Steam the Banhammer - Games being banned due to payment processor agreement

If it's illegal Steam won't sell it.

If these games are illegal then their creators should be punished for making them.

None of that is to do with purchasing or being gifted something available on the market.

Some games can't be bought in certain territories because of the laws there.

This move is a huge overstep and likely to incur a reaction which won't be favourable to those seeking to ban anything.

We are all just pawns in the game until then.

I am undecided. Personally I'm not crying about most of the games that were removed from Steam, the one's I've seen can hardly be called video games, they're low effort porn.

It's the games with more nuance that shouldn't be removed, like Vile: Exhumed. Games where rape isn't this fun thing you do for personal enjoyment, but where it's being discussed in a mature way. This is why the blanket ban made by Steam and itch is a particularly bad way to do it (even though it isn't their fault).

It's obviously a very slippery slope. If they decide that plain sex shouldn't be depicted (to protect the children™), games like Cyberpunk or even Far Cry 3 will be at risk of being removed or not developed in the first place for fear of being banned.

Payment processors are there to ensure a transaction, unless illegal, it's overstepping in my opinion

This is the key argument used by the group that made this happen, isn't it?

A transaction handled by Visa or Mastercard can't be illegal by itself, it's what being transacted that can be. You either allow for anything to be sold and transacted, no matter what, or put a line somewhere. Visa isn't knowingly going to partner with a store that openly sells cocaine or child porn.

Steam, Itch, and pretty much everyone else draws a hard line at minor sexualisation, obviously. If a game has child porn, real or not, it's not going to be allowed for sale. It's also illegal and most people will agree with this stance.

What the group has done is extend this to games that depict rape, sexual violence, and incest. Which are also illegal.

What they haven't done is consider the difference between depiction of rape and such in an obviously fictional format, as in thousands of books, films, and games, and glorification of it. When it's done for no reason other than satisfaction of whoever consumes the product, and is portrayed in a positive light, as if there's nothing wrong with it or there shouldn't be.

Isn't it absolute fun when a small group of people thousands of miles away can dictate what you can and can't do with your own personal time and entertainment while not bothering anyone?

This one hits the spot for me.
Not all that delighted about the flood of those disgusting incest games all over the place, not a fan of cencorship either.

I just saw a similar topic in a recent discussion here.
Новая цензура в стиме. / New censorship on Steam.
To be honest, I can't keep up with the increasing number of similar discussions.
Well, I've already discussed this issue on my blog, so it's fine.
To be honest, discussions are proliferating on both Steam and itch, and there are also cases where certain users are obstructing them.

Recently, there are people who are stirring up discussions about how changes in the laws of certain countries, rather than Steam itself, are likely to cause problems with the use of Steam.
It's truly lamentable that there are people who are trying to make something terrible happen in this increasingly chaotic situation.

Before discussing restrictions and deletions related to freedom of expression, violence, and sexuality, why not visit “conflict zones” and provide support?
It is strange that the opinions of people who call for such restrictions while ignoring actual violence are attracting attention.

I think this would be very beneficial for children's emotional education.

it took less than a week for it to go from "heh this ban will just affect your freaking GOONER games" to now having a popular horror game that tackle objectionable subject material in a serious manner being pulled from websites. genuinely fucked 👍

https://fixupx.com/horrorvisuals/status/1949924094696132892

It's crazy how people are so serious about fictional content these days.

Card companies are preventing people from buying things just because enough people said that they didn't like something. And it's not just that one can't use their method of payment; content is being removed from storefronts. Something is wrong with that kind of control.

The Itch situation is pretty bad, with pretty much any game with any sort of adult content being de-indexed and no longer able to be found in search results. This isn't just 'gross porn games' being affected, but any sort of game that discusses sex or NSFW topics. Autobiographical games about the author's trauma from being sexually assulted are delisted, even though they're not in any way glorifying this and are actively important for helping people empathize with victims and help other victims feel less alone in their trauma.

And there are plenty of games where sex isn't a core theme, but it just happens. Baldur's Gate 3, The Witcher 3, Cyberpunk, all would be de-indexed if they were on Itch due to their sexual content. The group responsible for this has already tried to ban GTA5 in the past. Thankfully Steam seems to have enough influence to prevent all games with NSFW content from being delisted on their site, at least for now. But ultimately, Steam is still very reliant on payment processors. Unless you want to physically buy a steam gift card with cash every time you want to buy something on there, you need to use payment processors to use the site. So there's only so much influence they can have. If this situation carries on, I worry that Steam might end up going the same way as Itch has.

People are trying to push back though. Collective Shout, the organization that pushed payment processors into making this decision, apparently did so with around 1000 phone calls. So people are fighting back, calling Visa and MasterCard and complaining. If it worked for Collective Shout, it very well might work for us.

This site (yellat.money) has phone numbers and stuff for some of the payment processors responsible for this. If you use their services and are concerned about the current situation, it might be worth giving them a call.

It also appears that Itch.io is also in the same situation:

Untrue, Steam has adult games listed with a reason - itch.io had just a blanket "adult" term to cover games with adult content. Steam removed all their most egregious rule-breakers (that shouldn't have been accepted to begin with), compared to ALL games with an adult tag at itch.io.

The situations aren't the same, and all of that is because of how the sites dealt with adult content years ago.

Just glad to get rid of junk

I'm 100% with banning these low quality porn games from Steam, they do nothing but harm. But the payment processors should have no say in this ban so I'm against this. How the hell do Visa and Mastercard have the right to do such a thing? And what comes next? Banning games that are too violent, too gory or politically incorrect? Maybe we should transition to USDT.

A bunch of Karens did this. A good video on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlEHovdeKZw&t=1s

If by "small group" you're referring to Collective Shout, maybe much less blame falls onto them. From what I've heard in threads from people that supposedly worked for Visa or Mastercard, this was a decision that they had taken themselves and been working towards in the background long before this fiasco happened. The letters from Collective Shout were simply the perfect opportunity for them to launch these changes and use them as a scapegoat in order to avoid the direct backlash.

The most messed up part about all this isn't the ban itself, in my opinion. I hate it, but theoretically a company should have a say in what transactions they want to partake in or not. Again, I don't support it, I don't like it, but I somewhat understand it. The major issue with all this is that Visa and Mastercard had been working towards annihilating their rising competition for years to the point that only very specific companies now have monopoly over such transactions and therefore their say is much more catastrophic.

Adult games (explicit ones) weren't allowed on Steam before 2018
And now I feel like every post every article every comment I've read is written like if those games were on Steam since the beginning
Please add some objectivity to the debate : before 2018, Valve was banning those games and nearly everybody was happy with that
I may add, before 2018 gamers on Steam were seen as gamers, and after 2018, gamers on Steam were sometimes seen as gamers but with a twist
That's just the same old boring debate : one cannot decide of its own morality, the others will instead

Generally speaking, in a free country : to prohibit something, it must be described first. This implies that each games would need to be reviewed individually. But instead a massive ban occurs. Personally I wouldn't want to review all those games, even if it's a paid job : if I'm able to do it, then I'm also able to have a better job. What about you ? Would you spend 8h/day reviewing those controversial games ?

There is a topic about this already, just in case.

And I'd like to add that recently I've seen a really interesting take on this matter so fasten your seat belts.

In short, there is Section 230 in the US that says:

No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

But back in 2018/2019 republicans said that there is a bias against conservative content, so they pushed for a change, essentially removing the 'no' part from that section.

Then there was a case involving video with an underage person on xxxxhub (censored this just in case), and if I got this right, it's Serena Fleites case from 2021:

Serena Fleites was 13 in 2014 when, it is alleged, a boyfriend pressured her into making an explicit video which he posted to xxxxhub.
.
Ms Fleites alleges that Visa, by processing revenue from ads, conspired with xxxxhub's parent firm MindGeek to make money from videos of her abuse.
.
Visa had sought to be removed from the case.

Then in 2022 this happened:

Judge rules Visa can be sued in abuse claim

The case is still ongoing and from what I see Visa is still involved, so it makes sense now that when in 2025 a group of retarded activists threatened Visa with something similar they decided not to risk it and folded like a cheap suit.