It has nothing to do with any sort of puritanical premise.
> We were recently notified that certain games on Steam may violate the rules and standards set forth by our payment processors and their related card networks and banks
Individual games violating "rules and standards" doesn't really fit with prohibiting a category because of high rates of fraud.
For a new company, the risk of chargebacks might rest on a credit card company (for a little while anyway). But not for a long established one.
Why are you assuming bad faith? There’s no indication parent is being insincere at all.
> It has nothing to do with any sort of puritanical premise.
But I have no problem with the parent poster. I'm here hoping for conversation. The argument though is one we hear now and then and like I point out, how can it make sense? Like many things, it looks more like a vaguely possible, plausible explanation or chain of arguments... which on closer look doesn't fly. How can Valve, a long established, apparently solid merchant, be a serious risk for the credit card infrastructure? Should there be chargebacks, they can handle chargebacks. This is not limited to Valve. Many of us have run into the issue. The credit card infrastructure goes out of its way to refuse solid business.
If you don’t have a problem with them and you were hoping for conversation, then starting out by accusing them of being disingenuous is a strange way of showing it.
> how can it make sense?
Why didn’t you ask this to begin with instead of assuming they were being deceitful? You know “disingenuous” doesn’t just mean “I disagree”, right?
You can get a long ways just by assuming that the people involved in these transactions are utterly amoral.
So why do these two things cause credit card abuse to go through the roof?
Furthermore if it caused the credit card abuse to go through the roof wouldn't Valve just remove it of their own accord - at some point the abuse would mean money was taken away from Valve right?
Finally the article doesn't give this as a reason why it was removed - it said "violate the rules and standards set forth by our payment processors" - which sure, that may mean "high rates of credit card abuse were reported", but I doubt it.
Anyway, a link to studies of this phenomenon?
ps: I would probably believe credit card abuse increase under crypto, due no doubt to my innate prejudices.
Credit card processors don't have to be puritanical. Instead, puritanical people simply have to be smart enough to figure out that the best way to deplatform content that they disagree with is by putting pressure on their payment processor monopolistic vendors.
Giving in to a pressure campaign by ideological people can be a completely amoral and smart business decision.
so that begs the question - what if the non-puritanical people also pressure the credit payment processors to stop curtailing to those puritanicals? Why is it effective one way, but not the other?
The bad news is that essentially ALL such businesses still believe that it is essential for them to accept credit card payments - and that means they must still implement whatever agenda these are pushing. On their entire customer base, even if paying by crypto. For now.
Hopefully this progress continues.
Which begs the question. Why would amoral people decline cash?
Yes the payment provider is making a simple money based business decision, or possibly there is a threat of sanctions against the directors so a personal decision as well.
Someone, somewhere is making a choice to pressure content vendors to not offer this kind of content, and not to pressure them to not offer other kinds of content. It may be upstream of the payment processors but there is absolutely a weird puritan American thing going on somewhere, and it's much more interesting to get to the bottom of that since that's the point where change could happen. If everyone involved was amoral, these profitable games would continue being sold.
What? Puritanism is not about some kind of blanket purity to be recognized or expressed from any angle, perspective or religion. And in American business is both extreme and extremely selective.
It's also very much about appearances and image projected. You have to accept a difference between anybody's personal values (in so far as these can show through the mess of corporate decisions), and the image that businesses believe they much display.
Since the processors don’t actually care, they must simply believe that dealing with these annoying people is not worth the effort, compared to just not serving stupidly marginal markets.
But the thing is, the people upset about the sex aren’t upset about the killing, which I think is ridiculous.
So it’s not even that the controversy is not worth the effort. It’s that it literally costs them money to deal with.
The sex taboo may not make sense, but it exists. And it makes people behave in ways that creates problems for lending to them, specifically fraud and chargeback rates are demonstrably higher.
And of course, even in America, we tend to like our violence and gore more over-the-top and simulated. Most people didn't care for liveleak type content, even fewer for not so hard to find footage from ongoing wars.
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.
There was no endorsement of Epstein.
There was a callout of multiple types of bank hypocrisy. Contrasting bank's "concerns" about small time erotic material vs. their lack of concern about employees use of erotic material, and the blind eyes they turn for major criminals, include prolific trafficking/pedophilic billionaires.
If that’s true, maybe it’s also true that the more people have access to adult content the less babies we create as a society.
A society shrinking causes a number of issues.
The US had more TVs per capita than Congo, and a higher life expectancy. Sending more TVs to Congo probably won't do much for their life expectancy though.
Similarly, I suspect the increase in violent video games and reduction of actual violence is just a side effect of an increasingly technology driven society.
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?
US is strict on language and nudity, but comparatively lax on violence (except blood).
UK is lax on nudity and language (comparatively), but very strict on violence.
UK being the country that considered the word "ninja" too violent for children, for example.
Can you quote any Republican who has “literally argued” this or are you just spreading lies that make it easier for you to vilify and dehumanize people who disagree with you politically?
At the same time those "games" that were affected, well, who on earth pays for that seriously fucked up crap? People need to get a grip. I'd rather send a psycho team to evaluate people who pay for these games...
note: PCGAMER the epitome of games journalism. They didn't even checked which were the affected banned games.
This disgusting trash should never have been allowed on Steam.
Edit: downvoted by mentally sick degenerates. This site is filled with disgusting people.
There's no evidence these people were corrupted by games on Steam. Somehow they managed to become who they are by other means.
Also, I don't insult or look down on sick or disabled people. Why are you?
You imply that people that play shooter games like the dea of killing people, and people that play GTA like the ideas of being criminals and killing cops and innocents, do this people also exposed themselves?
Do you also imply same things for movie watchers and book readers ? And metal listeners are Satanists right ?
If we let the Christian extremists ban something without any proof then they will move to the next thing and soon enough they will ban your favorite video game because it gives you the option to be bisexual. (I read about such extremists moving from Texas to Ruzzia since Texas is not Christian enough, it did not end well)
Or that healthy societies have incest taboos for very good reasons, and Valve "having standards" would have had more social (plus lobbying/marketing) value.
Angrily insulting HN's user base, on HN, is not an effective method of persuasion.
You think I am trying to "persuade" anyone who wants to fuck their own children?
I despise these people. It is shocking that 99.999% of comments are NOT angrily insulting anyone who supports incest in gaming. The fact that I am in the minority shows this site is truly degenerate and sick beyond repair.
No I don't think they should be "persuaded". I think they should be in prison or receive the death penalty.
It does feel different in a video game, because you're the one pulling the trigger. I played that CoD mission when the game came out, and I felt a bit sick in my stomach playing that mission out. But I'd probably have exactly the same feeling from violence in films if I wasn't so desensitised to it after growing up watching american movies and tv shows.
Its just new.
Most of the signatories are associated with Australian anti sex trafficking and exploitation groups, although there are several UK signatories and a couple Americans.
A publication[2] by one of the signatories connects the dots. It's driven by the core idea:
"Pornography Use Shapes and Changes Sexual Tastes"[3] which is supported by "In a survey of men involved in online sexual activities, 47% reported being involved in practice or seeing pornography which previously was not interesting to or even disgusted them."[4]
I'm trying to steelman when I say I believe that the authors would agree that this also applies to games with sexual content.
To address your comment specifically, while I see the appeal of consistent moral framework. I personally believe that moral frameworks trade consistency for completeness and rarely accomplish either. You have to assume the value-perspective of the other in order to understand why consistency might take a back seat to some other value we could only speculate on.
1. https://www.collectiveshout.org/open-letter-to-payment-proce...
2. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/391732869_Not_A_Fan...
3. ibid. pg 30
4. ibid
How defensible do you feel this position is?
2) Why haven't they banned all porn games then they banned porn game X? -> it takes a lot more effort to move the needle here. It's not for lack of trying or lack of will, it's that it's obviously much harder to get traction when you've expanded now to an entire category that includes borderline mainstream titles that will finally get defenders willing to put in the same effort as them.
3) Why haven't they banned GTA when they've banned porn game X? -> First, they've tried!. 2nd, again, same principle -> activists aren't stupid, they know they can win the battle one game at a time, and that they can't win it in one gigantic decisive swoop (conveniently enough though, you can leverage this as well to ensure you have a nice long runway to continue to do your activism and keep it as a wedge issue to push at for a nice long time)
4) Why not ban true crime podcasts when they've banned porn game X? -> see again, look, many. many people listen to true crime podcasts, and many people have also objected to them as exploitative. but why does porn game x get banned and true crime podcast Z not? because, well, duh, again, the amount of effort needed to move the needle on something many people enjoy is that much more! i don't think they don't want to, mind you, but again, it's going to take a lot more effort to get to true crime podcasts when they have a thousand other porn game XYZ's they can to work on
And lets not pretend people aren't also trying to get books banned, again, it's being done at a more selective pace, book by book, not category by category. Why is <random niche hentai> banned and not <50 shades of grey>? well, who is published by a mainstream big publishier and who is published by a niche publisher that doesn;t want to get the whole hammer on them?
Repeat at nauseam.
Perhaps there was a misunderstanding. I'm saying the fact that they've succeeded in getting some games removed while others of the same type still exist or that other similar things still exist is not because they are morally inconsistent but because they can't do this all at once
Thanks for understanding.
I'm still looking at the thread and see people bringing up other titles that haven't been banned as if that's a gotcha and it just baffles me. Like what do they think the activists would respond if they were called out on it?
"Oh we don't care about that we only had a grudge on this game in particular"
Or more likely
"Thank you for bringing this title to our attention, we will certainly try to have it taken down as well as it too is against the values we are fighting for"
Yeah, right.
1. https://www.academia.edu/27521992/Online_sexual_activities_A...
Perhaps you're just saying that you're mostly comfortable with the depiction of some forms of violence in some contexts. But what about other scenarios though? Would you feel the same about a game where the player runs around raping women, or capturing and lynching escaped slaves? It's just pixels!
The ability and the freedom to explore the darkest parts of our psyche in a safe, controlled, and fictitious environment IS important. Even if we find certain aspects or fetishes repugnant and distasteful.
I find the idea that payment processors have enough power to dictate the morality of a game market concerning. Given the number of other NSFW fetishistic stuff that is still being permitted on Steam I don't buy the "chargeback" rational AT ALL.
Yeah. Same thing. Should be ignored. If someone feels an urge to run around raping women and lynching slaves, I'd much rather they were sitting around at home playing videogames than doing anything else in their spare time. What do you want them to be doing, the traditional creep move of figuring out how to get into positions of power and influence?
In addition taxpayers shouldn't be footing the bill in the war on pixels; if the banks are taking a firm moral stand then clearly the government is involved and that means they're probably spending money on expunging victimless non-crimes which is a low.
i mean, i can understand a child porn game would be disallowed but we already have anime games where characters that look like children are nearly naked
Yes and yes. We have worse stuff in literature already.
If we are already okay with mass murder in video games, then absolutely yes.
Fucking your own children is illegal. It is everyones business.
I wonder how a modern implementation of these two games would look given the vast visual improvements since then. I assume UE5 or 6 already comes with a Ghoul-esque framework ready to go. Though I hope they would feature a curmudgeon caricature of Jack Thompson.
Where as in violent games like soldier of fortune I doubt most players are trying to achieve the feeling of brutally killing another human being.
And religious groups talking about protecting children (while raping them) is hypocrisy at its finest.
If group A wants to control group or person B, they should prove with very high certainty that group B's behavior is harmful to someone who is not B.
But try to show a sensual human body, instead of one that’s ripped into small pieces, and oh my god, this is going too far!