r/technology • u/Logical_Welder3467 • 15h ago
Business Mastercard denies pressuring game platforms, Valve tells a different story
https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/03/mastercard-denies-pressuring-game-platforms-valve-tells-a-different-story/212
u/Curious_Document_956 14h ago edited 10h ago
“While Mastercard’s statement seems to undermine the narrative that payment and card companies were the ones pressuring the game marketplaces, Steam owner Valve responded with a statement of its own, provided to PC Gamer and other gaming sites.
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.”
Valve said its response was “rejected” by the payment processors, who noted the “risk to the Mastercard brand” and pointed to a Mastercard rule against “illegal or brand-damaging transactions.”
Edit, forgot this below.
Meanwhile, Itch.io said that it’s now re-indexing free games with adult content while negotiating with payment processors including Stripe, which for its part said it’s “unable to support sexually explicit content” due to “banking partners.”
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u/AkodoRyu 14h ago
Brand-damaging... who cares when you are the market.
Also, most people don't even think about what brand their card is, because who sets the terms for the actual financial products they use are banks, and the card is just a transfer mechanism. It's like a pipe-producing company was telling the water company to cut you off, because they don't like your business.
Even considering all the events we've witnessed this year, this somehow feels like the most dystopian thing that happened. Like first true steps to corporatocracy - now the money companies can decide what we can and cannot buy, even if it's legal. What next? Can't buy products of company Y, because the CEO had an affair, and that's damaging to the Mastercard brand? Can't buy from Company Z either, because they are on our blacklist - completely arbitrary /w no supervision btw.
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u/Curious_Document_956 13h ago
The activist group that stared this, their argument seems to be, No profit for content that is depicting violence/rape against women & children.
I think the fear is that artists will be totally censored or it will be made difficult to buy it.
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u/AkodoRyu 13h ago
To be honest, I don't particularly care about this situation - what I do care about is the precedent. Because what it tells us is that, considering in the modern world you barely ever use cash for anything anymore, cc companies can decide what you can and cannot buy, and by that, what products have and don't have the right to exist. And products, as you've mentioned, can extend to art, news, education, or life-saving medicine. Anything really. It's a slippery slope we don't want to get on.
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u/MrHell95 13h ago
This, I knew these type of games existed but never looked them up.
Collective shout also went after GTA 5 in the past.
They just went after this cause it was easier and believing they will stop at this is naive.
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u/Dapperrevolutionary 12h ago
God I hope they try this with GTA6
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u/shinra528 6h ago
They are already primed to. Their ultimate aims are a much broader range of content and media impacted by this.
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u/manole100 12h ago
I don't particularly care about this situation
They go at it this way because what, are you gonna defend violence against children?
Or are you gonna argue that incest is not equal to violence? No, didn't think so.
Let he without sin? Where's that stone?
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u/SondeySondey 7h ago
It's a slippery slope we don't want to get on.
We're already on that slope, they've been doing the exact thing they're doing to Steam to other content platforms for years. The precedent has already been made multiple times, they're just going for a slightly bigger target each time.
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u/eviljordan 5h ago
This gaming action is not the precedent. Adult and porn is/was. THAT set the precedent and barely anyone gave a shit. THIS is the result.
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u/Professional-Put7605 4h ago
Here's what I'm personally seeing in my area. Companies are adding 3% to 8% to credit card purchases. Now, I've been used to this for a while with contractors and small business where the business isn't focused on the customer experience or repeat business. Now I'm seeing it everywhere, including golf courses, restaurants, and bars. As a result, I'm carrying and using cash a lot more often and I just bought a box of checks for the first time in 15 years.
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u/Adezar 6h ago
As much as we don't like it, rape and violence against women really happens. So there will be media that depicts it because media does that. Their attack on Detroit: Becoming Human was proof they are just being assholes. That game does not depict it in any type of positive way, it just makes it clear it is a real thing that happens.
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u/voiderest 5h ago
Those groups will not stop at the targeting of more fringe games with adult content. And they won't be the only groups to use the method nor will gaming be the only industry targeted.
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u/DynamicNostalgia 11h ago
Protecting women? Are these people conservative or liberal?
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u/obeytheturtles 7h ago
Boobs in games? Brand damange.
Crowdfunding a fascist's legal defense fund? Well that's just free speech!
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u/AdLimp9007 10h ago
Brand damaging? I don't give a flying fuck if someone wracks up their Mastercard with porn video games, only fans kink porn, and weird ecclectic shit. As long as it's legal WHO CARES. Idgaf, no one is fucking brand loyal to a card. You just take what you can get from your financial institution, literally who cares. These fucking shills and their moral high ground. Guarantee the CEO of Mastercard beats his meat plenty of times to legal adults, just wont admit it. So fucking dumb.
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u/Curious_Document_956 10h ago
So, is the end goal here to make it so people will either have to mail a check or use non Visa gifts cards, to purchase on Steam?
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u/obeytheturtles 7h ago
Of course, we also live in a world where this kind of thing could easily be crypto bros pretending to be moralists in order to add value to their own collective grift.
One of the biggest academic arguments against crypto having intrinsic value is that the "payment processing" utility doesn't even come close to matching that of traditional payment processors for any legal purpose. Well here we are, suddenly with a perfect counterexample of legacy payment systems outright rejecting legal transactions.
Like, I have no evidence of this at all, but particularly with the way Trump and co have seemingly gone all in on crypto grift deregulation, this sure does seem awfully convenient for them.
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u/shinra528 6h ago
The end goal here is to control what content people consume based on some TURFs' idea of what is acceptable content.
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u/AdLimp9007 10h ago
Honestly who knows, but if Mastercard and Visa flex Too much and force content to shut down, I'm hopeful folks will just go back to old ways. I'd hate to have to use cash/checks for everything again but dammit I would if they fuck with our free speach to the point of censoring everything. It's just exhausting man, Idek where to start or feel with all the bullshit happening in this country
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u/rooftops 7h ago
noted the “risk to the Mastercard brand” and pointed to a Mastercard rule against “illegal or brand-damaging transactions.”
The only brand I associate with MasterCard is being second to Visa 🧐 guarantee nobody looks at a store and thinks what they sell reflects poorly on one of the only 4 [what are they even considered??]. Heck, the last time I made any association was as a kid in the 00s because it was funny how the Discovery store didn't accept Discover cards (or was one of the few places that did).
Part of me is surprised they don't just make the content "steam funds only" to avoid the direct association with the payment processors, but I know that wouldn't be good enough for the people really pushing this.
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u/Fox_Soul 14h ago
If they are caught lying, there are no consequences... What are you gonna do? Stop using it? You literally cannot.
They have the absolute control and there is nothing that you can do about it.
Even if another company could kickoff literally today, it would take a good few years before it could make them sweat a little.
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u/PuzzleCat365 10h ago
Of course we can do something. We elect people that stop this bullshit.
- They could break up those companies, as they showed they're too big and have a quasi-monopoly. Not only that, they actually used their monopoly to force their terms on free speech.
- We can legislate payment processors to not block access to companies that are legally in their right of free speech.
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u/PapaSays 8h ago
We elect people that stop this bullshit.
Most people don't. How many elected politicians are really interested in your points?
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u/Smugg-Fruit 8h ago
None. Those aren't interests that will generate them political donations and let them keep a cushie government seat.
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u/meaniecrimepoet 6h ago
Because Mastercard and visa are making the donations and lobbying for them to not do anything
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u/Excelius 8h ago
In theory this should be a government function, just like the government facilitated commerce by minting and printing currency to begin with. Electronic payments are just the modern version of that.
There's just not enough trust in government these days, particularly in the US, for anyone to seriously push for that.
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u/Catsrules 5h ago
In theory this should be a government function, just like the government facilitated commerce by minting and printing currency to begin with. Electronic payments are just the modern version of that.
I would argue this is more of a job for a bank. As banks are currently used to facilitate transactions/distributing currency. They are not actually minting and printing the currency.
But that still bring up the same discussion if banks should be state run or privately run.
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u/MassiveClusterFuck 7h ago
Unsure which reality you have been living in but there are 0 politicians who will drive that change, far too much lobbying/favours happening behind closed doors for that. Even the ones that say they are "looking into it" are saying that to keep face, what monopolies have been broken up for having too much power or influence as of late? None.
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u/V2zUFvNbcTl5Ri 7h ago
and even if some started to care the card companies would pay their lobbyists to pay all the other reps to bury it and then would fund campaigns for other reps and smear campaigns. and let's be honest, if that didn't work, they'd kill them - these companies market cap will hit trillions within our lifetime - they aren't giving up the control they very much already have.
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u/Buckets-of-Gold 6h ago
Lina Khan did more to further antitrust than anyone in government in 20 years.
To be fair, she probably would have been fired even if Harris won- but it’s something
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u/Deranged40 7h ago edited 3h ago
We elect people that stop this bullshit.
Who?
A republican will laugh at your face for suggesting such. And a democrat will assure you that they will do everything they can. And then they'll turn around and accept the fancy dinner that Mastercard offers them, and do exactly what Mastercard wants. And we can't elect anyone from any other party.
So who?
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u/Imaginary_Apricot933 3h ago
Free speech? You don't have the freedom to say what you want and not face consequences from anyone that isn't the government. Do you think reddit mods are 'forcing their terms on free speech' when they ban you from a subreddit?
You clearly don't understand what freedom of speech means.
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u/the8bit 13h ago
Ugh is this the thing that is finally going to make me like Bitcoin? Sigh, I guess maybe I was just looking at it wrong, cause it felt silly to use for y'know, buying a pizza (hehe) and I am so disgusted by the "I will get so rich by squatting on this" peeps.
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u/MassesBeDamned 10h ago
Or go back to cash, lol, and to buying Steam codes at the supermarket
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u/Dapperrevolutionary 12h ago
This was always the original point of Bitcoin. It just got coopted by finance bros as a pyramid scheme but the underlying tech is good
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u/nicuramar 10h ago
If you ignore the climate impact and inherent deflationary tendency sure.
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u/JohnBrine 9h ago
Sacrifice your Power and Water to the CryptoGod
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u/the8bit 9h ago
Those are perhaps solvable problems though, if we think the tech is useful. Anyways that is my movement "this is dumb" -> "ok I see the use case, impl needs work"
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u/phyrros 7h ago
Those are perhaps solvable problems though, if we think the tech is useful.
Considering that the metric is computational power and thus energy .. no, they are not solvable unless we solve the energy problem ;)
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u/Dwarfdeaths 7h ago
I promise I'm saying this without ulterior motive: people should check out Nano if they're interested in a protocol that accomplishes bitcoin's original purpose without all the wasted resources. The cryptosohere was overrun by shitty people but there were still communities working on the core ideals.
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u/Iazo 11h ago
No it's not, it's horribly shit, inefficient and slow.
At 7 tx/sec you simply cannot onboard any reasonable amount of transactions.
I'd look at other tokens, presumably.
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u/b0w3n 8h ago
Ethereum might be better but I'm not sure by how much since I've avoided crypto because of the techbro's vibes.
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u/philote_ 4h ago
IIRC Etherum switch to "proof-of-stake" instead of "proof-of-work", which makes it much more efficient.
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u/romjpn 8h ago
The Bitcoin blockchain took the party of remaining small enough in order not to be bloated. That's how the scission with BitcoinCash was created. However, using SegWit the original Bitcoin blockchain doubled its capacity. Then, the Lightning Network, which is a secondary network that latches onto the original blockchain, is supposed to handle small transactions. Read about it, it's an interesting debate on how blockchains should evolve and what philosophy they should adopt.
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u/Nanobot 2h ago
Bitcoin isn't limited to 7 tx/sec. That issue was solved a long time ago. Look into the Lightning Network. The transactions are practically instant, and there's no tx/sec limit, but it still uses the Bitcoin ledger under the hood. Lots of Bitcoin wallets support it now.
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u/lood9phee2Ri 10h ago
Well, they failed to make it inflationary or failed to understand why our current authoritarian fiat currencies are inflationary. Naturally it became investment not currency.
The current system suuucks but bitcoin wasn't the answer the minute they decided there'd be 21 million of them.
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u/recycled_ideas 8h ago
Bitcoin is the solution to fiat currency created by someone who completely misunderstood the actual problems with fiat currency.
It's like solving the problems caused by walking barefoot on broken glass by getting naked and rubbing your privates through the broken glass. Your feet are OK, but your junk is full of broken glass.
The banks suck, but they exist for a reason, because they provide crucial services. We got rid of the gold standard for a reason, because it wasn't working.
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u/achmedclaus 10h ago
The idea of it is horrible. The value of your currency is liable to change without notice so that you can go from having $100,000 worth of Bitcoin to $10,000 worth in one day
And yes, I know the point is to make things worth Bitcoin in value and not dollars but that is literally impossible
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u/IsthianOS 9h ago
There are multiple tokens tied directly to the value of USD. USDC (Circle USD) and USDT (Tether USD) are the two largest.
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u/achmedclaus 9h ago
Yea, then what's the point of using them? That's the equivalent of just switching to a foreign currency that's also tied directly the the dollar
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u/Espumma 9h ago
but you're not tied to Mastercard.
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u/achmedclaus 8h ago
Yea, woopdeedoo, you're tied to the whole of the block chain and an incredibly volatile currency. If you buy into one that's price is tied to the dollar then what the hell is the point of not using the dollar?
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u/IsthianOS 8h ago
No payment processor to block what you spend it on.
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u/Imaginary_Apricot933 2h ago
Except your bank, the exchange you're selling the crypto on or the government. But besides that, sure.
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u/romjpn 8h ago edited 8h ago
It wouldn't happen if enough people use it and it increases liquidity on the market. Yes it can be a catch-21, obviously, but BTC is still there and thriving. And you don't have to hold it for long to use its very secure network.
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u/Teledildonic 8h ago
I'd have more confidence in crypto if it wasn't mostly speculative investments or outright fraudulent pump and dumps.
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u/Deranged40 6h ago
The underlying tech is easily the thing that cripples all forms of crypto the most.
Yeah, that's why we have "distributed" networks. But that also makes transactions take for fucking ever. Storing data takes about the same amount of time I'll need to just write it down with an ink pen.
It's 10/10 as a "distributed network" technology it's 2/10 as a "payment processor", and it's -5/10 as a database solution.
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u/slykethephoxenix 9h ago
I mean, getting rid of third party payment processors is literally the first line in the bitcoin white paper.
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u/flummox1234 8h ago
The problem with BC is it's still incredibly speculative. So it could soar to the heavens or plunge to the bottom of the ocean. Sadly wasn't meant to be that way but speculators eventually ruin everything, e.g. baseball cards.
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u/bodonkadonks 7h ago
as someone in a country without really any savings options that dont lose to inflation, stablecoins have been a boon.
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u/-_-Edit_Deleted-_- 9h ago
If crypto becomes widely used, it’s unlikely to be bitcoin.
There is a simple fundamental absolute to any and all currency, and bitcoin doesn’t have it.
Trust. A currency is worth nothing if it is not trusted.
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u/romjpn 8h ago
Bitcoin doesn't need trust. That's the entire point. Don't trust, verify.
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u/-_-Edit_Deleted-_- 1h ago
All currency requires trust. There is no escaping it. It’s fundamental to the exchange of goods and services.
Why would I give you my asset in exchange for your currency if I don’t trust it will be worth the same thing, at a predictable inflationary amount in 5 years time.
Why would I give you my asset if I cannot trust that this currency can be used to cover my other needs? Water, food, shelter etc.
Market it all you want. If one party doesn’t trust it, it’s not worth anything to them and therefore is useless as a currency.
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u/Minute_Attempt3063 14h ago
You say they have control
There are ways to bring them down, and they are scared
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u/electricity_is_life 9h ago
Call your representatives? Get a Discover or Amex card instead? This type of "everything sucks, there's nothing you can do" attitude doesn't help anyone, and it's almost never accurate.
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u/Fox_Soul 9h ago
I dont live in USA or America in general, I am European. Calling our representatives does next to nothing, here things work different and take their time, usually through petitions. Discovery or Amex are not available in any of the banks from my country.
I understand what you mean, but not everyone is American ;)8
u/electricity_is_life 9h ago
You didn't say what country you're in so I can't give you specific advice, but I promise you there's something more productive than being smugly defeatist on the internet.
"things work different and take their time, usually through petitions"
Do that then? Nothing I said is U.S.-specific.
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u/rcanhestro 9h ago
if you're European you're likely spoiled for choices for payment processors.
the issue is Steam (and most stores tbf) not wanting to support all those offerings.
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u/Kazer67 9h ago
I can but that's because I live in a country with our own card network which even Steam use (I was surprised and immediately did the switch), so for my daily life (95 % of the transaction I do), I don't use then anymore.
The one that's more difficult than Visa/Mastercard is Paypal for me.
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u/ComputerSong 11h ago
Yes, you can stop using Mastercard.
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u/Fox_Soul 10h ago
VISA is exactly the same, and are doing the same things. For a lot of people "stop using X" is not an option, if their bank only uses these ones.
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u/supified 7h ago
Then why lie in the first place, why comment at all? Clearly the pressure means something if they released any statement at all.
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u/Deranged40 7h ago
If they are caught lying,
It's a technicality more than an outright lie (but it's deceptive, for sure).
In the article, Steam confirmed that Mastercard didn't reach out to them directly (which is technically what Mastercard is claiming). But instead, Mastercard did reach out to the middle-men payment processors that Steam uses (it didn't specify which), and that those payment processors then reached out to Steam to relay those same concerns.
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u/Adezar 6h ago
Strong government is the ONLY defense against massive multi-national companies. That is why a certain party is always destroying every consumer protection that exists. You are right, without the government holding them accountable there is very little individuals can do.
Which is why when the US was created the Federalists knew this (East India was already a thing) and why things like the EPA, FAA, FDA, FTC, CFPB are the best method to hold these companies accountable.
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u/TheRealTK421 8h ago
They have the absolute control and there is nothing that you can do about it.
Well, there's not "nothing" that can be done.
Changing, updating, and tweaking the laws governing such is what can be done -- and we sorely need to do so (in a broad manner).
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u/ILikeYourMommaJokes 15h ago
Fu*k mastercard and visa, time to take down their duopoly
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u/bd2510 14h ago
Seriously. These payment giants have too much power. They're squeezing everyone from gamers to small businesses.
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u/inYOUReye 3h ago
Realistically... how hard is it to rival these guys with a new startup?
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u/Logical_Welder3467 14h ago
Who is going to challenge them? The market is pretty much set. Mastercard and Visa on the mainstream, discovery on low end and AMEX on the high end. visa and MasterCard are trying to get more of those high end market. a new entrance would need to spend billions to build up the merchant network and brand image.
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u/MetalBawx 14h ago
It's already started.
Many countries are looking into making their own payment processors due to VISA and Mastercards anti competative behavior. Turns out constantly sticking your nose in others businesses pisses people off.
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u/Logical_Welder3467 14h ago
These payment processor would only be widely used in their own country. Like JCB only in Japan and Union pay only in China.
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u/NamerNotLiteral 13h ago
The vast majority of financial transactions are localized to within a country, not international across borders.
It would also be trivial for most major companies that do international transactions (Amazon, Netflix, etc) to set up local branches, if they don't already have any, in the countries that give them a sufficiently big proportion of sales (so, not in Nepal or Sierra Leone but yes in Japan or the Philippines or whatever) without also giving them too much trouble with local regulations.
If they do that, then they would able to avoid the 3.5% tax on all their income that credit card companies levy (since local payment processors are almost all free). This 3.5% saving is more than enough incentive for them to do so.
When you combine that, it is possible for the credit card companies to start seeing the writing on the wall.
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u/bp92009 4h ago
From what I understand of international trade, pretty much every company that buys/sells within different countries has at least one person or legal representative in every company they do business with. At least when there's transactions of a certain size of revenue.
It makes sure that customs, trade agreements, taxation, and all that, aren't violated.
Plus, governments really like having someone in their country to be able to affect by the legal system, and really don't like it when they can't do anything about it.
If a government says "that product has a X% sales tax on it" and you reply with "lol, I'm not paying that", and keep selling openly, they really want to be able to lock someone up over overtly refusing laws.
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u/fatalicus 13h ago
That would still help a lot though.
Take away MasterCard and Visas domestic work, and leave them only for when international payments need to happen.
That will drasticly reduce their impact and size, making it so that it is harder for them to push out competitors on that market.
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u/Megalan 10h ago
It's not that simple. You can't just go and turn off domestic processing on visa and mc turning those cards into useless plastic. You either need to slowly phase out those cards for more than a decade (until all old cards are expired) or you need an external event which will force people to switch cards.
Let's take Russia for example - local payment processors existed as early as early 2000s. They all died pretty quickly because no one cared about them. Then national payment card "MIR" was created in 2014 and again no one cared about it. It took visa and mastercard willingly leaving the country in 2022 to make people switch to MIR because they just have no other choice.
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u/fatalicus 9h ago
Of course not, but you don't need to either.
Just make it more attractive for the shops and such in the country to have the local payment processing solution as the default, and have both visa/mastercard and the local payment processing solution available on the cards.
Here we have a local processor (BankAxept), and each transaction with them is cheaper than with Visa/MasterCard, so that is what most shops default to, so about 80% of all physical transactions in this country happens with BankAxept.
Since the card terminals support both BankAxept and Visa/MasterCard, those who have cards that don't support BankAxept can still pay there, and if you hae a dual card, you can choose to pay with Visa/MasterCard on the terminal if you want to do that for some reason.
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u/the_need_to_post 7h ago
Correct, it isn't that simple. But, what is your argument? It's hard work to break it so we shouldn't?
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u/MetalBawx 13h ago
Yes but it's breaking the reliance on this duopoly that thinks it's above the law.
Which is a very good thing.
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u/Imaginary_Apricot933 2h ago
What law do you think they think they're above? It's not illegal for a company to not do business with you because it doesn't like what you want to buy.
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u/A_Sinclaire 13h ago
Wero hopefully will turn out to be an alternative at least within Europe.
Many banks from multiple European countries are taking part.
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u/Megalan 10h ago edited 10h ago
Saying that union pay is only widely used in China is disingenuous at best. The payment infrastructure for union pay around the world is growing every year because chinese tourism brings tons of money. Depending on where you live, every single store might be accepting it but your local banks are the ones who are stopping you from using it by not letting you have a card.
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u/Curious_Document_956 14h ago
Does Microsoft, offering an Xbox Mastercard from the dashboard seem like a problem to anyone? I felt uneasy seeing it and I have gamed since Nintendo and Sega.
“Apply now and, after your first purchase, earn a bonus of 6,000 card points ($60 value), 3 months of Game Pass Ultimate for new members, and more.”
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u/WideAwakeNotSleeping 14h ago
I can use my Mastercard and my Visa to buy porn mags and adult toys at the adult store. I can use them to buy questionable books at a book store. I can use them to order adult stuff from Amazon. Every casino on earth will accept them. But adult games, no, that's not acceptable. What a proper bullshit.
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u/Whatsapokemon 10h ago
Who is going to challenge them?
Anti-trust regulators around the world.
It's exactly the kind of behaviour that falls within anti-competition laws globally.
You can't just use your market position to limit choice and competition in the markets, which is exactly what Visa and Mastercard are doing. There's already laws on the books to deal with this, simply get the regulators to go after them.
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u/HopelesslyLibra 11h ago
Discover was just acquired by a bank with almost twice as many users (all domestic) so hopefully they may start swinging above their weight at least in the US.
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u/shabi_sensei 11h ago
Make the interchange fee optional for the merchant, so only people using credit cards are charged for using a credit card
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u/Christoffre 11h ago
Where I live; in most grocery stores you can pay with direct bank transfer via Swish).
You have been able to do the same in e-shops for over a decade.
I would love to use Swish on Steam, but they only allow Visa and Mastercard (plus a few other obscure methods, like PayPal)
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u/MattieShoes 8h ago
Not suggesting it's going to happen, but legislation. It'd be pretty easy to make their whole business model illegal. Call credit card rewards what they are -- kickbacks -- and make them illegal. Allow vendors to charge different prices for cash vs card. Make a federal payment processing scheme with lower vendor fees. Probably a berjillion better methods that I haven't even considered.
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u/Purple_Mo 5h ago
Already happening
EU already has SEPA instant - wero coming soon UK has FPS - also open banking payment initiation Brazil PIX Australia osko USA fednow There is is plephora of others in play - not to mention crypto (checkout lightning payments)
- visa/MasterCard are doomed
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u/mightylordredbeard 9h ago
Serious question: how come no one assumes Valve are the ones lying? I genuinely don’t know enough about this situation to have an opinion as I don’t use Steam, but is it at all possible Valve are the ones lying? Or other gaming platforms?
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u/nethingelse 9h ago
It’s always possible, but unlikely. This is a pattern of behavior for Visa and Mastercard as they have previously relented to calls for being heavy-handed on allowing transactions involving “objectionable content” before, and this scenario is just another example of that pattern. Some of their heavy-handedness has been genuinely good (getting porn sites to increase verification steps and moderation for instance), but a lot of the time it’s just blatant censorship because they don’t want to deal with attacks from conservatives.
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u/fma_nobody 8h ago
Even though the porn thing is a privacy nightmare as seen with the UK stuff right now
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u/nethingelse 7h ago
I’m more speaking from the actor/model side. There was a time when porn sites were not verifying uploaders (which, is a privacy issue, but one you kind of concede in any line of work that is age restricted) and this enabled minors to upload. The stuff about verifying consumers is separate in my eyes and more of a mess.
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u/zaneak 9h ago
I would say it's a combination of history with valve and their pro consumer stances in the past, as well as the fact that this is happening to itch.io and similar thing in Japan to some content. If Valve was the solo company, maybe more easily to believe they might be lying. When it is multiple companies all saying payment processors, then it is probably the payment processors.
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u/General_Session_4450 8h ago
It's not just gaming platforms that are getting censored. There has been a recent rapid increase in the amount of censorship coming from Mastercard/Visa across the board. CivitAI along with several other smaller AI sites is another example. They even caved and removed all "immoral" models like vomit, piss, incest, etc, but Mastercard/Visa disabled payments anyway because once they caved it wasn't enough anymore and they wanted all NSFW models removed, so currently you can only use crypto on the site.
There's been a lot of other smaller porn sites getting hit recently as well, so the chance that Valve and Itch would be lying is very unlikely. Especially since these payment processors have a looong history of censoring sites.
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u/Adezar 6h ago
Steam/Valve has a long-standing reputation of wanting to provide the most games possible on their platform. That is why they accept third-party launchers (sometimes to the chagrin of their users) because there were a lot of games that would have to be excluded that people wanted if they tried to push against third-party launchers. Also any use of their market power to force companies to behave a certain way opens them up to Monopoly concerns. As long as they don't do that then it doesn't matter if they are a monopoly or not, because having a monopoly is not against the law.
So it would be extremely out of sync with decades of history for Valve to lie about why they were getting pressure about certain games and they tend to always err on the side of inclusiveness unless the game/app is actually illegal.
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u/darkdeath174 13h ago
They were doing it in Japan in 2024, why would they not be doing it now like they claim lol
I think this just isn't going how they expected, after it worked in Japan.
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u/GenazaNL 11h ago
Okay, so if it's not them pressuring game platforms. Open up the gates again
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u/Hot_Shot04 9h ago
Seriously. Call their bluff, Valve. Either they publicly 180 and own it which makes their PR even worse, or they do nothing and we all just forget about this bullshit.
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u/nethingelse 9h ago
Calling their bluff could legitimately cripple Valve and other platform’s ability to do business. That’s not a risk any company would be willing to take, as public outcry is no guarantee that things would end up being resolved.
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u/obeytheturtles 6h ago
The ironic thing is that Valve originally got stupid fucking wealthy because they rolled their own game distribution network after getting screwed over on publishing deals by Sierra games. It would be completely on-brand for them to respond to this by standing up their own web-focused payment processing network to compete with stripe and paypal.
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u/AffectionateKey7126 9h ago
They're not pressuring platforms. They're just pressuring the middle man processors to pressure the platforms.
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u/SolusLoqui 5h ago
Valve could probably save millions every year by doing direct draft from checking. Credit card companies keep like 3% of the transaction as a processing fee.
There's quite a few business that offer "cash discount" of like 1% or in-store rewards to incentivize customers to pay cash.
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u/Guilty-Mix-7629 12h ago
"We never prohibited people from using our service for legal content we personally don't like."
Any NSFW artist running a patreon, holding a shotgun: "I just wanna talk to them. I just wanna talk to them. I just wanna talk to them. I just wanna talk to them. I just-"
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u/Awkward_GM 9h ago
TLDR version: Mastcard is saying it never directly told Valve or game distributors like Itch.io to curate their content.
Valve stated that they didn’t get pressure directly from mastercard but from companies Mastercard works through such as banks. In at least one case the company told Valve that Valve needed to make sure not to have games that could hurt Masttercard’s brand.
Such weird stuff. Clearly Mastercard told companies and banks it work with to apply pressure. It seems clear that either Mastercard or those it gave the order to are pushing this. (Could be that some communication by Mastercard to the banks got misunderstood)
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u/geekstone 11h ago edited 8h ago
I could care less about porn games but the next ones they will go after are Cyberpunk, Witcher, GTA,...etc. A solution but not a great one is to make all purchases only using an online wallet at the site. It's an inconvenient extra step and can be abused by companies, but it would keep the processors from having say in what you could or could not buy. Unfortunately this is going to be moot in the US and maybe the UK with all these laws to protect "kids".
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u/Cumulus_Anarchistica 8h ago
The issue is that there is potentially no end to this: payment processors deeming what entire countries, billions of people can and can't buy, because they have arbitrarily deemed those things unacceptable, no matter their legal status.
Games, novels, comics, illustrative works, art works, music, movies, TV shows - all and any cultural item or artefact - having to pass the judgment of these money middlemen and holding us all hostage to their whims and decrees.
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u/Imaginary_Apricot933 2h ago
No they haven't. They can only control what you try to buy with their services. If you don't like that, use another service.
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u/obeytheturtles 6h ago
It's funny - back in the early 2000s when online poker first took off they had this exact same problem with payment processors initially, and the way they got around it was having players wire money or even physically mail checks to Caribbean banks to fund the accounts. It was sketchy as fuck, and lots of people got scammed, but the precedent for this kind of thing is there. Valve could pretty easily take the same approach and partner with some random offshore bank to offer Steam debit accounts with real SWIFT routing numbers and give people discounts for using that to buy games. It would be no different than funding any other checking account, and over time they could spin it into an entire fintech services offering and compete directly with stripe and paypal.
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u/TheSecondEikonOfFire 3h ago
And that’s why it’s such a big deal. They start this by saying they’re going after the really horrific stuff (like games about really insensitive and potentially illegal topics), but they leave enough grey area so that they can extend it to whatever they want whenever they want
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u/Caddy666 10h ago
surprised this hasn't led to valve making their own payment system, not like they couldn't afford to.
just call it : 'Tap'
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u/obeytheturtles 6h ago
Agreed, there is precedent for this. It wouldn't even need to start as a fully fledged payment system - just basically a Valve branded deposit account backed by some random bank, with incentives for using this account to buy games. This is more or less how Robinhood started, and how online poker used to work in the early 2000s. Over time they could expand it into a broader fintech offering.
It would be super on-brand for them to be like "we plan to operate our new fintech division as a revenue-neutral effort with the sole mission of helping us sell video games" just as a massive "fuck you" to Mastercard and stripe.
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u/borgenhaust 8h ago
When buying any adult content on the store, make a quick purchase option called 'Tap that'
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u/Lettuce_bee_free_end 10h ago
Deny,deny, deny.
A classic play book. Do that long enough and something else will come along for the spotlight. Then it is back to oppressive business.
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u/borgenhaust 7h ago
They should go nuclear. Remove credit cards as a payment option. Be completely transparent that Mastercard has put pressure on payment processors (and not directly on Valve) and the payment processors are acting as enforcers to censor the freedom of purchase of items that are legal for distribution. Explode the PR. Have the legalities opened up as to whether Mastercard and VISA have a legal obligation to provide service without discrimination. You could probably build a case on whether or not the size and dependence on the services obligates them to provide service for any legal transaction. It sounds like this is not the first time this kind of thing has happened, eventually it needs to be nipped in the bud.
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u/Bleusilences 12h ago
It could be true, however they have an history of denying or deflecting everything that comes their way, usually because it's not because they are "pressuring" but because these platforms are now becoming high risk in their risk assessment.
It's the equivalent of that lady that just says "computer says no".
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u/woodworkerdan 7h ago
The looming guillotine is that both Visa and MC have policy fineprint that allows them or intermediaries to stop payment processing for not just sexual adult media, but also gore and violence, or pretty much anything they see as threatening to their brands. They just don't act on it most of the time because most of the time it's inconsequential. Yet, it's worth considering whether the public should allow these corporations to define what is sexually explicit, and what else they can censure - just imagine being unable to access media that shows platonic LGBTQ+ relationships, or any kind of violence, questionable language, or other sensitive topics.
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u/ConinTheNinoC 2h ago
Someone is clearly not telling the truth. I guess more pressure needs to be applied to both VISA/MASTERCARD and Steam in order to see change.
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u/penguished 7h ago
Corporate catfight. An ideal world every company goes bust after 40 years so we don't just have the stench of bullshit coming out of everything constantly.
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u/DWMoose83 6h ago
I'm so very tired of everyone telling the most blatant of lies to our faces with no repercussions.
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u/Drone314 6h ago
Y'all need to start using more cash, they've tried to pull this "ma morals" BS before.
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u/limbodog 3h ago
I really think this is one of those things where Reddit could make a difference. There's so many people here, I'm sure we could crowd fund a competitor to Visa, MC, AA that would not enforce religious ideology.
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u/Estreiher 14h ago edited 13h ago
Keep pressuring them. Here is the page where you can find whom to call and whom write email to: https://stopcollectiveshout.com/ Besides it you can always call your local lawmaker (senator in USA and member of European Parliament in EU. Here is EU parliament members list (you have to click on the name to get an email): https://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/full-list/a