I don’t choose a payment processor over their morality standards. I choose how to spend my own money, not them. They shouldn’t have a say in that matter.
Time to start lobbying governments. EU/USA legislation stating that outside of legal violations, a payment processor is not allowed to refuse a legitimate legal transaction.
The extremist group that convinced the payment processor is already targeting horror games next. They will not stop until they can dictate every media choice available
For anyone who wants to help stop them, reach out to their partners who fund them. Most of the orgs would not be happy to know they’re financially supporting a LGBTQ hate group.
https://www.collectiveshout.org/partners
These are Australian companies, and are not used to any sort of serious pressure from the public. They will drop CollectiveShout quickly if it looks like bad press for them.
Why the actual apeshit are people giving them death threats??? That won’t solve anything… as much as I hate this group of extremists, that’s the wrong way… open letters, publicity, etc.
You need to make them shovel their own grave.
Who is giving them death threats? Where did this even come from.
I’ve been clicking through their website. They’ve postet screenshots on there
Source?
Headline is misleading reagarding LGBTQ+ games:
- no evidence that payment processors are asking for the removal of any games for being LGBTQ+, except for
- one person says their SFW LGBTQ+ webcomic was delisted on itch.io,
- I’m speculating, but it’s likely the eventual goal of Collective Shout to go after LGBTQ+ content in general.
Fuck these billionnaire fascists
And here we go… the inevitable conclusion. If you deviate from a fundamentalist ideal of the norm then your existence is pornographic by its very nature.
A few days ago there were many here saying the idea of a slippery slope to banning LGBTQ+ games was nonsensical.
Yet, here we are.
It always starts with “Protect the children!!”
Same crowd is who the children need protecting from
If you read the article, it does not say there has been a second wave or something targetting LGTBQ+ games. It is one person saying their comic was SFW and was delisted.
We should definitely fight back regardless, don’t get me wrong, but as of yet there has not been LGBTQ+ targetting.
The author of the SFW comic should contact itchio and ask why their game was deindexed, since itch did MASSIVE removal of all “adult” and NSFW content beyond what their payment processors asked, as to evade any issue and then reindex according to them.
Again, we should be alert, and we should monitor their firther actions closely, but it’s not time yet to cry wolf with the LGBTQ+ targetting.
Thanks for this.
SHOCKER.
Fucking fundamentalists
Apparently payment processor. Singular. Stripe. Visa/MS never changed it’s policy and still allows NSFW content, they’re not even a payment processor. It feels a bit bonkers now that internet bombed them when they weren’t even involved with this mess and it was just Stripe. On the bright side, itch.io already announced they’re ditching them and are in talks with other payment processors.
Can you post a source for this?
https://itch.io/t/5149036/reindexing-adult-nsfw-content
https://support.stripe.com/questions/prohibited-and-restricted-businesses-list-faqs
https://www.thegamer.com/steam-gaming-industry-visa-payment-processors-adult-games-banned/ (scroll down to Visa’s statement)
Another side note - If it was Visa/MS themselves, they could not switch to other payment processor as all card payment processors work with visa/ms.Steam is awfully silent, but that’s pretty normal of Gabe, transparency has never really been the strong side for Valve. Then again, steam never mentioned Visa/MS. In fact, they never mentioned any company names, only itch dared to do that, but seeing as both got hit at the same time, you don’t need to be a genius to figure out steam has likely the same problem as itch.ioUPDATE: Valve finally responded. MS now clearly looks complicit in this. There is some serious chain of blame game going, the whole thing seems rotten. What’s seriously worrysome about this is rule 5.12.7 mentions mutilation of a person or body parts, which would potentially also put many shooter games under the ban. Still unclear where Visa stands in this and if they’re involved.
https://kotaku.com/mastercard-denies-pressuring-steam-to-censor-nsfw-games-2000614393
True, but what did Valve actually delist on Steam? I frequent the AO section and everything has appeared to be business as usual in there. I had honestly not even heard about the pressures on Steam until I saw the stuff about Itch.
What? I’m not sure if that’s true, you seem to be the only person thinking this. Source?
I expected potentially shitty management of next gen Valve employees to ruin Steam, not this.
Worst case scenario if it get worse, what will the alternatives be in the future? Since most stores use these processors, would a store need to open up without them, or can the current ones decided to stop using them? I assume Steam won’t pull out even if they could, since it sounds like financial suicide when most of the customers are there for convenience.
It starts with porn, and ends with anti-church content. Everything in between must go.
Haha, it doesn’t end there it just keeps going.
No violence!
I have zero faith this campaign will stop until we’re back in the stone age.
Future headline:
“Game vendors pressured to stop selling games where women are allowed to vote or express an opinion that doesn’t reflect her husband’s”
Sounds like Valve should set up a payment processing system.
At least in the US, it’s full of regulatory red tape that was designed to pull up the ladder behind the current large payment processors.
Even Musk and his ample bribe money, under the most corrupt administration in decades, hasn’t managed to get full approval for his “
XTwitter Money” payment service.Steam can 100% enter any market they want, especially something entirely digital like online payment processing. That’s pretty closely related to what they do already. They just have to have a reason to want to do so.
Steam makes a reported $3.5 million per employee from commissions alone. Possibly as much at $19 million per head across the board. To put that into perspective, Facebook, one of the most profitable companies on the planet, averages a net income of $780,000 per employee, and Apple at $476,000 per employee.
Steam may not be as large as those companies, but they’re so effectively streamlined. So much of their profits come from existing systems that only need minimal maintenance as opposed to needing to constantly develop new products. It is a well-oiled money printing machine at this point. And nothing they do is based on any sort of speculation bubble threatening to burst at any point.
This is BS. Whatever payment processor they develop will need to interact with all of the major credit card processors: VISA, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express. All credit and debit cards use these four brands as the backing network. There is no way around it.
Nobody is going to add a new credit card brand, not even Steam. Amazon doesn’t do it. Twitter doesn’t do it. Ebay doesn’t do it. Nobody does. If they did, they would face immediate retribution from the VMDA empire. Their payments would cease, and Steam would collapse overnight.
And yet we’re still waiting for hl3
That’s almost surely a result of how Valve works internally for approving projects. They operate with a flat management structure. With no bosses or managers, the employees themselves choose which projects to work on. The philosophy is that Valve only hires the best, and they should operate at their best doing what they enjoy instead of simply being told what to do.
Every employee at Valve is given the freedom to join whatever project they choose, or to create a new one. They are encouraged to work on what they feel if the most important project to the company and what will have the highest direct impact on their customers.
If the Valve employees wanted to make Half Life 3, they would. At this point the joke is that Valve simply can’t count to three. It feels like they want to keep that joke going more than make another Half Life game. Half Life 1 and 2, them Episode 1 and Episode 2, Portal 1 and Portal 2, Team Fortress and Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike and Counter-Strike 2. Several of these have had other interim releases, especially Counter-Strike, but those were always based on the previous game and not a totally new game from scratch, much like the Half Life Episodes.
https://medium.com/@dperciv1/welcome-to-flatland-valves-unique-culture-8372e63d664e
Couldn’t they just start accepting ACH to get around the payment processors? Or is that overly complicated?
Should be feasible, many of my bills allow it. If there’s an issue w/ lag, they could always allow it only for wallet top-ups and people could use that.
But I think the issue is that if they accept these payment processors at all, they need to comply w/ their policies. Completely cutting them off could significantly hurt sales.
I buy my games using steam wallet.
Is there any way to see a list of whats been removed from both platforms? I know a lot of archiving is going on for Itch, but is there any site that’s popped up to show what’s been removed on both platforms?
Clickbait doesn’t explain properly - the reason queer games were removed from Itch.io is because (and this is another issue) they were one of many media hosters who labeled anything LGBTQ+ as NSFW. The tag itself gets improperly used but anyway. They were still banning under 18s from learning and experiencing diverse life. Romance ≠ sexuality ≠ identity but some people don’t understand that.
A lot of devs also label their game LGBTQ because THEY the DEV are gay trans or what have you while their game has NOTHING to do with it.
Iv played so many little platformer or rougelite games that have literally zero LGBTQ themes. But are labeled LGBTQ and nsfw purely because the devs like to misuse tags.
It’s a huge fucking pet peeve of mine.
TAG YER SHIT RIGHT GOD DAMN IT.
While I agree, a lot of these banning campaigns do try to link LGBTQ+ as NSFW to justify their actions.
Yeah, somehow I doubt this is just an unfortunate unintended consequence.
I keep people repeating this, but where are you getting this information from? I’ve never seen this claim before, and I’ve not noticed this happening when I’ve used itch in the past either?
I’ve noticed a ton of accusations of itch doing seemingly a bad thing after another, and so far all of those claims have turned out wrong. Please give a source at least!
They understand. They don’t care.
So they are going to ban Baldurs Gate 3?
100% they would try to ban anything with any sort of romance in it if they could.
Collective Shout is a group of anti-porn nutjobs hiding behind a feminist facade.
Surprisingly, not American, the Australians decided to join the puritanical bullshit this time.
they were one of many media hosters who labeled anything LGBTQ+ as NSFW.
Source? This doesn’t appear to be correct.
18+ might be a legislative requirement in some countries too, for example Russia required it since 2013, not sure if there are more countries that have the same law, but I’m sure Russia isn’t alone in their backward ways.
Jumped up bitches telling everyone how to live. Enjoy your doxxing.
