I'd love Valve to spend their extra billions on opening a payment processor. Fuck the big 3.

Fiat currency is the problem

Honestly, wouldn't be surprised, they have spent god knows how much to push linux to unshackle themselves from Windows and Microsoft

All of those titles make me really worried about Redemption of Li Wei...

I live miles and/or kilometers away from the three business that accept either of those

Does DAI count?

The Drip Card from Valve incoming!

It really isn't, in this case. The issue is not the currency being used for the transactions, but rather two companies having a duopoly on processing those transactions that allow them to dictate terms to other people on how they can legally use their money. If there were two similar points of failure in processing cryptocurrency transactions, they would be just as vulnerable to having whoever occupied those two spots throwing their weight around. Sure, I suppose in that situation, companies could take payments to a new wallet easier than they could open new business accounts, and bypass the restrictions temporarily, but it still wouldn't be a viable solution in the long term.

Direct link: Mastercard rule 5.12.7 Illegal or Brand-damaging Transactions

Tweet of their attempt to deny responsibility: great opportunity to wreck their brand.

So that's kind of missing the point. First as I pointed out you don't actually have to buy anything to see the explicit preview images, so Steam is arguably in violation of those laws. Secondly the issue is that the Visa and Mastercard contracts require companies to be in compliance with local laws. It doesn't matter whether someone is using a Visa or Mastercard to make the actual payment if the purchase would technically be considered illegal (which it arguably could be in some states/countries under the new super strict porn laws).

At the end of the day this boils down to a) terms of the Visa/Mastercard contracts, and possibly b) new anti-porn laws that are putting an onerous burden on services to collect customers IDs in order to prove age. This isn't a question of common sense, in contract law (and law in general) it's about the letter of it and not so much the spirit. Yes, it stands to reason that if you legally own a credit card, and you must be at least 18 to own a card, then you are obviously 18 or older. However that doesn't matter at all when the laws are written such that services must validate age using a photo ID. It also does not account for stolen credit cards (never mind that that's a far more serious situation than the possibility of under age kids seeing some naughty pixels).

This whole situation is stupid and Visa and Mastercard clearly need to make some changes to their terms and conditions, but until they do from a legal standpoint businesses like Valve and Itch.io have their hands tied.

Tbf in my day the children who thought of that and followed through got caught. Statements and such.

Those who didn't get caught either stole it in magazine or VHS/DVD form straight from the store, or from an older relative, and then when internet happened, from free or pirate sites (pics at first that took forever on a 56k modem, then videos as tech progressed). Or if you were lucky someone would burn DVDs and sell them.

A game of telephone involves the message changing from each person. In this case, everyone but Visa/MC are blaming Visa/MC (valve, game stores, and collective shout).

It's more like a game of calvinball, only Calvin is claiming the rule they made up doesn't exist

Payment processing is one of those things that really should have been treated as a public utility from the start. The same way we treat water, electricity, and phone lines. But even getting the internet treated as a utility has been a losing battle thus far.

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.

Why would they? Everybody's going to keep using them anyway.

In America I think you also either literally or effectively (to compete) have to own some banks as well.

They already support local payment processing schemes such as Bancontact, iDEAL, JCB, Pix, etc. A good chunk of their international customer base already isn't dependent on the big American payment processors.

The way towards undermining Visa/MC's power is for more governments/Central Banks to push for indigenous alternatives which abide by local regulations rather than foreign puritanism. This is already a desirable goal for most both from a geopolitical POV (reduce American control over world finance) and a financial one (VISA/MasterCard charge outrageous transaction fees).

American consumers are fucked whichever way things go though, it's not like the regime is going to make a move to break up the monopoly nor to push for less censorship in media. If Valve somehow goes through with this and makes deal with all major American banks, they'll be done just in time for the Save The Children From Pedostanic Video Games Act or whatever the fuck that will force them to purge all thought crime from their platform.

They just need to adapt this!

The trick is not actually buying anything.

Just using it for an id verification.

On a site that actually doesn't cost anything.

It could be done, over a 56k modem, guess how I know?

I'd never heard of this before. I hope Liberapay adds support for it. I don't think all itch.io developers would be interested. I'm not sure it quite solves all the problems that Steam has with getting payments to game publishers.

Quite interesting; thanks for the link!