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Comment by timpera | Hacker News Reader

Considering their volume, I find it hard to believe that Valve couldn't find another, more lenient payment processor with similar fees.

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My understanding is that it's not just the processor, but Visa/Mastercard themselves have rules against certain types of merchants/products... they really have a monopoly on credit cards in general so you have to play by their rules.

You're right, but it's slightly more complicated than that.

My understanding is that payment processors are obligated to follow the policies of Visa/MasterCard, AmEx, and Discover, but that those parties' policies don't explicitly ban these specific things for sale. Instead, they "strongly encourage" processors to ban them in their user agreements under the implicit threat of their risk level being increased, which in turn impacts the fees they pay to the credit card companies.

I've not been deep in this world since ~2014, but at that time the only processor I could find that wasn't specific to the porn industry, offered physical terminals, had reasonable (if high) fees, and didn't ban legal transactions in their user agreement was PAI ("Payment Alliance International"). A quick look at their site today shows that they seem to have been acquired by Brinks, so that may no longer be the case.

MasterCard have a specific restricted list that bans an awful lot of things in any adult context.

Some of how to interpret that is left up to the processor, but it is broadly under MCs and to a lesser extent Visa's control.

Yep, they are a just a modern day mafia. "Would be a real shame if you didn't take down these games. Then we couldn't do business with you anymore."

It complicates things to have some games that can be purchased with credit cards and some games that can only be purchased with crypto.

If they continued to carry any of the games that were singled out for removal by Visa and Mastercard, they would not be able to accept credit card payments for anything else in their store. This same drama has played out the same way with countless other online services.

Controversial games being restricted to purchase only with Steam Points. The credit card is only ever charged to buy points, which can then be used to purchase items on the store. Similar to fortnite.

Or similar to DLSite and Fantia, where it didn't work.

They could support a stablecoin like USDC and start pushing people to that. No censorship and lower fees. Valve broke ground with Steam, they could do it again.

nah. USDC funds can be frozen by Circle on demand/request.

You wouldn’t be buying or holding any USDC in your account. It would be invisible to you

The problem with that is that you usually end up using traditional payment rails (e.g. a Visa debit card) to "invisibly" buy the stablecoin and then you're subject to their rules and fees again.

Would you care to explain the process more? I'd be glad to see a useful application of crypto.

There are no other payment processors.

There are no other payment processors that can replace Visa/Mastercard*.

There are other payment processors in India/Japan/China/Brazil/etc. But none of them is internationally adopted like Visa/Mastercard.

Is it the case the Mastercard/Visa will reject a site that has such content even if you can only purchase it using ValveBucks or PayPal or something? That seems plausible.

In some countries there are other systems. It's high time the modern world adopted something similar like Pix in Brazil.

There are national issuers like JCB or UnionPay.

I'm getting a JCB card. Screw Visa.

Adult content has a high chargeback rate and high fraud rates so payment processing for adult content has higher fees.

People say that a lot but I haven't seen actual statistics, and sites that have established low chargeback rates face the same issues.

Also that's not a reason to ban certain genres/kinks, which is what's happening here.

You need to be more specific. Conflating "adult content" with porn is both problematic is masks the real issue. A large majority of games Valve sells are adult content. But as you can imagine grand theft auto is not causing a lot of political backlash, despite the objectionable content.

You say that but the same censors behind this also got GTA5 pulled from retail stores

Which makes less sense when you consider Steam will refund you game if you dont want it.

I don’t think you understand what’s being said. He’s not talking about the ability to refund

But is there a good reason to do a chargeback if you can easily refund it? Yes if someone stole the CC and used it buy something on Steam, but is that the concern or that someone buys something with a CC on their own account, and then chargebacks instead of refunding?

The fact that these were specifically incest games makes me think a title was somehow involved in distributing CSAM, which is often why Visa/MC crack down on porn websites.

But it is possible that Visa sensibly and correctly said "anyone who makes or purchases such a game is a despicable scumbag, and we shouldn't assume the financial risk of dealing with them."

That's a pretty wild idea for what someone would be putting on steam as a visual novel. And why would they need to be pressured into removing horrible illegal content?

Or you think one person did that and it made the credit cards decide any story with incest would be the same? That would be ridiculous on their part.

I think the government should be the one deciding what makes someone qualify as a despicable scumbag, not a private payment processor that is essentially acting as a utility provider. For the same reason, I also don't think an electric company should be allowed to shut cancel your building's electricity if they don't like your mismatched socks.

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