On the one hand, oh noz, the incest games. Who will live without the low effort AI goon crap?

On the other hand, why do the payment companies get to dictate what sales are made? It’s my fucking money, or my fucking store. It’s not the job of the payment processors to determine if I’m buying illegal goods, just that the money goes from me to the store.

Why shouldn’t the payment processors get a say in the payments they process? Illegal or not, why should they be forced to process payments that facilitate things against their beliefs?

Steam could pursue other payment processing possibilities instead of acquiescing to their demands.

Because they’re a financial institution, not an individual. They don’t have beliefs.

Arguing that corporate “beliefs” (image management) and interests take priority over societal order is ridiculous.

We regulate banks and financial institutions all the time. We regulate businesses all the time.

They should suck it up and treat businesses with legal activities and proper tax documents as just another business. Kinda like how we have laws that say that public shipping companies need to generally treat all customers the same. It’s why they don’t typically ask what’s in the box aside from questions related to operational characteristics. Porn doesn’t spontaneously ignite and threaten an aircraft, but lithium batteries can.

Arguing that corporate “beliefs” (image management) and interests take priority over societal order is ridiculous.

Good thing I’m not arguing that.

why should they be forced to process payments that facilitate things against their beliefs?

You’ll excuse me for thinking this means you think corporate beliefs are more important than the social benefits of neutral financial institutions.

To answer your question again without assuming anything about your opinion: they should be forced to process payments because they don’t have beliefs, it’s better for society if financial institutions only look at the business relevant portions of a business, and a legal obligation is perfectly sufficient to protect their business interests in reputation management. All the same reasons we don’t let shipping companies refuse customers for morality reasons.