I'm so confused; I thought MC and VISA were payment processors. So when I buy a game off Steam, I have two companies handling my money?

MC and VISA are the networks. They allow communication between banks, and the entire operation is packaged up by payment processors like Stripe, Square or PayPal. So you have processors, the banks on either end (perhaps two separate ones), the network operator, and additionally any extra companies that might offer additional services for the transaction, like for fraud prevention or financing.

It’s purely because steam hasn’t been able to keep my login info secure for almost a decade. I’ve changed emails, passwords, both, and yet I will always get random 2FA attempts from other places. I just don’t trust them to keep my bank info safe either.

I use Paypal and they charge my Discover (Novus network, IIRC). No MC policy issue, let me buy what I want.

So let's say you're in the market for a credit card. You can choose from:

iChar-Jit: We are ethical. We don't sell to Nazis. You (and your kids) will be safe from buying questionable products or from questionable sources.

MoneySLAM Our card is usable by anyone, for anything, anywhere. Bangladesh; In orbit around Jupiter; Russia; Sex; Drugs; Bombs.¹

1. Some products may be dangerous or unethically sourced; Please spend safely and exercise good judgement.

Assuming all other factors (interest rate, online accessibility, confused foreign sales reps etc.) are more or less equal, which card will you get?

ETA Interactive services absolutely should be more focused on equal accommodations (making sure everyone is served evenly, even if they want a gay wedding cake) than on whether or not the transactions involve questionable crap.

Though if the money exchange market is capitulating to activists, it'd be interesting to see if environmentalist causes could pressure them as well. Because fossil-fuel based products are killing the human species (and most of all the others). Stop allowing transactions for diamonds and chocolate.

If they're more hesitant about other kinds of unethical transaction then it's because the company officials think furry porn and queer content is icky, not from activist pressure.

I'm looking at this and I am just wondering... Did you also check the computers your using?

It's quite a bit easier to get in the pc of a normal user than it is to get into the computers of valve, or at least that's to hope.

I see, thank you for the explanation. I'm ashamed to say I never knew how any of this worked. I just knew it magically got me the games I wanted.

Can I still use visa or MasterCard on a dildo? And can I pay for it in cash... Dollars? Is my money accepted at the local adult bookstore?

As if they're not weaponizing private entities anyway

I kill people in GTA 5. I don't kill people in Hentai Incest Generator 3000. Yet someone prefers to see my transaction only for the first one, citing damages to "the brand".

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

Curiously, in our society, killing is less of a taboo than sex, especially in fiction.

Since the aughts, I feel it is a disservice we do to censor out the horror of warfare in games like Call of Duty or Medal of Honor. I haven't seen what they did with Six Days In Fallujah (by a vet of the Iraq War who experienced Fallujah and wanted to share his experience) but we'd have more respect for the gravity of war if the tragedy and immediacy of combat was properly expressed. In the Arma series, it's very easy to die, but it uses a similar engine used for training purposes.

It's our Christian values (more specifically, our Paulinian values -- he thought Christians should not have sex if they can abstain entirely¹ -- which has turned into taboos against sex without strict licenses, that has made our society super-prudish.

1. Paul actually also prohibited having additional children, the end being [nigh] and all. Later biblical interpreters would have to deal with the world's failure to end, and Christ's failure to return in their lifetimes.

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).

Yep, I’ve completely changed computers multiple times. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Have I Been Pwned: Check if your email address has been exposed in a data breach

Have I Been Pwned allows you to check whether your email address has been exposed in a data breach.

Have I Been Pwned (haveibeenpwned.com)

check your email addresses, then check for malware on your system.

that's definitely not normal...

Why doesn't valve simply restore games back then? Tell payment processors MC is OK with them (as evident by this statement) and tell them to come back with a reply from MC?

They are a fucking payment processor; the only brand that matters is reliability and confidency, which they damaged now.

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.

That's... Way out of left field for this post lol

Yeah I guess Collective Shout are fans, but I’m not one to judge