Liam @ GamingOnLinux 🐧🎮Valve gets pressured by payment processors with a new rule for game devs and various adult games removed https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2025/07/valve-gets-pressured-by-payment-processors-with-a-new-rule-for-game-devs-and-various-adult-games-removed/
pettter@gamingonlinux Entirely reinforcing the thesis that VISA and Mastercard are the biggest agents for exporting american puritanism internationally.
Colman Reilly@pettter @gamingonlinux via US "proceeds of crime" laws as interpreted by financial regulators there.
"Mutant Rob" Robert RothenbergA lot of countries have strict puritanical laws without the free speech protections that the US nominally has. And companies that do business internationally often choose the lowest common denominator rather than differentiate between what's allowed in different regions.
It's much easier to block all adult content than to track which games have a specific kink that's banned in Texas, Uganda, Malaysia and Dubai.
@rrwo @pettter @gamingonlinux my understanding is that this goes back to interpretations of "proceeds of crime" laws in the US insisted upon by regulators under pressure from "conservative" legislators.
Argonel@pettter @gamingonlinux I'm not sure how much of that is their own initiative, and how much is pressure from the US government. I'm not sure if I even care. I wish they would be a neutral processor for any legal transaction though, a common carrier for money. If they think someone is using their services for illegal transactions they can notify authorities for investigation.
Lars Eggert@pettter @patcharcana @gamingonlinux Funny how credit card processing is not part of any digital sovereignty agenda. Their Brussels lobbying budgets must be substantial.
2342Europeans don’t care about credit cards. Maybe go check out EPI for actual developments in the payment space.
Olivier Mengué
David Penfold 
justJanne
datenwolf
Paolog@justjanne @lars @pettter @patcharcana @gamingonlinux Thanks for mentioning Wero, can you believe I had never heard about it? Unfortunately I cant't use it here (Italy) because no Italian bank supports it ATM. But there is an orthogonal initiative in Europe which wasn't mentioned in this thread yet: the ECB digital Euro. See for example: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/key/date/2025/html/ecb.sp250714~437cfc6a51.en.html
The digital euro: legal tender in the digital age
The European Central Bank (ECB) is the central bank of the European Union countries which have adopted the euro. Our main task is to maintain price stability in the euro area and so preserve the purchasing power of the single currency.
chrysn@lars @pettter @patcharcana @gamingonlinux The EU funded @NGI_Taler project, when fully implemented, provides much more than *just* sovereignty.
@lars @pettter @patcharcana @gamingonlinux France has CB which is a french payment processor, alternative to VISA/Mastercard, powered by french banks.
But during Olympics VISA had a monopoly on all olympic sites and even CB was bypassed. What a shame!
Subhendu Ghosh
C.@lars @pettter @patcharcana @gamingonlinux
I would like Canada to pass a law - we heavily regulate all aspects of the financial industry here - that says anyone offering payment processing services may not refuse to handle merchants / services / products that aren't in actual violation of federal law.
You want a license to skim 3% or more off the top of virtually every transaction in the country? Okay, but no marginalizing creators or service workers based on your puritanical backers.
The Hairiest Bottom@lars @pettter @patcharcana @gamingonlinux the digital euro will be a way to circumvent them, but all the conspiracy nuts are complaining about it
SweetHellerYou’re write
leberschnitzel@gamingonlinux that is a worrying precedent
Valve making their own payment processing incoming ^^
Valve making their own payment processing incoming ^^
Natasha Nox 🇺🇦🇵🇸@leberschnitzel @gamingonlinux Them now supporting the adoption of GNU/NGI Taler would be so phenomenally funny.
LonM@gamingonlinux Steam could have chosen to sell such games only via wallet balance / gift cards, sidestepping any concerns payment operators had. That they have instead had to remove them entirely shows massive overreach from these payment orgs.
diwen@LonM @gamingonlinux Exactly like with crazy religious nutcases who aren’t content to limit their own behaviour, but have to interfere and restrict the lives of others.
Friedrich Hartmann@LonM @gamingonlinux they should have just made a second catalog you could opt in, back when they opened the floodgates almost a decade ago with abandoning Greenlight and literally anything goes. Kids get cynical by age 12 now but it’s pretty impossible to parent steam properly and just treat it as adult only shop. Everything from tagging to filtering is still absurdly broken.
Bryan (he/him) 🇺🇸 🏳️🌈While I will never be a customer of those types of games, I believe you should let people do what they want, especially when its their own money.
Snark Week Global
impossibleibex 🇺🇦@gamingonlinux I wonder as the payment processors shutdown those games, if the payment processors will refund the buyers or if the just got robbed
halcy 
@impossibleibex @gamingonlinux I think what valve did here is delist (so you can’t *buy* the game anymore, but you can still install and play if you own it)
this is still, of course, shithead behaviour, and while I‘m more willing to forgive smaller players that immediately cave to the payment processors, I‘d have hoped Valve would put up more of a fight. Though, maybe they did, who the hell knows.
shironeko@gamingonlinux valve should start it's own payment processor
Sassinake! - ⊃∪∩⪽
Rachel Rawlings@gamingonlinux They'll be going after itch.io next (if they haven't already).
Johns@gamingonlinux I don't like this. Now is incest games " because everyone is against that" and then they'll start attacking LGBTQ+ games just because they can.
Fuck'em, as someone has said, they should start their own payment process
Nazo@gamingonlinux What a lovely reminder that people seriously need to stop pushing that platform so hard. Valve isn't pure evil like some corporations these days, but they sure aren't all that good either. It's a locked in platform with serious limits and lack of sufficient competition allowing them to do stuff like this to publishers and devs.
@nazokiyoubinbou This happens literally *anywhere*. If the store takes money, they have to follow the processor rules. This is not a Valve issue, it's a payment processor issue.
Marking this down specifically against Valve is not the way to go.
@gamingonlinux I'm not so sure about that. I don't see such issues with, for example, GoG. But then too, even if that is 100% the case, Valve is one of those that could put their foot down and refuse. I guarantee no payment processor would want to lose Valve for very long with the business going to a competitor. That's one of the advantages of having a near monopoly. But the other (from Valve's point of view) is that they can make decisions like these and people won't stop using their service.
@nazokiyoubinbou GOG, itch, Patreon and so on all have to deal with the exact same issues. This is a fact.
四@gamingonlinux @nazokiyoubinbou Friendly reminder that corporate America can, will, and have gone scorched earth when there’s something they value higher than profits.
For example Walmart shutting down whole stores simply to stop unionization (and their evil propaganda they run for their poor employees).
Can’t do business without banking:(
irina 🐇🌷
@nazokiyoubinbou @gamingonlinux the problem is - what competitor? steam isn't going to convince everyone to start paying by direct debit, and all the credit card processors have similar rules.
@gamingonlinux First they came for the porn and I did not speak up because I'm not a coomer...
Lord Caramac the Clueless, KSC@gamingonlinux So now they're coming for Valve. It's that alliance of fundamentalist Christians and online payment providers that has been harassing all kinds of social web platforms, pressuring them to either forbid their users from publishing any nudity and anything vaguely sexual or else face the shutdown of their cash flow.
Goupilleau@gamingonlinux The erosion of antitrust laws and it's consequences has been a disaster for the human race.
cy
🌱@ambiguous_yelp:ahimsa.chat@gamingonlinux If steam took #Monero #XMR (ie an actually #private cryptocurrency unlike bitcoin/ethereum) there would be no payment processor authority that could enforce this, just #steam would set the rules, thats an advantage of #cryptocurrency
SturmUndDranger@gamingonlinux It has long been curious to me how sex (or even involved romantic relationships) are beyond the pale in video games but ultraviolence is the accepted central premise of the game.
Imagine an Assassin’s Creed where the several thousand body count referred to the number of satisfied sexual partners rather than decapitated guards.
Alkaris 
@gamingonlinux These payment processors can piss right off to the moon, always trying to limit and prevent what people can and can't buy with their own damn money. I hope Valve fights back against these stupid rules. We need replacements to these US owned payment processors and harder regulations against payment processors that they can't just make up and insert new rules whenever they feel like it on purchases, especially if they're not breaking any law.