Minor nitpick:

It's just onus, no h. English is inconsistent.

Herb, lol.

...

But anyway... so, this has yet to go to court.

If Valve just... does their own intepretation, unbans some games, Visa and MC can just say welp you violated the partner rules, no more payments for you.

Now, Valve has to do a prolonged legal battle to prove wrongful termination of contract ... while also having their money printing machine offline.

And also, all that would do is possibly award them compensatory damages.

A court cannot compel a business transaction (an ongoing partnership) or partnership anywhere near as much as it can compel people, corporations have more rights than people.

If it could, well then we have turned the economy on its head, now judges run businesses, not CEOs.

...

Maybe there is some kind of wrongful termination / non renewal of contract clause, but:

1 - I doubt it

2 - Well you'd be having lawyers argue the validity of that anyway.

Valve and MC + Visa both currently do not want to take this to an actual lawsuit because it would be extremely costly in financial / reputational terms for each of them.

Visa and MC and Valve would all massively lose financially if their agreements fell apart, Visa and MC and Valve as well could also suffer massive reputational damage depending on how exactly the public narrative forms around the lawsuit... and lawyers are quite expensive.

Nobody actually wants to pull the trigger, because its akin to a MAD scenario with nukes.

...

That is why we are getting this weird tap unfolding basically PR war, where both sides are angling snd making essentislly veiled threats... but not actually seeming to do much beyond posturing.

This kind of shit happens all the time between corporations, its usually just that it stays internal to the involved companies, you read about it two decades later in an autobiography named 'My life as a corporate big shot' or whatever.