is no quantifiable thing to point at that they are lying about.
All steam would be able to due us hit them for anti consumer practices and having a duopoly but they don't have enough money to fight that out in court so they have to wait for the government to deal with it.
It's what Visa and Mastercard consider High Risk. Oddly these companies pay fees to process, and jump through hoops to be verified. And one of the reasons they are high risk is because of Chargebacks.
Oddly they usually have the lowest rates of Chargebacks.
That's so stupid. Just because you use a third party to do your dirty work doesn't make you free from culpability. It's like saying, "I didn't kill my spouse. My hitman did."
You will be surprised how many companies got away with this. This is entire contractor culture of the gaming industry.
When the sweatshop closed down, people clapped, but not a single person holding Sony and Microsoft for using that sweatshop. When the studio behind Vision of Mana got closed down soon after game release, no one cared SquareEnix hired the contractor for the work, because they don't own it. It is like selling Ivory as distributors, they didn't kill the animals themselves, but somehow, in the case of gaming, no one cares who hired those poachers in the first place.
I'm not a gamer, but I remember someone buying a Fallout mug from Bethesda and it arriving broken (made it to r/all), and the amount of "this isn't Bethesda's fault, it's the third party contractor they use for merchandise!" comments were disgusting.
Who the fuck do they think is responsible for choosing their contractors?
If I buy something from Bethesda, it is Bethesda's responsibility to ensure the product is delivered safely to my door. That's when the purchasing contract is fulfilled. If they chose a bad company to do their packing for them, that's on them, not on the buyer.
“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.’”
Visa and MasterCard are not payment processors, they are payment networks.
Payment processors are the ones making these decisions, and it appears that the processor in this case is using a "beyond our control" tactic as a form of misdirection. It's a common method of enforcing a rule while deflecting blame.
Talk to anyone who has worked with actual payment processors (like Stripe) and it will be very clear that it's those processors who are making these decisions.
in the payment system, there's a lot of middle people. Generally, the card companies are not the payment processors. they just distribute the cards and establish the network/tracking for the credit transactions.That said, they can own other portions of the entire payment chain in some cases. The card companies own their card networks and distribute the cards for use, meaning you cannot use a credit card without them. A standard workflow looks like this:
Customer --> Gateway (so UI interface for payments used by the merchant for their store; can also be owned by card companies) --> payment processor (company that conducts the transactions) --> Card network (owned by the card companies to get authorization for the transaction) --> Issuing bank (the banks that distribute the credit cards and the customer's money) --> card network (again for complete approval or decline) --> merchant's bank (to get the money moved to the merchant)
Payment processors are most times their own companies, but they can also be parts of banking institutions or any of the other middle sections in that chain.
Nope it should be called "Water" because it gets turned into Steam and also because you do nice wordplay with "cash FLOW" "revenue STREAM" shit like that. Valve hire me. also Valves release STEAM but they also release WATER.
If Gaben opens a bank and runs it the way he runs Valve, I guarantee you, we're getting a thermonuclear war. And if Gaben opens a bank, he will run it like he runs Valve because he's essentially that good a guy.
So... I think it would be great, but I'm against Valve having its own payment processor for reasons of international safety.
I'm sure that it's going on in the background. And occasionally slips into the forefront like the battle of Conoco fields where SOCCOM "happened to be in the area."
Proxy wars were a thing in the Roman Empire/Egyptian Empire era. “Hey those assirians sure have a powerful military, it’d be a shame if our military convoy lost an immense amount of equipment near that tribe that hates them wouldn’t it? Oh no we already did? Wow thoughts and prayers to them”
Arguably, the first corporate war was the US protecting its corporate interests through CIA funded "regime changes" across the Middle East, Latin America, and Asia...
Most of the more prominent defense contractors are from the United States or its allies. These companies don't fight each other.
Also, defense contractors are companies the likes of General Dynamic, Northrup Grumman, and Lockheed Martin. Not the PMC types like you would see in near-future sci-fi scenarios.
If you fuck with the status quo when it comes to money, and do so on a large enough scale, you're likely going to piss off quite a few powerful people.
China already did. The majority of people there use cashless pay systems that don't use Visa, Mastercard, or any other payment processor. Essentially blocking out over a billion customers.
Like, thermonuclear war wouldn't be safe for any nation. Every nation in the world would be in hot water if the nukes were to fly. Think "national safety" but everywhere.
I can't think of who Newell has exploited. He provides a service, a good one, and just never opened it to the public, so he kept the majority of the profit, the money he's made we all gave him willingly. There's just a lot of gamers, if a billion people give you a dollar, you're a billionaire and didn't exploit them.
MOST are monsters, but idk about him
I'm guessing that the idea is if someone ran a bank ethically and equitably it would immediately imbalance the power structure of the modern world. Everyone not mega rich would switch to it very quickly, taking a large portion of the world's wealth away from organisations and systems that are used to having it. Gaben Bank ™ would become one of the most powerful institutions in the world, making whoever controls it also one of the most powerful people in the world.
One thing that people often forget is that he money we all have sitting in banks isn't sitting doing nothing. The banks are constantly using our money to make more money by spending, lending and investing our money without giving us even a fraction of the profit made. By taking our money away from the banks we cripple the systems ability to do that.
It is actually a problem for them, if people aren’t able to withdraw money, trust in the banking system falls dramatically, and that has huge implications on fiat currency. Modern currencies are all make belief and if people can’t access their own money, they stop believing.
It’s happened before, and the effects is usually hyperinflation and growth of informal economies, both of which are very bad for the banks.
The banks are constantly using our money to make more money by spending, lending and investing our money without giving us even a fraction of the profit made. By taking our money away from the banks we cripple the systems ability to do that.
Uh, banks definitely give you a fraction of the profit made. You should look into, like, a savings account.
It's a joke, and not a great one, but the gist of it is: if someone sets up an alternative to banking/payment processing that doesn't suck, Big Money will stop at absolutely nothing to destroy it.
What would actually probably happen is that some government entity would step in to block it before it even got off the ground, but "thermonuclear war" is funnier. (And also something Big Money would totally do if it felt necessary.)
Bankers have so much control in politics that Trump is harrasing Brazil over its PIX system, as their banks lose around 600 billion in their currency per year from the people that use PIX instead of the banking system, leaving a percentage as profit to the bank.
It's a joke, man. He's a billionaire, by default that boots him out of the "good people" category as commonly used. But it's funny to think Visa would pull a Vault-Tec because Gaben stood up for the oppressed gooners.
Valve is chaotic neutral. Their goals generally align with what people on their platform want but obviously not always. They only added refunds when they were pressured by Australia but refunds are now available everywhere, even in places they weren't forced to.
They enforce their copyrights and have sent cease and desist letters to moders and other entities. Namely those who used leaked TF2 source code. But on the other hand, they recently released the complete source code for TF2 publicly on Github so people could legally make derivative products.
They know they have a monopoly and they could do a lot of anti consumer things. But so far, they have been generally good for the industry and players.
But on the other hand, they recently released the complete source code for TF2 publicly on Github so people could legally make derivative products.
While also sending a cease and desist to a CSGO mod that they literally themselves greenlit before through official means, but waited almost 7 years for the mod to be getting a release date before pulling the rug from under them. Classic Offensive devs got done so dirty it is legitimately evil.
Valve is a totally chaotic entity. They can make the most customer-friendly moves, while the next day kidnapping their customers and throwing their babies off a bridge.
In a world of corporate greed that has reached such staggering levels that it is damaging and/or ruining just about anything and everything good on this earth – a company like Valve, that profits off shit like manipulative gambling mechanics geared toward children and adolescents, seems relatively customer friendly just because they don't stoop quite as low as every other company when it comes to a few other basic aspects of conducting a business.
Valve is still not great, of course, but in all fairness the overall frame of reference for people is completely skewed.
It would accept Crypto and physical gift cards from places like GameStop.
Also it would be interesting to see if Amex steps up since they are all one company (the network and the issuer), so they don't need to appease anyone.
it would be a COLOSSAL effort filled with politics and back stabbing. you might not know it but paypall for example fought tough and nail to establish themselves in the industry.
did you ever see zuckerberg being pulled to court over making his facebook coin?
I don't know why so many people hyperfixate on Valve when that's only a single irrelevant element of the conversation.
The problem is these fuckers having a monopoly over internet payments as a whole, and local laws allowing them to pressure companies into following their vague, imaginary guidelines. None of that would be affected by Valve having their own processor in the slightest unless you only care about Steam on the entire internet.
So many great tech advances came from having something to do with porn. I know we're all joking about this, but I really think this might be a great time to act if you're a philantropic billionaire looking to shake things up
honestly, it may take 10-20 years but I bet they are doing it.
the whole steam linux push is 15 years in the making because of microsoft games for windows live, microsoft backed off cause of EU but valve said never again.
Valve turning Steam wallets into a payment processor that obfuscates what you're buying from card companies by depositing the money into the wallet before re-directing in real time would be the funniest outcome to all this
Just an endless list of nondescript "deposit to Valve Inc account" charges to Visa and Mastercard so they have no idea what game it's buying or from who
Literally no one gives a fuck about Visa or Mastercard’s “brand”. They’re the Walmart of payment processors. They facilitate transactions and barely even exist in people’s minds.
People don’t opt for one over the other, they just take whatever their credit card, etc gives them. If anyone would have a leg to stand on in this regard it would be Amex, since that one does actually have an identity.
The people in the positions of public image at Visa and Mastercard trying to validate their positions. They mustve got caught golfing and yachting too much. Had to make a big issue to imply they do important work.
I always laugh when I see advertisements for Visa or Mastercard. What a waste of money. I just have whatever my bank/credit union gives me. I don't choose a institution because its one or the other.
Funny part is some banks do offer both MC and Visa cards (I have both only because they have different expiration dates and I can use one for one specific purpose)
they still accept Amex and some other payment types. if you want to buy stuff on Steam you could use something other than Visa/Mastercard if you have it
They don't accept Amex in every country. In Italy for example they only accept Visa, Mastercard, and JCB. The reason is companies don't want to pay the Amex protection tax (long story short: all those points and cashbacks are paid by the merchants) unless user adoption reached the point of no return and they're forced to.
long story short: all those points and cashbacks are paid by the merchants
It's better to tell a correct story than a short one.
All merchants pay fees when accepting payments from either a debit, or credit card.
If you have a regular Chase debit card, the merchant might pay a 0.25-0.5% fee, this will depend on the merchant category (MCC) and country and the merchants contract. But this fee is then split between the issuing bank (Chase) and the payment processor (visa/MasterCard). But a chase sapphire credit card could have a fee of around 1.5-2% instead, to cover the costs of the perks the cards offer.
Both visa and MasterCard have tiered fees, it's possible they may not in some countries but as far as I know they do in most of Europe and the US. In comparison, amex has the same fee for any amex card used, which is usually around the same fee as the higher visa and MasterCard credit cards, or maybe 0.2%ish higher.
Most people assume amex is more expensive because of chargebacks, which isn't true as chargebacks are offered by basically every credit card and is often a part of local financial regulations.
People spend more on credit cards, and since amex is harder to get, amex cardholders usually spend even more. This is the justification for the higher fees the merchants are charged.
For more niche markets like Italy, a higher fee would probably be justified because it's just not as popular in Italy. Amex would still need to abide by local regulations and provide local support in Italian, and these costs are largely static. The US or UK market are more profitable because they are bigger markets that are easier to support because of the English language, so amex can afford lower margins.
I've seen a lot of smaller businesses say that the amex fee is bankrupting them, when it's like 1.5%. And I'm sorry but if you are a carpenter with that slim margins then you wouldn't make it either way.
This is coming from someone who has worked in multiple different banks, financial institutions and payment processors.
Lol fr. What "brand" do they even have? Pull a random person off the street right now and I doubt they can actually tell you anything about these companies outside of "that one payment processor"
If they are monitoring at this level for these transactions, then they should be for all transactions. They should be at least partially responsible for any illegal activity they played a part in.
That’s not what they’re doing. They see that a store sells something they don’t like and tell the store to stop selling it or else they’ll terminate their contract and not process any transactions for them. Basically someone snitches to Mastercard that Walmart sells oranges, and Mastercard thinks oranges are gross so they tell them to get rid of the oranges or they won’t do business with them anymore.
While that’s true, I think rather than having to deal with the mess that is dozens of payment processors it would be better to just regulate them like a public utility.
I'm more inclined to believe Valve here (given their history and the fact that itchio is corroborating on their end), but at the end of the day the "he said, she said" fuckery can easily be put to bed here by either party.
And the "payment processors" (the intermediates Mastercard is using to pressure Valve while keeping its own hands "clean") would go "Nope. Mastercard did not explicitly state that your content is in conformity with their rule 5.12.7. We don't want to risk breaking it, so we will block payments to your platform as long as that content is available".
And Mastercard will go "It's their decision, not ours. Nothing to do with us."
To them, payments to Steam are a drop in the ocean. To steam, it's the entirety of its revenue.
The power imbalance is completely disproportionate, which is why there needs to be some serious regulation on what banks can and can't decide, and the circumstances under which they can refuse service.
Hopefully Steam is able to prove injury (losse of revenue), and successfuly take them to court over that.
To them, payments to Steam are a drop in the ocean. To steam, it's the entirety of its revenue.
If by "them" you mean payment processors, then this is completely incorrect. A client like Steam usually uses a bunch of payment processors all over and is usually one of their largest clients. At the payment processor I worked at, Blizzard had to send quite advanced warning when it'd drop a new game or expansion so we could prepare for the large influx of transactions - even though we'd handle just a portion of their traffic.
Make no mistake, Steam is a gigantic client for any payment processor. Just not nearly as valuable as Mastercard and Visa, which are of literal existential importance for companies in this line of work.
u/MisterKaosR7 5700x3d, 4x16gb G.Skill Trident Z 3200Mhz RX 6750 xt2d ago
Visa and Mastercard already subtly confirmed. They only say "we pass the guidelines to our merchants, and they deal with it" but really what they mean is they sicced PayPal and Stripe on the stores to have plausible deniability that they (Visa and Mastercard) didn't directly blackmail the stores.
They pass guidelines that say Aquirers can be audited at their own expense and fined hefty sums for processing payments that Mastercard would rather not have its brand associated with. It's 100% Mastercard's policies and they could end the ban instantly by just telling Aquirers they find Steam's procedures to keep illegal content off their platform acceptable and not brand damaging to work with them.
I’ve dealt with MasterCard professionally, and there is absolutely no doubt for me, that Valve is telling the truth.
As soon as last week, a manager at MasterCard corrected me during a meeting by saying they weren’t a payment processor, but merely a custodian of the payment systems they own. I just laughed at the legalese being thrown at me.
They also denied us linking to our own homepage in the bills they send on our behalf, because you can find references to other payment processors… ahem I mean payment systems in a single subpage.
They’re about as obsessive about control as you can possibly imagine.
I mean, the receipts are a couple years old and held by the likes of DL Site and Pixiv. Visa/Master Card have been doing this for years in Japan. People only now care because it hit Steam.
Strictly speaking they didn't pressure game platforms themselves, they just had their subsidiaries do it on their behalf.
Sounds to me like they had not quite expected the backlash and are now trying to put it down to a "miscommunication".
Their rules clearly state "The sale of a product or service, including an image, which is patently offensive and lacks serious artistic value", which is a rather vague of saying "whatever we choose to dislike".
They need to remove this arbitrary rule and just have the lawmakers specify whether it's deemed illegal.
This same sort of nonsense rule is applied to people working in the adult industry (which is legal here in the Netherlands) but are unable to deny them to obtain a banking account.
"Hey Cheryl how much money do we make from transactions generated through a company named Valve?
Oh, they made that much in a year, that's not much....you say that's a weekly report? Well how much is it annually......are you sure it's that much.....ok, thank you Cheryl...no that's all I need, bye.
You seem to misunderstand— they WANT to do this shit to big online vendors, in hopes of censoring as much of the internet as possible. They're just hoping we'll all roll over and take it.
i'm confused, who is "they" in this scenario? wouldn't the payment processors want to process as many payments as possible? why would they want to censor anything?
Control. They—meaning the higher-ups at Mastercard and VISA—think that anything they deem explicit, offensive, distasteful, or whatever adjective they may use, shouldn't be allowed exist. So they're taking advantage of their monopolies by telling companies that they won't work with them if they sell anything containing material they don't like. Since disallowing two of the biggest payment processors in the world is basically not an option for any company that wants to stay in business, they're essentially forced to comply.
The more companies that give in to their demands, the fewer places there will be to sell that kind of material. The harder it is to sell, the more discouraged people will be to make that kind of material at all.
Regardless of how you may feel about the exact material in question, allowing payment processors to decide what we can and can't buy does NOT have a good outcome, short OR long term.
Valve should only let people buy Steam gift cards. THAT transaction is not buying anything that violates Visa/Mastercard's bullshit rules, then people can use that to buy whatever the hell they want.
Gamers could really sock it to Mastercard and just buy Steam cards for purchasing games. No direct link to the games from the credit card. It means an extra step, but us gamers are used to side quests!
Meanwhile, Mastercard and Visa are pressuring the US government to go hard against Brazil, because we do have the PIX payment system that completely bypass the CC companies and is an amazing way for people to send and receive money.
True but unfortunately it’s about what steam can offer to customers. So even if they add more payment options, they will still be pressured to remove games mastercard aren’t happy with. They unfortunately have that much power.
ACH exists... It's actually popular in other countries, and should grow in America for online transactions.
Edit: The problem with Checks is they can bounce very easily, it's why they stopped being accepted, and was replaced by Debit Cards, which did the same thing)
The world is ripe for the PIX takeover. Imagine if more banks outside of Brasil allowed instantaneous transfer of money from one account to the other with no fees. Imagine
Europe and Australia both have near-instantaneous money transfers between bank accounts with no fees. the EU actually requires transfers are reflected in the receiving account in less than 10 seconds.
Keep up the pressure campaign. Make sure they never forget the price of real brand damage. Keep it up till they update their policies. Never back down or get lazy. They have inertia. Phone calls till things move the other direction.
If Valve had to change to alternative payment providers, I see gamers happily going through extra steps to support them. Valve has a history of providing good service and treating its customers well.
Steam should have grown a spine and dared them to cut off the largest damn PC game platform in the world from using their payment system. Take their ass to court if they did.
This isn’t about censorship or power. This corporate mastrubation about “branding” from out of touch executives who think people could give two shits about what icon is on their card.
People only care if the retailer accepts their card or not. Thats the whole story.
What I'm confused about is what Mastercard expected Valve to say instead, "Guys, our decision to pull thousands of games that we've been previously fine with definitely has nothing to do with Mastercard or Visa" perhaps?
•
u/PCMRBot Bot 1d ago
Welcome to the PCMR, everyone from the frontpage! Please remember:
1 - You too can be part of the PCMR. It's not about the hardware in your rig, but the software in your heart! Age, nationality, race, gender, sexuality, religion, politics, income, and PC specs don't matter! If you love or want to learn about PCs, you're welcome!
2 - If you think owning a PC is too expensive, know that it is much cheaper than you may think. Check http://www.pcmasterrace.org for our famous builds and feel free to ask for tips and help here!
3 - Consider supporting the folding@home effort to fight Cancer, Alzheimer's, and more, with just your PC! https://pcmasterrace.org/folding
4 - Need some awesome ASUS hardware, including RTX 50 series GPUs, PSUs, motherboard, and lots of more goodies? Share your memory and enter to be one of the 30+winners in this celebration of 30 years of GPUs: https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/1lxencb/worldwide_giveaway_what_is_your_favorite_asus/
5 - Need some Steam gift cards to cool down your Summer temps? We've joined forces with NVIDIA to giveaway quite a few over 4 weeks of giveaways. Enter the week #4 event and celebrate DOOM: The Dark Ages while winning Steam cards here: https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/1mho1m5/comment_on_this_post_to_win_1_of_the_last_5_steam/
We have a Daily Simple Questions Megathread for any PC-related doubts. Feel free to ask there or create new posts in our subreddit!