Submitted 3 weeks ago by Pro@reddthat.com to games@lemmy.world
https://reddthat.com/pictrs/image/3c4d6a80-a4e1-4fa6-9c73-7808b849aa28.png
Transaction companies should not play police, in my opinion
In fact no company should play being police
This is why we have the digital market act
How are transaction offering companies not included there? Who gives them the right to choose what people consume?
Way do much centralised power
Basically a dictatorship
Fuck that
I mean, they have no problems offering transaction services to obvious scams like “find sex in your region” and other scammy find relationship websites.
This will never go away. Payment processors make life easy for most consumers, people like them. And as long as we have them, they hold all the power around how money can be used. And they will always be limited by governments and local laws.
If you don’t like the situation, use cash. If that’s too inconvenient Bitcoin is essentially your only other option.
They have the power because states gave it to them. States can very easily take it back. But they won’t because they’re corrupted assholes.
Bitcoin, and the millions other way more efficient alternatives 😜
gamers, unironically, rise up. this isn’t going to end on niche porn games
It’s already expanded. It started as going after “rape and incest” but now it’s all adult games. But a bunch of lgbtq games have already gotten hit. I am beyond furious.
Shit. Would you provide a source please?
It’s gonna stop once they hit a category that includes big AAA games. Once they start cutting into the revenue of Call of Duty or Assassin’s Creed the big developers should take a stance.
Since this is caused by activist pressure on the payment processors, perhaps a grassroots activist campaign of our own could change their mind. Especially if we threaten to stop using their services in favor of any competitor that allows all legal purchases.
Hopefully you’re referring to Visa/Paypal, not Itch.
One place that comes to mind is Verotel. I barely know them, but supposedly one of their star attributes is their use for adult businesses. Likely someone else knows them better.
I’m not sure that works, like on a purely game theory level. If gamers start to apply pressure, threaten to stop buying games, the stores need to make a choice:
A. Risk facing the wrath of the games, sales are likely to drop. Possibly by a lot, perhaps 15-20%. That could keep up for months before stabilizing.
B. Risk facing the wrath of the payment processors, credit card sales will stop immediately, only alternative payment types get through. Sales drop by 80% and that will continue indefinitely.
While both of those options are bad, one of them is totally fatal to their business.
How do I tell politely in a letter to MasterCard, that if I want to buy a horse dildo it's only MY fucking business?
buy a horse dildo with bitcoin and flaunt how they didn’t get any money from your transaction? idk man, i’m good at vague ideas, specifics are harder
Any games with even mild nudity is next (like Nier)
Yep, then lgbtq games, then games with guns, then games with blood, so on and so on
Neighbors being kidnapped: I sleep
Taking my fetish games: Real Shit
most of the world isn’t american. we can’t do anything about your government
This morality police crap being carried out by the most immoral bastards on the planet needs to stop.
Yeah! Let’s sell pornos out of candy shops too! Fuck morality policing!
except nowhere on earth is your example happening.
The issue at hand is that it’s being made impossible to sell them at all.
Yep fuck morality policing and anyone who supports it, hope you all rot in hell etc.
When did they say “fuck morality policing”, or even “let’s all stop policing morality”?
Either you piggy-backed off a comment to be a whole weirdo. Or you neee to up your reading comprehension.
No one with a brain is suggesting this. It should be up to the service and government to create rules to allow or not allow harmful content. It should definitely not be a payment processor.
why not?
You realize that you’re defending a game that was literally a rape and incest simulator that was already named in multiple countries before the payment processor issue occurred, right?
Fuck religion.
Don’t you just love people that can’t mind their own fucking business?
Bro for real! Like I hate any porn game, as a game. Not as a societal flaw!
So you know what I do? Same exact thing I do about gay sex. I don’t do it, I don’t think about it very often unless there’s a funny joke to be made in a tangential way, and I don’t tell other people that they have to be exact like me.
Ffs, let people do what they want if they aren’t hurting anyone.
“If you sin you’re going to hell, I have to save you from yourself!”
We got GoonerGate before the release of the Epstein files
All my homies hate Collective Shout
I find it funny that a lot of the fediverse is anti-cryptocurrency, yet this is a perfect example of a problem cryptocurrency can solve. No one can stop you from transacting on a number of blockchains.
Too bad cryptobros are more interested in using it as a speculative investment/scam machine than an actual currency.
Yeah the wild swings in exchange value instantly preclude its use as a currency.
Yes you are right, but there are always grifters everywhere, unfortunately.
In theory, crypto could be good for this, but crypto is used (and designed) more as an investment than a transaction tool.
Also, the issue here is not centralized currency under a government, it’s centralized payment processing under monopolistic private companies. Crypto is not required to solve that, all that is needed is an alternative payment processor.
It’s a good point, but a payment processor run by the government would also be under pressure (from voters) to wield its power to suppress marginal content.
Imagine a US-government-run payment processor right now - it would be blocking anyone that sells anything “woke” or “DEI”.
True, but crypto is used very successfully all the time to purchase things online. Now just because most of those transactions are for drugs doesn’t mean it doesn’t work, steam should start accepting monero, the only truly secure and private crypto currency.
In theory, crypto could be good for this, but crypto is used (and designed) more as an investment than a transaction tool.
I would argue that while crypto is as investment now, it was initially designed and intended to be used for transactions.
Out of curiosity though, why do you think this situation would be any different if it were government controlled? Especially considering that you sometimes have administrations like Trump’s, which would do anything no matter how corrupt.
If it was used as an actual currency instead of an investment vehicle for speculators, that would help.
It also has zero protection from scams and fraud.
I mean you can use it as currency, and I do sometimes. I have bought plenty of steam games with Bitcoin. I’ve also bought a bunch of stuff on Newegg, and other places online.
It has exactly as much protection from scans and fraud as cash does, that’s essentially what it is.
Crypto is so heavily regulated now, I don’t even know how to procure any cause all the sites I have used years ago are just dead now.
In KYC systems it is really easy to acquire—companies are willing to sell it to you with no problems.
If you want to get it anonymously, the easiest would probably be to buy via cash. In Switzerland, you can buy via some atms
Couldn’t you just masturbate the normal way?
Monero
I don’t get it. Do payment processors want less money? Do they hate being entrenched and bringing in money just for existing? Do they want us to try and find alternatives to them?
this bullshit is surely coming from the recently intensifying family friendlinessification of the internet, but why the fuck do payment processors care? i have no idea. are they taking a cut of advertising revenue? do all ceos just want to appear as massive prudes? do they see children as an untapped market to exploit? or maybe they’re just fucking stupid? what is actually going on
I think someone once told me its about charge backs. People will swipe the stripe, even online, to pay up for hours and hours of content (more for addicts) and then issue a chargeback, or otherwise say their card was stolen and because there is no physical product to seize, the company is left with repeatedly eating investigation costs into fraudulent porn addicts.
It’s all about misandry
They make money hand over first for doing practically nothing… They’re perfectly happy with their current situation and the most important thing to them right now is not rocking the boat.
Collective shout finacials year: 2024 revenue: 458043 employee_expenses: 107000 other_expenses: 215488 net_surplus: 135555 employees: total_fte: 2 full_time: 0 part_time: 1 casual: 4 volunteers: 15 donations_and_bequests: 389800 government_grants: 0 commercial_income: 0 expense_to_revenue_ratio: "70.4%" average_expense_per_employee: 39400 Leadership - name: Melinda Tankard Reist role: Founder, Movement Director public_socials: - Twitter: @MelTankardReist - Instagram: @collective.shout public_email_address: Not publicly listed salary: Not publicly listed - name: Caitlin Roper role: Campaigns Manager public_socials: - Instagram: @collective.shout public_email_address: Not publicly listed salary: Not publicly listed - name: Renee Chopping role: Campaigns Strategy public_socials: - LinkedIn public_email_address: r******@collectiveshout.org salary: Not publicly listed - name: Lyn Swanson Kennedy role: Campaigns Strategy public_socials: - Instagram: @collective.shout public_email_address: Not publicly listed salary: Not publicly listed - name: Coralie Alison role: Movement Operations Manager public_socials: - Twitter: @CoralieAlison - Instagram: @collective.shout public_email_address: Not publicly listed salary: Not publicly listed
This is exactly like the pearl-clutching we had back in the 1980’s around D&D and music lyrics. At least we moved the goalpost from satanic panic and thinly-veiled racism, over to “art that features sexual expression I don’t understand.”
If history is any indicator, their actions are only going to increase awareness of this kind of stuff.
How do platforms like Patreon and OnlyFans circumvent this? I know OF had issues with payment processors in the past but I’m not sure what changes they implemented to stay compliant. There must be some way for itch.io to keep these things on their platform while not pissing off the payment processors (who can go fuck themselves btw, this is completely unnecessary)
Porn sites are categorized as high risk at these payment processors. So probably itch has to fall into the high risk category and incur higher fees or remove all porn content. If you fall into the high risk category the payment platform will probably audit you more often and thus charge higher fees.
OF probably had these same issues because they didn’t start as a porn site.
I don’t think OnlyFans had to do much of anything in the end. There was just enough media stink about it to make it go away.
Credit card companies don’t have to set a consistently applied set of rules the way a government of laws does. They can make it all up for each individual site if they wish.
Holy fuck why did Collective Shout go full nuclear and go behind the platforms’ back and straight to the payment processors. Like they could have at least talk to the Itch.io people.
If they wanted any games banned all they had to do was talk to the Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC) in Australia, where they’re based. Any of the games listed would have likely been added to the ‘Refused Classification’ list and thereby banned from sale and import in Australia. If they wanted them pulled from Steam or Itch entirely they could have talked to those platforms.
But they didn’t want to raise objections through appropriate preexisting channels, they wanted to push their Christian-based ideology on the whole world by going Karen on the social media of all the payment processors.
This is what killed tumblr.
Hmmm. Could porn once again because the medium catalyst for bitcoin to take off.
I get not liking a game about SA and incest, but how about just not play that game?
Reminder they do nohing about all thise fujoshi comics whuch has rape & incest. They like cuties too. So the goal was destroying men"s outlet for sexual pleasure.
Notice they didn’t go after onlyfans
Can we crowdfund a big lawsuit against those responsible for this?
Against banks? I love the enthusiasm but this is not the way. Banks as a whole have many of the best lawyers in the game on retainer (possession is 9/10ths of the law, and this industry banks on that and make bank.) The best crowdfunding campaign in history* is 800 million. The banks would be willing to spend at least that in their own defence.
*not including investments (nor blockchain)
Plus, a progressive lawsuit in this environment? Might backfire spectacularly - right now banks are cautiously picking on ‘safe’ targets. But with a green light from the supreme court the banks could go full Nazi. Yeah - there’s nothing good I can reasonably expect here.
Or use cryptocurrency more
Why are they doing a comprehensive audit on the content and not doing a comprehensive audit on new payment providers? I sure would be
My biggest issue with this situation is: if they can get away with getting games they don’t like being delisted, where does it end? Delisting books with themes or authors they don’t like? Banning the sale of alcohol and cigarettes?
What’s stopping them from doing what DLsite did in Japan by using credits purchased off site? Seems like an alternative business opportunity there.
Are we still doing phrasing also thank god they’re not coming for the ultra violence and graphic scenes of bodily dismemberment
We should go back to sending the cash per physical mail…
What games were taken down? Are they preserved somewhere? Anybody know?
So can I call the payment providers of the companies I don’t like and complain about them?
Miserable fuckers, the whole lot of puritans…
Yall will hate me for it, but porn games should have never been on the main launcher. That’s just asking for trouble. Steam should have a secondary launcher that is just for the adult games, and keep the two seperate. This shit wouldn’t be happening if these games hadn’t been so accessible to people not looking for that in the first place.
Also lets be honest, some of the shit is over the line. There shouldn’t be multiple “Sex with Hitler” games, because as ridiculous as that sounds, normalizing Nazis and Hitler is a fucking virus that does so much fucking harm when spread. Its not just a “silly joke”.
Shame. I’m sure plenty of people will miss great titles like “Cousin Fucker Alabama: Step-sis anal edition” or “I’m a woodman but this ain’t a tree”
One of the great mysteries of the 21st century is how a tiny number of US companies control most of the world’s payment processing, when it’s not a technically difficult problem.
You could implement an entire end-to-end payment processing system in a year with a team of a few dozen competent engineers. The only difficulty is getting banks and retailers to sign up to it, but when the big players charge so much and create so much trouble this doesn’t seem like it should be a tough sell. In most cases literally all you’d need to do is charge 2.4% instead of their 3%.
It seemed like every search on Itchio was 70% NSFW results before this move
Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melinda_Tankard_Reist?wprov…
Collective Shout. Thanks to itch.io for naming them. TIL
SpicyLizards@reddthat.com 3 weeks ago
Wow, good to learn about the conservative christian, anti-abortion, “radical feminist”.
MITM0@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
They are feminists all right.
inbeesee@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Here’s a different comment to avoid the other stupid one. Feminist support equal rights and freedom.
Fontasia@feddit.nl 3 weeks ago
My favourite fact is she thinks decriminalising sex work will lead to more sex trafficing.
Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Such wisdom and vision, we should let these people have power over payment processors
TheBat@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yeah. As a society we seriously need to get on the same page about morality, but for my money it can’t come from a religious group tinkering with the beating heart of commerce. They may have points to make but it’s fruit of the poisoned tree.
Wahots@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
Damn, Rupert Murdoch and now this asshole. Australia has a monopoly on ruining media, lol.
redwattlebird@lemmings.world 3 weeks ago
You can thank Advance Australia for that. Huge think tank that likely bank rolls all this nonsense and more.
Also, down with Collective Shout! As someone who suffered child abuse, I condemn these cookers crusading under the guise of child protection. FFS, they were patting themselves on the back for stopping sales of plastic heads on Temu.