this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2025
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I completely understand wanting to fight Visa and MasterCards position in the market. That's fine.
But for the love of God. Do not involve Steam and various porn games into it. That is not going to help your case.
I get the whole. "Just because I'm killing someone in a game, doesn't mean I'll kill someone in real life".
But that's not going to hold up as an argument here. Depictions of CP, even if it's a drawing with crayons, is still highly illegal in so many places. Same logic can be applied regarding other depictions of illegal behavior in the same category (pornogrophy). Such as incest. I'm not saying that depictions of incest is illegal in many places. Because I honestly don't know. But there would be a precedence for it.
Personally, I find it utterly disgusting that Steam even allowed such titles to begin with. I welcome their removal of them. But I wish it was because of other reasons than payment processors having an issue with it.
They removed Detroit: Become Human, dude... That is not a porn game.
If I had to guess, it's probably because of the scene with the lesbian android couple.
That's great, not great that they removed it but a great example of something you can bring up that doesn't hurt the case.
I just really wish people would leave actual porn games out of it. Because that is not going to be helpful to their case.
I dunno, I personally think respectability politics is garbage but ya know, To Each Their Own.
Could you elaborate on what "respectability politics" is? I've never heard that before.
Point is. Making a movement and using the removal of games that fetishize incest as the drop that made the cup overflow. Is simply not going to go the way you think it is. Unless you think it's going to crash and burn. Then it'll go exactly how you think it'll go.
You can make at least 101 far better arguments against Visa and MasterCard using their monopolized position to morally dictate what people can and can not buy, than having to involve incest porn. Or porn at all for that matter.
Porn is art, there's no compromising on that without throwing someone under the bus. Respectability politics == throwing people under the bus for not being "respectable" enough. It's been a huge issue in LGBTQ advocacy for a really long time.
Would you consider child pornography art as well? You don't compromise, that's what you said no?
You're obviously just trying to twist my words. Porn has to be consensual, otherwise it's just abuse material. Hence the term CSAM being advocated rather than CP these days.
Why would you be advocating for a different term other than CP? It doesn't matter how you depict it. Consensual or not. Abuse or not. CP is CP, and that is bad enough. Anyway. That's not the topic. I was just floored by that statement.
Point is. It seems like you DO compromise. Everyone does. Somewhere you've drawn a line. This is acceptable. This is not acceptable. And regardless of what you think of incest. I'm sure you can agree, that the vast majority of people would frown upon it. And if you say "Visa and MasterCard are bad because they stopped authorizing payments to incest games". Well... You're just not going to get a lot of people to sign up. They're gonna say. "Good."
So, trying to build momentum in a movement, and then using or citing incest porn games on steam as the catalyst, is just not a particularly good strategy in my opinion.
You generalised to all porn games. Now you're moving the goalposts again. This move by Visa/Mastercard has been affecting all NSFW games. Just like I don't think it's objectionable to have sex depicted in a movie, I don't think it's objectionable to have sex in a game. Adults can choose what content they consume. Payment processors should be forced to be common carriers.
I'm not moving anything. We have the same basic opinion. "Visa and MasterCard should not be allowed to leverage their monopolized position into a morality police of what we are allowed to buy or not"
I'm not here to debate you on what is you think is objectionable or not. I simply stated that I wish for people to not make this about porn. Because I don't think that's going to be helpful. You're just giving ammunition for the opposition to use against you. It will take them 5 seconds to use it against you and reach an audience of 100 million. You will have to spend 50 minutes trying to counter, and it will only reach the 10 million that actually bothered to look into it.
How many times do we have to go down this road before anyone learn from it?
So what is the solution? Don't give them that ammunition to begin with. Use other arguments. Arguments that can not be turned against you.
You don't have to agree with that advice. That's fine.
That's the problem.
Valve already had a process to flag titles as illegal in specific jurisdictions, and as far as anyone can tell, was doing an okay job at that (not perfect, obviously), but they were forced to add an extra clause of, 'oh, plus anything visa et al. don't like' the extra layer is adding minimal protection and is rife for abuse.
Additionally, let's talk about what makes porn. Does "https://yakuza.fandom.com/wiki/Be_My_Baby" of Yakuza 2 count? Or does it get a free pass because it's a large publisher?
What if players take the elements of the game to create something the developers didn't prevent? Like if a map contains a baby on one side of a map and an orgy (in another office) on the other side of the map, is it CP if a player picks up the baby and brings it into the orgy room? Is this something you want the banks deciding? Couldn't we - have therapists or other behavioral health development experts make this call?
Most importantly is the recorded history of how these systems are routinely shown to be used against smaller publishers, and assorted minorities (including LGBT people) have a woman show a boob, it's polite adult fun, but if their twin brother shows a pre-op trans boob, now it's magically porn.
I said I wish removal of titles would be because of other reasons than payment processors having an issue with it. So to be clear. The answer to your question of if it should be up to banks to decide, is "No".
We don't need to talk about what makes porn. Though it may have been unclear, the titles I spoke of, was the ones Steam removed after PayPal wasn't authorizing payments. The "Incest porn games". I don't know what the law says where you live. But in my part of the world. Incest is illegal. And I do not think games where incest is the goal and depicted as a fetish have any place on steam.
It's ok if you want incest games on steam. That's your opinion. I just said I welcome their removal. But wish they would have been removed due to other reasons.