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

(www.pcgamer.com)
803 points freedomben | 8 comments | 18 Jul 25 15:54 UTC | HN request time: 0.496s | source | bottom
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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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1. irusensei ◴[19 Jul 25 07:57 UTC] No.44613483[source]▶
I think the biggest issue here is that somewhere down the line we gave payment processors the responsibility of policing for crime and terrorism. Our governments and regulators punish those institutions for "not doing enough" to prevent such things from happening.

You might think I'm defending the multibillion company but here comes the catch: all of this is expensive so when you are doing something funky even though not illegal they just cut you out. You are a small dev or merchant and it's not worth running a whole monitoring apparatus over your activities.

Then we get into this situation where borderline cartel activity like this happens and we have a sort of shadow government enacting their own regulations. This raises some eyebrows dont you think? It will probably continue until governments realize this is happening.

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2. peanut-walrus ◴[19 Jul 25 08:07 UTC] No.44613534[source]▶
The responsibility ended up with payment processors and other financial institutions because otherwise they would be forced to give access to all their customer / transaction data to governments and law enforcement.

I really wish we had a push for payment neutrality. Financial transactions are infrastructure and infrastructure should be dumb and neutral. Why does everyone have to suffer slow and expensive transfers just to maybe occasionally catch some bad guys (and they're not actually caught, just mildly inconvenienced)? And of course once you're already doing it, there's inevitably overreach, as evidenced by Visa here.

And before someone chimes in about how crypto will solve this: yes, crypto has already solved this for the criminal class. But most of the rest of people still have to suffer all the fincrime policing every time they move money or pay for something.

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3. wood_spirit ◴[19 Jul 25 08:21 UTC] No.44613602[source]▶
As a generalisation it seems sensible that it should be illegal to knowingly handle illegal things and the proceeds of illegal things.

It’s hard to say that it’s ok to profit from someone else’s crime.

If I sell you a bike cheap, no questions asked, then you ought be as culpable as me as you don’t have reasonable doubt that it’s stolen. Etc.

This can be weaponised. The lobbies go after visa and Mastercard etc by giving the company “proof” that same transactions are very illegal, eg leaks or underage or duress etc. This forces them in the position of being complicit which means they have to step back.

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4. irusensei ◴[19 Jul 25 08:21 UTC] No.44613610[source]▶
> and they're not actually caught, just mildly inconvenienced

I read somewhere that criminal organizations and individuals love KYC and AML because they have the resources to go around it and it makes their operations look legit.

5. schappim ◴[19 Jul 25 10:00 UTC] No.44614080[source]▶
> we gave payment processors the responsibility of policing for crime and terrorism

Mirrors what Marc Andreessen said on Lex's podcast.

The problem isn’t just regulatory overreach, it’s delegated enforcement w/out accountability.

Financial institutions are now playing judge and jury, not because they want to, but because the cost of scrutiny or punishment is too high.

It’s soft censorship by infrastructure...

6. xcf_seetan ◴[19 Jul 25 14:00 UTC] No.44615533[source]▶
>we gave payment processors the responsibility of policing for crime and terrorism

Maybe is time to do a reboot of the economy, what about everyone goes to the bank and withdraw all their money, and when everybody has his money, we put the money back in the bank? Would be funny to see how banks would react :)

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7. jgilias ◴[19 Jul 25 19:00 UTC] No.44618328[source]▶
That’s literally impossible. There’s not enough cash in the system for that.
8. LorenPechtel ◴[19 Jul 25 19:27 UTC] No.44618533[source]▶
Yeah, but there should be a concept of what level of scrutiny is warranted. Pornhub had a legitimate problem in that in permitting user content they made it extremely hard to keep their system from being used for improper purposes (underage, revenge.) But neither would I expect any system to be 100%. Should you have known? If so, you're wrong. Things look reasonable? No fault.