Steam Censorship of Adult Games Shows How Payment Processors Wield Immense Power

The reason these credit card companies wield so much power is the modern duopolistic system. "Monopolies are ILLEGAL" they said. Thusly, an array of duopolistic megacorps essentially acting as a monopoly. Something something game theory. Visa and mastercard. Coke and Pepsi. iPhone and Android. Windows and MacOS. Google search and google search. NASDAQ and NYSE.

The answer is to have 10+ actually competing, financially healthy payment processors. At some point the cabal-like duopolistic behavior breaks down.

There was no such evidence presented, all the evidence was that some christian extremists complained.

Sure your wife might see that you have a payment to pornhub and might not like it but you will not get on your credit card report the name of the game you bought from Steam or GOG so this fake excuse does not work like it would have worked with adult sites subscriptions.

But if there is evidence for Steam and GOG let me know, if somehow I missed the news and the chritian extemists were not the one that pressured VISA then also let me know.

When Fandango at Home sells you the movie Shortbus is it more likely to be a fraudulent transaction than when they sell you Shrek?

The entire giftcard industry operates with these payment networks just fine despite large chargeback percentages that come from literal stolen credit cards

If the claim that "higher chargeback risk" like that cut you off from the payment networks were true, you would not be able to buy gift cards with credit cards.

Steam has a specific return policy that it applies everywhere, the games don't show up on card statements, and Steam will lock your entire account for charging back.

If there's a secret epidemic of people making new accounts specifically to buy and chargeback on adult games, the solution is for the processor to pressure Steam to take measures to reduce fradulent chargebacks (e.g. through minimum account age requirements for adult games), not to censor the platform.

Is this something that happens when you have a registered account? I don't have a Steam account. I opened https://store.steampowered.com/explore/upcoming/ in a private browser window and I see only one one game out of 20 tagged with "Nudity" / "Sexual content".

I don't think it's "whataboutism" to ask why they don't do something that helps society with that power instead of using it to censor art they find personally distasteful.

    Hot take, but parents should, y'know, parent

Every one of these "just shunt the responsibility from the giant corporation with infinite resources to the parents who are already stretched thin" is another link in a long, long chain that is the woes of modern parenting and really in the woes of modern life, in general.

Historically we have typically gated adult content from children via opt-in systems, not opt-out systems, like you're describing - e.g. Adults opt-in to sensitive content, not children opt-out. There is a reason adult stores are separate from Walmarts and that 21+ bars are separate from family-restaurants.

Also these games are absolute garbage, so I'm not sure why everyone is jumping on this issue like we're losing something of significant cultural value... Why is low-quality XXX-slop the line in the sand we're deciding to rally around... This is not a slippery slope to fascism, or whatever make-believe story we're peddling about this situation, its somebody somewhere doing the right thing, for once, and slowing our seemingly inevitable decline into Biff's Casino Future the teensiest bit.

    What is your justification for this position?

    How does this not reduce to "steam shouldn't sell games that aren't fit for toddlers"?