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Valve gets pressured by payment processors with a new rule for game devs and various adult games removed (www.gamingonlinux.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/gaming@beehaw.org
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Valve have added a new rule to the Onboarding guide for game developers, noting that payment processors get a say in what stays on Steam.

Newly added rule is:

Content that may violate the rules and standards set forth by Steam’s payment processors and related card networks and banks, or internet network providers. In particular, certain kinds of adult only content.

Diff of the new terms https://github.com/SteamDatabase/SteamworksDocumentation/commit/fddd59b5395cc3c1c74574650dbf5784612d0521

:/ payment processors strike again (slippery slope etc)

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[–] 48 points 1 year ago (18 children)

If Steam or someone went to crypto just to kick the processors out, that might be one thing that would actually make me look at crypto with something other than derision.

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  • [–] 37 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    They'd never do that, as it would severely limit their userbase. Throwing out a couple games, especially when it's ultra-niche stuff like "futanari incest" games, is the much easier and more sensible move for Valve.

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  • [–] 26 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    That was originally one of the intended purposes of cryptocurrency, or at least claimed to be. Too bad we can't have anything without needing to make it an investment engine.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Government essentially guaranteed that by classifying it as such, e.g. SEC regulating crypto

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago

    Huh? Investment people definitely didn't wait for that classification to start turning it into a speculations market. The SEC actions were largely reactive.

    My local bank's investment and wealth management bros were already all about crypto long before regulations.

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  • [–] 18 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    They accepted BTC for a while but stopped. The other comment here mentioned the transaction fees being a problem for purchases on the scale of steam game prices, but it wasn't just that. A big problem was crypto volatility and transaction processing time. They found that very often by the time a transaction cleared the value had swung enough that they were getting amounts that failed to align with the actual prices of the games people were buying.

    It's more stable now, so maybe that would be less of a problem, but I feel it highlights a big problem with crypto in general and that is that even when you do find places that accept crypto nothing is priced in crypto. It's basically always just a proxy for USD using whatever its current market value is.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Stable coins exist to counter that very problem. There's several out there that are pegged to the value of the dollar, and are mostly used as intermediaries when trading between other coins.

    USDT is one such option.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago

    I spent ages buying games on steam with Bitcoin years ago. They dropped it when transaction fees got bigger than the game cost (I don't think they ever supported crypto other than Bitcoin, and that was through a specific payment processor that took the Bitcoin and gave Valve real money).

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago

    Well yes, this was the original intent of crypto. Putting payment in the hands of the people. It's only been made terrible by tech bros and greed the same way the Internet has.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    That's what Backpage tried to do when the cc processors pulled out. The owners of Backpage were at some point charged with money laundering among many many other crimes. The years of legal battles that started in 2018 drove one of them to suicide. Would not recommend.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Backpage is very different than Valve. Backpage execs were directly involved in the pimping of minors, this were proven in court.

    I don't believe Valve execs are pimping minors through Steam.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    No, they were not directly involved and no, pimping minors was not proven in court. Money laundering and conspiracy to facilitate prostitution were the charges that stuck. In fact, prosecutors claiming they were involved in child sex trafficking caused a mistrial https://apnews.com/article/business-trials-3b1c9d3e59e90cd60764b3eb989fec80

    The point is not about what they did or didn't do, it's that if you try to go outside the system you get hammered.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago

    Its not different because in both instances it was CC companies being anti sex.

    Realpage being a "den of CSAM" was not happening at any scale the CC companies were actively worried about and it was about defunding sex workers.

    Same deal here. This is about control and puritanism.

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