Blamed for Steam games ban, Mastercard encourages censorship during Riot Games VCT livestreams
Blamed for Steam games ban, Mastercard encourages censorship during Riot Games VCT livestreams
You can't control what we jack off to, Mastercard.
I don’t think they care what you jack off to, bud. That’s a weird way to frame it.
Clearly you haven't been paying attention over the last couple of weeks because that's exactly what they're doing.
I'm in Europe and following the news of the MasterCard and Visa censorship I activelly went looking for how else could I pay for things online without using their networks, and as it turns out there are plenty of solutions supported by both Steam and GOG which I was just ignoring before because they just looked as lots of "weirdly named" unrecognized payment options.
I'm now using those in my purchases and so far they actually look more convenient than the Visa/MasterCard (for example, with iDEA which is Dutch, I can literally pay from my mobile phone banking app by just taking a picture of a QR-Code on my screen). The problem in Europe is just there being lots of local solutions and no EU-wide one yet, though I'm lucky because I have bank accounts in different countries (having lived in several countries in Europe) so I have access to many options.
Keep in mind that outside Britain, the rest of Europe have long had their own debit card withdrawal and payment networks and not relied on Visa/MasterCard (to me Britain was, frankly, weird in that it relies on mainly VISA Debit and had no local payment solution, probably explained by lack of political will in the UK for that: most such payment networks in Europe were born out of political pressure on banks to come up with a standard and sometimes were even started as state-owned companies) so a lot of these local online payment options are extensions of those existing networks, which is probably why trying come up with an single integrated cross-border payment processor has been slow going.
That said, thanks to it having been mandated at the EU level, bank transfers are nowadays fully cross-border integrated and you can transfer money between accounts anywhere in EU with the same ease and for the same cost you can for local accounts (the banks really resisted that, by the way, as it took away most of their "international transfers" profits) so we're probably not far from a single EU-wide payment processor (or at least EU-wide account support on existing solutions).
There is a EU-wide payment option.
Cries in American
If it was about money, MasterVisa would have already given up. There are people who claim that MasterVisa bent the knee to Collective Shout for the sake of money, yet when a much bigger demographic speaks, MasterVisa tries to ignore it.
This is about the power to shape society.
The fact that multi-millionaires are doing to most heinous shit with their money and getting a way with it, meanwhile me, a wage slave, has a payment processor telling me what I'm allowed to do with my money, society is built on tiers.
Gamers who care about this are a much smaller group than American regressive religious zealots.
Australian religious zealots are the ones taking credit for the steam & itch.io censorship.
Why do payment processors have the ability to control morality in our world? Easily the definition of a monopoly. Absolutely insane.
Because we, collectively as a society, gave them that power.
Clearly, that was a mistake.
i have it on good historical authority that the nazis loved mastercard
MasterCard lied? No they would never
Anyway, thanks MasterCard for introducing me to porn games a few weeks ago
There was an entire subreddit devoted to porn games but it's not made it over to Lemmy.
Maybe once I get laid off I'll start a community
Make it. I will be there.
Also, Please play "Ripples" even if you don't like Lewd Game. It's story is so good that the Lewd Scene just feels like reward
Edit: Forgot to say but it's completely free
I'm pretty sure I saw one, but maybe it was just general anime thirst trapping. There's a lot of niche abandoned communities.
You need to censor those messages accusing us of censorship!
Also, If someone was secretly negotiating on their behalf they would be asking the FBI to help arrest the impersonator, and they would probably want the publics help too!
Oh wow, it's like everyone who said MasterCard was lying to protect their image from reality turned out to be correct. Only someone with a functioning brain could have seen this coming.
Ana Valens recently resigned from Vice following an article about the censorship of games. On social media, she shared communication between Mastercard and Riot Games.
Looks like Vice can't be trusted as a reliable source of information if they're willing to fire journalists after a little outside pressure is put on them.
This also goes to an entire new level. Before it was "only" censoring digital products and events. Now it is directly censoring media outlets.
This screams for an antitrust lawsuit, if a company has this kind of power.
https://www.theverge.com/24094310/vice-media-layoffs-bankruptcy-shane-smith
they havn't been trustworthy since 2023
What about everyone buy a share of thier stock. Then sue thier board for ignoring thier fiduciary duty to the shareholders. Turning down business is bad for revenue... and the games that got removed probably made decent money all together.
Make sure its not Class B
Classic streisand effect
Man wtf can we DO about this shit? I'm planning on calling and shit but damn they don't give a fuck.
Is it too late??
Do you have to have assloads of money to file a class action suit? Like would steam or GOG or itch be down to be a part of it or is that just a pipe dream.
I am not promoting it, but I will say that this is the exact reason shit like cryptocurrency exists. Stupid overreaching shit like this.
Keep calling. Tell your friends. It's already gotten MasterCard's attention enough to make a statement.
I'm super pro crypto but it isn't a magic bullet. The companies being restricted are victims of a monopoly who will retaliate if they try alternatives. It's the same reason NFTs haven't killed Ticketmaster.
Crypto is now a fucking wall street product.
NFTs are highly regarded.
The reason you can't kill Ticketmaster is because Everyone who stands to make money benefits from Ticketmaster and the only ones to benefit from an alternative is customers.
Is it possible for us the people to do it then? How do you organize something like a class action lawsuit against a big player like that?
They JUST finished paying out the 5.5 Billion in a class action lawsuit they've already lost before so we can for sure do it again, right?
Fits the definition of the wealthy "moving their will throughout the world"
Stuff like this is going to make people mostly pay in cash and buy gift cards as needed. I already started buying most of my things in person anyway just to avoid paying for shipping. I'm seriously considering only buying steam games with gift cards I buy at the store and avoiding using my card as much as possible.
Man I just wish there were better alternatives to MasterCard and Visa.
It really boggles the mind why we have to go through private corporations to use our monetary system in the digital realm
If we had to use private corporations then there needs to be enough competition to prevent what is happening now.
Discover? Not that much better but works fine for me. Good cashback too.
I wish they weren't a duopoly. There isn't really any other options even if they would be better, just because of the marketshare hold they have.
Isn't Stripe one of the growing alternatives?
Stripe bans even more stuff https://stripe.com/en-de/legal/restricted-businesses , recently they banned payments for online dating platforms in the US.
Stripe is a payment processor. It has different payment methods it supports. Which are MasterCard and Visa. But it does also support(if you can use it and the merchant accepts it): Giro card, other card options, Revolut Pay and other options. Those avoid the MasterCard, Visa ecosystem.
Regardless, not everyone wants to use or uses Stripe. And it's a bad thing for everyone to use Stripe just because of their interoperability because that then gives stripe too much power.
Plus, for a company like Valve, the fees of Stripe would severely affect their revenue.
I remember during world's a couple of years ago, the stream chat was shouting "TY MASTERCARD" everytime their ads came up
God, imagine thanking a fucking corporation lmao
How well are Visa Debit or Mastercard Debit as an alternative for paying online?
Ah ah ah boost that shit.
Pretty pathetic that corporations are even as smart as the ferengi.
looking forward to taler becoming a thing
I'm all for it but I thought this was simply an alternative to say, apple pay or paypal