This is just a peek into a possible future. With the trend of eliminating cash, the powers that be can prevent people from buying anything deemed harmful. Or a large company can close down a small but innovative competitor with a flick of the wrist.
Yes, some may save the bitcoins will save us from this. But seeing all governments are looking closely to regulate the *coins, I believe it will be locked down just like the credit cards.
Good. Payment processors need to either be regulated or voluntarily self-commit themselves to processing all legal payments. Nobody asked them to act as censors.
Is there a reason steam hasn't just changed policy so that adult games can only be purchased with store credit? They already have systems in place to load a steam balance, which isnt refundable, and then buy games with it. Just lock these games to only use that payment type...
The leadership at Visa, Mastercard, etc. know damned well that consumers and businesses have no other realistic options than them and that a consumer campaign is unlikely to sustain itself for more than a few weeks. What we need is pressure on politicians, particularly Democratic legislators and candidates who are desperate for an issue that will garner them support and votes.
> “We raised our objection to rape and incest games on Steam for months, and they ignored us for months,” reads a blog post from Collective Shout. “We approached payment processors because Steam did not respond to us.”
Right about now Visa and Mastercard realizing they should have done the same.
I feel like it should be a law that you can't provide information to someone about what their their customers/employees are doing out of your own accord. Credit card companies have no business in knowing what their customers are buying. They should just process the payment with the minimum amount of information possible.
Turning private entities into investigator and judge isn't good for anyone. It ends up in a game of who can annoy them the most, and the entity will be wasting time trying to appease both sides.
Leave these things to the government. At least then you need evidence and have due process.
It's crazy that we live in a world where maybe a few dozen people's weird ideas about what shouldn't be allowed can cause payment processors to pressure the storefronts to delist the titles. It is censorship of something they personally find distasteful. guess what: nobody is forcing you to play weird art games about trauma.
obviously we must keep the pressure up on payment processors to reverse course, but we also need to push back against people in society who think they can decide what other adults are allowed to do on their own time. If folks IRL have weird ideas pushed back on IRL we wouldn't get to crisis points like this.
Payment processors as gatekeepers is absurd, even worse the entire system is completely opaque.
A local company who makes swords (very nice ones) ran into an issue where they couldn't take credit cards. No warning, they weren't even told, they were just added to a list and couldn't take payment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLIcohyT5Dc
They still haven't completely resolved the issue / don't know how they ended up on a bad list.
The idea that someone somewhere else complains inside an opaque system, and your ability to do business ends without warning is absurd. You can't appeal, you can't talk to anyone, you're just hosed. In some cases you AREN'T EVEN TOLD what is going on.
I have a slightly different opinion. Businesses can decide who they want to do business with unless it’s a protected class. I don’t think Visa is doing anything wrong here. They are in a difficult position as they need to be mindful of the government coming at them as well as chargebacks. Ideally there would be a new entrant here to fill the need.
I suspect a lot of people are rather comforted by the fact that it was pornographies that were removed at first. Now the waterline has moved up to horror games[1]. Mouthwashing(2024) is a horror adventure game available on all 3 major game consoles as well as Steam, and now it's hidden on itch.io. Think about that.
in case anyone is interested - collective shout claims they made a thousand phone calls to get the Credit card companies attention on this, so the bar is apparently pretty low. (I assume lower when it's something they already want to do, or think looks good optics wise.)
so there's various lists of numbers to call going around online with a target of keeping up that volume for a few weeks. I'm sure it'll fall off eventually but it might be possible to at least match collective shout here.
I'm always surprised at how "easy" it is to pressure litteral billion-dollars companies like Visa and Mastercard, don't they make "fuck you money"? How are you even going to cancel them? They're hegemonic.
Payment processors should be like power and water companies - completely agnostic - by law
If you asked a poll about whether an undesirable person should have their power and water cut off, as if it was actually up for debate, many people would treat power and water as a reward to be removed and say yes
Its been determined that is a problem, and financial access should be at the same standard
Why we even have private payment processors is a mystery. This is a great example of something that should have been nationalized 50 years ago. Privatization provides zero value to society; fees are high and accountability is low across all providers. Discover is the best (maybe Amex too) but it barely works anywhere outside america.
Some things should be regulated heavily. But payment that is private by default and censorship free should just be a public (government run taxpayer funded) service.
50 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 49.8 ms ] threadYes, some may save the bitcoins will save us from this. But seeing all governments are looking closely to regulate the *coins, I believe it will be locked down just like the credit cards.
So we need to ensure we keep cash available.
Also: this is why cash should not die
Right about now Visa and Mastercard realizing they should have done the same.
Turning private entities into investigator and judge isn't good for anyone. It ends up in a game of who can annoy them the most, and the entity will be wasting time trying to appease both sides.
Leave these things to the government. At least then you need evidence and have due process.
obviously we must keep the pressure up on payment processors to reverse course, but we also need to push back against people in society who think they can decide what other adults are allowed to do on their own time. If folks IRL have weird ideas pushed back on IRL we wouldn't get to crisis points like this.
A local company who makes swords (very nice ones) ran into an issue where they couldn't take credit cards. No warning, they weren't even told, they were just added to a list and couldn't take payment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLIcohyT5Dc
They still haven't completely resolved the issue / don't know how they ended up on a bad list.
The idea that someone somewhere else complains inside an opaque system, and your ability to do business ends without warning is absurd. You can't appeal, you can't talk to anyone, you're just hosed. In some cases you AREN'T EVEN TOLD what is going on.
Then again, things are looking good for the Stop Killing Games campaign so maybe the "gamer" demographic is big enough now to have real influence.
1: https://itch.io/search?type=games&q=mouthwashing&classificat...
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouthwashing_(video_game)
so there's various lists of numbers to call going around online with a target of keeping up that volume for a few weeks. I'm sure it'll fall off eventually but it might be possible to at least match collective shout here.
If you asked a poll about whether an undesirable person should have their power and water cut off, as if it was actually up for debate, many people would treat power and water as a reward to be removed and say yes
Its been determined that is a problem, and financial access should be at the same standard
https://www.change.org/p/tell-mastercard-visa-activist-group...