As is tradition.

I'm done living under their boot heel

Yep they’ve always been shitty while pointing fingers at atheists for being mad about it.

This pressure is coming from the payment providers without whom no storefront can operate. We need alternatives to Visa and Mastercard.

We need a...decentralized alternative to steam.

Customer protections would suuuuuuuck if everyone was running different variations of, what is essentially, a store. Not to mention shovelware would be even more rampant.

Uh, I think it's called the World Wide Web.

I mean, I'm joking, but I do remember buying games directly from a developers website, that's a thing that used to happen.

Seems like a weekend hack to set up a fediverse-backed categorized market that, when you want to buy something- forwards to a "buy our download" link of the seller's choice. Rabid moralists would have to challenge each producer/indie developer individually to take things down.

The real crux is to build a nice user interface on top of it so people would actually use it.

In the Reddit thread about the rejected NSFW updates, Crimson Delight have only good things to say about Valve's handling of the situation. "I have to say the reviewer was kind and forthcoming, we didn't feel threatened or bullied in any way, and we got the feeling they were trying to do their best to help devs navigate the process," developer Frenzin writes. "But the fact of the matter is that Valve has payment processors breathing down their neck, and the rules keep getting stricter as time goes on."

"Valve isn't the problem here," Frenzin continues. "The big credit card companies are. If anything, Valve has stood up to them and pushed back. They could've simply nuked the 18+ section of Steam, but they didn't, they stuck up for developers. Obviously adult games make Valve money, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to the rest of Steam's catalogue. Silksong itself probably earned Valve more than most NSFW titles put together.

"Given that we're erogame devs, we're against any sort of censorship (as long as the content isn't sexualizing minors or nonconsensual in any way)," the developer comments. "But it's important to understand where the real problem lies, and it's not with Valve."

That wouldn't work. Visa and the others don't care what exactly someone buys on Steam. They're saying that Valve can't sell certain things on their store, or they will stop processing payments that go to Steam. Doesn't matter if you pay for "points" or games directly.

The only way to get around that would be to remove the option to pay with Visa, etc. from Steam entirely and only accept other forms of payment. This would include physical Steam gift cards that could then be bought with any payment option, but only as long as Visa, etc. don't start threatening stores that sell those.

Also, to your last suggestion: I don't see how that would help. Publishers and developers need to make money somehow and if that involves Visa, etc. at all we're back to square one.

That has been the plan from the start

19th of September 2025, seem fresh enough to me, and the game isn't the same. Maybe they once again changed their policy.

But the fact that it wasn't NSFW at first may have worked in their defavor, that's true.