First, the networks have brand protection stipulations for any partner that uses the network. None of them want to be known as the porn brand.
Second, porn (and other similar categories) have a different risk profile than other charges. Specifically chargeback risk goes through the roof. None of the members of the network want to deal with sales of things that spike chargebacks.
Third, the federal government and some states have outsourced enforcement of some laws to the banks and payment networks. It’s easier to ban things than to do this enforcement at times.
None of this is a ethics issue and none of this is about money transfers. It’s about extending credit, and there is no technical solution around credit extension with electronic payments.
They could try cash-by-mail, like Mullvad.
Cash by mail would be either the merchant extending credit to the purchaser if they allowed the game download before receipt or the purchaser extending credit if not.
But in your example, you don't need to invoke a security guard stealing your apples. There is a _ton_ of credit risk already just by the invocation of the electronic payment. Your funds will not hit the account of the merchant in question for _a long time_ (usually modeled as 1-3 days for risk purposes in the US). All kinds of things can happen in that time. The merchant has extended you credit and has taken on credit risk. They've done so because of the chain of credit and agreements that the banks, processors and networks have worked out.
If Mastercard gets a bunch of its transactions reversed because a Congressional panel gets huffy about pornography, that potentially blows up transactions for apples miles away. That's why this is mostly a conversation about risk management, not morals. To the apple vendor's bank, they largely don't care if you buy porn, they just don't want their settlements caught up in the blowback.
The rules that are being invoked around porn exist to protect different parts of that chain, from each other.
The argument about Steams ability to revoke the good in question doesn't help with that. What it does is provide an alternate path if Steam wanted to extricate themselves from that chain of 7 counterparties. Steam could stop being involved with all those other players and become a payment network unto themselves. They could demand ach (or cash in the mail as the parent suggests). Give the game with the understanding they would rapidly revoke it for bad customers, and limit their exposure to the publisher by giving them very delayed payment terms. Of course, then the customer is taking on more risk and losing choice and Steam has to account for that in their sales numbers.
A puritanical activist group circumvents the law/courts and successfully pressures the handful of companies that control the vast majority of transactions to remove content they find distasteful - content that is 100% legal - but this isn’t an ethics discussion?
Mentally modeling this as “this bank doesn’t like porn” is incorrect in ways that will cause you to make incorrect downstream inferences.
There’s a reason this hasn’t been taken to the courts and regardless of what you attribute the motivation to the outcome is the same. This is top to bottom an ethics discussion, and the banks are a part of it. By capitulating they have made a choice. They decided the public debate would be bad for business.
They may be worried (slightly) but they also most likely simply don't want another headache.
A corporation is in business to make money and that means that they will do what makes the most money in the shortest amount of time as long as it's legal.
Getting entangled in a potential lawsuit that would take years to resolve and cost many millions of $ is a distraction that does not serve their interest. If you are Epic and it is in your interest to challenge Apple and if winning this lawsuit brings you potentially more revenue, then that is a different story entirely.
GP was right when he said this is a business decision. Porn has nothing to do with it. It could have been gambling and harry Potter books, the end result would have been the same.
To give you an example:
I have a small business with a very clear refund policy, yet every 6 months or so, someone will send me a message saying that they forgot that they have an active subscription and could I refund them the money or they will do a charge-back.
Please note before getting the pitchforks out, that my refund policy is very generous and that each customer gets an email before their subscription renews so there is nothing deceptive in my billing practices and also users have the ability to self refund their last payment in the app.
I am faced with the same question that Steam faced, what do I do? Do I fight the refund and eventually fight the charge-back costing me time and money when I could be doing other things or do I roll over and get it over with so that this headache goes away as soon as possible so that I can focus on my other customers?
That's how businesses see things. Opportunity cost. I understand that for some people (including you) this sort of decisions could be seen as some sort of morality judgement but IMHO it is not.
What does Steam have to gain from starting a fight with Visa or Mastercard? A better reputation with gamers? Will that help them increase their revenue in the short term or the long term? Will this make them liable for other things down the line like an angry parent suing them because their son or daughter bought a game with naked people in it and the kid was only 8 at the time?
This is the equation that I am sure many people at Steam ran and the they decided that it just wasn't adding up.
It sucks because from a personal point of view I agree with you, they should have thought harder but from a business point of view they simply followed what made most sense and decided that the risk wasn't worth the reward.
Does it mean Mastercard/Visa are right, absolutely not? This duopoly should be broken up but no politician in the west or elsewhere is going to go after them for the same reason that nobody went after the banks that brought the global economy to it's knees in 2008.
That phrasing makes it sound somehow illegal, but all the activists did was exercise their right to engage in political speech. I don't particularly agree with their cause, but there's nothing untoward about their methods.
The real problem for society isn't the fact that political groups can raise a ruckus about things we personally don't agree with, but rather the fact that payment processors are such a narrow choke point, ideal for putting up gates and thereby giving a small group of people way too much control. The solution is to address the choke point, not to play wack-a-mole trying to slap down activist groups whenever they vie for control of the choke point (which will inevitably continue to happen as long as the choke point exists.)
what would happen if Valve accepted Cryptocurrency?
in turn, what might happen if valve decided to become a cryptocurrency exchange exclusive to the gaming community?
EDIT: another solution is to use a load-wallet based system to shroud transactions from your financial nanny. money in, money out, no explicit evidence of a purchase.
A technological solution to a political problem. Visa/mastercard/banks will just censor the off ramps next.
> wallet based system
What does this accomplish? The same institutions will request proof that all transactions are compliant, which will most easily handled by simply banning the content.
The people pressuring visa and Mastercard to drop porn/sex related services are not going to suddenly roll over when those services switch to crypto. They’ll simply go for the crypto off-ramps.
Crypto is almost as bad as handing over your ID to see "adult" materials, because both require you to trust two parties (government ID stores and the general crypto community) that have shown themselves to not be trustworthy at all.
I can count on people in the crypto community to do unsavory things with my money to my financial detriment.
monero has solved that issue and it does not matter if you see any "IDs"
people already are trying to use all kind of vectors to launder money, including steam
and cryptocurrency systems in general don't do the legal due diligence of a payment processor/bank
so you now have the problem of being partially responsibility to do that legal due diligence yourself and make your service more attractive to be abused as in money laundering schemes
but if things get worse they could consider creating a payment processor sub company, the issue with that is I think there are a lot of way Visa can mess with them in the US and it seems not necessary in the EU (as due to side effects of pushing/forcing banking payment system improvements you technically have a wide choice of alternatives to PayPal or Credit Card payment for only payment, it's just many solutions are niche so most sides don't bother for now (but things are changing))
They also already let you load funds onto a wallet for use later.
While all games delisted at MC/Visa demands were from the rape and/or incest nsfw genre (and that should've not been on Steam to begin with), it still set a dangerous precedent as the game selection criteria was ultimately subjective. Relatable, but subjective. Next time it will again be subjective, but not as clear cut, yet the precedent will already be in place.
Every law, order, rule, and regulation is captured by this argument. It needs to provide a scissor to be meaningful.
Hit us with the source. Would love to see the methodology used in it.
In addition:
> (and that should've not been on Steam to begin with)
Where do you believe that they should have been sold? Are you proposing a separate "Steam: After Dark" store that only adult humans are permitted to browse and purchase from?
It's a video game, nobody actually dies.
If you show a nipple, somebody actually sees a nipple.
If this is not a joke, please elaborate on the difference between "seeing a murder" and "seeing a nipple".
The difference is that it's not "seeing" a murder. It's committing a murder vs watching pornography.
Killing somebody in a video game isn't real murder. Seeing a nude character is still pornography.
Likewise, having sex in a video game isn't real sex. It's still pornography, okay, sure, and..? And..?
That's the point. Many people don't like pornography. So much so that they've collectively grouped together to demand payment processors make changes.
I seriously don't think we have the 'margin' to excuse GTA anymore. It is not the 90s and way to many people are on the brink of going mad.
For pretty much anything else, nope only courts in jurisdiction should be able to act... If even then.
I can accept that some content goes too far and might have to be banned according to some people, but the only groups who should have the actual power to do that, should be the owner of the platform, the users of the platform, and the government, and definitely not some third party that might have completely different interests.
The only reason this is possible at all is that some of these payment providers are nearly monopolists. People should have about a dozen payment options to avoid this. Fortunately I do; Steam supports iDeal, which is not controlled by any payment provider. It just goes straight to my bank. If my bank were to try to ban certain types of legitimate payment, customers could simply switch to a different bank to avoid the ban.
The only kinds of payment that payment providers should ban, are those involving financial crimes, like money laundering, fraud and corruption.
Also which is why, I am happy to see V-pay and SEPA transfers in EU. Especially SEPA-direct transfers, allowing you to be free of CC-processing fees completely as they have been regulated to be free quite well...
So no $, €, and so on...
Absolute lies. They require that transactions that may damage the goodwill of the Corporation or reflect negatively on the Marks are not to be submitted to the Interchange System. It is also their own sole discretion what does or doesn't hurt their Brand.
ectospheno•5mo ago
TheCraiggers•5mo ago
Curious. You don't think that this slippery slope we're on is worth reporting on?
ectospheno•5mo ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44713414
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44783566
kulahan•5mo ago
trenchpilgrim•5mo ago
(To be fair - I think some stores like the Epic Games store actively make playing games on them worse, e.g. I played Alan Wake 2 through Epic and the achievements notifications were massively distracting, ruining many scary and dramatic moments, and they turn themselves back on every time you launch the game...)
TulliusCicero•5mo ago
And now that I have a Steam Deck, this difference is even more stark.
tstrimple•5mo ago
jjice•5mo ago
There have been timed exclusives on Epic that I just waited out, partially out of spite, and mostly because I just wouldn't want to own the game on something that wasn't Steam.
bsimpson•5mo ago
They try to play folk hero when it suits them, but someone who actually cared about individual well-being wouldn't lock Linux players out of their flagship games, or use dark patterns like artificial scarcity to get people to spend more time/money in their ecosystem.
rkomorn•5mo ago
Epic the past couple of years has been a great example of the "a broken clock is correct twice a day" idiom, at best.
AlexandrB•5mo ago
kalaksi•5mo ago
BolexNOLA•5mo ago
Imagine a world where a PE firm gets its hands on valve
tracker1•5mo ago
BolexNOLA•5mo ago
dizlexic•5mo ago
tracker1•5mo ago
It's started to even draw a lot of attention from more general gaming and pc streamers. So many videos of different streamers trying Bazzite lately.
Next year might actually see a tipping point where there can be real pressure to gain support from the likes of Adobe. I expect MS might make some offline version or Office 365 + Electron at some point soon as well.
freedomben•5mo ago
It definitely helps that it works (almost) flawlessly. If it stopped working well, I would stop using them, but with the current status quo it's a rare example of a company I transact with that I actually feel good about
Insanity•5mo ago
Occasionally I was forced into using others, when a game only released on Epic / Origin / Battle.net. But they all felt worse than Steam. So given a choice for the game, I'll buy it on Steam even at a higher price.
arprocter•5mo ago
Ended up in a loop of support asking for logs ad infinitum, while ignoring the fact that when I installed the client and game on a separate computer it crashed at the same point. Chalked it up to experience and just decided to not give them any more of my money
creaturemachine•5mo ago
trenchpilgrim•5mo ago
ecshafer•5mo ago
Proliferation of credit cards, increased internet stability/speed, and more powerful computers have taken the warts away. Steam has also repeatedly shown to be on the side of the consumer, and also very offline friendly.
HolyLampshade•5mo ago
The first time I did a rebuild and now no longer needed the installation media for games, or the license keys in the manual/game jacket, and I was fully sold.
I don’t fully grasp the hatred, because almost every aspect of it is a vast improvement over what existed 20 years ago. But fortunately there are alternatives.
iamtedd•5mo ago
mrguyorama•5mo ago
Except when they only added any sort of return mechanism after violating consumer rights laws in all sorts of jurisdictions for like a decade.
Though that was significantly less painful back in the day when a steam sale was actually meaningful.
Steam's pro-consumer-ness is absurdly overblown, but the rest of consumer facing corporations are so fucking awful in comparison that they look like angels. They're also mostly just trying to keep anyone from looking at the closet full of profits explicitly from enabling underage gambling.
Not that I'm a hater, but people need to keep perspective. Valve is just a company that is slightly less abhorrent in it's practices.
bee_rider•5mo ago
Of course, I’d never use their generous only-superficial-questions-asked-if-you-don’t-play-much return policy to, basically, get a demo of a game. Because that isn’t what it is intended for. But, I wonder if that ability has gotten them more sales…
qualeed•5mo ago
Curious what you mean by this?
mrguyorama•5mo ago
In 2012, Terraria went on sale for 25 cents. Valve sold the entire Half Life family for like two dollars. AAA and big name games would go for 80% off or more, back when that actually got you a full game without microtransactions or significant DLC to buy.
People got excited about the sales because you might wake up to find the game you really wanted for $60 was now a few dollars.
Objectively "Incredible" deals are a lot less common, and old stuff doesn't have massive discounts anymore, sticking with "just" very good discounts.
qualeed•5mo ago
How much of that is to blame on steam vs. the publishers, though? I would imagine the publishers have much more control over (if not total control?) over pricing. So, unless I'm wrong, it seems misguided to put that at steam's feet.
lupusreal•5mo ago
thewebguyd•5mo ago
Steam came out in 2003, in an era where PC gaming was still very much - go to the store and buy a physical CD. You owned the game.
I still feel uneasy about it, but Steam is the least evil (outside of GOG, but much smaller catalog). But our options for actually owning digital content have all evaporated, unless you sail the high seas.
The next evolution in our journey to non ownership will be game streaming, if latency can be solved to take the non-ownership a step further. We are halfway there with even single player games now requiring an always-on internet connection.
I miss the days of offline and physical media.
iamtedd•5mo ago
* Required you to type in a serial number (at best), or went online to actually download the game binary (at worst).
* Needed to stay in the CD drive in order to play
* Could not be copied as a backup if the disc ever got lost or damaged.
* Was a major cause of scarcity for a digital product.
The concept of ownership was already eroding before Steam was created.
wolrah•5mo ago
At the time I had dialup. Patching on Valve's schedule simply did not work for me. Patching most games at that point was a multi-stage process involving resume-capable download managers and setting my PC to automatically get online and start downloading at night.
I will say that even those who had broadband did have legitimate grievances. Any kind of background process mattered a lot more back then, and Steam was not particularly light weight thanks in part to its use of a custom UI framework. I also don't recall it being particularly stable early on, nor the servers being able to hold up too well under load as demonstrated almost immediately by the HL2 launch. Neither insurmountable and both in fact surmounted within a few years, but again it was being forced on an existing community.
Had it been optional for CS it still would have had a rough start with HL2 and a lot of gripes from that community but I think it wouldn't have been hated as hard as what resulted from forcing it on CS players.
TulliusCicero•5mo ago
That's true, but Valve put in the work to make Steam really great.
mcv•5mo ago
That said, I still prefer to buy from GOG when possible.
immibis•5mo ago
mnahkies•5mo ago
I did have to use some obscure tool to extract it being on Linux but it's nice to know I won't have to purchase another copy again. There's a number of games I've had to repeat purchase (mostly from disk to digital), and with modding the forced auto updates on steam can also be a pain
Jach•5mo ago
I'll continue supporting Steam over GOG for PC gaming, especially as a Linux user.
teamonkey•5mo ago
In any case, often with these free deals the developer is compensated according to how many installs the game gets. Number of installs during sales is also a metric that helps gain funding for future titles.
So if Epic/GOG give away a game you already have and like, taking the time to add it to your collection, installing and running it briefly may help the developer out.
Jach•5mo ago
Valve doesn't feel the need to shovel free games at me to get me to use their services, they're right not to do so because their services are still the best and I'm not begrudgingly using them but happily using them. And again, especially for Linux, where they've given a great deal back to making it a viable gaming platform. For launchers, I use Lutris and Heroic to manage my non-Steam games from Epic, GOG, Amazon directly, Humble Bundle, and Itch.io. I tend to configure these to use the GE fork of proton, again something that wouldn't be where it is without Valve.
teamonkey•5mo ago
But I disagree that it’s unsustainable or unhealthy for the ecosystem. It’s clearly a loss-leader designed to keep you engaging with the platform, yes, but it’s not necessarily worse for the developers or the platform than, say, a hugely-discounted Steam sale (or a subscription service like Gamepass).
Also if Steam started giving away games like Epic do I’m pretty sure they’d be adored for it.
noisem4ker•5mo ago
mcv•5mo ago
Is that criticism? Because from your comment, so are you. You pay Amazon, and GOG gives you free games.
I refuse to give any money to Amazon, but gladly pay GOG.
overfeed•5mo ago
Before Valve sponsoring/partnering with Code Weavers on Proton, running anything-but-old-and-stable games via Wine was a fraught affair, now even games that update weekly/monthly run perfectly, without having to fiddle with config files or downloading specific DLLs. For the large and growing library of supported games, Steam made Linux gaming painless.
mcv•5mo ago
And if that doesn't work, you can still import the game into Linux, while also still owning it independently from the platform.
immibis•5mo ago
mcv•5mo ago
darth_avocado•5mo ago
J_Shelby_J•5mo ago
And we who are dependent on steam know how bad things would be if steam wasn’t this unicorn. Gaben is the rare feudal lord whose people show up to battle out because they know it’s good for them. All he had to do was not abuse his monopoly for the past 25 years, as the meme goes.
transcriptase•5mo ago
The user on the other hand doesn’t want 8 different bloated game launchers slowing startup, siphoning bandwidth, constantly updating, using a bunch of memory, and each using 1-2% of CPU at idle doing who knows what.
Ekaros•5mo ago
These clients really have zero respect for users.
taude•5mo ago
sersi•5mo ago
pjmlp•5mo ago
OS specific stores, consoles, and retrogaming already have more games than I am able to play the rest of my life.
If they were like Loki in the Linux gamming efforts, I would be willing to kind of sponsor it, for Proton I already have Windows at home.
babypuncher•5mo ago
pjmlp•5mo ago
Better keep targeting Windows.
babypuncher•5mo ago
With Proton we basically have a common stable runtime that handles all the platform specific needs of a video game. It just so happens that runtime is largely binary-compatible with Windows. It's easier for devs to support when all they have to do is stick to a Proton-compatible subset of the Win32 API. Users get way more games. And anecdotally my experience as a user is generally better than with true native ports. It's a big net win.
pjmlp•5mo ago
It is up to Valve to make it work.
It is a loss for GNU/Linux as gamming platform.
Do you think anyone would be paying for Nintendo and PlayStation consoles, if they were running XBox OS translations, instead of having the games natively target them?
That is why all those cheap Chinese handhelds never go nowhere, being basically MAME devices.
babypuncher•5mo ago
The alternative is that they do not do this at all because it is too much work for too little payoff. Proton is driving real Linux adoption in PC gaming.
pjmlp•5mo ago
Proton is driving the adoption of PC Windows games on Linux.
babypuncher•5mo ago
Plenty of other AAA games have made Proton and Deck-specific compatibility considerations
Sohcahtoa82•5mo ago
Other than my phone, I would never purchase software from an OS-specific store. Why would you ever choose to do that?
pjmlp•5mo ago
It is already there, has enough choice to keep me entertained, I don't suffer from FOMO.
Sohcahtoa82•5mo ago
I'm a Windows user. I don't want to lose my apps if (really, when) I eventually switch to Linux.
Buying my games on Steam means I can play my games anywhere.
pjmlp•5mo ago
bob1029•5mo ago
The quality of support I've received as a developer on Steam makes Apple's App Store ecosystem look like joke.
iamtedd•5mo ago
nyeah•5mo ago
maverwa•5mo ago
Sure, if GOG had even 20% of steams catalog and useability, it be no. 1 without question. But since we‘re sadly limited to this one reality, there is no alternative.
XBOX GamePass is a trap I expect to spring every day, Uplay and EA Origin are just a splash screen I see when starting a game in steam, and I almost forgot the epic store exists, despite their “free game” Marketing campaign.
It’s not perfect, it’s anti-consumer way to often, and it’s for sure a monopoly’s, but steam is still my favorite poison And yes, if they decide to disable me account and cut me off my pile of shame I will have an impact.
But owning games does not seem to be an option generally. Exceptions exist, ofc.
lupusreal•5mo ago
Steam is simultaneously hard to like, as a DRM service, but also hard to dislike as they put so much care into getting games running on Linux and have a very reasonable return policy, full refunds for the game not working makes it easy for Linux users especially.
maverwa•5mo ago
Same point: it’s not good, but that’s reality for you.
Ferret7446•5mo ago
I suspect almost all of the games on GoG, if they are also on Steam, also don't have DRM on Steam.
tstrimple•5mo ago
kulahan•5mo ago
unethical_ban•5mo ago
To the second line, systems with a network effect tend to clump people together.
the_snooze•5mo ago
Given Steam's history and market position, they don't need exclusives at this point. I do remember the likes of Outer Wilds and Final Fantasy 7 Remake being EGS exclusives for the first year of their respective PC releases.
2OEH8eoCRo0•5mo ago
godelski•5mo ago
I'm not trying to disparage steam, I actually really like them[1]. I'm pointing it out because it's a business strategy we don't see that often: loyalty. I mean what other billionaire do you know where there's tons of memes of but is also overwhelmingly seen in a positive light? Sure, he doesn't have Elon money but dude has $10bn, I don't think another $290bn is really going to make a big difference in his life[2]. He has way less controversy than Elon had even before all the political stuff. Steam is like Costco, except Gabe is a billionaire.
What I'm trying to say is that you can become a billionaire by building a quality product and through customer loyalty. These things don't have to be mutually exclusive. You can be fucking rich, your employees can be fucking rich, you can build a useful, AND a beloved product. In a time where we live in a Lemon Economy, where it is all about making the s̶h̶i̶t̶t̶i̶e̶s̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶u̶s̶e̶r̶s̶ ̶w̶i̶l̶l̶ ̶b̶u̶y̶ minimum viable product, where we rush for the newest feature and loudest bells and whistles (regardless of if they actually work), Steam stands out.
I want more companies like Valve/Steam.
[0] https://upptic.com/valve-structure-employment-numbers-revenu...
[1] Like another user pointed out, they won be over with Linux gaming. I've had a great experience with them, even from the early days. You could tell through github issues they cared. They wouldn't just dismiss things like "oh, we don't support that distro" and actually just figure out what's going on (because your distro doesn't actually matter). They were clearly nerds themselves and nerds that cared.
[2] You just can't spend that kind of money. Fucking MacKenzie Scott is trying to give her wealth away as fast as possible, has already given away half her wealth, but she has the same net worth as when she divorced Bezos. Compound interest is a crazy thing.
[3] P.S. Fuck Visa and Mastercard. Unless my transaction is illegal, you better fucking process it. Anything short of that is holding my own money hostage. That is fucking theft. You created the duopoly. Don't get greedy or you'll lose it.
HWR_14•5mo ago
godelski•5mo ago
mumbisChungo•5mo ago