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

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.

> 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.

It definitely should not be determined by corporations because they not elected and almost untouchable by the individuals affected.

The state is a less bad alternative but bad (unintentionally harmful) and malicious (intentionally harmful) decisions are generally not punished either.

When people set rules which affect others, they should also be held accountable.

And in general, rules limiting a person's behavior should only exist when that behavior can be _proven_ to be harmful.

They should be determined by individuals capable of critical and logical thinking and without anything personal to gain from the rules.

They should not be determined by individuals who have antisocial traits or who are indoctrinated into various belief systems which are founded on preferential treatment (such as religion).