Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games

It is sad that in 2025 this needs to be repeated: fiction is not real.

This statement imply that:

* Simulated violence is not violence.

* Simulated sex is not sex.

* Simulated sorcery is not sorcery

And yet it is possible to make simulations extreme enough I would not opposed to banning them. There are some things that should not be normalized in society.

It shouldn’t be payment processors doing it unilaterally, I’ll grant that. But I’m not (and I’m sure a great many more of a silent majority) wholly opposed to the outcome.

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

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

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.

Yeah, who gets to decide whats too far?

There's a similar issue with free speech - the moment you ban certain speech the door to banning your political opposition opens.

It's a slippery slope. It's not real but can certainly, by definition, create a situation that mimics reality to the point of assisting someone at committing a real crime that they couldn't possibly commit without the simulation.

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.

From what I can tell, only one country in the world has free speech. Actual free speech. USA.

Should also ban GTA then. /s

I don't know what your definition of "actual" free speech is but there are certainly limits to free speech even in the US[0].

And those are just explicit limits. Try supporting Palestine on a college campus or mentioning women or gay people in any government funded scientific publication, or finding a book portraying pro-LGBT content in a library or a school curriculum that portrays slavery in a way that "makes white people feel victimized" in the South.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...

Its dying fast. The Late Show was just cancelled because it was a massive thorn to the POTUS.

Thanks for this mate, REALLY needed this laugh on this fine end-of-grinding-workweek… Fantastic!!

You should make a petition. Maybe we can exclude pro-exclusion websites from payment processors.

This is not okay, and we need to take a strong moral stance here. Some views should not be acceptable in a society.

I love a good “POTUS” conspiracy as much as the next guy but The Late Show cancelation is a simple money game, the show was bleeeding money. If the show was profitable the chance of it being cancelled are same as me dating Beyonce

Supporting Palestine would get you deported to El Salvador (or worse) :)

Technically yes, but the money game was CBS losing a massive lawsuit to POTUS.

I would agree with this if this was factual, the money cbs paid via 60 minutes nonsense is same if you were fined a dime for something you did today. so not “massive” but whatever is the exact opposite of massive

The show itself was losing viewership cause who the F watches late night TV these days?

Isn't freedom of speech just "you're allowed to say whatever you want", and not "you're entitled to the use of taxpayer dollars to help distribute your message" or "you're entitled to have the government force children to read your message"?

The limits to speech (in USA) depends (roughly) on if it's intended to incite imminent lawless action and is likely to do so.

Actual speech is communicating ideas or opinions, even distasteful or unpopular ones. The fact that university morons throw a riot if anyone disagrees with them (many such cases), does not affect your right to do so.

Denmark passed a law in 2023 that makes public burning, tearing, stepping on, or defiling holy texts illegal. It's informally called the Quran Law, because everyone knows who doesn't tolerate any criticism of their religion at all. This is one of many limits on speech in Denmark. In my view, speech is either free or it isn't, hence my argument that only USA has free speech.

Violence is still considered ok in games, last time I checked.

Which is possibly because violence is not as awkward to watch with your family as sex is.

> Yeah, who gets to decide whats too far?

The ruling ethnic group, of course, as is tradition.

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.

Won’t somebody please think of the children?

> There's a similar issue with free speech - the moment you ban certain speech the door to banning your political opposition opens.

There is TONS of speech that is banned, even in America. There isn't a single place on the planet that has no limits on speech.

When we start saying "no content restrictions besides illegal stuff", your hyperbolic question becomes legitimate in a way that it's not when we're talking about Doom.

And all Hollywood studios as well.

It's both. A merger is happening in two weeks and this helps. It was going off of the air in a year or two anyways. Easy way to give Trump a win.

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

is said late night TV actually expensive though? they have a payong audience, and the whole thing is an ad for whoever is selling a book or movie release.

whats gonna replace that slot that people are gonna watch? a blank screen?

having a green card or visa stripped because you said something is not "having the government force children to read your message"

thats a historical view, but not the most useful now that the second american revolution has happened.

things that lightly annoyed the president is now the decider between legal and illegal speech in the US, and the punishment is death, because nothing the president does that could be part of their regular responsibilities like talking to secret service assasins, can be considered in court proceedings.

if you have a car that is a money pit you and your family keep bleeding money on to make repairs, would you keep making repairs or get another car? all of TV is a simple money game, shows get canceled, new ones spruce up, they get canceled, some are super successful but run their course, others stink from the get-go. what is going to replace the late show? not sure but whatever it does it better make money for cbs or the same faith awaits it

there are already hundreds, if not thousands of anime lolicon porn games on steam.

the people making a stink about this know this but are pretending that they don't because it would overtly out them as pedophiles.

I don't have to be "interested" in seeing something on steam to disagree with nkrisc. I don't care about 99.9%+ of the games on steam, that doesn't mean I want them gone.

Interesting, do you have a source for that claim? Mallen Baker [1] says it was gaining viewers.

[1]: https://youtu.be/KMLZAE4okWs

Correction: Won't somebody please think of the pixels?

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.

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 could do without Jeff from accounting showing off his latest proud performance with the wife to the coworkers like it's his golf swing.

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."

Are the assassins in the room with us right now?

Recently? Hasn't society always topics they thought shouldn't be normalized?

Are you saying the people who are petitioning Steam to remove porn games are playing the porn games themselves and simultaneously pretending porn games don't exist on Steam?

That doesn't make sense.

Nothing you said here is true.

Something tells me Jeff from accounting can still freely show photos of him "hunting" with some dead wild animals and few will consider it gross.

Abrahamic religion is prudish about sex none of the pagan or Buddhism is prudish.

You say this like they haven't already tried.

Recently? Such a sentiment has existed since the dawn of human society.

That’s the tricky bit.

It's possible he means people saying steam should not delist anything due to pressure from activists are tacitly condoning sketchy lolicon games.

>There is no connection, you are without a leg to stand on except your own religious indoctrination.

Flagging my reply is gross (you state that, not me!) and grounds for ban. I'll just leave this 2nd rebuttal here as I take back both my legs to stand on and yours as well :P

https://www.pcmag.com/news/take-it-down-act-deepfake-revenge...

Buddhism literally teaches celibacy. Mostly for monks but if you get serious about your practice the advice is always to become celibate in order to make progress. It makes sense as you're trying to remove your desires.

>would you really be interested in seeing Child Grooming Simulator 25 on steam?

If we are going down this path there's a lot of literature popular with women about to be banned

> ethically or morally unacceptable

What does that mean?

For example if something can be shown to cause actual harm to innocent individuals, i find it morally unacceptable.

But some people will tell you anything banned by their favorite fairytale or their upbringing is morally unacceptable.

That's a complicated question I'd like to see settled via legislation and in courts interpreting (and sometimes overturning) these laws rather than in a private corporation's compliance and/or PR department.

Normalization is a fake argument that sounds fancy, not a real thing.