Visa and Mastercard Are Getting Overwhelmed By Gamer Fury Over Censorship (polygon.com) 188
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Polygon: In the wake of storefronts like Steam and itch.io curbing the sale of adult games, irate fans have started an organized campaign against the payment processors that they believe are responsible for the crackdown. While the movement is still in its early stages, people are mobilizing with an eye toward overwhelming communication lines at companies like Visa and Mastercard in a way that will make the concern impossible to ignore. On social media sites like Reddit and Bluesky, people are urging one another to get into contact with Visa and Mastercard through emails and phone calls. Visa and Mastercard have become the targets of interest because the affected storefronts both say that their decisions around adult games were motivated by the danger of losing the ability to use major payment processors while selling games. These payment processors have their own rules regarding usage, but they are vaguely defined. But losing infrastructure like this could impact audiences well beyond those who care about sex games, spokespeople for Valve and itch.io said.
In a now-deleted post on the Steam subreddit with over 17,000 upvotes, commenters say that customer service representatives for both payment processors seem to already be aware of the problem. Sometimes, the representatives will say that they've gotten multiple calls on the subject of adult game censorship, but that they can't really do anything about it. The folks applying pressure know that someone at a call center has limited power in a scenario like this one; typically, agents are equipped to handle standard customer issues like payment fraud or credit card loss. But the point isn't to enact change through a specific phone call: It's to cause enough disruption that the ruckus theoretically starts costing payment processors money.
"Emails can be ignored, but a very very long queue making it near impossible for other clients to get in will help a lot as well," reads the top comment on the Reddit thread. In that same thread, people say that they're hanging onto the call even if the operator says that they'll experience multi-hour wait times presumably caused by similar calls gunking up the lines. Beyond the stubbornness factor, the tactic is motivated by the knowledge that most customer service systems will put people who opt for call-backs in a lower priority queue, as anyone who opts in likely doesn't have an emergency going on. "Do both," one commenter suggests. "Get the call back, to gum up the call back queue. Then call in again and wait to gum up the live queue." People are also using email to voice their concerns directly to the executives at both Visa and Mastercard, payment processors that activist group Collective Shout called out by name in their open letter requesting that adult games get pulled. Emails are also getting sent to customer service.
In a now-deleted post on the Steam subreddit with over 17,000 upvotes, commenters say that customer service representatives for both payment processors seem to already be aware of the problem. Sometimes, the representatives will say that they've gotten multiple calls on the subject of adult game censorship, but that they can't really do anything about it. The folks applying pressure know that someone at a call center has limited power in a scenario like this one; typically, agents are equipped to handle standard customer issues like payment fraud or credit card loss. But the point isn't to enact change through a specific phone call: It's to cause enough disruption that the ruckus theoretically starts costing payment processors money.
"Emails can be ignored, but a very very long queue making it near impossible for other clients to get in will help a lot as well," reads the top comment on the Reddit thread. In that same thread, people say that they're hanging onto the call even if the operator says that they'll experience multi-hour wait times presumably caused by similar calls gunking up the lines. Beyond the stubbornness factor, the tactic is motivated by the knowledge that most customer service systems will put people who opt for call-backs in a lower priority queue, as anyone who opts in likely doesn't have an emergency going on. "Do both," one commenter suggests. "Get the call back, to gum up the call back queue. Then call in again and wait to gum up the live queue." People are also using email to voice their concerns directly to the executives at both Visa and Mastercard, payment processors that activist group Collective Shout called out by name in their open letter requesting that adult games get pulled. Emails are also getting sent to customer service.
Adult Games? (Score:3)
Is that just porn?
Or is it stuff like Grand Theft Auto?
What are "adult games" ?
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It's the same feminist group that got Grand Theft Auto pulled from shelves in Australia. They scream "incest/rape/pedophilia" in their propaganda but in practice they go after everything that's got even a Looney Tunes level of violence or mature content to it. Anything but the most social justice current year approved G rated pap gets tarred and feathered with the same brush.
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Name the group.
Re:Adult Games? (Score:5, Interesting)
To answer your question. Yes, GTA was classified as an adult game in Australia, and taken off the market, due to activity from Collective Shout, the same group which organized an email campaign to pur pressure on Steam and itch from payment processors. Their goal is to rid the world of "objectification", which means, games like GTA. And Detroit: Become Human, which shows just how unhinged they are.
And no, it's no more precise than that. The guidelines from payment processors are immensely vague, and place an enormous burden on the seller. Worse, the payment processors will not only reacto to laws being broken, but to emails of complaint about wares purchased, which places even further burden on the seller. That's why so many games were removed. The risk of an email complaint about a game is enough to make it not appear in the store.
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Adult games are games that have some adult content in there. It ranges from actual good as games (think Baldur's Gate 3) with adult elements to mostly adult content.
Re:Adult Games? (Score:5, Interesting)
There are no games "With child abuse and incest". They are video games with no real people in them. That is literately the "murder simulator" argument from the 90's. There is almost no video game made since the 90's that even uses real people footage.
I wish people would get it through their head that there are no victims in video games, just like there are no victims in comic books and anime.
Yes, you can make the argument that a video game about children beating up monsters that turn around and sexually assault them when they fail, as being "questionable", but you don't need to play it. That is no different from shooting monsters in a video game that explode into giblets. Neither of these things are actually happening.
I personally find those kinds of games disgusting, but I don't actually care that they exist, just like I don't take people's cigarettes and pot and step on it when I see them smoking. Not MY problem.
Re: Adult Games? (Score:3)
This. Why is it ok to have video games that let you pretend to commit one crime, but not another. Hey, what about books - man, do you know what you can read? This is just really weird Puritanism, even more so when it comes to anime, which is obviously fantasy.
The MasterCard/Visa cartel power is sufficient that they could refuse to play censor. And you can't tell me that they have actual ethics, not given the usurious games they play. So...why?
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Cigarettes can't be confused as speech, while the kind of obscene material we're talking about here has to have a specific word made for it to avoid calling it speech- pornography.
Who knew the Constitution was so fragile.
You're like, a really smart person, aren't you?
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Neckbeards want to plot-lawyer it, but that's not useful.
Let me explain it more concisely than the person above.
This is about games that have words like "incest" in the title.
There is nothing actually happening in regards to things being "questionable." That's a word that websites use because they don't want to type out "incest."
You're obviously a shy pedophile. This isn't like taking somebody's cigarettes away, it's like having a store and choosing not to sell cigarettes. Or really, having a store and choosing not to sell illegal cigarettes, for example ones that don't have a tax stamp.
Why do you want feel that credit card processors should be required to process payments for depictions that claim to be of incest, when that's illegal in many states? It's a stupid and absurd position that directly contradicts your faux libertarian phrasing.
Erm... my question is why does anyone think that it's appropriate for a payment processor to know what you're buying?
Process the damn payment. It's up to the courts to determine if what the merchant is selling is legal.
In most civilised countries the payment processor has no idea what you're buying, just who you're buying something from.
As for "incest"... erm the characters are virtual, so it's really not applicable except in the minds of the buyers or haters. Sure I'll grant you that depictions of
They don't really care about censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
And most of it is because the Republicans or whatever your local right wing political party equivalent is are making a huge stink about porn because the economy in every country they are running its collapsing so they need more moral panics to make their voters feel like they're getting their money's worth. Because they're losing all their money voting in these Jokers.
Re:They don't really care about censorship (Score:4, Interesting)
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Some of that may be chargebacks, but that is just a convenient excuse for censorship one that you were very quick to eat up. Make no mistake you're talking about two companies that have a *LONG* standing history of being against adult content. Chargebacks weren't the reason they got Pornhub to nuke 2/3rds of their video repo. Chargebacks weren't the reason the beastiality industry ceased existing in the USA even in states where it was perfectly legal.
These two payment processors have for the best part of 50
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It also included Republicans- though none quite as famous as the later Second Lady.
Turns out blue hair brigades have the capacity to be bipartisan.
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I don't know about music, but politicians trying to get video games banned have been almost exclusively democrats.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
And that doesn't even touch on later efforts by Jack Thompson, Janet Reno and Hillary Clinton, and many others I'm probably forgetting. E.g:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Trump tried to ban violent video games in 2019, and then pretended he wasn't trying when nobody gave him any attention for it.
Someone pulled a clip of that up and it did the rounds late last year.
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Definitely fuck those guys, but they weren't alone.
Read the opinions of the conservative justices [archive.org]
We can argue that Scalia was against the idea, but he stood alone on that regard. Start at "The Dubious Concurrence" if you want to get to the juicy bits.
None of this is to attempt to justify the liberal stance on the matter which was pro-censorship (or at least pro-California, who can say)
Ultimately- you are right- that it has been Democrats that spearheaded the attacks against
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Republicans [congress.gov] have been trying to codify obscenity as meaning:
“(i) taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest in nudity, sex, or excretion;
“(ii) depicts, describes, or represents, an actual or simulated sexual act or sexual contact, actual or simulated normal or perverted sexual acts, or lewd exhibition of the genitals, with the objective intent to arouse, titillate, or gratify the sexual desires of a person; and
“(iii) taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
The goal here is to set the stage for a ban on anything they consider pornographic, including (one would presume, video games)
It should be noted that their definition of pornographic is dubious.
It's funny the different things that the different political persuasions find worth violati
That was then (Score:4, Interesting)
I couldn't resist the '80s reference since your referencing something else from the '80s.
That's some nice whataboutism though. Excellent way to distract from the Republican party or your local right wing party's anti free speech policies though.
I'll never understand why people defend the Republican party when they are so obviously evil. I'm sure people did the same thing with the Nazis and with Stalin
Bizarre Focus (Score:4, Insightful)
"Gamer fury" is usually something to ignore, but the more you think about this, the more bizarre it gets.
First, the idea that fantasy porn (not likely to be real images) - or indeed any porn - is the worst thing you could possibly buy with a MasterCard, and must be prioritized for elimination.
Second, the idea that banks or payment processors should be policing anything, beyond their obligation to prevent fraud and similar.
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The people behind it claim that they first asked Steam to remove the games, but Steam ignored them. They probably get a lot of requests like that. So then they contacted the payment processors. They say they asked only for specific games to be removed, but Steam just removed all the adult stuff. They probably hit the nuclear option when Visa and Mastercard queried potentially illegal material on their website.
As for how potentially illegal it is, it depends on jurisdiction. In some places the depiction of c
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If content is illegal to sell somewhere, Steam will not ignore complaints. Because the next step is simply involving the police to make a criminal complaint and that will get followed up on and will land Steam in hot water.
No, this is about stuff that is actually legal to sell, but that some assholes do not want others to have. Hence the detour over the payment processors.
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It's a bit of a legal grey area. People in the UK have been prosecuted for things like pornographic takes on The Simpsons, but I don't recall any involving video games. I remember there was a bit of controversy when Namco released Dead or Alive and changed one of the character's age from 16 to 18. Of course she was the hot, scantily clad one.
I'm not defending what happened, I'm just saying that the lack of clarity is one potential issue.
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They're also relying on the belief that call centers won't learn how to share blocklists.
If they push hard enough, call centers will probably figure out how to make a clearinghouse. And for a lot of these neckbeards the worst part will be when they also add people who call up and shout at them to the list...
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A depiction of an illegal act is not an illegal act.
Do you get off on being a fucking moron?
The open letter (Score:2)
In a couple days... (Score:2)
In a couple days (if not already) they'll have implemented a system that allows CSRs to flag a number as annoying, and those annoying customers will be put in the back of the queue.
The anger doesn't matter (Score:2)
Bitcoin (Score:2, Insightful)
Steam should accept Bitcoin for these types of games (and all other games). Yes, they need to think carefully about refund policies, but it's totally doable.
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They did at one point. The cost of using bitcoin outstrips the benefit of it.
Realistically, Steam should probably just roll it's own gift-card system ... oh wait THEY DO. Problem solved.
In all seriousness, what steam should be doing is what sites like Skeb and webtoons are doing, where they have a simultaneous "points" scheme (Which guess what, also violates these VISA/MC policies) where you buy one kind of points with VISA/MC/AMEX/JCB/etc and you buy another kind of points with gift cards. The gift card ba
Re: Bitcoin (Score:2)
They tried Bitcoin before Lightning Network was established. Bitcoin doesn't create any significant extra costs.
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You've achieved the same thing as Mastercard here: Ludicrous additional hoops for someone to make a payment which will have the effect of decimating sales of a game and bankrupting the studio.
Any time you propose *fring thing* as a solution to *common universal thing* it isn't actually a workable solution.
Re: Bitcoin (Score:2)
Cash app is already in use by lots of people and makes buying/sending Bitcoin quite easy. Sure, it's a hoop, but I'd argue it's an easier hoop than gift cards.
Re: Bitcoin (Score:2)
And that is different than their current refund policy. Thus, they must change their current policy.
Re: Bitcoin (Score:2)
Store credit or gift cards for refunds of games bought with BTC. Doesn't need to be a complicated change.
Click X to Pay (Score:2)
2 Companies Control Free Speech (Score:2)
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Crypto was never going to solve this, because they aimed to replace the central bank, and take a large chunk of every transaction.
Really what we need is the equivalent of the "canadian tire money" or disney dollars (corporate scrip) for entertainment works. Basically just a non-crypto currency that is denominated in USD that you have to actually buy somewhere. Any entertainment company who wants to sign on, agrees to accept it without conditions. The company then exchanges it back to USD at par plus a 0.5%
Best I can do is LibertyFreedomCoin (Score:2)
Too busy working on the next rugpull swindle. Best you will get is some freedom themed name for the ICO or patriotic NFT "art"
Re: 2 Companies Control Free Speech (Score:2)
They already solved this problem. It's on Steam to actually make it a reality though.
Lets not forget (Score:3, Interesting)
We also need to target Collective Shout for being so short sighted that they believe they're speaking for all of us. Organizations out there like Collective Shout need to be permanently snuffed out.
Re:Lets not forget (Score:4, Insightful)
They think they're speaking for what's right, the rest of us be damned.
That makes them a lot scarier than a group that thinks they're speaking for all of us.
Visa/Mastercard are not payment processors (Score:3, Interesting)
Steam and Itch.io do not connect directly to the Visa and MasterCard networks. Instead, they use "payment processor" companies. Itch.io uses PayPal, Stripe, and Payoneer. Those payment processors are a middleman between the merchants and the card networks.
Visa and MasterCard are in the payments industry but they are not payment processor companies.
Collective Shout is a small Australian non-profit with maybe 10 employees. They got about 1,000 people to send letters to put pressure on payment processor companies. Those processors gave in way too easily.
It's those payment processor companies that are making the demands, not Visa/MC. Itch.io put out a notice [itch.io] stating that the changes were due to the demands of their payment processor companies (and not blaming Visa/MC).
I haven't seen any reports that Visa/MC put pressure on the payment processor companies though. (Not that I like Visa/MC. I think it's nuts that they can charge merchants 1% to 3% of sales. But, they're not the big villain this time.)
Unfortunately, a law to prevent payment processors from dictating these kinds of restrictions was proposed, but didn't become law - Fair Access to Banking Act, H.R.987 [congress.gov]
Re:Visa/Mastercard are not payment processors (Score:4, Informative)
Visa/MC absolutely have rules, and they will suspend payment processors for collecting money in violation of them.
Example. [mastercard.com]
Another example, if you still don't believe me. [mastercard.com]
The processors would love to collect money for everything. The reason you're not seeing platforms switch to different processors, is because the rules come from above.
Do more research, and recompute your position.
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It's those payment processor companies that are making the demands, not Visa/MC.
Prove it. Well no, you can't prove the negative. Payment processors are dime a dozen. If you wanted to maintain your system you could simply migrate to another, but they are largely presenting a unified front on this. Think about why that is. Also think about how this relates to the direct implication of the credit card companies in the Pornhub debacle, or the end of beastiality porn in the USA.
The excusing of Visa/Mastercard as an innocent party and blaming a payment processor alone breaks down very quickl
By Gamer (Score:2)
All I read was "By Gamer Furry". Oh wait, it said Fury. Awww. UwU
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Good news: They only deleted games with "incest" or child abuse words in the titles.
There are still lots of Steam games with shitty CGI furries.
Though in fairness the CGI quality looks a bit higher when it's cartoon animals than 3d people from the Uncanny Valley.
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There are still lots of Steam games with shitty CGI furries.
Blocking them too. And that's the fucking problem with censorship.
Additionally, you keep spreading the same horseshit lie. Do you think if you type it enough times it'll become true?
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Bad news: they deleted a lot more than that. A LOT more than that.
Internet *cash* (Score:2)
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You could take crypto for high risk processing, I guess. then all the risk would be on the merchant's side and they couldn't blame the processor. Different risk, but still. No charge backs, but risk of hacks and all your money disappearing, yes. or at least money not converted back to USD immediatly. Oh and high barriers of risk for customers as well who have to convert currency to whatever dumb crytpo they choose and spend before hack.
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Monero uses a public ledger blockchain, it's not actually anonymous.
Note that the IRS has paid out bounties to two different contractors for creating tools to trace Monero transactions.
If it became more popular, it would also be easier to trace.
This comes to mind for some reason (Score:2)
https://www.dailymotion.com/vi... [dailymotion.com]
Stores (Score:3)
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I remember a time where doing that with adult content would fill people with a sense of shame and humiliation. I remember being in an adult store and watching someone put serious effort into not looking the shop-keeper in the eye.
Don't pretend that cash is some magic solution here. The bigger question is why aren't there laws requiring payment processors to blindly accept all payments and only report fraud.
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Maybe it was different where you live, but the locals used to object to shops selling adult stuff near them back in the day. There was far less choice than the internet offers.
Nobody has come up with a good solution to this. Bitcoin is volatile, an environmental disaster, and slow. None of the other crypto currencies have really gained any traction for general spending.
Re: Stores (Score:2)
Bitcoin is losing its volatility, and Lightning Network (built on Bitcoin) is far more environmentally friendly and very fast.
LN is a very good fit for Steam since it's most efficient when you have a long term business relationship with the other party.
E.g., right now Bitcoin fees are around $1.50 per transaction. LN requires two transactions to setup and close out a relationship, so about $3 of electricity used. And depending on how much you put into the channel when you set it up, this could be used for h
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Unless it gets regulated and reputable banks start supporting it though, I can't see it getting very far. People aren't going to want to give their money to BitBollox Cyber Exchange to buy some crypto that they don't know how to properly store, just to use Steam. And Valve probably don't want to deal with it either, since there will be endless complaints about theft and unauthorized transactions, and no standard process for handling them.
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Funny they are so worried about what goes on in other people's houses when all too often they should've been worried about what's going on at their own house.
Mister preacher man husband came home late, well after 12:00am. Again. Says he was out doing evangelical work. And he looks like he's under some real physical stress whenever he does that late night "work".
Dumb nerds don't understand shit (Score:2)
Re: Dumb nerds don't understand shit (Score:2)
Risk of chargebacks from Visa/MC far exceed risks of accepting Bitcoin.
Old-School hacker protest ... (Score:2)
... going balistic in a society that is 110% dependant on digital systems and networks up and running 24/7.
Nice. I like it.
And somehow I get the inkling that Visa and Mastercard won't be able to ignore this or brush it away.
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And somehow I get the inkling that Visa and Mastercard won't be able to ignore this or brush it away.
You don't think?
I can't think of a single time they've lost the morality enforcer fight when they decided to wage it.
keep it simple (Score:2)
Bitcoin? (Score:2)
Wasn't this what Bitcoin was supposed to help us avoid?
I haven't been following the whole crypto currency for a while, what went wrong. Too volatile? I remember hearing something about it not scaling well for small transactions?
payment processors (Score:2)
This cartel must be destroyed (Score:3)
Much as I enjoy this activity, we need to go beyond simple defense. We should be attacking Mastercard and Visa via both legislative activity and the courts.
This cartel is a duopoly that is exerting monopoly power over issues which are none of their goddamned business. Payment processing is an infrastructure-level requirement for every single legitimate business in existence. As such, the MasterVisa cartel represents a threat to every legitimate business on the planet.
Their exclusive domination of payment processing should be destroyed via legislation which establishes payment processing as a public service available to all. Credit cards are a massively profitable business model which should not be in the hands of monopolists.
It's time for establishment of a credit card system which operates completely independently of the MasterVisa cartel and returns profits to the public. Given the profitability of the business model, this is a potential source of untold tax dollars being left on the table.
AmeriCard - Because fuck those guys.
Re:Be careful what you ask for (Score:5, Interesting)
Gaming is a bigger industry than movies. And the same people who object to adult games object to bare titties and cuss words in movies. And, in fact, at times in the past, have gone after movies, ultimately to no avail. Games seemed like an easier target because the market has never come together to stand up for itself.
Until now.
This, too, will pass, and the blue hair brigade will find something new to clutch their pearls over.
Re:Be careful what you ask for (Score:4, Insightful)
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It's not quite so simple. In many cases, they're complying with somebody's laws, or just avoiding potential downstream liability. And it's not just payment processors that do this either, it's also banks themselves. This is (one among many reasons) why I keep saying there is a need for decentralized electronic payments. I don't know that the answer to that is necessarily bitcoin, or even blockchain. Rather that, quite simply, something is needed. The problem is, some political group always has something to
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And it succeeds at that. There are other problems, but not that one.
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It's not quite so simple. In many cases, they're complying with somebody's laws
Oh yes, some governments love the idea of censorship-by-proxy: instead of issuing unpopular laws against free speech or free commerce, they come up with rules to make companies responsible for countering money laundering, human trafficking, or what have you. Rules with vague criteria but very stiff penalties, in order to scare companies into erring on the side of caution.
But in this case, it is quite that simple. Banks and payment processors should be declared to be a Common Carrier, especially since t
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Laws are one thing but they already as banks have semi-government granted monopolies and shouldn't have liability if operating as a common financial carrier. And yes, this should apply to the banks as well. Banks as morality police needs to be stopped hard.
Bitcoin is one answer and monero is another but honestly so long as the state grants banks special control to distribute funds from the fed tap they are regardless of ownership agents of the state and should have some restrictions on discrimination. DEI i
Re:Be careful what you ask for (Score:5, Interesting)
The inbred Klanass Republicans who are insisting on banning games and threatening the credit card processors are FASCISTS. It's no coincidence that this is happening at the same time as all the "age verification" laws in Klan Inbred Shit States like Texas and Florida.
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Their duty is to authenticate the purchaser and the seller and facilitate the movement of funds. Thats it.
The problem is in the last 25 years governments have said the opposite. The law of the land for all banking, financial service, and yes payment processor companies which started in the US and regulators worldwide have adopted is called Know Your Customer.
The idea is that the companies facilitating payments are mandated by the government to have monitoring and risk management programs in order to spot
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Gaming is a bigger industry than movies. And the same people who object to adult games object to bare titties and cuss words in movies. And, in fact, at times in the past, have gone after movies, ultimately to no avail. Games seemed like an easier target because the market has never come together to stand up for itself.
Until now.
This, too, will pass, and the blue hair brigade will find something new to clutch their pearls over.
Indeed, those of us old enough to remember Jack Thompson from the 00s know that ultimately they'll lose. Thompson was eventually disbarred for launching frivolous suits and although vowed he'd get right back into it, has barely been seen since 2009. So much so that the first Google result for "Jack Thompson" is the criminally under-rated Australian actor, not the pissing-himself constantly activist ex-lawyer.
And before Jack Thompson started losing law suits against video games, he did try the same thing
Re:Be careful what you ask for (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why cartels are bad.
In a healthy economy, there would be more than two major credit cards and plenty of payment processors, so that they must compete against each other for business. That gives them the right incentives and many would choose to allow processing of porn content because they need the money just like everyone else.
All markets tend towards cartel dominance, so you need government interference to prevent that. Clearly, this is an area where the government has fallen down on the job.
Re:Be careful what you ask for (Score:4, Insightful)
This is why cartels are bad.
In a healthy economy, there would be more than two major credit cards and plenty of payment processors, so that they must compete against each other for business. That gives them the right incentives and many would choose to allow processing of porn content because they need the money just like everyone else.
All markets tend towards cartel dominance, so you need government interference to prevent that. Clearly, this is an area where the government has fallen down on the job.
I came here for this. WHY do they act like visa and mastercard are the only players in this game. Vote for people that break up monopolies and don't take bribes to let monolithic companies grow even bigger.
Re:Be careful what you ask for (Score:5, Insightful)
WHY do they act like visa and mastercard are the only players in this game.
Because, functionally, they are. The Visa/Mastercard Cartel has a lock on more than 80% of the market. "American Express" sits at 18%, because they signed a cartel alignment deal with V/MC.
Discover, by contrast, sits at 2% of the market by transaction frequency.
Vote for people that break up monopolies and don't take bribes to let monolithic companies grow even bigger.
Wouldn't that be nice? Unfortunately, the Corrupt Shitrag Trump Administration just dropped the Antitrust lawsuit against V/MC that Biden's DOJ had filed last September. Republicans are corrupt shitrags who WANT cartel monopolies like this, because then a corrupt Fascist regime like Trump's can do precisely what's been done here.
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It's not a duopoly.
Every time anti-trust comes up someone always pipes up with some variety of this.
"Monopoly" or in this case "duopoly" is the colloquial term, but it is not about whether technically there is another options sometimes. The actual terminology is "anti trust". In other words are the companies distorting the market.
That requires a certain size, and certain actions on the part of the companies. Actions which are perfectly legitimate and legal for a small company are not legit and/or legal for
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It doesn't matter if there is a monopoly, duopoly, or a fully competitive market, none of them are going to knowingly make illegal payments for you.
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The real problem is that if credit card companies make a payment for something illegal, they can be prosecuted.
It's actually the banks who handled the funds (The Issuing bank who approves and pays the transactions), and the Merchant, and their customer who can be prosecuted. The card names only get involved in issues about the goods being sold in order to make sure they get their extra fees for certain type of merchants and keep their corporate brand pristine.
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so funny. you have no understanding of the situation but act and comment like you do
A bunch of gamers are confused about the law. That's all.
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Fascists really despise capitalism, this is news to nobody.
Re:Be careful what you ask for (Score:5, Interesting)
VISA has been the puppet master behind all commerce censorship in the last 20 years.
Can't find a NSFW game? Blame VISA
Can't find a hyper violent game? blame VISA
Can't find a find information about abortion? blame VISA
Can't find artists willing to sell you furry smut? blame VISA
Can't find webcam models able to cosplay as vampires? Blame VISA
Literately VISA pulls the "brand safe" card the same as the advertisers do, and companies like paypal and stripe have to bend the knee. Paypal itself has additional rules that basically make purchasing of any artwork practically impossible.
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VISA has been the puppet master behind all commerce censorship in the last 20 years.
Can't find a NSFW game? Blame VISA
Can't find a hyper violent game? blame VISA
Can't find a find information about abortion? blame VISA
Can't find artists willing to sell you furry smut? blame VISA
Can't find webcam models able to cosplay as vampires? Blame VISA
Literately VISA pulls the "brand safe" card the same as the advertisers do, and companies like paypal and stripe have to bend the knee. Paypal itself has additional rules that basically make purchasing of any artwork practically impossible.
I should point out, this has only really been a problem in the US. In other countries not only can the payment processors not get a say in what you can and cannot spend your money on, they don't even get to see it. All they know is the merchant you're buying from.
Beyond that, if they do want to fuck with the merchant, the merchant can tell them to fuck off because there are other options including direct bank transfers. In fact due to the high fees with cards, if you're buying in the tens of thousands of
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In other countries not only can the payment processors not get a say in what you can and cannot spend your money on, they don't even get to see it.
That's incorrect. Visa has been pulling the same shit in Japan, forcing manga and anime stores to drop adult content or get de-credit-card'ed. This included a store owned by an elected national representative. It's gotten so bad the Japanese government has recently started an anti-trust investigation against Visa.
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Can't find a find information about abortion? blame VISA
Can't find artists willing to sell you furry smut? blame VISA
Can't find webcam models able to cosplay as vampires? Blame VISA
That got specific fast. Are those all related?
Do they value money or outdated principles? (Score:2)
Go ahead. Leave billions on the table, and someone else can swoop in after the near duopoly step back.
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No way they will give up all that free money to placate some crazy Karens. You just have to make the pain from gamers worse than the pestering from the prudes.
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No, pushback is definitely needed here. These payment processors have begun to dictate morality in a number of areas and it has to stop. We have a way to define societal level morals, they are called laws and anything which is legal should more or less be allowed on any payment processor or bank which are due to their special charters and effective money creation powers enjoy government created semi-monopoly status and reduced competition.
I've heard these processors are even sticking their hand in the power
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That would actually be good. Valve and others definitely could create their own alternate payment processor.
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Payment processors may decide that gaming companies as an industry just aren't worth the hassle.
OK, that's not likely (because gaming is such a big money-maker and greed will prevail).
However, they might get "permanently cold feet" to anything novel: They might decide that if you are a new company in a new industry that doesn't even exist in 2025, they won't work with you until there's clear and convincing evidence that neither your industry, your company, nor the principles of your company are anywhere close to any politically sensitive industry.
Imagine living a world so ridiculous that cartoonified sex-acts, or heavens forbid, nudity, are politically sensitive. We'll never escape puritanism, will we?