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

(www.pcgamer.com)
819 points freedomben | 1 comments | 18 Jul 25 15:54 UTC | HN request time: 0.211s | 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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1. WhyNotHugo ◴[19 Jul 25 10:07 UTC] No.44614120[source]▶
> Is there some regulation that requires them to?

There isn’t. Even worse, there’s no legislation prohibited them from doing so.

Payment processors (eg: Mastercard, Visa) are the ultimate deciders of whether you can sell something online or not, regardless of whether it is legal.

They haven’t just blocked adult content, they’ve also blocked non-profits with which they disagree in the past.

We need much stronger legislation around this. Private entities shouldn’t be capable of deciding that a given organisation can’t charge online. Only institutions which represent the public’s interests should have this level of influence.