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

(www.pcgamer.com)
728 points freedomben | 2 comments | 18 Jul 25 15:54 UTC | HN request time: 0.501s | source
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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.

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ijk ◴[19 Jul 25 00:50 UTC] No.44611517[source]▶
One factor is the ongoing campaigns from number of moral crusading groups who lobby them to cut off payment processing for things they don't approve of. NCOSE has been working for decades on the project, and targeting credit card companies has been a successful tactic for them for a decade or so.

[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/visa-and-mastercard-ar...

[2] https://www.newsweek.com/why-visa-mastercard-being-blamed-on...

[3] https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/bitstreams/761eb6c3-9377-...

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1. cornholio ◴[19 Jul 25 06:03 UTC] No.44612962[source]▶
It's easy to dismiss all such campaigns as religious prudes and moral crusaders, especially on a site with the demographics and political leanings of YC News.

But often time such campaigns are waged by former victims of trafficking. It's well documented that trafficking, prostitution and pornography are closely interlinked - this modern notion of a fully liberated "sexual worker" controlling their careers, choices and finance is substantially a fiction of the pornographic industry. So there is real merit în the anti porn stance.

Of course, once the camping is set in motion, it takes a life of its own, that has nothing to do with the concerns of the victims and more with prudishness; the religious circus will join hands and demand the removal of synthetic pornography etc.

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2. fn-mote ◴[19 Jul 25 11:40 UTC] No.44614655[source]▶
I’m willing to listen if you’re willing to provide sources.

Otherwise, your claims run counter to more credible sources I have read. (Which I am not willing to search up for this post.)