[mwill]

These conservative groups aren't pressuring Steam and Itch directly, they're targeting payment processors.

I don't think it's realistically viable to compete with Steam (or Itch) without access to Mastercard and Visa.

(For anyone thinking crypto: we have a different idea of what it means to be either "realistically viable" or to "compete with Steam")

[hungmung]

If we don't get a section 230 for payment processors we're looking at serious consequences for 1A because everything will be a civil suit away from getting blacklisted. Economist reported that adult performers are having trouble keeping bank accounts open -- as soon as a bank or payment processor finds out it's porn-related it gets nuked. Now that this is established practice, what's going to happen when Visa/MC gets sued for handling payments to do with disagreeable political speech? Our right to freedom of speech is currently only as strong as what Visa/MC are willing to defend in court, or you'd better be willing to live without any access to the banking system -- even if you're a gazillionaire who doesn't have to work, you've got to keep your money somewhere (and satisfy KYC).

Even if somebody thinks certain speech should be censored, I doubt they'd want what they consider unsavory speech being driven to use a payment system like Bitcoin, and for that to become the norm, it would open up much more potential for abuse.

[MBCook]

This is not the administration to ask for that.

[qball]

Why not? Payment processors have done it to guns just as much as they've done it to porn, both under the Obama administration.

[MBCook]

I think they would be far more likely to support a gun exception than a general “no moralizing” rule.

They seem totally fine with the age checks many states are enacting for porn sites. The Republican Party loves slagging pedophiles (real or imagined) and hating on LGBTQIA+ people or trying to make their lives as difficult/horrible as possible.

Yeah some games delisted were horrible. One of the main offenders had already been pulled as soon as Steam (or was it Itch) was notified. But they still used it as evidence. The platforms were policing themselves well.

But not only did gratuitous porn games and abuse games get delisted, lots of games on related to inclusiveness of LGBTQIA+ did too from what I’m seeing from developers on social media.

I suspect if anything the administration would be happy to let people use this as yet another hammer in their culture war against such people existing.

That’s why.

[atmavatar]

Because one of the goals of project 2025 is to make porn illegal.

    Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to First Amendment protection. Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.

Bonus: it also aims to eliminate sex ed.

    eliminate central promotion of abortion; comprehensive
    sexuality education; and the new woke gender ideology

[johnnyanmac]

So they want to not have women abort children, but also not have them aware of how their bodies and sex works. Surely not a formula for a dysfunctional future generation.

[evan_]

It’s not a contradiction at all, they want women to get knocked up as early as possible because (the thought is) that makes them easier to control. That’s what all this “tradwife” propaganda is about.

[__MatrixMan__]

That they really want is to eliminate any sort of ground truth so that whoever holds the power can resolve related issues by fiat. Less policy, more kissing the ring and such.

This way, abusers can disagree about what constitutes abuse in private, but can form a bloc in public, unifying around the common ground that the boss's whims should be respected in matters where the bandying about of facts is taboo. Might makes right, etc.

[GoblinSlayer]

>registered sex offenders

Does that term still have any meaning?

[zahlman]

Most of the people I've seen advocating for this kind of pressure, for the purpose of suppressing this sort of content in video games, would describe themselves as very much the opposite of "conservative". But perhaps it's for the better that they are recognized as such. Because it really is a conservative instinct, no matter what American party politics might currently be dictating.

[magicmicah85]

You don't need to compete with Steam or Itch for games that they can't sell, you're in your own market.

[MBCook]

And as soon as people find out you exist, they get the payment processors to shut you down too as part of their crusade.

Now what?

If you’re visible, you’re a target. If you’re not, you don’t matter.

[creer]

The suggestion is new start businesses that do not need credit card processors.

[MBCook]

We’re back to chicken and egg.

If it’s not a credit card, it’s what debit? Different countries do it differently, so that’s a big hassle for the storefront. Sure you can use a payment processor, but look it’s someone to pressure to prevent you from taking money again.

Maybe Crypto? How do people buy that crypto? Probably want to use credit cards. Oops. Or debit. See above. How do you turn your crypto into currency to pay your employees? That’s an institution to pressure to block you again.

If your new system interacts with the old system at all there is an attack point. So unless you can bootstrap an entire alternate financial system where people can live without needing to access the old one you’re in trouble.

And if you do succeed, the law and the same groups will come knocking.

You can’t get away from the banking system. The only solution to this is regulation, and I don’t see that happening.

[creer]

> If your new system interacts with the old system at all there is an attack point.

Yes but no. Currently the issue is that these two payment systems - both credit/debit card networks - (1) have the power to decide with impunity, because they have critical mass. And (2) have visibility into who each vendor is and what they are selling. If there is one case of abusing market dominance, this is it - and for all we frequently hear, this is REALLY not all that common. (And it's "funny" that we hear a lot about Apple's app store - but not about their anti-adult content rules!)

For example, right now a bank would have a VERY hard time preventing you from paying for $OBJECTIONABLE_CONTENT with crypto. That bank would have no visibility into who you are paying with that crypto. There are other crypto intermediaries but they are "diffuse". Nobody in there has both visibility and power.

For example, right now some vendors accept gift cards as payment. Buy a Home Depot gift card in cash at your local store and use it to pay for $OBJECTIONABLE_CONTENT. Obviously this is not a very efficient payment infrastructure but it exists.

But yes of course, imposing to credit card networks to be content-blind would be helpful and soooo much more efficient.

[MBCook]

The big credit/debit networks can easily justify killing buying crypto.

Terrorism, money laundering, illegal things like drugs, whatever.

If it’s hard enough to get crypto, then it doesn’t matter if it’s technically an option.

You could make it possible to buy this stuff with Fruity Pebbles box tops. They’d have no visibility into that either. And roughly no one would do it.

They just have to make this stuff hard enough. And that’s currently very easy.

[GoblinSlayer]

Some people kinda already live in an alternative financial system where only a part of their salary is in money.

[chipsa]

What you need for running a site that people might not like: 1. Your own servers 2. Your own network 3. Your own CDN 4. Your own payment processor

Step 4 gets you thrown in jail for violating AML.

[josh_p]

being discoverable on the existing markets is extremely valuable.

[creer]

It's hard for the big companies which want to stay big - and so feel that they can't live without credit cards. But indeed that's not an issue for newcomers.

The problem with alternatives to things like OnlyFans is that the performers who work through OnlyFans want to go where people can find them. They can dumb down their acts - and have lots of paying traffic, or they can do what they would prefer - and have hardly any paying traffic. That's tough.

[leptons]

>These conservative groups aren't pressuring Steam and Itch directly

Pretty soon (in the U.S.) all porn and sexual-adjacent content is going to be illegal. The christo-fascists currently in power said they were going to do it, and they will.

[the8472]

> I don't think it's realistically viable to compete with Steam (or Itch) without access to Mastercard and Visa.

They could not allow those games to be sold through those particular payment processors and require wire transfers instead. More cumbersome payment method, but better than outright banning them.

If the payment processors try to dictate what content these sites may host even when it involves competing processors that sounds quite anti-competitive practice.

[mywittyname]

The impression I get is allowing them to be purchased at all is grounds for the payment processor to suspend their account. So this solution is a no-go.

Probably the only way around it is to spin up a completely different corporate entity which only allows for payments via wire transfer, ACH, or perhaps some of the various payment apps available.

[GoblinSlayer]

FWIW https://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/fednow_about.h...

[the8472]

Like I said, that smell like anti-competitive behavior. It basically means the payment processor denies competitors a business opportunity for cases they don't want to service.

[madaxe_again]

Just get people to mail you cash. Sounds stupid, but that’s how I built my first ecommerce business in the 90’s, and it was a pretty normal way to pay for stuff online. Cash, money order, bank cheque, whatever.

[TulliusCicero]

> Just get people to mail you cash.

> (For anyone thinking crypto: we have a different idea of what it means to be either "realistically viable" or to "compete with Steam")

Wow, not crypto, but GP fucking nailed it.

[FranchuFranchu]

You can't realistically target anyone outside the US with this.

[efskap]

It worked for Amazon.com in 1995!

> Bezos: We got an order from somebody in Bulgaria, and this person sent us cash through the mail to pay for their order. And they sent us two crisp $100 bills. And they put these two $100 bills inside a floppy disk. And then they put a note on the cover of the floppy disk, and they mailed this whole thing to us. And the note on the cover of the floppy disk said, "The money is inside the floppy disk. The customs inspectors steal the money, but they don't read English." That shows you the effort to which people will go to be able to buy things.

[TulliusCicero]

> That shows you the effort to which people will go to be able to buy things.

It shows you the effort that some people will go to be able to buy things if they also don't have good alternatives.

But if we're talking about a hypothetical Steam competitor, then Steam still exists and takes credit cards.

[TimorousBestie]

You can’t realistically target anyone inside the US with it either. USPS is allowed to seize cash in packages if it believes it’s being used for illegal purposes.

[BlueTemplar]

We are discussing legal purchases though, not illegal ones.

At least I hope that USPS is forbidden from not (eventually) delivering legal packages ?

[veeti]

Back in the days we used to mail cash in an envelope all the way to Britain just for some RuneScape membership time.

[TulliusCicero]

You can't even realistically target people inside the US with this. How many people are gonna mail cash to buy digital games? Gimme a fucking break.

Yes, a small business in the 90s may have been able to make it work, but it's not the 90s anymore.

[jimbob45]

they're targeting payment processors

They're not "targeting" payment processors. Payment processors have to deal with significantly more problems due to the nature of porn games and chargebacks. Fix those problems and the payment processors won't have a reason anymore to ban porn (or anything). What's the point of a capitalist economy if not for startups to target market needs like these?

[gs17]

> Payment processors have to deal with significantly more problems due to the nature of porn games and chargebacks.

This is commonly repeated, but doesn't hold up. Chargeback fees (especially for card-not-present transactions) are paid by the merchant and are simply increased (with reserves required) for high-risk accounts. It also wouldn't make sense to target hyper-specific niches if it were really about chargebacks, they would go after all of it, and go after things like the CS marketplace.

But the biggest giveaway IMO is that they do not allow, e.g., Steam selling these games crypto-only. It's either remove them entirely or remove credit cards entirely. If it was really about specific titles having high fraud/chargeback rates, selling them some other way would be fine.

[jdasdf]

Those problems are artificially created by regulation. There is nothing inherent to these topics that makes servicing them physically impossible.

Charge backs, etc... can be effectively solved by appropriately pricing in such risks (or not offering those services at all).

This isn't a payment processor issue, it's a political choice.

[jacobsimon]

Maybe a silly idea, but here’s a solution to prevent financial censorship: make the game free. Or monetize via another way—ads, subscriptions, credits. There’s actually a lot of options for Steam if they aren’t being pressured directly to remove the content.

[gs17]

> if they aren’t being pressured directly to remove the content.

The problem is that they aren't being told "we won't let people buy this through us", they're told "this needs to go entirely or no more credit cards for you".

[jacobsimon]

Fair enough - so in reality they _are_ being pressured directly to remove the content and it has nothing to do with selling the products. A slippery slope indeed!

[gs17]

And it proves that it's not about these games having high risks of fraud and chargebacks.

[WorldMaker]

Most of the games that have been deindexed on itch.io and some of the ones that were banned/removed were free or Pay-What-You-Want/Donation-Ware (some even via Patreon or SubscribeStar rather than itch.io's own payment processing).

The problem isn't just "the Payment Processor doesn't want to support this game" but also "this game shows Guilt-By-Association that your platform's money might go to 'criminals' or 'sinners'."

Guilt-By-Association is real gross, but a large part of the current fight, too, especially looking at itch.io's payment processor-required actions, not just Steam's.

[jandrese]

> Or monetize via another way—ads, subscriptions, credits

That don't use Visa/Mastercard? The bans aren't coming from the platforms but from the payment processors.

[axus]

"Citizen's United" wasn't _wrong_ about money being a type of speech, that shouldn't be censored. Only wrong about who the first amendment is for.

[gqgs]

>Or monetize via another way—ads, subscriptions, credits.

All of those are still prone to censorship if the attacking group is motivated enough. Even crypto, which should be the ideal solution to this problem, is not ideal because most transactions are performed through centralized exchanges which can easily blacklist whatever transactions they want.

[pfisch]

F2P games are very different in design from regular games(and far worse imo)

You can't even realistically have a F2P game that requires a high spec machine because of how the market works.

[zer0tonin]

There's quite a few F2P games requiring high spec machines, Throne & Liberty for example.