Everyone I know personally still loves steam. We hate more than a few banks and strongly dislike the visa/mastercard duopoly but steam is great. Guessing the game drought is causing some news publications to reach for a story.
trenchpilgrim · 1h ago
It's more than love - I have friends who will actively refuse to buy games on other stores, even for significantly better prices.
(To be fair - I think some stores like the Epic Games store actively make playing games on them worse, e.g. I played Alan Wake 2 through Epic and the achievements notifications were massively distracting, ruining many scary and dramatic moments, and they turn themselves back on every time you launch the game...)
jjice · 1h ago
I bought a game on Epic over Steam for the better price once and I'll never do it again. Steam is just too good of a platform and Epic has a lot to work out. Valve has also earned my trust way more than Epic has. Epic comes off as a company of the people sometimes when they drop a suit against Apple or something, but they're exactly the same when it suits them (like their dark patterns for in-game purchases).
There have been timed exclusives on Epic that I just waited out, partially out of spite, and mostly because I just wouldn't want to own the game on something that wasn't Steam.
bsimpson · 44m ago
Epic is scummy as hell.
They try to play folk hero when it suits them, but someone who actually cared about individual well-being wouldn't lock Linux players out of their flagship games, or use dark patterns like artificial scarcity to get people to spend more time/money in their ecosystem.
rkomorn · 42m ago
Agreed.
Epic the past couple of years has been a great example of the "a broken clock is correct twice a day" idiom, at best.
dizlexic · 1h ago
I'm one of those. I have a few reasons. Initially it was just wanting to keep things in one place as much as possible, but as a Linux guy it's morphed into fierce platform loyalty as a way to support Linux gaming.
tracker1 · 23m ago
I think it's entirely fair though. Valve has put a lot of its money where its mouth is on this. I get that it started as a hegemony against Windows' store, but it's been great for the Linux community as a whole. By some metrics, desktop Linux is sitting around 6%, and I think that Valve is almost solely responsible (along with all wine devs) for at least a full 1% of that.
It's started to even draw a lot of attention from more general gaming and pc streamers. So many videos of different streamers trying Bazzite lately.
Next year might actually see a tipping point where there can be real pressure to gain support from the likes of Adobe. I expect MS might make some offline version or Office 365 + Electron at some point soon as well.
freedomben · 6m ago
Same (excepting GOG, where I buy the game if they have it, but they usually don't). I'm so grateful to Steam for working on Linux that I actually feel good about buying games knowing it's a vote for Linux.
It definitely helps that it works (almost) flawlessly. If it stopped working well, I would stop using them, but with the current status quo it's a rare example of a company I transact with that I actually feel good about
TulliusCicero · 1h ago
Steam is just way better than other stores, because it's not just a store, it's got a bajillion features besides.
And now that I have a Steam Deck, this difference is even more stark.
creaturemachine · 50m ago
Funny how we got here. Anyone with a 20 year badge remembers the hatred in the community over being forced to use it.
thewebguyd · 19m ago
People have now been successfully conditioned to not own anything.
Steam came out in 2003, in an era where PC gaming was still very much - go to the store and buy a physical CD. You owned the game.
I still feel uneasy about it, but Steam is the least evil (outside of GOG, but much smaller catalog). But our options for actually owning digital content have all evaporated, unless you sail the high seas.
The next evolution in our journey to non ownership will be game streaming, if latency can be solved to take the non-ownership a step further. We are halfway there with even single player games now requiring an always-on internet connection.
I miss the days of offline and physical media.
ecshafer · 34m ago
I love steam. A big part of my complaints 20 years ago was that I barely ran these games in the first place! Nowadays computers are a lot more powerful compared to games.
Proliferation of credit cards, increased internet stability/speed, and more powerful computers have taken the warts away. Steam has also repeatedly shown to be on the side of the consumer, and also very offline friendly.
HolyLampshade · 15m ago
I completely agree with you. 21 years ago when it was released it was simply “yet another competitor” to the sort of overlay systems that gamespy and the like were trying to implement. You installed it because Half-Life 2 (and the litany of mods that became empires into themselves) required it, but it took years for it to develop in a direction that pointed to where we are now.
The first time I did a rebuild and now no longer needed the installation media for games, or the license keys in the manual/game jacket, and I was fully sold.
I don’t fully grasp the hatred, because almost every aspect of it is a vast improvement over what existed 20 years ago. But fortunately there are alternatives.
trenchpilgrim · 46m ago
Haha, remember when it was "the weird tray app for playing Counter Strike"?
lupusreal · 21m ago
I remember that when HL2 came out. At that time I think it was fully justified hate of what was essentially DRM bloatware, not yet tempered by many years of Valve/Steam earning a good reputation for doing things right.
kalaksi · 1h ago
That's basically me. While Steam can always be improved (and has been), it has worked well and to me looks better than the alternatives. Additionally, I trust Valve and value it's products. So I don't mind paying more and it's also very convenient to use just Steam and not worry about anything else.
BolexNOLA · 33m ago
I know this is far from a hot take, but I really think people need to be more weary of what will happen with Valve once Gabe passes. No amount of profitability seems to stop people from demanding more even at the cost of longterm viability.
Imagine a world where a PE firm gets its hands on valve
tracker1 · 20m ago
Kind of a terrifying thought... Not familiar enough with Valve/Steam's corporate structure to know if they have a governance model in their founding documents to help prevent this.
arprocter · 57m ago
Funny you mentioned Epic - I bought something there and played it for a while, until one day it just...refused to load
Ended up in a loop of support asking for logs ad infinitum, while ignoring the fact that when I installed the client and game on a separate computer it crashed at the same point. Chalked it up to experience and just decided to not give them any more of my money
Insanity · 58m ago
I'm included in that. Steam is great, I've been using it for 21 years, and I don't need/want another launcher.
Occasionally I was forced into using others, when a game only released on Epic / Origin / Battle.net. But they all felt worse than Steam. So given a choice for the game, I'll buy it on Steam even at a higher price.
J_Shelby_J · 19m ago
It’s because steam is 100% an aberration in our modern world. The closest comparison is, maybe, Costco?
And we who are dependent on steam know how bad things would be if steam wasn’t this unicorn. Gaben is the rare feudal lord whose people show up to battle out because they know it’s good for them. All he had to do was not abuse his monopoly for the past 25 years, as the meme goes.
transcriptase · 4m ago
The “do nothing and win” strategy has served Valve well. The fact is every publisher wants their own launcher on start-up running all the time collecting data, updating all the time, throwing popups at the user.
The user on the other hand doesn’t want 8 different bloated game launchers slowing startup, siphoning bandwidth, constantly updating, using a bunch of memory, and each using 1-2% of CPU at idle doing who knows what.
darth_avocado · 23m ago
Lord Gaben has almost a cult like following, so any missteps are going to be ignored. Steam is objectively great compared to other stores so it will barely see a problem. If the fact that children are gambling skins on the platform barely affects them, an issue they are in full control of, I doubt this controversy where they were pressured externally will cause any long lasting damage to them.
immibis · 47m ago
For desktop gaming, GOG should be prioritized above Steam.
mnahkies · 39m ago
+1 - I used GOG for the first time the other week to get a copy of Morrowind so I could see how https://openmw.org/ was these days, and it was a really good experience.
I did have to use some obscure tool to extract it being on Linux but it's nice to know I won't have to purchase another copy again. There's a number of games I've had to repeat purchase (mostly from disk to digital), and with modding the forced auto updates on steam can also be a pain
maverwa · 36m ago
As someone who’s using steam daily for probably 50-75% of their lifetime now: I don’t love them, but it’s the lesser evil for sure.
Sure, if GOG had even 20% of steams catalog and useability, it be no. 1 without question. But since we‘re sadly limited to this one reality, there is no alternative.
XBOX GamePass is a trap I expect to spring every day, Uplay and EA Origin are just a splash screen I see when starting a game in steam, and I almost forgot the epic store exists, despite their “free game”
Marketing campaign.
It’s not perfect, it’s anti-consumer way to often, and it’s for sure a monopoly’s, but steam is still my favorite poison
And yes, if they decide to disable me account and cut me off my pile of shame I will have an impact.
But owning games does not seem to be an option generally. Exceptions exist, ofc.
lupusreal · 24m ago
GOG is great but I'd like them even more if they did some of the wine/proton work that Steam does for Linux users. For the dosbox games at least it's not much to do (for them nor for myself to be fair.)
Steam is simultaneously hard to like, as a DRM service, but also hard to dislike as they put so much care into getting games running on Linux and have a very reasonable return policy, full refunds for the game not working makes it easy for Linux users especially.
maverwa · 11m ago
I won’t complain about anyone investing into wine/proton. GOG/CDPR just seem less willing or less capable of spending that money.
Valve is essentially printing money. From sales, but also from other, morally less likeable sources like gambling. It’s nice to see them spending at least a tiny part of this in ways that serve the greater good (besides their own business).
Same point: it’s not good, but that’s reality for you.
bob1029 · 1h ago
The customer side of Steam is great but I think their partner program is even more impressive.
The quality of support I've received as a developer on Steam makes Apple's App Store ecosystem look like joke.
nyeah · 46m ago
Yes we all pray to Gaben that this crisis will pass. I am honored to pay more in His name.
TheCraiggers · 1h ago
> Guessing the game drought is causing some news publications to reach for a story.
Curious. You don't think that this slippery slope we're on is worth reporting on?
ectospheno · 1h ago
Yes I do. Already discussed. This article adds nothing.
Steam is great at turning a blind eye to underage gambling
godelski · 15m ago
Interestingly Valve makes the most money per head compared to any other company. At $19m/head it's magnitudes above Meta and the average salary is $1.4m[0]!
I'm not trying to disparage steam, I actually really like them[1]. I'm pointing it out because it's a business strategy we don't see that often: loyalty. I mean what other billionaire do you know where there's tons of memes of but is also overwhelmingly seen in a positive light? Sure, he doesn't have Elon money but dude has $10bn, I don't think another $290bn is really going to make a big difference in his life[2]. He has way less controversy than Elon had even before all the political stuff. Steam is like Costco, except Gabe is a billionaire.
What I'm trying to say is that you can become a billionaire by building a quality product and through customer loyalty. These things don't have to be mutually exclusive. You can be fucking rich, your employees can be fucking rich, you can build a useful, AND a beloved product. In a time where we live in a Lemon Economy, where it is all about making the s̶h̶i̶t̶t̶i̶e̶s̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶u̶s̶e̶r̶s̶ ̶w̶i̶l̶l̶ ̶b̶u̶y̶ minimum viable product, where we rush for the newest feature and loudest bells and whistles (regardless of if they actually work), Steam stands out.
[1] Like another user pointed out, they won be over with Linux gaming. I've had a great experience with them, even from the early days. You could tell through github issues they cared. They wouldn't just dismiss things like "oh, we don't support that distro" and actually just figure out what's going on (because your distro doesn't actually matter). They were clearly nerds themselves and nerds that cared.
[2] You just can't spend that kind of money. Fucking MacKenzie Scott is trying to give her wealth away as fast as possible, has already given away half her wealth, but she has the same net worth as when she divorced Bezos. Compound interest is a crazy thing.
[3] P.S. Fuck Visa and Mastercard. Unless my transaction is illegal, you better fucking process it. Anything short of that is holding my own money hostage. That is fucking theft. You created the duopoly. Don't get greedy or you'll lose it.
pjmlp · 1h ago
I never installed, nor plan to.
OS specific stores, consoles, and retrogaming already have more games than I am able to play the rest of my life.
If they were like Loki in the Linux gamming efforts, I would be willing to kind of sponsor it, for Proton I already have Windows at home.
Sohcahtoa82 · 25m ago
> OS specific stores
Other than my phone, I would never purchase software from an OS-specific store. Why would you ever choose to do that?
babypuncher · 37m ago
Valve/Steam is the reason gaming on Linux is even viable today
pvtmert · 32m ago
Which is why de-monopolization of critical infrastructure such as payments is important for sovereignty.
Also which is why, I am happy to see V-pay and SEPA transfers in EU. Especially SEPA-direct transfers, allowing you to be free of CC-processing fees completely as they have been regulated to be free quite well...
adolph · 20m ago
If you don't like CC gatekeeping, you really won't like being dropped from your bank due to suspicious transactions. Financial institutions of various capacities are downstream from their chartering polities which seem very interested in holding sovereignty of geography over individuality.
intalentive · 1h ago
The monetary system is a public good and should be treated like one, with transparent upfront rules not arbitrary action that takes people by surprise.
Ekaros · 58m ago
I can understand banning bad actors that successfully or unsuccessfully perform fraud and other such direct acts against payment processors or merchants.
For pretty much anything else, nope only courts in jurisdiction should be able to act... If even then.
nimbius · 1h ago
If valve can escape the Microsoft store, it can handle a few payment processors.
what would happen if Valve accepted Cryptocurrency?
in turn, what might happen if valve decided to become a cryptocurrency exchange exclusive to the gaming community?
EDIT: another solution is to use a load-wallet based system to shroud transactions from your financial nanny. money in, money out, no explicit evidence of a purchase.
elenchev · 1h ago
Steam used to accept BTC payments in 2016 but they didn't want to deal with the probabilistic finality of bitcoin so they quickly removed the btc option. previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30478262
ipaddr · 1h ago
In 2016 this wasn't a solved problem but today it is
rxyz · 1h ago
I think Valve will not accept crypto unless they run out of options. They don't accept any games that use NFT's on their platform and haven't added crypto top-ups to this day, even though it would be simple for them via providers like Stripe
fishgoesblub · 1h ago
Steam used to support Bitcoin to add money to your Steam account. To my knowledge, they removed it due to issues with fees and other stuff.
lenerdenator · 52m ago
Load-wallet would probably be better.
Crypto is almost as bad as handing over your ID to see "adult" materials, because both require you to trust two parties (government ID stores and the general crypto community) that have shown themselves to not be trustworthy at all.
immibis · 45m ago
I'm not seeing how the "general crypto community" can be compared to a "government ID store".
_aavaa_ · 1h ago
> cryptocurrency
A technological solution to a political problem. Visa/mastercard/banks will just censor the off ramps next.
> wallet based system
What does this accomplish? The same institutions will request proof that all transactions are compliant, which will most easily handled by simply banning the content.
vlovich123 · 1h ago
Whose off ramps? Steam doesn’t need CCs for that. The more likely situation is them preventing payments through their system for Steam and Steam having to pick.
_aavaa_ · 6m ago
We were talking about steam transacting in crypto to avoid the censorship.
The people pressuring visa and Mastercard to drop porn/sex related services are not going to suddenly roll over when those services switch to crypto. They’ll simply go for the crypto off-ramps.
wokkel · 1h ago
It's a stupid situation that banks and payment processors force their ethics upon while other companies take the blame (valve in this case). They should just dommoney transfers and as long as the transfer itself is legal should not have any opinion on the parties or product involved in the transaction.
kasey_junk · 55m ago
There are 3 issues being commingled within this.
First, the networks have brand protection stipulations for any partner that uses the network. None of them want to be known as the porn brand.
Second, porn (and other similar categories) have a different risk profile than other charges. Specifically chargeback risk goes through the roof. None of the members of the network want to deal with sales of things that spike chargebacks.
Third, the federal government and some states have outsourced enforcement of some laws to the banks and payment networks. It’s easier to ban things than to do this enforcement at times.
None of this is a ethics issue and none of this is about money transfers. It’s about extending credit, and there is no technical solution around credit extension with electronic payments.
devnullbrain · 37m ago
This is not true. Here's a page from Collective Shout, the group mentioned in the article:
A puritanical activist group circumvents the law/courts and successfully pressures the handful of companies that control the vast majority of transactions to remove content they find distasteful - content that is 100% legal - but this isn’t an ethics discussion?
kasey_junk · 14m ago
It’s not an ethics issue _for the bank_. It’s purely a business decision.
Mentally modeling this as “this bank doesn’t like porn” is incorrect in ways that will cause you to make incorrect downstream inferences.
immibis · 44m ago
None of this has to be about extending credit. People are trying to buy games with money they have. Why do you say credit has to be involved?
They could try cash-by-mail, like Mullvad.
kasey_junk · 28m ago
If you are taking electronic payments you are extending credit. The rails (currently) require it.
Cash by mail would be either the merchant extending credit to the purchaser if they allowed the game download before receipt or the purchaser extending credit if not.
nilslindemann · 12m ago
Indeed, PayPal is not gone for everyone, luckily. I am from Europe and can still buy games using PayPal, just did. This makes me happy, as I am trying for over two weeks now to buy credits on Open AI, just to be able to translate texts from the FastAPI docs to German. Open AI and others do not support PayPal and not even a prepaid credit card, which my local bank sold me as "works everywhere". It is frustrating.
mcv · 59m ago
Ridiculous that a few large corporations get to decide this. The only people who have any business deciding what content is or isn't allowed on someone else's platform, are the People, or their representatives in government.
I can accept that some content goes too far and might have to be banned according to some people, but the only groups who should have the actual power to do that, should be the owner of the platform, the users of the platform, and the government, and definitely not some third party that might have completely different interests.
The only reason this is possible at all is that some of these payment providers are nearly monopolists. People should have about a dozen payment options to avoid this. Fortunately I do; Steam supports iDeal, which is not controlled by any payment provider. It just goes straight to my bank. If my bank were to try to ban certain types of legitimate payment, customers could simply switch to a different bank to avoid the ban.
The only kinds of payment that payment providers should ban, are those involving financial crimes, like money laundering, fraud and corruption.
randoomed · 46m ago
i hope that situation (with iDeal) will soon apply to the entirety of europe.
Wero rolling out this system to all countries in the EU.
meroes · 42m ago
Piracy gained two more pluses in the past few weeks: no age verification and no payment blockage.
abcd_f · 1h ago
It bears repeating -
While all games delisted at MC/Visa demands were from the rape and/or incest nsfw genre (and that should've not been on Steam to begin with), it still set a dangerous precedent as the game selection criteria was ultimately subjective. Relatable, but subjective. Next time it will again be subjective, but not as clear cut, yet the precedent will already be in place.
lozenge · 1h ago
When are they going to remove the murder genre? Including the game where you can murder a prostitute to get your payment back... it's very obscure, you might not have heard of it... it's called GTA V.
baobabKoodaa · 32m ago
Americans seem to think murder is A-OKAY (as long as you don't murder an unborn fetus, or show a nipple while murdering).
lesuorac · 24m ago
Well yeah.
It's a video game, nobody actually dies.
If you show a nipple, somebody actually sees a nipple.
johncessna · 1h ago
Why shouldn't they have been on steam? There are plenty of movies we can all go buy/rent/watch on amazon right now that have that content.
kelseyfrog · 1h ago
There are better arguments to make than this one.
Every law, order, rule, and regulation is captured by this argument. It needs to provide a scissor to be meaningful.
abcd_f · 1h ago
Point being that even though this time the takedown targets were reasonable, the next time they might not be, but the mechanism will be already in place.
vlovich123 · 1h ago
Reasonable by your standard. As others noted not necessarily reasonable by theirs, especially when you contrast it with other games that remain available. It also flies in the face of research that shows that games probably prevent those fantasies from taking place in the real world which seems preferable.
huhtenberg · 22m ago
> research that shows ...
Hit us with the source. Would love to see the methodology used in it.
otikik · 30m ago
They are probably drying their tears with stacks of 1000 bucks
(To be fair - I think some stores like the Epic Games store actively make playing games on them worse, e.g. I played Alan Wake 2 through Epic and the achievements notifications were massively distracting, ruining many scary and dramatic moments, and they turn themselves back on every time you launch the game...)
There have been timed exclusives on Epic that I just waited out, partially out of spite, and mostly because I just wouldn't want to own the game on something that wasn't Steam.
They try to play folk hero when it suits them, but someone who actually cared about individual well-being wouldn't lock Linux players out of their flagship games, or use dark patterns like artificial scarcity to get people to spend more time/money in their ecosystem.
Epic the past couple of years has been a great example of the "a broken clock is correct twice a day" idiom, at best.
It's started to even draw a lot of attention from more general gaming and pc streamers. So many videos of different streamers trying Bazzite lately.
Next year might actually see a tipping point where there can be real pressure to gain support from the likes of Adobe. I expect MS might make some offline version or Office 365 + Electron at some point soon as well.
It definitely helps that it works (almost) flawlessly. If it stopped working well, I would stop using them, but with the current status quo it's a rare example of a company I transact with that I actually feel good about
And now that I have a Steam Deck, this difference is even more stark.
Steam came out in 2003, in an era where PC gaming was still very much - go to the store and buy a physical CD. You owned the game.
I still feel uneasy about it, but Steam is the least evil (outside of GOG, but much smaller catalog). But our options for actually owning digital content have all evaporated, unless you sail the high seas.
The next evolution in our journey to non ownership will be game streaming, if latency can be solved to take the non-ownership a step further. We are halfway there with even single player games now requiring an always-on internet connection.
I miss the days of offline and physical media.
Proliferation of credit cards, increased internet stability/speed, and more powerful computers have taken the warts away. Steam has also repeatedly shown to be on the side of the consumer, and also very offline friendly.
The first time I did a rebuild and now no longer needed the installation media for games, or the license keys in the manual/game jacket, and I was fully sold.
I don’t fully grasp the hatred, because almost every aspect of it is a vast improvement over what existed 20 years ago. But fortunately there are alternatives.
Imagine a world where a PE firm gets its hands on valve
Ended up in a loop of support asking for logs ad infinitum, while ignoring the fact that when I installed the client and game on a separate computer it crashed at the same point. Chalked it up to experience and just decided to not give them any more of my money
Occasionally I was forced into using others, when a game only released on Epic / Origin / Battle.net. But they all felt worse than Steam. So given a choice for the game, I'll buy it on Steam even at a higher price.
And we who are dependent on steam know how bad things would be if steam wasn’t this unicorn. Gaben is the rare feudal lord whose people show up to battle out because they know it’s good for them. All he had to do was not abuse his monopoly for the past 25 years, as the meme goes.
The user on the other hand doesn’t want 8 different bloated game launchers slowing startup, siphoning bandwidth, constantly updating, using a bunch of memory, and each using 1-2% of CPU at idle doing who knows what.
I did have to use some obscure tool to extract it being on Linux but it's nice to know I won't have to purchase another copy again. There's a number of games I've had to repeat purchase (mostly from disk to digital), and with modding the forced auto updates on steam can also be a pain
Sure, if GOG had even 20% of steams catalog and useability, it be no. 1 without question. But since we‘re sadly limited to this one reality, there is no alternative.
XBOX GamePass is a trap I expect to spring every day, Uplay and EA Origin are just a splash screen I see when starting a game in steam, and I almost forgot the epic store exists, despite their “free game” Marketing campaign.
It’s not perfect, it’s anti-consumer way to often, and it’s for sure a monopoly’s, but steam is still my favorite poison And yes, if they decide to disable me account and cut me off my pile of shame I will have an impact.
But owning games does not seem to be an option generally. Exceptions exist, ofc.
Steam is simultaneously hard to like, as a DRM service, but also hard to dislike as they put so much care into getting games running on Linux and have a very reasonable return policy, full refunds for the game not working makes it easy for Linux users especially.
Same point: it’s not good, but that’s reality for you.
The quality of support I've received as a developer on Steam makes Apple's App Store ecosystem look like joke.
Curious. You don't think that this slippery slope we're on is worth reporting on?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44713414
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44783566
I'm not trying to disparage steam, I actually really like them[1]. I'm pointing it out because it's a business strategy we don't see that often: loyalty. I mean what other billionaire do you know where there's tons of memes of but is also overwhelmingly seen in a positive light? Sure, he doesn't have Elon money but dude has $10bn, I don't think another $290bn is really going to make a big difference in his life[2]. He has way less controversy than Elon had even before all the political stuff. Steam is like Costco, except Gabe is a billionaire.
What I'm trying to say is that you can become a billionaire by building a quality product and through customer loyalty. These things don't have to be mutually exclusive. You can be fucking rich, your employees can be fucking rich, you can build a useful, AND a beloved product. In a time where we live in a Lemon Economy, where it is all about making the s̶h̶i̶t̶t̶i̶e̶s̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶u̶s̶e̶r̶s̶ ̶w̶i̶l̶l̶ ̶b̶u̶y̶ minimum viable product, where we rush for the newest feature and loudest bells and whistles (regardless of if they actually work), Steam stands out.
I want more companies like Valve/Steam.
[0] https://upptic.com/valve-structure-employment-numbers-revenu...
[1] Like another user pointed out, they won be over with Linux gaming. I've had a great experience with them, even from the early days. You could tell through github issues they cared. They wouldn't just dismiss things like "oh, we don't support that distro" and actually just figure out what's going on (because your distro doesn't actually matter). They were clearly nerds themselves and nerds that cared.
[2] You just can't spend that kind of money. Fucking MacKenzie Scott is trying to give her wealth away as fast as possible, has already given away half her wealth, but she has the same net worth as when she divorced Bezos. Compound interest is a crazy thing.
[3] P.S. Fuck Visa and Mastercard. Unless my transaction is illegal, you better fucking process it. Anything short of that is holding my own money hostage. That is fucking theft. You created the duopoly. Don't get greedy or you'll lose it.
OS specific stores, consoles, and retrogaming already have more games than I am able to play the rest of my life.
If they were like Loki in the Linux gamming efforts, I would be willing to kind of sponsor it, for Proton I already have Windows at home.
Other than my phone, I would never purchase software from an OS-specific store. Why would you ever choose to do that?
Also which is why, I am happy to see V-pay and SEPA transfers in EU. Especially SEPA-direct transfers, allowing you to be free of CC-processing fees completely as they have been regulated to be free quite well...
For pretty much anything else, nope only courts in jurisdiction should be able to act... If even then.
what would happen if Valve accepted Cryptocurrency?
in turn, what might happen if valve decided to become a cryptocurrency exchange exclusive to the gaming community?
EDIT: another solution is to use a load-wallet based system to shroud transactions from your financial nanny. money in, money out, no explicit evidence of a purchase.
Crypto is almost as bad as handing over your ID to see "adult" materials, because both require you to trust two parties (government ID stores and the general crypto community) that have shown themselves to not be trustworthy at all.
A technological solution to a political problem. Visa/mastercard/banks will just censor the off ramps next.
> wallet based system
What does this accomplish? The same institutions will request proof that all transactions are compliant, which will most easily handled by simply banning the content.
The people pressuring visa and Mastercard to drop porn/sex related services are not going to suddenly roll over when those services switch to crypto. They’ll simply go for the crypto off-ramps.
First, the networks have brand protection stipulations for any partner that uses the network. None of them want to be known as the porn brand.
Second, porn (and other similar categories) have a different risk profile than other charges. Specifically chargeback risk goes through the roof. None of the members of the network want to deal with sales of things that spike chargebacks.
Third, the federal government and some states have outsourced enforcement of some laws to the banks and payment networks. It’s easier to ban things than to do this enforcement at times.
None of this is a ethics issue and none of this is about money transfers. It’s about extending credit, and there is no technical solution around credit extension with electronic payments.
https://www.collectiveshout.org/steam_campaign_history
A puritanical activist group circumvents the law/courts and successfully pressures the handful of companies that control the vast majority of transactions to remove content they find distasteful - content that is 100% legal - but this isn’t an ethics discussion?
Mentally modeling this as “this bank doesn’t like porn” is incorrect in ways that will cause you to make incorrect downstream inferences.
They could try cash-by-mail, like Mullvad.
Cash by mail would be either the merchant extending credit to the purchaser if they allowed the game download before receipt or the purchaser extending credit if not.
I can accept that some content goes too far and might have to be banned according to some people, but the only groups who should have the actual power to do that, should be the owner of the platform, the users of the platform, and the government, and definitely not some third party that might have completely different interests.
The only reason this is possible at all is that some of these payment providers are nearly monopolists. People should have about a dozen payment options to avoid this. Fortunately I do; Steam supports iDeal, which is not controlled by any payment provider. It just goes straight to my bank. If my bank were to try to ban certain types of legitimate payment, customers could simply switch to a different bank to avoid the ban.
The only kinds of payment that payment providers should ban, are those involving financial crimes, like money laundering, fraud and corruption.
While all games delisted at MC/Visa demands were from the rape and/or incest nsfw genre (and that should've not been on Steam to begin with), it still set a dangerous precedent as the game selection criteria was ultimately subjective. Relatable, but subjective. Next time it will again be subjective, but not as clear cut, yet the precedent will already be in place.
It's a video game, nobody actually dies.
If you show a nipple, somebody actually sees a nipple.
Every law, order, rule, and regulation is captured by this argument. It needs to provide a scissor to be meaningful.
Hit us with the source. Would love to see the methodology used in it.