Steam Users Rally Behind Anti-Censorship Petition

We knew in the aughts that this was going to be an issue when the charging companies defunded Wikileaks and Julian Assange¹ and were allowed to do so, defying public accommodations laws.

1. Yes, Assange is a git and a Russian asset (or at least has been before) but he did serve as a whistleblower against evil shit done by Bush and Obama administrations and the general aristocratic corruption at play in US federal politics. As with Chelsea Manning, he embarrassed politicians using their positions of power inappropriately, revealing that the state was not serving the public. Incidentally, ACLU in its early years was funded by USSR to cause trouble against the US state (which it was doing anyway and still does), which makes it historically (and debatably) a Soviet asset. Strange bedfellows and all that.

This is a tale that keeps repeating itself, and is why protections by the fourth, fifth, and sixth amendments of the Constitution of the United States have been carved out like a holiday turkey by the US Supreme Court. We found it easy to deny unreasonable search and seizure protections from major crimes suspects, only to find that every black citizen with a gram of cannabis now no longer has those protections.

So it is with monopolies that decide they can be selective with their accommodations.

If we can't pressure the transaction services to obey public accommodation rules since they have monopolistic power, it may be time to circumvent the issue, and support black market tactics ( Archie comic and bag of sawdust, $20, comes with free incest porn! )

These days, when discussing the usenet alt.* heirarchy, its acronym ( Anarchists, Lunatics, and Terrorists ) is now considered a backronym, a joke. I was there, and it belied a serious point: The worst of us deserve free speech, as per Larry Flynt, knowing that Hustler magazine is legally published in all its (raunchy) glory means that whatever you're releasing to the public is safe from moral guardians and critics because they have worse stuff to shout at.

But we're in an era of book burning, which means those would-be moral guardians are emboldened to try to reshape society in their image, in contrast to the principles of liberty and free thought. And soon ICE will expand its POI list to include liberals and wrongthinkers.

It may be time for bricks in windows and direct action against high-ranking company officials, but such behaviors carry high risks of consequences. So be careful and thorough.

In the meantime, write petitions of your grievances and sign those others have written. And remind them at this moment the public presumes petitioning them for redress of grievances will be acknowledged and acted upon. And if that turns out not to be the case, the outraged public will not simply disappear and keep to its place.

IANAL - Can credit card companies coordinate like this? This seems like price fixing but the other way around. Like one company wouldn't do this alone cause it would drive customers away so they agree to do it together. Does that coordinated monopolistic behavior have president?

Petitions like this are meaningless unless they come with a viable solution to the duopoly in payment processing that is Visa and Mastercard.

It doesn't matter what Valve agrees with, if they want to survive as a business they have to ultimately do what the only 2 companies that handle the payment processing tells them to do.

Valve is a big enough company that they could conceivably start their own payment provider to bypass this.
- Come on, Gabe. You know you wanna.
Consumers punting the accountability and responsibility of their demise to the next generation of consumers. I hate how feeble and weak willed we are all as a species.
- we have been like this lately, but humans are definitely not weak willed or feeble at all.
  shit, the right wing nuts are killing themselves over their beliefs rn.

So, I wanted to see if I could find a list of games that were removed. I found this https://steam-tracker.com/ which is not specific to this event, but useful to keep track.

I completely understand wanting to fight Visa and MasterCards position in the market. That's fine.

But for the love of God. Do not involve Steam and various porn games into it. That is not going to help your case.

I get the whole. "Just because I'm killing someone in a game, doesn't mean I'll kill someone in real life".

But that's not going to hold up as an argument here. Depictions of CP, even if it's a drawing with crayons, is still highly illegal in so many places. Same logic can be applied regarding other depictions of illegal behavior in the same category (pornogrophy). Such as incest. I'm not saying that depictions of incest is illegal in many places. Because I honestly don't know. But there would be a precedence for it.

Personally, I find it utterly disgusting that Steam even allowed such titles to begin with. I welcome their removal of them. But I wish it was because of other reasons than payment processors having an issue with it.

That's the problem.
Valve already had a process to flag titles as illegal in specific jurisdictions, and as far as anyone can tell, was doing an okay job at that (not perfect, obviously), but they were forced to add an extra clause of, 'oh, plus anything visa et al. don't like' the extra layer is adding minimal protection and is rife for abuse.
Additionally, let's talk about what makes porn. Does "https://yakuza.fandom.com/wiki/Be_My_Baby" of Yakuza 2 count? Or does it get a free pass because it's a large publisher?
What if players take the elements of the game to create something the developers didn't prevent? Like if a map contains a baby on one side of a map and an orgy (in another office) on the other side of the map, is it CP if a player picks up the baby and brings it into the orgy room? Is this something you want the banks deciding? Couldn't we - have therapists or other behavioral health development experts make this call?
Most importantly is the recorded history of how these systems are routinely shown to be used against smaller publishers, and assorted minorities (including LGBT people) have a woman show a boob, it's polite adult fun, but if their twin brother shows a pre-op trans boob, now it's magically porn.
- What if players take the elements of the game to create something the developers didn’t prevent? Like if a map contains a baby on one side of a map and an orgy (in another office) on the other side of the map, is it CP if a player picks up the baby and brings it into the orgy room? Is this something you want the banks deciding?
  I said I wish removal of titles would be because of other reasons than payment processors having an issue with it. So to be clear. The answer to your question of if it should be up to banks to decide, is "No".
  Additionally, let’s talk about what makes porn. Does “https://yakuza.fandom.com/wiki/Be_My_Baby%E2%80%9D of Yakuza 2 count? Or does it get a free pass because it’s a large publisher?
  We don't need to talk about what makes porn. Though it may have been unclear, the titles I spoke of, was the ones Steam removed after PayPal wasn't authorizing payments. The "Incest porn games". I don't know what the law says where you live. But in my part of the world. Incest is illegal. And I do not think games where incest is the goal and depicted as a fetish have any place on steam.
  It's ok if you want incest games on steam. That's your opinion. I just said I welcome their removal. But wish they would have been removed due to other reasons.

We want our pron and we want it now!

What is a gooner that cannot goon? This is murder.
Give me the whole tiddy or give me death

The article is saying the petition is targeting steam, but the actual linked petition is addressing credit card companies. The text of the petition doesn't mention steam or valve. I don't know what the author of the article thinks is happening here, and they've explained it very badly.

As of July 16, Steam's new guidelines state that game publishers should avoid releasing titles that may violate the terms and conditions of its payment processors. In other words, the storefront is asking creators to not only follow the platform's rules but also submit to potential oversight from companies like MasterCard, Visa, and PayPal.
and from the petition
MasterCard and Visa have increasingly used their financial control to pressure platforms into censoring legal fictional content
Steam is enforcing MasterCard's, Visa's, and PayPal's policies. From Steam's Rules and Policies:
What you shouldn’t publish on Steam: ... 15. 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.
Point number 15 was not there in a Snapshot from February on the wayback machine. If anything, the solution should just be to remove the payment method for those games (which would still hurt the creators substantially).
There is a line that is confusing:
In response to this censorship, some fans have launched a petition on Change.org urging Valve to revert its policies
There may be petitions about reverting Valve's policy, but it's not the main petition against Visa and MasterCard (which is the one they linked).
- So yeah, being mad at Valve is stupid, people need to be mad st MC and Visa and probably also PayPal.
  Being mad at Valve is shooting the messenger.
  Fortunately the petition is at least correctly aimed at the payment processors.
  But also...
  If MC and Visa won't budge on their positions, well, if Valve then makes an alt payment system for adult only games...
  MC and Visa go, oh, hey, you're violating our guidelines, we no longer support Valve/Steam, now no one can buy any game.
  This is a MAD situation, Valve would have to come up with a comprehensive payment processing system for everything, in secret, and then deploy it all at once.

How to use Debit or e-transfer to pay for Steam games?

Hell, you can buy with cash. Walk to a local big box store and buy a steam wallet/gift card. That is assuming you live somewhere that has that option, of course.
Unless I'm mistaken, I thought Debit is usually through visa or MasterCard, for security.
Unless you mean like... A direct line to your bank account. Which is extremely risky.
- Online, usually. Though you can technically use debit in some places.
- In Canada, it can be done through Interac.

CC companies have a really easy retort in that they operate in jurisdictions where these things are illegal

And the easy retort to that is that they don’t apply Chinese censorship globally. Only in China. Regional laws only apply regionally.
- They have regional pricing already, regional content bans should be easy enough.

Valve please fix

*Develops an open online payment system that isn't a scam.
- I keep seeing this suggested and while I think that would be amazing I really don't think its likely. These incumbents are set up to make things difficult for new entrants to their market. With political will and engagement it would be possible, but in the current world political environment these payment processors would simply buy the right politicians & court officials to ensure that any legislative challenges would be killed in the nest.
  In the world we are in right now we need to instead focus on making the payment processors bend to the will of the majority not a vocal minority.
  We also need to start finding strategies to fight back against paedophilia as an accepted permission slip to let the worst people in the world get away with whatever they want. If its not a disqualifying status for the office of president of the US, then why does the existence of paedophiles mean we (vast majority not paedophiles I hope) have to sacrifice our rights, our privacy, and our free speech?

I wish it was feasible to hve a large scale boycott of visa and mastercard. american express is already useless so it wouldn't help much to include it...

Or a decentralized alternative that isn't just used to scam people, that doesn't eat up insane amounts of electricity to process, and is as convenient as regular money.
In reality, private corporations should not have control over money at all. Money is printed by the local government and should be controlled by the local government. Governments generally have better free speech protections than private corporations, which have none. Obviously, free speech protections are not universal, but countries can already ban content in other ways.
- Money is not printed by the local government at all. Money is created by private banks through extending credit. And it shouldn't be controlled by the government either, that's a terrible idea.
  I agree with the rest though.

Petition: https://www.change.org/p/tell-mastercard-visa-activist-groups-stop-controlling-what-we-can-watch-read-or-play

Signed, thanks for the link <3

After reading the article on gamerant.com, the many comments on here and looking at the petition, I really wonder if actually so many people are delusional and/or are just missing the core point here?! (Or it is just a small crowd with much noise?) IMHO, there are better places in the world to engage and petition for. (Local communities and regional politics, for example.) But if banning that little "funny" child incest game on Steam puts you up the tree, well, ...

Are you really that offended? And why, on point? How in the world can you defend publishing (and selling) games - mostly targeted at young folks - which are quite disturbing, derangend and morally wrong in the name of "freedom" or "independence"? And call that blatantly censorship, when there are instead public guidelines by Steam and their partners? Don´t you wish for (young) people to develop good values instead of becoming delusional with child pornography, incest, violence, gore and such? What are your values here?

Don´t you wish for (young) people to develop good values...
Sounds like a fucking dog whistle for sure. Get off lemmy.
- "Dog whistle"? Like for right wing talk? That is not what I am or what I mean. What is wrong about developing values? Being supportive to people is one value or finding moral standards, for example. That's what I talk about.
It isn't about the actual games being targeted. It's everything about the implications of having a private company dictate what legal content I can buy with my own money. If they cave to lobby groups once, they will do it again. Next time it might be something you care about instead.
Also games made for adults are targeted at adults, not "young people". You can't even really see these games on steam unless you are an adult and explicitly turn on visibility of porn games. The average gamer is well up in their thirties at this point as well.
- Alright, I understand your point. But I only partially agree with it. Hear me out: You want a free marketplace to buy whatever you wish, without any dictations? - But any market or shops you can think of has some regulations and dependencies, right? The one who offers the platform dictates what and how it is traded, as far as it has been. And even more if banks or transaction processors are involved, who also have a say. Not ideal, I agree, but the norm. How do you want to technically solve this? By their own transaction service, like some suggest here? Not sure if that helps, because you might create a new monopoly.
  And at the same time, we discuss this here, people demand transparency and environmently responsability for all the delivery chains. Like for clothing or food. - Is that not what happens here? The banks as part of the service chain are pushing Valve to implement stricter rulings about critical content. For me, that looks like what people would ask for. Correct me, if I am wrong.
It's about the danger posed by a monolithic government or corporation deciding what things get to be traded and sold. Like a fucked up capitalist version of that poem "First They Came".
- Oh, interesting! I know the poem. But I find it a harsh comparison to the situation about Valve's new regulation. And I did not see it as such a highly-charged political topic. But apparently it is. To me it does not look like "a monolitic corporation", as you can still buy games elsewhere. But I surely see the influence that the big banks/transactors have on Valve here. - But how would you limit this? Any technical solutions? On the other hand, if Valve would have implemented stricter rules for critical games themselves earlier, we would not have that problem/discussion now. (Please also see my other answer below.) Edit: Typo
An ml account wanting to have private companies decide what people are able to see and what not.
Guess you just want to live in an authoritarian world no matter who's ruling
- What does my account origin has to do with that? Please explain. No, I don't want to live in an authoritarian world. But I appreciate businesses following certain moral standards, like banning child porn in every aspect.

"Hi there, would you like to sign the petition?"