[thallium205]

Adult content is considered a high risk merchant category - meaning it is susceptible to high chargeback and fraud rates. This is because after someone pays for and consumes adult content, a certain level of "clarity" overcomes them resulting in the execution of chargebacks against the merchant.

It has nothing to do with any sort of puritanical premise.

[GrantMoyer]

I don't think that can explain why they're only targeting certain sub-categories of porn, and it's also contradictory to the public statements by Valve:

> We were recently notified that certain games on Steam may violate the rules and standards set forth by our payment processors and their related card networks and banks

Individual games violating "rules and standards" doesn't really fit with prohibiting a category because of high rates of fraud.

[boredatoms]

They should instead charge a higher transaction fee on those items to cover that risk

[mitthrowaway2]

Do you think this happened because Valve was getting lots of chargebacks? I don't.

[delusional]

That sounds like a reasonable argument. We should force them to make it publicly with data. Maybe even force them to release aggregate statistics every quarter going forward.

[_345]

Just plain wrong and a puritanical group already claimed responsibility for this

[creer]

That seems disingenuous. (1) in this case, this is a not a tiny fly-by-night wannabe game company. (2) which is good for paying back (or never seeing) the money of chargebacks.

For a new company, the risk of chargebacks might rest on a credit card company (for a little while anyway). But not for a long established one.

[JimDabell]

> That seems disingenuous.

Why are you assuming bad faith? There’s no indication parent is being insincere at all.

[creer]

> Adult content is considered a high risk merchant category

> It has nothing to do with any sort of puritanical premise.

But I have no problem with the parent poster. I'm here hoping for conversation. The argument though is one we hear now and then and like I point out, how can it make sense? Like many things, it looks more like a vaguely possible, plausible explanation or chain of arguments... which on closer look doesn't fly. How can Valve, a long established, apparently solid merchant, be a serious risk for the credit card infrastructure? Should there be chargebacks, they can handle chargebacks. This is not limited to Valve. Many of us have run into the issue. The credit card infrastructure goes out of its way to refuse solid business.

[JimDabell]

> But I have no problem with the parent poster. I'm here hoping for conversation.

If you don’t have a problem with them and you were hoping for conversation, then starting out by accusing them of being disingenuous is a strange way of showing it.

> how can it make sense?

Why didn’t you ask this to begin with instead of assuming they were being deceitful? You know “disingenuous” doesn’t just mean “I disagree”, right?