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

(www.pcgamer.com)
803 points freedomben | 2 comments | 18 Jul 25 15:54 UTC | HN request time: 0s | 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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Al-Khwarizmi ◴[19 Jul 25 12:12 UTC] No.44614860[source]▶
> Some of these games seem completely abhorrent

Why would you consider those abhorrent while games where you can slaughter people, or commit all kinds of crimes like any random GTA, are widely considered normal?

I'll never understand American morals. What's clear is that we need non-US payment processors so that the values of a given culture aren't imposed worldwide.

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bornfreddy ◴[19 Jul 25 12:15 UTC] No.44614885[source]▶
Say what you want about crypto, but it does solve this problem at least.
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1. aprilthird2021 ◴[19 Jul 25 16:02 UTC] No.44616638[source]▶
It doesn't "solve" the problem, it's just not regulated the same way. If governments decided to extend the same regulations to crypto transactions, what recourse would a person have?
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2. tavavex ◴[19 Jul 25 16:54 UTC] No.44617145[source]▶
I'm not some crypto evangelist, but as far as I know, crypto at its foundation is a lot less "watertight" in terms of ascertaining who is who. Your government could pass laws to pressure your local money-to-crypto exchange service into complying with whatever regulation is needed. But they can't force the entire network of crpyto transactions to have real names tied to accounts, demand reasons for payment, discriminate based on what's being paid for, etc. So, circumventing payment processors' "grassroots" self-moderation requires finding a way to bypass basically the entire payment pipeline. Circumventing a hypothetical highly-regulated crypto environment just requires finding a way to sneak your money into the system. And there will probably be foreign or grey market services that don't care about what your specific country thinks.