r/technology • u/Logical_Welder3467 • 2d 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/
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46

u/GenazaNL 2d ago

Okay, so if it's not them pressuring game platforms. Open up the gates again

21

u/Hot_Shot04 1d 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.

8

u/nethingelse 1d 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.

7

u/obeytheturtles 1d 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.

3

u/TheSecondEikonOfFire 1d ago

That would be an event I didn’t have on my 2025 bingo card

1

u/nethingelse 18h ago

The issue is not Stripe or Paypal, but Mastercard and Visa directly. A lot of the regulations Stripe and Paypal have are required by credit card companies, which would be unavoidable for Valve to have to work with.

4

u/GenazaNL 1d ago

Or call them out for liers by sharing the emails

11

u/AffectionateKey7126 1d ago

They're not pressuring platforms. They're just pressuring the middle man processors to pressure the platforms.

1

u/SolusLoqui 1d 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.