Payment processors pressure Valve into banning porn games with themes of incest

20 notthemessiah 7 7/16/2025, 5:53:39 PM bsky.app ↗

Comments (7)

notthemessiah · 14h ago
@steamdb.info‬:

Steam has added a new rule disallowing games that violate the rules and standards set forth by payment processors and card networks, or internet network providers.

This is possibly related to PayPal because people in certain regions have not been able to use it to pay on Steam for the past five days.

At the same time, many incest themed games were removed from the store.

PaulHoule · 13h ago
A lot of visual novels.
segmondy · 13h ago
It's not the payment processes that care, it's the underwriting banks!

It's not the underwriting banks that care, it's the investors that own shares in the banks, and the insurance company that cover those banks.

Outside of religious groups, the other owners don't want to be exposed legally or financially due to losses in high risk are strongly regulated areas like gambling, porn, etc. This is why processors say no or might start enforcing on these.

immibis · 10h ago
Does my bank give a shit about the morality of pornography? Can we look up which banks give a shit? Investors invest in actual porn companies too, so clearly it's not a valid generalization that investors hate porn.

I hear porn has a significantly higher chargeback rate. This could be compensated with higher merchant fees.

dzhiurgis · 10h ago
It's more likely because incest rhymes with CSAM.
tooka5663 · 12h ago
Good
notthemessiah · 8h ago
How are payment processors gatekeeping free speech good? You probably also thought it was good when Visa and Mastercard stopped payments to investigative journalists who were publishing classified materials.