Submitted 8 months ago by themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com to technology@lemmy.world
https://nmiagaming.com/collective-shout-purge-sees-horror-games-targeted/
Collective shout seems to have expanded its scope: games like cult classic Fear And Hunger have been removed from Itch.io, while horror game VILE: Exhumed has been delisted from Steam just a week after launch.
God, I’m getting flash backs to that lawyer who hated video games and wanted them all banned. He had a hardon for the stars series. Jack something.
One thing I’m hearing a lot of is that this is a Christian lobby group. I did not see obvious signs of that on their website, though some of the language felt like an intentional alternative to how I (social worker) would discuss issues of women’s empowerment. Like they were holding space to later include “LGBTQ+” in their definition of problematic content. I am more than willing to believe an activist group from that demographic would lie to push their true agenda. Who has a good news source discussing their ideology?
The founder is a well-known Christian “pro-life feminist” from Australia.
Pro life feminist is an oxymoron
So she’s savvy with her words so people don’t recognize the true anti-gay crusade. A true wolf in bitch’s clothing.
She was the founding director of Women’s Forum Australia, […] It also promotes a trans-exclusionary ideology and campaigns against transgender rights.
Right so assuming she’s not Lesbian she’s going to be anti-LGBTQ+, and if she somehow is Lesbian, she’s going to be anti-BTQ+.
This will be fun 🍿.
(before downvoting: don’t worry, this won’t go over well)
Isn’t there some hacker group putting Collective Shout in the crosshairs?
Hope so.
Honestly horrors get old when you can read in the news about “respected people” calling to exterminate Gaza and build beachfront cottages there. Even from just reading that and knowing that the same people can put anything onto your Android devices via a Facebook update or any of the Google applications update, on a whim. Nobody will even know.
About this - is it even legal to obey such pressure?
I think there are probably some skeletons in the closets of Collective Shout’s members.
Why cant the payment processors just fucking ignore them oh my god
I think all the higher ups are afraid to admit they consume adult content so they will act as if it’s wrong.
Or you know, try bitcoin instead? 🤷🏻♂️
no
Yeah, because that’s an actual payment option isn’t it?
The people who would typically be expected to push back against collective shout also typically wouldn’t be expected to do anything effective whereas the people involved with collective shout are the type of people who give politicians money.
Wait, that’s actually their logo? A butthole?
E Pluribus Anus.
So close to the Greendale flag from Community.
A stretched out pink butthole full of cum, yes
New punk band name found
gross, who would fuck them?
And kids, that’s how I met your mother
Yay were back to the 2000s again, Jack Thompson rises again !
don’t you mean Joe Lieberman?
That slop got real slippery real quick.
Give them an inch, they’ll take a mile.
Wow… This count have happened in the 2010’s with the anti-gaming feminist and conservative movement at the time.
If only they knew to go after payment processors instead of identity groups.
To be fair… Funger is pretty brutal, a little past regular “horror”. Definitely against the censorship tho.
Well, this is happening earlier than I thought.
Can we go after CollectiveShout Now ??
We should, but also they aren’t the root cause. If they’re gone, there’s nothing stopping a different group from doing the same thing (except for fear of retaliation). The ideal solution is to force payment processors to process any payment for legal content.
But they can be used as an example
I don’t get why the gaming platforms are removing games instead of removing the objecting payment providers as a payment option for purchasing those particular games.
If visa doesn’t want people to purchase game X with Visa, then remove Visa as payment option for buying game X.
I don’t get why the gaming platforms are removing games instead of removing the objecting payment providers as a payment option for purchasing those particular games.
I think the issue isn’t that the payment providers don’t want to support the purchase of those games with their card. They want to stop offering their services to a platform that sells those games.
It appears that in the future, Itch will allow creators to opt out of payment providers, meaning that it’s probably on a per game basis, not per platform. That Itch and Steam are not making a per game solution now, is most likely because their current software doesn’t allow it and they need time to rework it. Itch has promised various changes already, Steam has been mum afaik.
Source for Itch: “For NSFW pages, this will include a new step where creators must confirm that their content is allowable under the policies of the respective payment processors linked to their account.”. itch.io/updates/update-on-nsfw-content
This is what Steam will probably do in the future, and Itch.io is already looking into it. There’s a reason all this garbage hasn’t splashed GOG. GOG is based in Europe, where protection laws would slap silly any financial entity trying to pull this stunt on an European company (pressure groups have weaseled censorship and moral panics with other strategies though, just not this one), and they have so many more payment processors that PayPal, Visa and MC would just be dropped entirely and immediately for any of the other dozen or so alternatives. The issue is that in the US and Australia, the three headed shit dragon already lobbied governments to pull the ladder behind them, so no other payment processor could take their place or compete with them, establishing a legal oligopoly of the old money finance club. They won and have this power due to systemic and political failures decades in the making.
I only use Steam myself, so I hadn’t checked Itch Io’s communication yet. I don’t know the platform myself so it’s quite possible that I’m misinterpreting this, but to me it appears that Itch Io will allow creators to delist payment options that they are not compliant with: “For NSFW pages, this will include a new step where creators must confirm that their content is allowable under the policies of the respective payment processors linked to their account.”.
Itch has come out and said it’s not Visa, it’s PayPal and Stripe.
Removing those payment options would cause a massive loss of revenue.
If this is true, all gamers who care about this issue of censorship should collectively boycott those payment processors. PayPal should be especially easy to disconnect from since they already suck.
But removing them from the specific games they object to would not lose any more revenue than removing the games entirely, and reduce the backlash significantly, as long as they could find 1 obscure payment provider to handle the obscure games and keep some form of access.
Yeah, that’s not what the payment processors are requesting. They aren’t saying they don’t want to be used to buy this content. They’re dating, if your platform hosts this content at all then they won’t process any payments. It doesn’t matter if the option is removed if the content is still there. They’re using their power of monopoly to police content.
Do you have a source of where they are saying that?
I have seen an article about the Australian political action group that was claiming credit for getting the games banned. The story behind the start of the controversy.
And I have seen an article about the communication from Steam that they were banning games which were in conflict with the rules of their payment providers. The result basically.
But I’ve only seen conjecture and speculation about what went on to get from the start to the result. I haven’t seen any article that spelled out exactly what the different payment providers demanded from the gaming platforms, nor anything about what they discussed in between them.
And then use what?
A few options include American Express, Discover, JCB, and the Steam Wallet, which can be funded through Steam gift cards.
You overestimate the adaptability of the average software stack. I worked at companies where even adding another button to the cart screen was a monumental undertaking
Soon: games causes mass shootings! Prohibit all games! And the payment processors will just comply because again they’re semi dictatorial greedy fucks
The Collective Shout logo looks like a butthole.
It’s an asterisk…
TIL the thing under a cat’s tail is an “assterisk.”
asterisk
Thank you! First thing I thought when I saw that logo.
Six seasons and soon a Movie!
First, I don’t understand why processors give a fuck. Do they imagine people are going to just stop using credit in protest of how other people spend their money? Tell me another fucking joke.
Second, I’m not a game developer, but I suddenly want to make a horror game that includes graphic, exploitive, gratuitous depictions of everything they complain about. And name the game Collective Shriek.
The worm that keeps getting put into payment processor’s brains is that they might somehow be held criminally liable for games people purchase. It’s like telling a bus driver that they might be liable because they gave a ride to someone who robbed a store.
I’ve heard this reasoning a few times. I don’t buy it. Illegal content is already illegal. You aren’t allowed to sell it. Policing particular content beyond that doesn’t cover your ass. In fact, it implicates you if you do process payments for illegal content.
I’ve never seen any argument from them that this is the reasoning. The only rule they need is that you aren’t allowed to sell illegal content on your platform. That covers everything. Going beyond that implies there’s a different reason. They’re being influenced by something else other than the law.
NOW that they’ve started curating, that has become way more likely to actually happen. They could have claimed to be a neutral carrier before. Actively filtering means they’ve decided to take on that responsibility, and the consequences for missing stuff.
They’re morons
That what I just dont get about this.
If payment processors think they are liable because these games cause harm then where does it stop? Supermarkets sell cigarettes and so on…
I hate corpos as much as the next guy, but I don’t think that’s a good rule to have.
Fear and Hunger appears to be back.
Called it. Soon all we’ll only be able to play baby games like Elmo’s big adventure puzzle book land, or something like that.
I feel like even those games will be banned if we don’t stop them now. My thoughts are that games like ‘I am Jesus’ is the end goal here.
Nah, most likely Veggie Tales. Elmo is too woke and might cause dissonance with supremacists and Christian Nationalists. Oh, wait. I just repeated myself - sorry.
Nah, we’ll still have our shooters and sports games, just not anything sexual (yucky), taboo or too outside of the ordinary.
They hate Elmo, too.
It’ll be some “evolution is the devil” creationism bullshit, because this is a Christian fascist movement.
If only there was a method of paying people in a private and decentralized way, possibly maybe even… cryp"SCAM!"
“SCAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM”
sits back down
If people had used cryptocurrency as a currency instead of as a “it’s totally not a security, we swear, even though we’re only saying that to evade SEC regulations a little longer” there’d be a lot fewer people calling it a scam.
For sixteen years, crypto’s only use cases seemed to be buying illegal goods and securities fraud. Finally, we have another use case presenting: perfectly legal transactions that credit card companies have gotten cold feet about.
The only thing I’ve ever used crypto for was to buy totally legal goods and services.
If people had used cryptocurrency as a currency instead of as a “it’s totally not a security, we swear, even though we’re only saying that to evade SEC regulations a little longer” …LTC did. Monero has and is. BTC’s fall was a massive pullback on an extremely new and volatile idea that not even half the buyers entirely understood. BTC now is held up by ETF funds, private equity and everyone that cares putting a few chips in. Is it a scam now? Is everyone scamming everyone?
…there’d be a lot fewer people calling it a scam. For sixteen years, crypto’s only use cases seemed to be buying illegal goods and securities fraud. Some would call that decentralization and freedom. Spin it however you like.
Finally, we have another use case presenting: perfectly legal transactions that credit card companies have gotten cold feet about. They deserve every negative degree.
The SEC had every opportunity to make up it’s fucking mind for years, but even after repeated promptings from all the big crypto exchanges, they kept putting things off and randomly throwing lawsuits for violations for things they were asked for guidance on.
Also, this is the exact kind of transaction they had in mind when they created the tech, but everyone decided it was only ever for drugs, because that’s what the Wall St owned media told them to think
There also has been cases where people increasingly used cryptocurrencies as their national currency was subject to instability and severe inflation. Usually the governments cracked down on it hard, like in Turkiye.
Not every country has a corrupt securities administration. Don’t push your third-world Americanism on others like its their problem.
“Man, I don’t understand why unregulated currencies are unpopular! I’m going to dismiss the heaping mountain of examples of it being abused with no possible recourse as just people being unreasonable in their dislike! That’ll convince people!”
I got robbed!
blames the currency
I think the biggest problem is getting any crypto which usually involves an exchange which is also dependent on the payment processors you are trying to avoid
There’s also p2p sources like Bisq and Haveno.
Do you think it happen randomly that payment processors are unavoidable to get crypto money ? Because it’s clearly on purpose and a way to control a market they didn’t have any leverage on.
Still the take above of “I would rather support payment processors than Cryptos” still sound super dumb to me. People are so extreme on their assessment of technologies here. There is no nuance. AI is all bad, crypto is all bad that’s pretty much the tone here.
I don’t care what gets delisted, I’m not buying your fucking monkeys
What does it have to do with monkeys ?
NFT is a very small subset of “Cryptos”.
On a more serious note, you really do prefer VISA MasterCard to dictate what is to be censored or note rather than using crypto currencies ?
What I see is a new niche opening up for a website offering game sales through alternative payment processors.
Maybe we should retaliate.
Man, I knew it was only a matter of time but I didn’t think it would be this bad, this soon.
Fear & Hunger is a goddamn masterpiece. Yes, it has depictions of nonconsensual sexual acts. It’s in keeping with the lore of a world that is truly fucked even beyond our reality. It’s an integral part of the worldbuilding, and it is by no means glorified.
Agreed. Fear and Hunger has it’s issues and I would not broadly recommend it to anyone. I would also say that the FREQUENCY of sexual assault in the game, and the presence of some weirdly sexual status effects like anal bleeding are a bit overboard. That being said, when one of the earliest enemies can sexually assault you, or maim your character in a way that leaves you able to keep playing, but effectively crippled, it really nails home not just that the world is dark, but that your assumptions about what is in the game don’t apply here. Anything could happen. REALLY anything. And exploring a harsh, hostile world with that expectation set is one of the best parts of the game, because it’s a unique experience that you just can’t get at that quality anywhere else.
Involving the MasterCard Mafia in your puritanical crusade is next to criminal. The only solution is to [CONTENT REMOVED FOR VIOLATING RESTRICTIONS AGAINST ADVOCATING VIOLENCE].
wabafee@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Gotta love the Collective Cunts.