Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down, but Valve says payment processors 'specifically cited' a Mastercard rule about damaging the brand

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.world⁩

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/mastercard-deflects-blame-for-nsfw-games-being-taken-down-but-valve-says-payment-processors-specifically-cited-a-mastercard-rule-about-damaging-the-brand/

Statement: mastercard.com/…/clarifying-recent-headlines-on-g…

Mastercard has not evaluated any game or required restrictions of any activity on game creator sites and platforms, contrary to media reports and allegations.

Our payment network follows standards based on the rule of law. Put simply, we allow all lawful purchases on our network. At the same time, we require merchants to have appropriate controls to ensure Mastercard cards cannot be used for unlawful purchases, including illegal adult content.

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MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
They are a fucking payment processor; the only brand that matters is reliability and confidency, which they damaged now.

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- phx@lemmy.ca ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  They’re not talking about with Steam customers though, but rather with the religious idiots who have decided to crusade against porn, feel emboldened by recent age-ID bills and are now pursuing the “MasterCard funds filth” angle.
  
  I’m kinda wondering what the ratio of anti-porn religious knobs is you gamers. There’s a lot of religious folk but many of them also enjoy porn so …
  
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acosmichippo@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
so this is a game of telephone between activists, banks, payment processors, and vendors.

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- Catoblepas@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  My view is that Valve is the most likely to be honest about who is responsible here, both because they’re not responsible for this shit show no matter what the answer is and because they have a monetary interest in restarting sales.
  
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  - orclev@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Valves statement also matches with the claims of Itch.io, Stripe, and what Collective Shout themselves have claimed. So we’ve got two different claims, on one side are Visa and Mastercard, and on the other we’ve got literally everyone else. I feel pretty confident about which one is a load of bullshit.
    
    It’s also worth noting that Visa and Mastercard are playing semantic games with their statements. Nobody ever claimed they were “refusing legal transactions”, rather what they’re doing is threatening to stop working with any business that doesn’t implement censorship that they’re happy with. It’s a subtle but important difference and they’ve never denied that’s what they’re doing.
    
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  - brachiosaurus@mander.xyz ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    
    both because they’re not responsible for this shit show
    
    Nobody is forcing them to use mastercard and visa services
    
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- cley_faye@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Their condition (both via and mastercard) include stuff which, when you read it attentively, boils down to “we only prevent illegal things. And stuff we deem bad.”.
  
  It’s not even a game of telephone or anything, they have their conditions that says “yes we did” and their PR that says “we probably didn’t”. They could be playing alone and still losing this one.
  
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- Passerby6497@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  A game of telephone involves the message changing from each person. In this case, everyone but Visa/MC are blaming Visa/MC (valve, game stores, and collective shout).
  
  It’s more like a game of calvinball, only Calvin is claiming the rule they made up doesn’t exist
  
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- Ulrich@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Combining what Valve and Itch said, it seems like it’s Stripe or PayPal, and they cited MasterCard’s policies as justification…
  
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- paraphrand@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Yet everyone initially confidently reported on who was to blame.
  
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HalfSalesman@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
More people should watch this:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmHHnPLllUk

The CC companies have religious morons contained within their executives but they’re mainly being puppeted by outside religious evangelical organizations with a long history of wanting to destroy all sex work or erotica art.

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Gloria@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
American Payment Processors really need more competition. They can not be trusted to act in a free market sense and not drift into a chaindog for political ideas.

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- logicbomb@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  It feels to me like payment processing has a similar function to physical currency. Like all of those security features on the bills are used to ensure the transaction is trusted.
  
  Point being, I’ve long thought that payment processors are essentially doing a job that should be done by the government.
  
  There are strange gaps where physical services have digital analogues but are completely ignored by the government.
  
  I don’t understand why the treasury doesn’t process payments or why the post office doesn’t issue email addresses, for another example.
  
  Anyways, back to the point, physical currency specifically says that it is valid for all debts. If they applied the same logic to payment processing, then this would never happen.
  
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  - emax_gomax@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Probably because government and the people in charge of government are largely tech illiterate and being literate or seeking policy advice from literate people isn’t expected.
    
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  - SheeEttin@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Postal banking is a thing in some places.
    
    I’m not sure I want the government running those services. Like a basic one, sure, but for handling credit cards and general banking services? Nah, I don’t want the Trump administration having direct access to my purchases.
    
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  - Revan343@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    It is fucking wild that we don’t have INTERAC credit cards here in Canada
    
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- mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Payment processing is really one of those things that should have been nationalized as a public utility from the start.
  
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  - aramova@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Only problem with a public utility like that now would be Trump and his Insane Cunt Posey would weaponize it for the religious right.
    
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- Resonosity@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Would it be possible to build a FOSS alternative to all this?
  
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  - orclev@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    They’re trying with GNU Taler, but it’s pretty much a pipe dream at this point.
    
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  - BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Does Bitcoin count?
    
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- Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  I feel like it should be super easy now for smaller competitors to pop up by just offering digital credit services using tap on mobile phones. No need to manufacture and ship out plastic cards, just a digital version people keep on the phone, until they get large enough to be able to provide physical cards.
  
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  - Mihies@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    The issues here are trust, security, adoption and so forth. It’s not easy to start a competition here I’d say.
    
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- Nastybutler@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Have you tried Discover or American Express?
  
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  - Grass@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    I live miles and/or kilometers away from the three business that accept either of those
    
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PieMePlenty@lemmy.world ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Why doesn’t valve simply restore games back then? Tell payment processors MC is OK with them (as evident by this statement) and tell them to come back with a reply from MC?

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rdri@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I kill people in GTA 5. I don’t kill people in Hentai Incest Generator 3000. Yet someone prefers to see my transaction only for the first one, citing damages to “the brand”.

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- uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Curiously, in our society, killing is less of a taboo than sex, especially in fiction.
  
  Since the aughts, I feel it is a disservice we do to censor out the horror of warfare in games like Call of Duty or Medal of Honor. I haven’t seen what they did with Six Days In Fallujah (by a vet of the Iraq War who experienced Fallujah and wanted to share his experience) but we’d have more respect for the gravity of war if the tragedy and immediacy of combat was properly expressed. In the Arma series, it’s very easy to die, but it uses a similar engine used for training purposes.
  
  It’s our Christian values (more specifically, our Paulinian values – he thought Christians should not have sex if they can abstain entirely¹ – which has turned into taboos against sex without strict licenses, that has made our society super-prudish.
  
  1. Paul actually also prohibited having additional children, the end being neigh and all. Later biblical interpreters would have to deal with the world’s failure to end, and Christ’s failure to return in their lifetimes.
  
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  - TheRealKuni@piefed.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    
    the end being neigh and all
    
    And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him, and the horse said, “the end is neigh!”
    
    (Neigh is what a horse says. The end is nigh. 😉)
    
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  - Harbinger01173430@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Well it’s Cain’s fault. He did the first murder and it was bad. Adam did the first fuck and it was good.
    
    Such is the way of the lord
    
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  - vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    The only game that I know of that tackles war as a psychological thing is Spec Ops the Line which is a brilliant game that is now delisted on steam for reasons. Regardless I do think the reason war is rarely shown in such a way is that the artistry (for lack of a better term) is relatively hard to balance between story and gameplay. Not even getting into how hard it is to tell such a story, making True Grit 1969 is a lot easier than making True Grit 2010.
    
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echodot@feddit.uk ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Oh I’m so glad that their brand isn’t being damaged. It’d be terrible if that were to happen.

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seejur@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Of course, because when everyone buy a game on steam the FIRST thing it comes to their mind is the credit card brand they used. What a load of bullock.

FFS I don’t even remember which one of my credit card I have saved on steam.

MasterCard can go fuck themselves. Great job saving your brand

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- dogs0n@sh.itjust.works ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Seriously rediculous, most people don’t even know if their card is Visa or Mastercard, nor do they care (because they dont know what they are or what they mean).
  
  (This is from my experience with people i know)
  
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  - echodot@feddit.uk ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Mastercard have changed their design so that it no longer says Mastercard on it, and it’s just the two circles. I bloody hate it, MasterCard thought they were able to get away with it because they thought they had brand recognition but literally no one cares about them.
    
    Also they’ve been fine with porn games up until now and literally no one cared.
    
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- bss03@infosec.pub ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I use Paypal and they charge my Discover (Novus network, IIRC). No MC policy issue, let me buy what I want.
  
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- BowtiesAreCool@lemmy.world ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I don’t have any credit cards saved on steam. I only use PayPal for steam purchases.
  
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  - SippyCup@feddit.nl ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    😬
    
    I’d rather pay with my actual blood than use PayPal.
    
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- HugeNerd@lemmy.ca ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  A bullock is a steer. You wanted bollocks.
  
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RedSeries@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Mastercard: worried about damaging brand ALSO Mastercard: torpedos brand harder than the titan submersible implosion

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- madcaesar@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Mastercard: We better not alienate our customers! Let’s cave to these religious lunatics from Australia.
  
  Mastercard: Becomes hated by gamers all over the world.
  
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kboy101222@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I’d love Valve to spend their extra billions on opening a payment processor. Fuck the big 3.

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- kameecoding@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Honestly, wouldn’t be surprised, they have spent god knows how much to push linux to unshackle themselves from Windows and Microsoft
  
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- dubyakay@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  There’s multiple steps to this sadly, including the payment gateway, processor, acquirer and this is before even Mastercard, VISA, Amex or other card companies come into the picture.
  
  It’s not impossible, but Valve would need to convince the card issuers that they are a valid processor and then also make deals with banks all over the world for GWs. Or they could just act like Stripe and own the full stack and bully their way through the fintech world.
  
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  - azertyfun@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    They already support local payment processing schemes such as Bancontact, iDEAL, JCB, Pix, etc. A good chunk of their international customer base already isn’t dependent on the big American payment processors.
    
    The way towards undermining Visa/MC’s power is for more governments/Central Banks to push for indigenous alternatives which abide by local regulations rather than foreign puritanism. This is already a desirable goal for most both from a geopolitical POV (reduce American control over world finance) and a financial one (VISA/MasterCard charge outrageous transaction fees).
    
    American consumers are fucked whichever way things go though, it’s not like the regime is going to make a move to break up the monopoly nor to push for less censorship in media. If Valve somehow goes through with this and makes deal with all major American banks, they’ll be done just in time for the Save The Children From Pedostanic Video Games Act or whatever the fuck that will force them to purge all thought crime from their platform.
    
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  - kieron115@startrek.website ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    In America I think you also either literally or effectively (to compete) have to own some banks as well. I think it’s called vertical integration.
    
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  - bhamlin@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    That, and I’m like 70% sure that as a payment processor you can’t take your own payments in the way that valve would need to.
    
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- ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  They just need to adapt this!
  
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  - kboy101222@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Unfortunately Taler still needs a lot of maturing, but having a distributed payment system not running on that horrendous waste of energy that is the block chain is promising!
    
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  - bss03@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    I’d never heard of this before. I hope Liberapay adds support for it. I don’t think all itch.io developers would be interested. I’m not sure it quite solves all the problems that Steam has with getting payments to game publishers.
    
    Quite interesting; thanks for the link!
    
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- atticus88th@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  The Drip Card from Valve incoming!
  
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candyman337@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Effecting the brand?? Who in their right mine would associate them with anything but payments? That’s ridiculous

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- Pika@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Like for real, the only reason I’m associating them with these games now is because they’ve actively brought it into the limelight, so we can see that
  
  I wouldn’t have even thought anything of association if they hadn’t done so.
  
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- fluffykittycat@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  This is actually ruining their brand. I now associate MC and Visa with Christian oppression
  
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- 9point6@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  They think they’re more than a money pipe.
  
  A competitor to MasterCard and Visa could show up with double their combined budget and do what they do to massively disrupt this particular industry. The average Joe would not give half a shit and continue paying for stuff with whatever card their bank gave them just like they always have.
  
  The specific brand of payment processor a card uses is just not a thing people care about unless they have an Amex and that’s essentially because places don’t always take it.
  
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- sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  The astonishingly hypocritical part:
  
  Guess who does payment processing for OnlyFans?
  
  Visa.
  
  And MasterCard.
  
  =D
  
  All you need to verify your id is a credit card!
  
  Then you get all the pr0n you want!
  
  Hope you didn’t borrow one from your parents!
  
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  - ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Tbf in my day the children who thought of that and followed through got caught. Statements and such.
    
    Those who didn’t get caught either stole it in magazine or VHS/DVD form straight from the store, or from an older relative, and then when internet happened, from free or pirate sites (pics at first that took forever on a 56k modem, then videos as tech progressed). Or if you were lucky someone would burn DVDs and sell them.
    
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vortexal@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I expected nothing less from them. They did pretty much the same exact thing when Japan tried confronting them after they started blocking Japanese retailers from trading internationally. I can’t find the article anymore but IIRC, Japan’s Prime Minister tried having an in person interview with them about it but it was cut short because he stormed out of the room after Visa tried denying everything. I don’t think that the payment processors will ever take responsibility for their actions.

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- MisterOwl@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Why would they? Everybody’s going to keep using them anyway.
  
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joel_feila@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
mastercard you are hurting your brand by doing this

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beemikeoak@lemmynsfw.com ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Can I still use visa or MasterCard on a dildo? And can I pay for it in cash… Dollars? Is my money accepted at the local adult bookstore?

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merdaverse@lemmy.world ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Image

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- k0e3@lemmy.ca ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I’m so confused; I thought MC and VISA were payment processors. So when I buy a game off Steam, I have two companies handling my money?
  
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  - Bilaketari@reddthat.com ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    MC and VISA are the networks. They allow communication between banks, and the entire operation is packaged up by payment processors like Stripe, Square or PayPal. So you have processors, the banks on either end (perhaps two separate ones), the network operator, and additionally any extra companies that might offer additional services for the transaction, like for fraud prevention or financing.
    
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  - vpunt@lemmy.zip ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    It’s processors all the way down.
    
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lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Direct link: Mastercard rule 5.12.7 Illegal or Brand-damaging Transactions

Tweet of their attempt to deny responsibility: great opportunity to wreck their brand.

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- Theoriginalthon@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Wtf are all these rules that I didn’t agree to when getting a bank card?
  
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thermal_shock@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
But what was “illegal”? I mean, if we’re applying real life laws to video games, that completely removed any game where violence is portrayed, GTA, Sonic the hedgehog, animal cruelty in super Mario. That’s why they are GAMES.

dumbasses. All of them.

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- otacon239@lemmy.world ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  No more RISK. Too violent. Should probably ban Clue while we’re at it.
  
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umbrella@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
oh they have damaged the brand alright

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roofuskit@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Get ready for Gilead.

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paraphrand@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Is this why it appeared Steam only took down Incest and other spicy things?

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- orclev@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  That’s what it started with but it seems to have quickly expanded to include a lot of more mundane things. Initial reporting was only on the first wave of censored games and didn’t include the stuff that was removed later on.
  
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  - paraphrand@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Ah, I didn’t hear that Valve did the take downs in waves.
    
    But I did hear itch.io took down everything, including things with labels that happen to frequently overlap with porn.
    
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- Grass@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  All of those titles make me really worried about Redemption of Li Wei…
  
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uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
So let’s say you’re in the market for a credit card. You can choose from:

iChar-Jit: We are ethical. We don’t sell to Nazis. You (and your kids) will be safe from buying questionable products or from questionable sources.

MoneySLAM Our card is usable by anyone, for anything, anywhere. Bangladesh; In orbit around Jupiter; Russia; Sex; Drugs; Bombs.¹

1. Some products may be dangerous or unethically sourced; Please spend safely and exercise good judgement.

Assuming all other factors (interest rate, online accessibility, confused foreign sales reps etc.) are more or less equal, which card will you get?

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