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Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down, but Valve says payment processors 'specifically cited' a Mastercard rule about damaging the brand (www.pcgamer.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Statement: https://www.mastercard.com/us/en/news-and-trends/press/2025/august/clarifying-recent-headlines-on-gaming-content.html

Mastercard has not evaluated any game or required restrictions of any activity on game creator sites and platforms, contrary to media reports and allegations.

Our payment network follows standards based on the rule of law. Put simply, we allow all lawful purchases on our network. At the same time, we require merchants to have appropriate controls to ensure Mastercard cards cannot be used for unlawful purchases, including illegal adult content.

Media contact

Seth Eisen

seth.eisen@mastercard.com

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[–] 188 points 1 year ago (33 children)

American Payment Processors really need more competition. They can not be trusted to act in a free market sense and not drift into a chaindog for political ideas.

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  • [–] 90 points 1 year ago (9 children)

    It feels to me like payment processing has a similar function to physical currency. Like all of those security features on the bills are used to ensure the transaction is trusted.

    Point being, I've long thought that payment processors are essentially doing a job that should be done by the government.

    There are strange gaps where physical services have digital analogues but are completely ignored by the government.

    I don't understand why the treasury doesn't process payments or why the post office doesn't issue email addresses, for another example.

    Anyways, back to the point, physical currency specifically says that it is valid for all debts. If they applied the same logic to payment processing, then this would never happen.

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  • [–] 20 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    Postal banking is a thing in some places.

    I'm not sure I want the government running those services. Like a basic one, sure, but for handling credit cards and general banking services? Nah, I don't want the Trump administration having direct access to my purchases.

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  • [–] 38 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    I don't see any reason to trust the credit industry more than the government, though.

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

    The main reason is that the credit industry isn't in the business of running an intelligence service or part of law enforcement. That said, what they are connected to is almost the same as an intelligence service, that being the advertising industry, and there's literally nothing stopping them from selling or even being forced to give their data to law enforcement. The only reason it doesn't happen more I'd say is just the optics of it.

    Ultimately what's needed is a digital payment system that's at least somewhat anonymous, but that's an incredibly hard nut to crack. Bitcoin tried it, but largely failed to do so (and immediately got corrupted by speculators that wanted to use it as a forex instead of currency). A couple of the other crypto currencies that have come out since then have claimed to be better but I'm still incredibly skeptical that there's any real anonymity there.

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

    Someone above linked GNU Taler which seems to go in the right direction, but I'm not sure how mature it is yet. It specifically claims to not be a new currency, so hopefully the speculation part won't be an issue.

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

    Yes, that was me. Unfortunately much like GNU Hurd, Taler is less of a project than it is a thought experiment. It lacks a sufficient number of people pushing it to become a viable project. It exists, but as far as I'm aware it's never been used seriously in the real world outside of some proof of concept type deployments at a university. Without a champion, ideally a major business or significant public figure, it's likely to continue being far more conceptual than practical.

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

    I guess the closest we might be getting anytime soon then is the digital euro. Which is supposed to end its preparation phase soon, and, in spite of being government issued, promises to be private (not like ccs are remotely private anyway, so nothing lost at least).

    As always there's some risk of it getting changed to allow tracking later down the line, but if done correctly it could still be a big improvement over the current situation for EU citizens. If it's successful, maybe other governments will look into similar programs.

    I feel like ideally the digital euro project would work with GNU Taler since the goals seem to align, with the main difference being that the digital euro would be government backed. I don't have high hopes since governments always fuck this up somehow, but I guess in the best timeline the EU is that champion (since using the same technology even with a different currency would give some trust into the concept, so it could help with finding early adopters - likely outside of the EU since I'd imagine in that scenario the digital euro would just be preferred here)

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Yes, in a perfect world the EU would require banks to support Taler for transactions in euros and presumably also provide the necessary infrastructure for that support. Doing so would allow you to seamlessly (and transparently) convert back and forth between Taler and Euro as needs require just like is done with cheques and credit cards.

    It would honestly be the smartest play by the EU since they would avoid reinventing the wheel. That said I doubt it would happen because even at the best of times government of any type rarely makes the best decision. If you're lucky they still make a good decision, just not the best one.

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  • [–] 20 points 1 year ago (12 children)

    Would it be possible to build a FOSS alternative to all this?

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago (10 children)

    Does Bitcoin count?

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    With how volatile cryptocurrency has been in general in the last decade or so, I wouldn't bet on it.

    Crypto is ultimately a different form of money, as compared with fiat.

    What I think people in this discussion are seeking is an electronic, FOSS , secure network that can facilitate economic transactions of fiat currency.

    Of course the two don't have to be mutually exclusive

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

    Does DAI count?

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

    What's DAI?

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

    Deliberate Anal Inebriation — a.k.a. “boofing,” “plugging,” “butt chugging,” “booty bumping,” And so forth — is a popular subgenre of concert-style praise music long enjoyed by American evangelicals.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Fiat currency is the problem

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  • [–] 18 points 1 year ago*

    It really isn't, in this case. The issue is not the currency being used for the transactions, but rather two companies having a duopoly on processing those transactions that allow them to dictate terms to other people on how they can legally use their money. If there were two similar points of failure in processing cryptocurrency transactions, they would be just as vulnerable to having whoever occupied those two spots throwing their weight around. Sure, I suppose in that situation, companies could take payments to a new wallet easier than they could open new business accounts, and bypass the restrictions temporarily, but it still wouldn't be a viable solution in the long term.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Yes, it does. Pretty wild that people will proudly fly their luddite flag even in threads like these lol.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago

    Bitcoin is sadly a failed experiment and you're not a luddite for pointing out its various shortcomings. I was an early adopter back when you could get an entire coin for a buck or two, but never invested much in it and lost most of what I had when one of the early exchanges imploded.

    The concept of bitcoin was great, a decentralized currency not under the control of any government or institution, but that was still reliable and pseudo-anonymous. The execution however was beyond disappointing. It was quickly commandeered by "investors" looking to gamble on something even more volatile than forex markets and ceased being able to function as an actual currency due to the wild swings in value. In order to be a useful currency something must have a relatively stable value. Additionally scammers and criminals also gravitated to bitcoin further driving legitimate businesses away from it not wanting the guilt by association. Finally it turned out that the anonymity was even easier to break than initially thought and the tax headaches involved in buying, selling, or trading in bitcoin or any cryptocurrency make it too annoying to actually use (massively compounded by its wildly fluctuating exchange rates).

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

    Payment processing is one of those things that really should have been treated as a public utility from the start. The same way we treat water, electricity, and phone lines. But even getting the internet treated as a utility has been a losing battle thus far.

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

    I feel like it should be super easy now for smaller competitors to pop up by just offering digital credit services using tap on mobile phones. No need to manufacture and ship out plastic cards, just a digital version people keep on the phone, until they get large enough to be able to provide physical cards.

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

    The issues here are trust, security, adoption and so forth. It's not easy to start a competition here I'd say.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Well at least with phone tap there's like a limit of $200, so maybe some company can corner a niche market where they only cover small daily purchases. No $10,000 credit balances or $2000 purchases and points and whatnot, just like $1000 balance limits and max $200 on purchases through tap.

    You wouldn't need quite as much capital that way, and I bet that would eat a good chunk of business from visa and MasterCard.

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  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    It's a catch 22. You need a phenomenal amount of capital to stand up a payment network with all those criteria, but anyone with that amount of capital can't actually be trusted not to abuse their position in exactly the same way the existing banking networks have.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    Probably not just capital, also political influence and other ways I guess. But yes, it's always a problem if it's like that. If you ask me, there should be a generic independent payment backbone, where many providers could provide payments - like internet or something like that.

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