The group responsible is “Collective Shout”, the same org has targeted Steam before.
There are calls on social media now to contact Mastercard, Visa and co. and file complaints.
First they came for the incest/rape games, which most people somewhat agree with (although the principle is still wrong) Next up is all nsfw games. After that, it’ll be mainstream and indie games altogether. This never stops with just one “victory” for these groups.
It’s going to come down to anything with even a whisper of LGBTQ+/minority/disability/etc representation, just like with books.
They start with the “egregious” content (not that it’s necessarily right to remove that either), then narrow it down until it shapes up into hegemonic conformity and systemic oppression via media (there’s a term for it, kind of like stochastic violence but not quite that I can’t remember atm).
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it doesn’t even stop there - it will be used to punish people who do not exactly like it’s expected, with the mere accusation of playing/reading/watching/thinking something “unchristian” as reason.
BDSM games have been targeted as well for “sexual violence”. Only straight, vanilla PiV missionary for the express purposes of having children within the confines of marriage where nobody is enjoying it porn will be left.
There are specific games in steam’s case I’m very ok with getting removed, but at the same time its very fucked up that we’re in a situation where the world is beholden to payment processors. Ideally this would be a case where they go directly to Valve and say “hey we think you should take a look at your content policy and at these specific games” and Valve makes the call from there on where they want to draw the line.
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mention of sexual assault
not OP, but for example the first game collective shout went after a few months ago (“no mercy”) was explicitly a game about raping women to make them obedient. this is bad not because its NSFW, it’s bad because it’s rape apologia, and a misogynistic hate game.
to me, it’s not much different than “chad vs the gay nazis”, another hate game (with a pretty self-explanatory name) that was released around the same time and was also quickly delisted.
I wouldn’t be surprised if other games that just got delisted were as bad as no mercy. but also, the blanket banning of anything NSFW (or even just kinky) sets a terrible precedent.
The main stuff I saw removed was related to incest and rape, not in a “it contains it” way. Somehow Corruption of Champions 2 escaped the ban hammer which makes me think those games probably took things pretty far, or were basically built to simulate assaulting people.
For reference, CoC2 is uh… Well when you lose in combat the enemy fucks you, and vice versa. It’s like a lot of fetish stuff too. So not that I know exactly what’s in the games, but I feel like you have to really be trying to outdo CoC2.
Edit: I’m not criticizing CoC2 btw, it’s fine. Its… I don’t wanna say tasteful but non con is like one of 90 things you can or cannot opt into. Idk how to put it. It’s an actual game that happens to have non con content I guess is what I mean.
What kills me is in most cases you have to pay for the game, then you have to download the game, then install it and finally play it. It’s not.like the game is going to one day pop into your computer and then force you to play it.
Bottom line. If the game bothers ornoffends you just move on.
Once they get rid of the sex they’ll come for the violence.
Steam is gonna look mighty empty if every game with violence is removed tho.
They’re not going to ban 90% of video games, not everything is a slippery slope
They’ve been trying to ban violent video games for several decades, you knob. They absolutely will come for them.
And it won’t happen because companies won’t allow them to ban a trillion dollar industry, you knob. Banning adult games isn’t remotely comparable. Most video games rely on violence and it’s too big of an industry to fail, adult games have a tiny following and were an easy target.
They banned adult games?! That means they’ll ban all violent media! They’ll eventually come for all media, they’ll come for our computers, they’ll trap us in cages! It’s a slippery slope!
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So what do I, a common shlub, do to resist this? Boycott Steam and itch.io until they reinstate the games?
Steam and Itch are both victims in this matter, their hands are tied. If the payment processors simply refuse to process any payments unless they comply, there’s no point in trying to put pressure on them. I’m pretty sure they were happy to take people’s money for these games and still would be, if they could so while saving face.
So what useful action can I take to push back against this censorship?
This is gonna be down vote central but use crypto to pay for games whatever that looks like.
Isnt itch.io only indie games?
Yes, but.
Everyone should read the open letter that’s linked in the itch statement, to have a fully informed opinion.
There definitely is a line. Everyone can choose were they draw it. You don’t have to draw it in a way where you end up defending things that are kinda messed up.
There is definitely a hill worth fighting on in that area. I don’t think it’s this exact one.
My line is these payment processors being judge, jury and executioner about what material they deem valid. So I am fundamentally opposed.
I agree, but they aren’t.
I am specifically saying this, because my democratic country has laws that would also cover these things the letter mentions and would also deem them wrong. The people normally charged with upholding that law, are just dumb, “not from the internet” and overworked with other stuff.
Please check what laws your country has around the topic of glorification of crime and violence.
We also don’t know what the payment processors told itch and steam.
Itch and steam are doing what they are doing as a blanket move, to create a situation where they can stay in business for now and deal with the problem at all.
My bet would be that they “allowed nsfw stuff”, turned a blind eye, and now suddenly noticed they actually have a really big legal problem, with actual laws and the fact that it was an NGO and not an official legal institution that started this, was dumb luck and now they mostly need time and cover their own arse.
And I fully support the opinion that it shouldn’t be the payment processors forcing these sorts of things. But reality is messy and if this was the path of least resistance to get something done, such is life.
If GTA V is allowed, I’m pretty certain most of what we’ve seen from NSFW games is as well. Regardless, a payment company should not be acting as judge for such things, just as media companies should not act as judge on copyright infringement on YouTube.
Moral judgement or suppression of fiction/artistic expression is deeply and profoundly unethical. How you or I or anyone else feels about something that isn’t “real” is inconsequential. If you allow any line to be crossed in this, then every line can and will be crossed.
I’m pretty sure I can find fictional things immoral? Why would it be unethical to have an opinion on fictional things?
Factually, all the lines that you allow to be crossed are crossed and all lines that are collectively defended are usually not crossed. That’s culture. It’s arbitrary and not absolute.
Puritanical US based payment processors need to stop getting their panties twisted.
I don’t even understand how they give a shit. Seems like the perfect place for shareholders to want them to make as much money as possible, it’s a limited market.
People with a lot of money doesn’t really want just money. They want power to impose their views over the rest. Money is just a mean to do so.
The shareholders aren’t the ones pressuring the payment processors.
the payment processors didn’t randomly wake up this week and decide to ban NSFW video games on a power trip.
they are being financially pressured in some way to threaten game platforms that they’ll remove their services completely. the implication of that is they’re worried about losing even more money than they make from payments on game platforms.
from the payment processors perspective, they’re thinking, “okay this is not a hill we want to die on and it’s a small percentage of our business anyway.”
They give a shit because they are being pressured into giving a shit by religious nutjobs: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality_in_Media
That hasn’t ever stopped other companies from pursuing profits at all other costs.
Why are they capitulating though?
You’re still thinking within reason. Megalomania doesn’t.
It’s not about money, but power. “The world bent its knee at our word.” Simple as that. People can be and are that crazy.
It’s an Australian organisation pressuring the payment processors.
It’s not just happening recently with Steam and Itch.io, it’s been happening for a while.
Some smutty art creators on Patreon have been chased off that platform because of payment processors telling patreon they’d pull the plug if Patreon kept that type of art on the platform. Those same artists have then reported being unable to set up, for instance, Stripe for their paywalls.
Porn stars have complained about being unable to set up accounts with payment processors.
Same with ad companies that are deathly afraid of being seen next to NSFW images, so for instance Imgur has cracked down on them.
It’s nice to see a more reasonable response in the comments on Fediverse. On the itch discussion board people are frothing at the mouth posting death threats and the like against itch staff.
The anger is completely misdirected. I wouldn’t be surprised if they decide to just let itch drop dead after this abuse from two sides simultaneously. Mega corps and rights groups at one side, and their very own users on the other.
Once this review is complete, we will introduce new compliance measures. For NSFW pages, this will include a new step where creators must confirm that their content is allowable under the policies of the respective payment processors linked to their account.
Itch is even willing to go for partial filtering, what more do you want. The only thing that will please these people is when itch waves their magic wand and keeps everything as is. Like folks here have said, accepting crypto payments might help, but who knows how soon that is going to get regulated.
Once this review is complete, we will introduce new compliance measures. For NSFW pages, this will include a new step where creators must confirm that their content is allowable under the policies of the respective payment processors linked to their account.
kind of a clever way to say “hey don’t give us grief, if you want to change this go complain to visa and mastercard.”
It’s nice to see a more reasonable response in the comments on Fediverse. On the itch discussion board people are frothing at the mouth posting death threats and the like against itch staff.
Sounds like the bar is so low to be even comparing the two sites.
I never thought I would say this, but cryptocurrency might have a use after all.
This is exactly what it was designed to solve before cryptobros turned it into a pump and dump scheme.
If you want to buy something from seller X that is between you and X and no one else. No goverment, payment processor or other third party can get a cut or stop it for any reason.
Buying drugs and gooner games. That’s the satoshi dream.
So do regular fiat payment processors that are beholden to citizens and not faceless shareholders. Wero and Pix for instance.
Democratic governments are supposed to safeguard your ability to exchange legal tender for legal goods and services. The fact that Visa/MC have a duopoly and a stranglehold on the entire online economy is a major governance failure that needs to be rectified ASAP.
Crypto goes a lot further and says no-one, not even the government, should be able to prevent a transaction from taking place. Not necessarily an invalid idea but it does come with some huge unanswered challenges, such as “what happens when someone makes 1B€ through fraud and refuses to hand over the coins” and “how do we even prevent large-scale fraud in the first place”.
I’m wondering who gave these credit card companies the moral authority.
Finicial authority beats moral everytime.
The fact that they hold the keys to the kingdom. Online retailers and businesses rely on credit card processors to be able to do business, which is all the leverage they need to exert tremendous pressure on the businesses they service.
This is something that really should be getting legislated against, but good luck in the US under the current administration. Maybe the EU has a shot.
I’m sure this is no coincidence that cbristofascists are in control of all the top branches of US Government.
Tbf, Collective Shout group is actually Australian
Visa and Mastercard are based in the US, though.
It’s not about morals. It’s purely about money. Porn sites are labeled as high risks because things like chargebacks, stolen credit cards etc happen more often at these adult websites. Not to mention the thin line between legal and illegal content. Therefore payment processors charge companies in the high risk category a higher fee since they need to audit these companies more frequently and deal with these chargebacks etc. more.
So either Itch.io goes into the high risk category and pay more for transactions or they remove porn. Maybe itch.io should just create a separate company to host these adult games.
But wasn’t that true before Collective Shite decided to piss on everyone else’s day?
Plus, I thought NSFW works were a large market driver. Back in the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray war, they said the winner would be determined by the porn producers.
maybe it’s because itch mostly sells non-porn games so they probably flew under the radar since they could have less fraudulent transaction or chargebacks as a porn site. Or the payment processors didn’t care too much that itch broke the compliance rules until someone reminded them of their duties. Like PornHub was showing illegal content for years and the payment processors only gave a shit about it until someone went to the news.
Those ladies are really unpopular at the moment.
Still, it further highlights just how much power over law payment processors have - a worrying thought that the morality of a company (influenced by problem life nuts) dictates international law.
Edit - autocorrect turned pro life into problem life. I am ok with this.
Controlling the money means controlling the world.
Meanwhile, on my feed there’s a post directly below this one about a compiler that will give you BSDM messages for good and bad coding and can even be hooked up to a remote butt plug to pleasure you when you compile a successful program.
The Rust community just knows what’s up.
cargo mommy reference
Gives a new meaning to the term “code smell”.
ACLU petition concerning the payment processors: https://action.aclu.org/petition/mastercard-sex-work-work-end-your-unjust-policy
Fucking signed.
Can we force law banning money transactions to the churches and christian organisations?
Fight fire with fire (not literally, at least not yet, even if they did that long time ago already).
Posted this elsewhere so just going to copy paste here but with regards to Collective Shout:
I think we need to get this group to weigh in on the content of certain holy books. Surely as a secular organisation they will have no problem demanding that the bible and qur’an be banned (I bet I know which one they actually would like banned).
After all we don’t want kids exposed to books that contain incest, sex, violence, rape, etc. I’m sure there are some parts of Ezekiel they will want editted at the absolute minimum.
I imagine balkanisation would be one way to make them slightly less visible/insufferable, and you know they would love some factional infighting.
Every time they get brought up they should be forced to confront that the people pulling their strings are most likely engaging in all the things they want banned from culture (regardless of culture or intent). Once they are forced to start lobbying Visa and MasterCard to block transactions to religious bodies I will accept they genuinely believe in the drivel they leak. Until then its performative puritanism.
P.s. not a fan of religion of any stripe, but I would feel as violently opposed to censoring them as I am to censoring anything else, I will accept it if its the only responsible solution until then alternative can be found.
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Well yea, but also no. I think a lot of their ability to operate is the veneer of legitimacy they have, my suggestion above, while funny, was mainly facetious, however if we could figure out a way of stripping that legitimacy away they might see more pushback from the next company they try to convince they represent a statistically large chunk of the population.
In this exact situation if Visa had just said to them: “We will take that under advisement.” Then filed the whole thing with the crayon scrawl “letters” they get from a certain “BLEACH BLONDE BAD BUILT BUTCH BODY” about not letting the Jews buy any more space lasers. Then no one would be getting rights taken away from them.
Can’t wait for an EU alternative to Visa/Mastercard. Heard Wero is supposed to be that. Europe can’t decouple from US garbage fast enough.
we already had that: Eurocard. they needed to pay mastercard in order to be compatible with their terminals, and that relationship ended with mastercard just absorbing them.
they were started for the exact same reason that we are talking about, to get a european alternative. so obviously the answer is not free market-based.
I hope that as an American, I would have the option to use Wero for all of my purchases. I simply don’t trust my government.
GNU Taller. I heard it was working in Switzerland
Sounds interesting!
Fuck these god-bothering pieces of shit. No, seriously. It sounds like they need it.
I suspect the reason why is that most of them are under pressure from the USA government, which is trying to recrete Gillead
I hate American Companies it will be a good time to start a new platform for NSFW games and payment platforms
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Let the Digital Euro become a thing. It will wreck havoc on the current payment ecosystem.
And the Digital Euro is not a crypto. It will be a digital currency, backed by the ECB, at a one to one exchange rate with standard euro currency.
I mean the issue here is not with the money itself, it’s the payment processors
The eEU is supposed to be one, itself. And even if it fails Wero and MBWay are growing, which are direct money transfer systems.
be careful. stablecoins are a step towards central bank digital currency. once CBDC is established, it’s all over for freedom to spend money.
You can still pay with gold and silver.
Euro(pe) is the MVP
It has its moments.
The various groups trying to ban payments for NSFW products and whatever else they don’t like would just target the ECB and member states to restrict transactions they don’t like
Sure. Targeting a central bank and several independent nations will be as simple as pressuring two US companies. /s
You’re a dick. Hope you get better
Practically the whole world has been having an authoritarian/conservative shift. I would not expect the EU and ECB to be a progressive force for sex work. The EU has been pushing to break encryption for a solid decade now. Visa and Mastercard process 90% of transactions outside of China. They’re huge. I don’t see why ECB leadership would be particularly less conservative and risk averse than Visa and Mastercard. Bankers are usually on the conservative side of politics
The Nederlands, Germany, Spain, if I’m not wrong, France and Italy have prostitution as legal. My own country abstains from legislating on it, instead opting to criminalizing procuring and the facilitation of prostitution, as well as human traffic for such end.
Europe has a well established culture of sex work, with a good number of organizations lobbying - openly, through open public debate - in the way of making sex workers being recognized as any other worker and increasing their social relevance and recognition.
If you inform yourself a bit, in my country, you can legally establish yourself as an escort, under a very specific tax code, and pay taxes according to the money you make and have tax deductions and social benefits.
Currently, we already have a direct payment and transfer system, called MBWay, that through your phone number, allows for transfering, paying and collecting money, from one account to another.
No fintech, no middle agents, no shit: direct transfers from one account to another.
The Digital Euro takes this a step further. And even if the eEuro never takes place, this system is to be widened to all EU and abroad, to run against AliPay, Visa, MasterCard and others.
Bankers want money.
American bankers should spit out the “holy” book they have stuck up their arses.
At least Germany, Spain, and Italy have resurgent far right political movements. I am not about to trust government payment systems to not eventually be abused as technology makes control and surveillance easier. A holy book can be replaced with whatever new age self-help, health movement, anti-<ethnicity/sexuality/religion> movement. All it takes is some instability and desperation and people will support whatever or turn a blind eye to whatever they may think is not their problem or they may potentially benefit from. Good for the EU to run their own payment systems. When a conservative wave takes a large enough majority in governance someday, it’ll be the same problem as Visa/Mastercard/etc
The governance powers we give with results being leftist in mind will someday be in the hands of conservative who will use them with a kind of zeal that leftist don’t
My own country too.
Now allow me too share a conviniently forgotten fact about most far right governments of the last century: they all were very at ease with having sex workers.
My own very catholic and repressive country had a very detailed law on prostitutes, which mandatory registration, regular medical exams and visits, etc. It’s a good way too pacify populations.
The current hunt on independent adult themed art/entertainment/etc is more about good old fashioned religious zealotry than anything else. Pornography gets some flak but it’s a lot harder to successfully target.
This isabout forcing people into conventional set roles and definitions and closing minds and shutting down free independent thinking. And stopping people from being or becoming humane.
@network_switch @Jackhammer_Joe even authoritarian states doesn’t like dependencies which can tell them what they have to do. So those companies are a risk for their independence… my personal feeling europe’s right people might not like porn but they probably would rather fight for porn then let a none european company tell them how they have to handle business ;)
@network_switch @Jackhammer_Joe oh on a sidenote -> https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/27/22641095/onlyfans-sex-work-ban-online-porn-payment-processing-controversy << just a reminder …
To me it’s an inevitability that if the EU weans itself off Mastercard/Visa, then EU based payment processors whether credit based or something like SEPA payments for a digital EURO would be censored. The EU would be happy to handle their own business and that may just end up no different than American companies and the American government. The European right can fight against porn while fighting for independent finance infrastructure
The issue with the systems being proposed and already in place in Europe is that the money flows directly between accounts. Banks don’t have a way to know what is being payed for.
And there is even another system, where blocks of payment references can be bough from a slew of independent entities (all must be registered as financial entities at central banks) and used to transfer money that way. The issuer either charges a token value for each reference, a % on the payment value or both. Money flows directly between accounts, instantly.
The all-mighty PayPal uses a third party payment reference provider for people who want to use their service but don’t want to put their card into it.
Time for Brazil’s PIX to be exported around the world. That’s likely to be hard, as here it is a direct, bank agnostic account-to-account transfer without middlemen and without any tax, so it’d need cooperation between the involved countries.
You’re describing the same system behind Wero and MBWay. We can just use cellphone numbers to move money from account to account, regardless of the banks at each end of the transaction.
First, fuck Visa and Mastercard. Second, fuck Collective Shout. Third, I feel for the itch forum mods.
