←back to thread

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

(www.pcgamer.com)
728 points freedomben | 4 comments | 18 Jul 25 15:54 UTC | HN request time: 0.002s | source
Show context
maxbond ◴[19 Jul 25 00:26 UTC] No.44611358[source]▶
Why do payment processors do stuff like this? Is there some regulation that requires them to? I get that they don't want to process fraudulent transactions, but I'd think the response to a higher percentage of fraud from some industry would be to charge them more. It doesn't make sense to me why they would be concerned about the content of games, as long as everything is legal and the parties concerned aren't subject to sanctions.

Some of these games seem completely abhorrent, and probably illegal in more restrictive jurisdictions, but not the United States. And I've not seen any suggestion they're funding terrorism or something. So I'm perplexed.

replies(28): >>44611411 #>>44611419 #>>44611451 #>>44611517 #>>44611528 #>>44611604 #>>44611625 #>>44611674 #>>44611713 #>>44611790 #>>44611866 #>>44612085 #>>44612637 #>>44612830 #>>44613322 #>>44613401 #>>44613483 #>>44613691 #>>44613744 #>>44614120 #>>44614860 #>>44615550 #>>44615769 #>>44616205 #>>44616269 #>>44616805 #>>44616821 #>>44616872 #
guidedlight ◴[19 Jul 25 01:44 UTC] No.44611790[source]▶
Another factor is that credit providers (i.e. banks) are increasingly using customer transaction data to assess customer behaviour as part of its risk scoring.

If a customer is regularly purchasing adult material that would be definitely be a red flag.

replies(1): >>44612127 #
chao- ◴[19 Jul 25 02:49 UTC] No.44612127[source]▶
A red flag of what?
replies(1): >>44612205 #
1. supertrope ◴[19 Jul 25 03:05 UTC] No.44612205{3}[source]▶
Defaulting on their credit card bill. Or the account ends up having been started by an identity fraudster. Which also ends in default.
replies(2): >>44612417 #>>44613380 #
2. jrflowers ◴[19 Jul 25 03:46 UTC] No.44612417[source]▶
That seems backward. The people I’ve known that spend a lot of money on adult entertainment are exactly the group that pays their bills.
replies(1): >>44613308 #
3. SXX ◴[19 Jul 25 07:21 UTC] No.44613308[source]▶
This. I dont know who do you need to be in order to pay for the porn that you can pirate for free. In case of games or music or movies there is collecting and convinience, but porn is pretty much opposite.

But at the same time chance of "oops it's not mine" charbacks likely much higher compared to other spending.

4. globular-toast ◴[19 Jul 25 07:36 UTC] No.44613380[source]▶
Then why would they want to stop getting these red flags?