this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2025
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Steam Users Rally Behind Anti-Censorship Petition (gamerant.com)
submitted 16 hours ago by themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] SpaceScotsman@startrek.website 21 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Bazoogle@lemmy.world 2 points 38 minutes ago

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).