They should instead charge a higher transaction fee on those items to cover that risk

If by “people involved” you mean folks who consume this kind of content then id totally agree. As soon as you offer crypto or even mildly sexual content your cc abuse rate goes through the roof. Which i suspect is the sole reason for processors getting upset in this case

The GP highlights a classic observation: America's nearly unique cultural contradiction, where nudity and sex are considered highly offensive, while gore and violence are widely accepted.

So grotesque violence appeals to fewer people, but banning gets focused on material more people find acceptable, even desirable?

This really is a culture/posture driven issue.

It is not as if many people think (emphasis on "think", as in being honest, reasoning carefully and being scientific about evidence) that banning sexy curves in a video game is going to impact the prevalence of sexy curve imagery, or "save" anyone from anything.

Imagine if financial companies required their employees to sign a legal statement committing to not "use porn, escorts, blow ... or spicy video games!" So strange that they don't do that!!

Financial companies like to make a show of having "high standards" when it comes to "controversial" segments of the market, or unfortunate individuals who don't fit the mold, when that gets them a lot of showy theatre for being hard asses to their audience of regulators.

While keeping very quiet, and not looking into things too hard, when it comes to tens of billions of sketchy dollars going through their systems associated with very high net worth criminal actors, organizations and corrupt governments.

Epstein did not lack for financial services.

Are you saying porn buyers regret and that gore buyers do not? (As a broad generalization). Are you also asserting that's built in to risk-profole that payment gateways have?

You must be American if you think very violent games are not extremely popular.

> There is simply far more risk with adult content as a result and a lot more chargebacks from disatisfied customers with a post nut clarity.

Do you have any evidence to back this wild claim? I've never heard this argument about chargebacks made before.

I don't think it's about this at all. I think it's about policing content, but then the observation of GP's comment applies: why is violence ok, but sex is not?

Targeting them with what?

What could possibly hold enough leverage that Visa would jeopardize their sweet gig as an ideology-neutral, essential piece of American infrastructure siphoning 1-2% off of every dollar of consumer spending?

They tried to do the same to OnlyFans, but lost that battle

Another factor is the board members and other investors of the institutions themselves.

I have been privy to two specific instances where pressure to either ban or reject providing support for specific content was handed down from beyond the executive level at a major financial network player that my client was doing business with.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/01/visa-mind...

Visa being responsible for CSAM isn't a theoretical lawsuit they're afraid about. (2022)

This is the correct answer. There are many merchant categories, adult being just one of them, that are susceptible to high chargeback rates which result in payment processors banning them.

Does Valve actually have a high risk of chargebacks? I was under the impression that moreso than other platforms, most Valve customers would rather go through Valve's own refund system. I understand that chargebacks is supposedly the reason for adult-only platforms.

That's the problem though. The risk means the market for those riskier credit transactions is literally categorically not a great market. You think JP Morgan gives a shit about Japanese titty games? Hah. No. They care that these games get charged back way more often.

If there is a market opportunity, it's probably in a processor for debit-based transactions that are harder to reverse. But then that makes fraud harder to combat, and one of the reasons everyone loves credit cards so much is because consumers are far more confident to buy from random shops if they know they can always get their money back if the shop scams them.

So - this whole system's lucratively is entirely predicated on easy credit and low risk meaning low fees. Anyone who wants to play in the mud that's leftover by these companies taking the good business are inherently playing a low margin risky game.

Often it's because of secret government requirements.

Compare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point .

Somehow, it's forbidden for the government to oppress pornographers directly, but it's perfectly fine to impose legal sanctions on banks who maintain business relationships with them.

This makes little sense with even the tiniest amount of probing.

This is a solvable geo regulation issue, solvable like many other geo regulatory issues

A red flag of what?

I have no trouble seeing why a payment processor would want to avoid doing business with dietary supplement companies.

this is such small potatoes compared to the results of everything going on right now though

I think that for better or worse Valve is genuinely committed to lassies faire moderation, they have historically been very hesitant to remove really heinous games. I don't think they're using this as cover.

Valve made the conscious choice to allow porn games in the first place, they knew what they were getting into imo

The card networks are never on the hook for fraudulent transactions (nor for any other type of chargeback for that matter). If anything, it's the merchant's payment service provider/card acquirer that absorbs the loss if the merchant can't pay.

that wouldn't apply in this case, because the vendor, Valve, would be on the hook for fraudulent purchases and they would definitely have the deep pockets to pay out. The cc companies only have to worry about the small, fly by night companies that might disappear after a bunch of fraud.

What if you used your mastercard to buy valvebucks you spend on whatever the hell you want in the steam store?

Why does ValveCard need to work anywhere other than Steam? Privacy.com manages to issue card numbers somehow. How does that work?

Steam gift cards are funded by traditional banking products and partnerships. They can’t live without the invisible hand of the banking and credit card industry.

IBM was not able to. Story from a friend-who-claimed-to-be-there:

In days of yore, Visa did processing on IBM iron. The iron in question took a while to boot, and time is very definitely money to Visa and they wanted to speed up reboots (e.g., after a crash). Saving seconds = $$$.

Visa to IBM: "Please give us the source code for the <boot path stuff>, it's costing us money."

IBM: LOL

Visa to some big banks: "Please tell IBM to give us the source code for this, it's costing you money."

IBM, a little later: "Here's a tape. Need any help?"

> I am genuinely curious who can actually threaten Visa (I do not think it is Valve).

Visa is a clearing house whose members are banks. Think of it like a payment router between issuers (banks) and processors (banks).

Only sponsored organizations can directly use the "Visa rails", where "sponsor" is defined as a bank, a bank subsidiary, or an entity previously sponsored by one of the other two.

This is also the case for MasterCard and Discover. "Traditional" American Express is different though.

> Amazon, Walmart, Target and then increasingly unsure.

Those merchants use banks or one of their subsidiaries for processing credit card transactions. Most large merchants do as well in order to minimize their discount rate as well as other transaction fees. Smaller merchants often use ISO's or VAR's for business specific reason, knowing both ultimately transact with a bank or one of a bank's subsidiaries.

Any coalition of banks can. Replacing Visa is a daunting task, but rolling out PoS support and the technical challenges are peanuts compared to actually getting banks onboard. Visa itself was started by a single bank, and Mastercard was started by a coalition of banks. They can do it again.

Interac[1] is Canada's debit system, originally created as a non-profit by our largest banks way back in '84, and these days is supported everywhere. The large banks are already used to bullying their way through political or bureaucratic challenges, and a single Canadian bank typically has trillion(s) in managed assets - they _can_ bully Visa.

Zelle[2] (2016) is a limited (etransfer only) clone for the American market, UPI (2016) in India, UnionPay (2002) in China, carte Bleue (1967) in France, etc etc. What's missing is cooperation between national systems like these, as well as lending as they typically only do debit instead of credit.

Any cooperation between these systems would likely get spun out as a separate entity, which would eventually just turn into a new Visa or Mastercard - but 3 choices is better than 2.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interac [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zelle [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Payments_Interface

Other payment processors, mostly. So other credit card companies (e.g. JCB [1]), government run payment services like Pix in Brazil [2], theoretically crypto, etc.

[1] as a random example: https://archive.kyivpost.com/technology/japanese-payment-sys...

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pix_(payment_system)

Likely Apple currently has the deepest finance industry roots.

Though unpopular, I'd say China is able to

Only the USG.

Mastercard?

Visa needs to be broken up.

On a serious side note, only certain banks get to print money.

I have seen crypto used for payments, particularly if its overseas companies

Did Apple try? I don't recall.

> Only thing that works is partnering up with existing bank

Could Visa just reject payments from this bank and kill your whole thing?

Seconded.

Regards: Game dev who cares about conservation and doesn't like chilling effects.

All eyes on you.

Games/hentai about these topics are not illegal, even if they are in bad taste.

And I’m willing to bet some content removed does not fall in these categories

Ah, like a video game version of "Game of Thrones"? None of the payment processors had any issues with taking money for that series. And that was live action.

But they are strangely okay with murder.

Violence has no religious morality baggage - religions were extremely violent. Sex, however, has all the baggage from all the angles. Even if we aren't religious, it doesn't matter, religion still dictates huge chunks of our lives and our mindsets. It has thousands of years of inertia.

i think peoppe would probably have much better sex in general if it wasnt so taboo, and so people could get outside feedback on how theyre doing

There is a world of nuance separating "normalizing" and "banning" something though, that's simply a false dichotomy.

I'd wager most "normal" people would recoil at the idea of eating excrement and, for all my open-mindedness, it's probably not something I'd actively endorse. But banning it is on a whole other leaf. Things can and should be allowed to exist on the fringe.

Otherwise we're moving towards the subject of the T.S. Eliot quote where "everything that is not forbidden will be compulsory, and everything not compulsory will be forbidden."

> There are some things that should not be normalized in society.

That attitude has recently become normalized, and I find it Concerning(TM).

Personally, I won't miss these games either, but it just seems like such a slippery slope to normalize achieving societal/political goals through exerting pressure on infrastructure companies instead of through democratic means.

I totally support this type of pressure being exerted on companies involved in editorializing and providing an audience (e.g. I don't think Valve should be required by law to carry any form of content, just like a publisher can't be forced to print any content it doesn't agree with). But infrastructure, due to being both fundamental to doing business and generally living in a society and very often being at least regionally monopolistic in nature, should be open to anybody that's acting within the law.

And conversely, if something seems ethically or morally unacceptable to a rule-based society, what ought to change is the law.

That's all assuming a functioning democratic and political process, of course, but it generally seems to be possible even in the US, with its strong protections of speech, to limit certain types of speech under obscenity laws, so I don't really get the desire to outsource this inherently political process to private corporations.

The term “silent majority” has a very specific political meaning.

But, in what way do you think those opposing “extreme” content being consumed by their fellow citizens are silent? State governments across the country are clamoring to censor all sorts of things, presumably to satisfy their constituents.

For the people who disagree: would you really be interested in seeing Child Grooming Simulator 25 on steam? I think we can almost all reasonably agree that at least this sort of content should not be sold on there.

The slippery slope is in banning speech. If you want to make the claim that simulated sex leads to crimes we have been over this a thousand times with violence in games. There is no connection, you are without a leg to stand on except your own religious indoctrination.

Should also ban GTA then. /s

Unfortunately, cash is slowly getting phased out.

Try buying a second hand car and you want cash from the bank. Used to be very easy, but now you need to declare what your spending your money on.

You sold your car. O, its over 7 or 10k, well, this is getting reported to the local IRS. Where is that cash coming from, questions, questions?

Over here they are even cracking down on stuff like ebay, amazon because some people run a business on those sites and do not report the taxes. Result: If you make over 3k in the year on ebay, you need to provided your tax number, or ebay closes your account. And above 3k, it get reported to the IRS.

But wait, what happens if your a foreign national from some specific Asian countries and want to open a bank account? Refused, refused, refused... But you need a bank account for a lot of basic things. Well, tough luck. Lets not talk account closing issues.

And that is the EU, and just normal people. Nothing tax evasion, guns, or whatever. Just everybody putting up umbrella's to be sure, not understanding that when everybody does it, it really screws with people.

They are going crazy with this over regulation. Yes, i understand you want to fight black money but the people who get the big amounts will have ways to hide it. Your just hurting the normal people wanting to know what everybody is doing exactly with every cent.

You see this gradual effort to slowly phase out cash. Cashless payment are getting encouraged, cash withdrawals cost your money more and more, more questions regarding origins (so you say f it, and use bank deposits with release approvals).

Its not a surprise that we seen the increase in cryto usage (and the efforts of governments to control that also).

If they continued to carry any of the games that were singled out for removal by Visa and Mastercard, they would not be able to accept credit card payments for anything else in their store. This same drama has played out the same way with countless other online services.

Or similar to DLSite and Fantia, where it didn't work.

You're right, but it's slightly more complicated than that.

My understanding is that payment processors are obligated to follow the policies of Visa/MasterCard, AmEx, and Discover, but that those parties' policies don't explicitly ban these specific things for sale. Instead, they "strongly encourage" processors to ban them in their user agreements under the implicit threat of their risk level being increased, which in turn impacts the fees they pay to the credit card companies.

I've not been deep in this world since ~2014, but at that time the only processor I could find that wasn't specific to the porn industry, offered physical terminals, had reasonable (if high) fees, and didn't ban legal transactions in their user agreement was PAI ("Payment Alliance International"). A quick look at their site today shows that they seem to have been acquired by Brinks, so that may no longer be the case.

Yep, they are a just a modern day mafia. "Would be a real shame if you didn't take down these games. Then we couldn't do business with you anymore."

There are no other payment processors that can replace Visa/Mastercard*.

There are other payment processors in India/Japan/China/Brazil/etc. But none of them is internationally adopted like Visa/Mastercard.

In some countries there are other systems. It's high time the modern world adopted something similar like Pix in Brazil.

There are national issuers like JCB or UnionPay.

nah. USDC funds can be frozen by Circle on demand/request.

People say that a lot but I haven't seen actual statistics, and sites that have established low chargeback rates face the same issues.

Also that's not a reason to ban certain genres/kinks, which is what's happening here.

You need to be more specific. Conflating "adult content" with porn is both problematic is masks the real issue. A large majority of games Valve sells are adult content. But as you can imagine grand theft auto is not causing a lot of political backlash, despite the objectionable content.

Which makes less sense when you consider Steam will refund you game if you dont want it.

The fact that these were specifically incest games makes me think a title was somehow involved in distributing CSAM, which is often why Visa/MC crack down on porn websites.

But it is possible that Visa sensibly and correctly said "anyone who makes or purchases such a game is a despicable scumbag, and we shouldn't assume the financial risk of dealing with them."

Seeing reduced use partially because only a few banks support using it in Apple Pay. And Google Pay can't support it at all currently

You can get Pornhub subscription with Bitcoin, but not credit card.

And you could indeed use Bitcoin on Steam for a while!

But then the blocks got full, fees and wait times skyrocketed, and in response to the customer backlash Steam removed Bitcoin.

Meanwhile Bitcoiners were (and still are) only focused on number go up instead of other, more productive, use cases.

Such a waste.

Exactly. It's really a tragedy that crypto becomes a speculator's tool, and the real problem didn't even get solved.

PayPal has also been involved in this.

Those solutions might work for some people in some countries, but I would argue that it's not acceptable for the vast majority of customers, and they would lose a very significant portion of revenue.

I'm not sure I buy the chargeback angle. It's commonly trotted out as a reason card companies would enforce censorship, but it doesn't make sense with the actions they take. Chargeback fees are paid by the merchant regardless of the chargeback's success, and are supposed to cover the costs of administering it (and then some). The very selective rules applied here are pretty odd from that angle too, if adult content chargebacks/fraud is the issue, then all of it should be the issue, not small niches.

Fraud is likely more realistic of an issue, but that's probably an issue with games in general, not just adult titles.

There are already high-risk merchant accounts with higher fees and cash reserve requirements, but AFAIK companies like Valve aren't being given any options other than comply or be destroyed.

I doubt it. If that were the case, I think they would only be complaining to Valve about the number of chargebacks issued from the Steam store. Not about genres-that-are-correlated-with-chargebacks-in-other-contexts.

Given Valve's generous refund policies, and the fact that a steam store purchase on your credit card statement looks quite innocent, and that the credit card companies didn't complain to Valve about chargebacks but about content, my guess is there are hardly any chargebacks, and this is just about moral purity.

Can you link a reliable source for this claim? I personally couldn't find anything with substance.

I can't imagine people are risking their steam accounts to ripoff a $5 adult game

Visa charge a fee for processing chargebacks, and this will be a tiny fraction of Steam sales. I doubt it's their concern.

That's not true, anti-sex work and anti-porn activists have specifically been pressuring payment processors to assume these policies. The processors as the critical control point of this whole thing was identified decades ago and conservative christian think tanks have been pursuing this path since then.

This is part of a long-term plan to de facto ban lgbtq content without having to deal with first amendment protections. First have the payment processors ban explicit content, then have queer content categorized as explicit.

which is relevant how exactly?

merchants don't deal with mastercard, they deal with an acquiring bank

of which there are hundreds

no doubt one of which will be happy to take the business

You could have clicked the link embedded in the very text you're quoting, to read an explanation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-abortion_feminism

Why would it be?

I live in a red state in the South. I'd say about 2/3 of the women I know well enough to be confident of their politics to that degree of detail would describe themselves as both feminists and anti-abortion/pro-life.

If you want to put a name to it, they're basically second-wave feminists with a few third-wave beliefs tacked on.

The real lesson here is that politics are nuanced, and the US party dichotomy doesn't come close to covering it.

I consider myself an AnCap (shocking given my username, I know), but grew up here surrounded by Republicans. I fit in well enough overall because this is where I developed my "social mask" in the first place. I lived in a community with nearly directly opposite politics (Charlottesville, VA) for a few years and found that I fit in pretty well with that crowd as well.

I share enough with both parties that I can have conversations on things that I agree with them on and connect to the point that they assume that I'm "one of them". Invariably, once conversation turns to other topics I'm accused of being a member of the other party. It's to the point that it amuses me when it happens, and I frankly enjoy being in a place where I can connect with most everyone and serve as a sort of translator: I've spent enough time "in enemy territory" from their perspectives that I can explain the other side's position fairly and with empathy while explicitly not holding that position. It makes for stimulating conversation with little risk of offense.

I don't need your 'what ifs' and 'could haves.' Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is actually available on Steam, and that's good enough.