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Comment by throwaway071625 | Hacker News Reader

The article calls out “certain adult games” which is vague. It is interesting to note that most of the delisted games were themed specifically around incest.

https://bsky.app/profile/steamdb.info/post/3lu32vdlsmg27

Wondering if this will be a slippery slope towards pulling more anodyne stuff.

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> The article calls out “certain adult games” which is vague.

A Quick Look at the list has me wishing I hadn’t thought to look at the list.

I suspect the vague “certain adult games” was chosen because it makes it sound more controversial. If the headline was “Valve removed incest-themed games under pressure” there would be a lesser reaction.

Why? Incest is more objectionable than murder or rape?

Collective Shout, the group behind this petition, has previously gone after more mainstream games, like Detroit Becomes Human, for spurious reasons. I have no doubt they'll use this win and mealy-mouthed language to push for more censorship.

Specifically incest, rape, and child abuse-themed games.

Ah, like a video game version of "Game of Thrones"? None of the payment processors had any issues with taking money for that series. And that was live action.

Yep, those games were exactly the same thing as Game of Thrones.

I mean by the content they were yeah. Precisely the problem with rules declaring what content is and isn’t acceptable.

Exactly. By content, here is a book on Amazon[1] where the author openly tells stories of rape and incest and somehow it's all Ok. Pretty much the same as Game of Thrones and those Steam games.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Body-Keeps-Score-Healing-Trauma/dp/01...

Seems like we’re in agreement - I read your prior comment differently

You are not in agreement. The person you are replying to is being sarcastic. They feel that a HBO produced tv show with incest is art that needs to be protected while an indie dev game with incest is trash that needs to be censored.

The fact of the matter is you will find more people willing to publicly bat for GOT than you will find people willing to bat for an "indie incest non-con game". And it's not like GOT has not received criticism for its content or that people haven't tried.

The movements here (the pro-censorship movement & the anti-sexuality movement) are mainly driven by religious beliefs, and as such, it comes as no surprise that they do not want to apply censorship in a fair or even logically consistent way; they merely want to ban things they personally do not like.

As I pointed out earlier, it's also valid that they are savvy enough to pick their battles and divide and conquer - you can't take down a critical mainstream success like GOT or GTA, but you can go after fringe games with content most people would be uncomfortable publicly defending.

The very same group did try to take down GTA V : https://www.collectiveshout.org/prostitution_survivors_call_...

Sure, but GTA is still on steam.

Sure, I can see that being part of it (I didn't see this implication in your earlier post)

Ah sorry I meant elsewhere in the thread

Games/hentai about these topics are not illegal, even if they are in bad taste.

And I’m willing to bet some content removed does not fall in these categories

That’s exactly the point: getting Valve to remove illegal content would not have caused any headlines. These themes go against common moral standards and so Visa et al don’t want to be seen selling them.

You can find the list of removed titles if you go looking for it. Feel free to point out which ones you think are collateral damage. I’m not looking at that list with my eyeballs though. I need them for later.

In the US they are criminally illegal https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1466A

You crossed two categories together, and made a new category I didn’t say: “Depictions of sexual assault of children”

Are you claiming that the content removed was encroaching on this law?

Visa and Mastercard generally don't like anything with incest, rape, and/or underage participants.

But they are strangely okay with murder.

It's kind of fucked up that we are almost used to murder in various media (movies, games, etc.), meanwhile even slightly explicit sex is much more taboo. I do vaguely understand why this is (religious beliefs that formed our understanding of what is acceptable and what-not), but I am still surprised that this is how it is even with the rise of Atheism in recent decades.

That's american values for you.

Unless it's a TV show depicting it with live action. Then it's fine.

Yes, I don't know if selling those games is legal or not.

Thus I can imagine that they don't want to become criminally responsible if that's illegal.

Nekopara and Sabbat of the Witch are safe... for now.

Hopefully they don't know about the little-sister route in Making Lovers.

Payment processors should be regulated like utilities. Permissionless and agnostic to anything you do.

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