Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games (pcgamer.com)

Article summary

Valve has confirmed that credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games from Steam, citing violations of payment processors' rules and standards. The company removed the games to avoid losing payment methods, which would have prevented customers from purchasing other titles. Valve is reaching out to affected developers and offering app credits for future game distributions. The move has raised concerns about censorship and the influence of payment processors on online content.

Main themes

• censorship
• payment processing
• adult content
• Visa and Mastercard dominance
• cryptocurrency alternatives
• online content regulation

What commenters say

• Some argue that Valve could have found alternative payment processors with more lenient policies, but others claim that Visa and Mastercard's rules are unavoidable due to their market dominance.
• The removal of adult games is seen as a form of censorship, with some arguing that it sets a bad precedent for private companies to dictate what content is acceptable.
• Others believe that the high chargeback rates and fraud associated with adult content justify the payment processors' cautious approach, but this view is not universally accepted.
• There are suggestions that Valve could explore alternative payment methods, such as stablecoins or cryptocurrencies, to reduce its dependence on traditional payment processors and avoid censorship.
• Some commenters think that government regulation, rather than private companies, should dictate what constitutes acceptable content, while others argue that this would be an overreach of authority.
• The use of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or Ethereum is proposed as a potential solution to the censorship issue, but others point out the limitations and environmental concerns associated with these technologies.
• It is argued that the problem lies not with the technical aspects of cryptocurrency, but with getting people to care about and adopt these alternative payment methods.