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Comment by flumpcakes | Hacker News Reader

They are targeting incest/rape games. I wouldn't call that 'LGBTQ' like some people seem to imply. If Itch and Steam don't want to police their store fronts _before_ the law gets involved, then I am not surprised that other businesses such as payment providers will choose not to work with them.

Visa and MasterCard are in the business of making money, they're not doing this for fun.

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> _before_ the law gets involved

There's no law (as of now). If there was a law, Valve would happily de-list these things. For example, a recent custom map for Mount and Blade that was banned in South Korea: https://automaton-media.com/en/news/valve-cooperates-in-bann...

This is my entire point: Valve and Itch do not police their store fronts (Itch actually does, it won't allow any games it thinks are 'hatred' but other content is OK) and now the payment processors think the risk is too great.

I think one solution for Valve/Itch to continue with the 'no policing policy' is for governments to step in and say all video games needed classification like films do.

I think a few of these video games that are sold would be found to breaking some law if anyone cared to test it.

Steam's storefront is actually policed somewhat, their rules are simply not the same as the ones you want them to have.

> governments to step in and say all video games needed classification like films do.

Valve and (I believe) Itch are both US companies. In the US, films are not required to get a rating anymore.

Have you heard of a television show called "Game of Thrones". It featured live actors, real humans with human bodies, acting out representations of incest and rape. And positive representations at that. It was a worldwide phenomenon and hundreds of millions of people probably watched it. It's still available to buy and sell GoT and related merchandise and payment providers don't bat an eye.

Video games don't even involve actual human bodies like GoT does. It's crazy that "Collective Shout" thinks this is worth invoking violence and violating peoples volition for. Certainly not consistent with all other aspects of entertainment in society. Makes me think there are probably other fame, power and money motivations behind their behavior. But it doesn't explain people agreeing with them. That's the weirdest part of this.

"It was a worldwide phenomenon and hundreds of millions of people probably watched it." - this is what explains why GOT is not the one getting taken down. Collective Shout is picking battles it can win.

Collective Shout also actively targets games like Detroit: Become Human that are hardly 'incest/rape games'.

And that game is still available. Hardly evidence that payment providers are targeting all 'NSFW' or adult games.

I think what that tells you is that there are still limits to what collective shout is able to do, hence why GTA is still for sale but the fringe porn games aren't

I think I missed the part where Valve or these games were in violation of any laws.

MasterCard/VISA clearly think the risk is there.

The problem is that they are opting to ban all games labeled “NSFW”, not just rape/incest games.

Itch is only doing this in the short term as they don't have enough time to go through all of the NSFW games on their platform.

And 4chan is only introducing the Captcha until the spam stops

Porn is a massive cash cow for itch, they are very incentivised to get the NSFW stuff up again asap

They should consider banning sale of the Bible and Game of Thrones from Amazon as well

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