Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down, but Valve says payment processors 'specifically cited' a Mastercard rule about damaging the brand
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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.
Well it's Cain's fault. He did the first murder and it was bad. Adam did the first fuck and it was good.
Such is the way of the lord
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Other than that being how a huge portion of Americans access their money.
Pick a bank that use different sercives
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the end being neigh and all
And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him, and the horse said, “the end is neigh!”
(Neigh is what a horse says. The end is nigh.
)Fixed but still funny.
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Someone above linked GNU Taler which seems to go in the right direction, but I'm not sure how mature it is yet. It specifically claims to not be a new currency, so hopefully the speculation part won't be an issue.
Yes, that was me. Unfortunately much like GNU Hurd, Taler is less of a project than it is a thought experiment. It lacks a sufficient number of people pushing it to become a viable project. It exists, but as far as I'm aware it's never been used seriously in the real world outside of some proof of concept type deployments at a university. Without a champion, ideally a major business or significant public figure, it's likely to continue being far more conceptual than practical.
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Yes, that was me. Unfortunately much like GNU Hurd, Taler is less of a project than it is a thought experiment. It lacks a sufficient number of people pushing it to become a viable project. It exists, but as far as I'm aware it's never been used seriously in the real world outside of some proof of concept type deployments at a university. Without a champion, ideally a major business or significant public figure, it's likely to continue being far more conceptual than practical.
I guess the closest we might be getting anytime soon then is the digital euro. Which is supposed to end its preparation phase soon, and, in spite of being government issued, promises to be private (not like ccs are remotely private anyway, so nothing lost at least).
As always there's some risk of it getting changed to allow tracking later down the line, but if done correctly it could still be a big improvement over the current situation for EU citizens. If it's successful, maybe other governments will look into similar programs.
I feel like ideally the digital euro project would work with GNU Taler since the goals seem to align, with the main difference being that the digital euro would be government backed. I don't have high hopes since governments always fuck this up somehow, but I guess in the best timeline the EU is that champion (since using the same technology even with a different currency would give some trust into the concept, so it could help with finding early adopters - likely outside of the EU since I'd imagine in that scenario the digital euro would just be preferred here)
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Effecting the brand?? Who in their right mine would associate them with anything but payments? That's ridiculous
I associate them with religious pundites and discrimination of payments. A payment is a payment, for christ's sake! If it's illegal, report it to the relevant authorities.
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Mastercard has not evaluated any game or required restrictions of any activity on game creator sites and platforms, contrary to media reports and allegations.
Our payment network follows standards based on the rule of law. Put simply, we allow all lawful purchases on our network. At the same time, we require merchants to have appropriate controls to ensure Mastercard cards cannot be used for unlawful purchases, including illegal adult content.
Media contact
Seth Eisen
They realized that this news getting out damaged their brand worse.
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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".
Hire prostitute in GTA, kill her, get money back -
Have consensual sex with character in hentai game -
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I don’t have any credit cards saved on steam. I only use PayPal for steam purchases.
Ah yes PayPal the completely benign brand that Elon was trying to shove the fact that he registered X dot com down our throats with decades ago
e: didn't realize it would link to that shithole
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Mastercard has not evaluated any game or required restrictions of any activity on game creator sites and platforms, contrary to media reports and allegations.
Our payment network follows standards based on the rule of law. Put simply, we allow all lawful purchases on our network. At the same time, we require merchants to have appropriate controls to ensure Mastercard cards cannot be used for unlawful purchases, including illegal adult content.
Media contact
Seth Eisen
They forgot the part of their TOS about "damaging the brand".
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Mastercard has not evaluated any game or required restrictions of any activity on game creator sites and platforms, contrary to media reports and allegations.
Our payment network follows standards based on the rule of law. Put simply, we allow all lawful purchases on our network. At the same time, we require merchants to have appropriate controls to ensure Mastercard cards cannot be used for unlawful purchases, including illegal adult content.
Media contact
Seth Eisen
Can religion just die already?
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I guess the closest we might be getting anytime soon then is the digital euro. Which is supposed to end its preparation phase soon, and, in spite of being government issued, promises to be private (not like ccs are remotely private anyway, so nothing lost at least).
As always there's some risk of it getting changed to allow tracking later down the line, but if done correctly it could still be a big improvement over the current situation for EU citizens. If it's successful, maybe other governments will look into similar programs.
I feel like ideally the digital euro project would work with GNU Taler since the goals seem to align, with the main difference being that the digital euro would be government backed. I don't have high hopes since governments always fuck this up somehow, but I guess in the best timeline the EU is that champion (since using the same technology even with a different currency would give some trust into the concept, so it could help with finding early adopters - likely outside of the EU since I'd imagine in that scenario the digital euro would just be preferred here)
Yes, in a perfect world the EU would require banks to support Taler for transactions in euros and presumably also provide the necessary infrastructure for that support. Doing so would allow you to seamlessly (and transparently) convert back and forth between Taler and Euro as needs require just like is done with cheques and credit cards.
It would honestly be the smartest play by the EU since they would avoid reinventing the wheel. That said I doubt it would happen because even at the best of times government of any type rarely makes the best decision. If you're lucky they still make a good decision, just not the best one.
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More people should watch this:
The Secret War To Censor The Internet
The CC companies have religious morons contained within their executives but they're mainly being puppeted by outside religious evangelical organizations with a long history of wanting to destroy all sex work or erotica art.
It's been going on since the start of the internet pretty much. Web hosts do the same thing. though they are much more forgiving. Middlemen saying what you can and can't talk about, share, and consume online.
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both because they’re not responsible for this shit show
Nobody is forcing them to use mastercard and visa services
they could and should fight this, Amazon did and they came out on top, but that doesn't mean it isn't the payment processors fault.
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There's multiple steps to this sadly, including the payment gateway, processor, acquirer and this is before even Mastercard, VISA, Amex or other card companies come into the picture.
It's not impossible, but Valve would need to convince the card issuers that they are a valid processor and then also make deals with banks all over the world for GWs. Or they could just act like Stripe and own the full stack and bully their way through the fintech world.
Considering valve is, basically, the gateway to a billion dollar industry, they certainly have the weight to throw around and get this done, or at least to prop up a less demonic processor. It'll take time whatever they do, but i really hope they are doing something.
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They're not talking about with Steam customers though, but rather with the religious idiots who have decided to crusade against porn, feel emboldened by recent age-ID bills and are now pursuing the "MasterCard funds filth" angle.
I'm kinda wondering what the ratio of anti-porn religious knobs is you gamers. There's a lot of religious folk but many of them also enjoy porn so ...
There are less puritans than gooners, if a corpo is backing the puritans is because that corpo is ran by one of those demons.
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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?
They are, for some reason people just like to call them something else.
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Can religion just die already?
You do realise religion is just an excuse?
