this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2025
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Updated: 8/1/2025 4:18 p.m. ET: In a statement to Kotaku, a spokesperson for Valve said that while Mastercard did not communicate with it directly, concerns did come through payment processor and banking intermediaries. They said payment processors rejected Valve’s current guidelines for moderating illegal content on Steam, citing Mastercard’s Rule 5.12.7.

“Mastercard did not communicate with Valve directly, despite our request to do so,” Valve’s statement sent over email to Kotaku reads. “Mastercard communicated with payment processors and their acquiring banks.  Payment processors communicated this with Valve, and we replied by outlining Steam’s policy since 2018 of attempting to distribute games that are legal for distribution.  Payment processors rejected this, and specifically cited Mastercard’s Rule 5.12.7 and risk to the Mastercard brand.”

Rule 5.12.7 states, “A Merchant must not submit to its Acquirer, and a Customer must not submit to the Interchange System, any Transaction that is illegal, or in the sole discretion of the Corporation, may damage the goodwill of the Corporation or reflect negatively on the Marks.”

It goes on, “The sale of a product or service, including an image, which is patently offensive and lacks serious artistic value (such as, by way of example and not limitation, images of nonconsensual sexual behavior, sexual exploitation of a minor, nonconsensual mutilation of a person or body part, and bestiality), or any other material that the Corporation deems unacceptable to sell in connection with a Mark.”

Violations of rule 5.12.7 can result in fines, audits, or companies being dropped by the payment processors.

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[–] SheeEttin@lemmy.zip 299 points 1 day ago (4 children)

"Nonconsensual mutilation of a person or body part" includes just about every fighter or shooter game. They really want to have COD delisted over this?

[–] yeahiknow3@lemmings.world 123 points 1 day ago

To be fair, that would be fucking hilarious.

[–] acosmichippo@lemmy.world 61 points 1 day ago (1 children)

you're missing some context in that.

"The sale of a product... which is patently offensive and lacks serious artistic value... (such as... images of... Nonconsensual mutilation of a person or body part"

insert joke about COD lacking artistic value, but clearly there is more to COD than just body mutilation.

[–] SPRUNT@lemmy.world 176 points 1 day ago (2 children)

"Patently offensive" and "lacks serious artistic value" are entirely subjective classifications. With those restrictions, any game with country music should be delisted.

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[–] jaybone@lemmy.zip 22 points 1 day ago

Some kid on COD said he fucked my mom and then he called me a faggot.

[–] joelfromaus@aussie.zone 20 points 22 hours ago

Unironically, COD getting delisted would probably get mainstream media coverage and legitimate outrage from people who “don’t play video games” but actually do.

[–] CocaineShrimp@sh.itjust.works 178 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I don't think they realize how much worse their brands look now, after starting all this shit...

[–] fluffykittycat@slrpnk.net 59 points 1 day ago (5 children)

I want to cancel ally visa and mastercard cards and never give them my business ever again after this

[–] Darkonion@lemmy.world 19 points 1 day ago (3 children)

This might just be my insomnia talking, but I thought a reasonable idea might be to call and reduce the available credit by however much is comfortable. For me, it would be fairly reasonable to reduce it by 50%. I assume they use some kind of magicians handshake to value their company based on how much potential credit is out there... Maybe it'd do nothing though. Anyone know?

[–] Saleh@feddit.org 38 points 1 day ago (6 children)

You guys use them for actual credit? To me it seems that in Europe they are mostly used as a debit card directly charging your account, but compatible with the global payment processing of them.

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[–] couch1potato@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 points 1 day ago

This will do nothing except hurt your own credit score as your credit utilization will be higher

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[–] filcuk@lemmy.zip 37 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Does it really matter when you're a duopoly and equally bad as one another?

[–] fluffykittycat@slrpnk.net 27 points 1 day ago

Until they're not, and any competition now has the NSFW and LGBT markets to themselves

[–] Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de 144 points 1 day ago (19 children)

Brilliant, just make your rules vague and force everyone else down the chain to self-censor. Surely this will result in the best outcome.

Fucking mastercard

[–] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 45 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (13 children)

It's not even that vague.

Valve basically said: "we are not doing anything illegal".

To which mastercard responded: "yeah but you're making us look bad, so tough".

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[–] Grizzlyboy@lemmy.zip 126 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I love how this has damaged Mastercards brand much more than anything Valve sells. MC would rather pressure Valve for selling NSFW games, than clean up billionaires buying and trafficking children.

[–] Luouth@lemmy.world 23 points 1 day ago

Hey, Mastercard don't deal with those transactions. Too traceable! Diplomatic narcotics and crypto have less of a paper trail...

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[–] PlzGivHugs@sh.itjust.works 106 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Tl;dr: Mastercard says they didn't "force" Valve to remove nsfw games. They just told them that if they didn't remove the games that were complained about by Collective Shout, they'll block them.

[–] AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 27 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Couldn't they just block collective shout thus probably losing far less business?

[–] PlzGivHugs@sh.itjust.works 29 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Mastercard? Yes, but then they'd have to admit that they were in the wrong, so it seems unlikely.

[–] HarkMahlberg@kbin.earth 15 points 21 hours ago (3 children)

Unless MC and Visa are run by people who already agree with Collective Shout and are just using them as an excuse to enforce this policy.

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[–] NONE_dc@lemmy.world 97 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

Collective Shout says it wasn't their fault, MC and Visa say it wasn't their fault, Steam and Itch say it wasn't their fault. Conclusion? No one is to blame! No one did it! What's more, it didn't even happen!! it was all a figment of our imagination!

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[–] merdaverse@lemmy.world 97 points 1 day ago (4 children)

“Mastercard did not communicate with Valve directly, despite our request to do so,” Valve’s statement sent over email to Kotaku reads. “Mastercard communicated with payment processors and their acquiring banks. Payment processors communicated this with Valve

This whole thing reads like a telephone game where nobody wants to take any responsibility.

[–] Passerby6497@lemmy.world 70 points 22 hours ago

Honestly, I don't care if MasterCard doesn't want to take responsibility. It was their rule and their intermediaries that caused the situation and they did not intervene when valve tried to reach out directly.

They are responsible through action or inaction, no matter how they try to deny it.

[–] bryndos@fedia.io 26 points 1 day ago

At work when no one wants to pick up a task, I issue the "slopey shoulders" award.

collapsed inline mediahttps://static.wikia.nocookie.net/mrmen/images/1/15/Mr_cheeky1.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/250?cb=20170519093913

[–] rozodru@lemmy.world 22 points 23 hours ago

they did the exact same thing in the porn industry. naturally Visa and MC didn't communicate directly with the individual porn companies. So thats' how places like CCBill and what have you took off. and then Visa and MC laid out their weird rules to CCBill who then passed it along to the individual companies.

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[–] CameronDev@programming.dev 88 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Ok furry artists, you know what to do, I wanna see the filthiest Visa x MasterCard art you can dream off. Payment process me baby

[–] puppycat@lemmy.blahaj.zone 123 points 1 day ago (4 children)

not furry but someone already made mastercard-chan and visa-kun

collapsed inline media

[–] CameronDev@programming.dev 29 points 1 day ago

Thats hot. And I am going to assume this is canon from now on.

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If nobody takes responsibility, then they should all just agree that this was a big misunderstanding and reinstate the titty games.

[–] angrystego@lemmy.world 64 points 1 day ago (6 children)

Isn't every game NSFW? Funny how language works.

[–] mx_smith@lemmy.world 33 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Unless your work has been gamified. I play several games at work, one called Jira, another called GIT they aren’t super exciting but it’s a job.

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[–] TheGreenWizard@lemmy.zip 60 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

So obviously somebody is lying. I really don't understand why Valve or Itch would be the ones lying about this. My money is on the group of self righteous censorship soldiers with too much time on their hands, and the payment companies. I could always be wrong I though.

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 22 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

MasterCard is so big they don't even know what all their departments are doing. The PR department probably asked a couple of the top level execs if they were pushing for this and they said no so they claimed it didn't happen.

[–] GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 24 points 17 hours ago

MasterCard knows exactly what they're doing.

executive leadership is varying degrees of Christian nationalist and trump supporters.

source: me, I know people.

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[–] ChicoSuave@lemmy.world 57 points 1 day ago

Fuckers are just propagating the fury without providing a fix. Are the censored games back or not? Because right now they aren't. Put them back and make Mastercard do something about it now that they have staged their position. Collective Shout is playing both sides.

[–] Eyekaytee@aussie.zone 52 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

so it was about potential brand damage that doesn’t exist? and/or has this actually brand damaged visa and mastercard more than ignoring collective shout?

[–] halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 51 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

What I see is Mastercard hiding behind their generic rules for processors and being fine with the processors taking unilateral action that could damage their brand.

Mastercard should demand they rescind the decision based on a flawed interpretation of their rules since the content IS NOT ILLEGAL where Steam provides it, or drop those processors entirely due to the brand damage their unilateral decision has caused. If Mastercard lets this sit, that signals that they agree with this decision, regardless of what they say, and they should be treated as such.

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[–] darthelmet@lemmy.world 49 points 20 hours ago

Gotta love it when companies put something in their legal agreements that just says “we can do whatever the fuck we want.” Is the rest of the wall of text just there to hide that somewhere someone won’t read?

[–] GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 46 points 1 day ago (1 children)
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[–] Itdidnttrickledown@lemmy.world 30 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

We have seen the same behavior out of the credit card companies before. Its pretty clear that they do pressure companies to remove content they don't approve of. Its censorship and its legal since the companies are not the government. They are just tied in at a high level to the banking industry. Its a good example of how lack of regulation harms both creators and consumers.

It lets a bunch of poorly adjusted individuals force their personal mental problems on us all.

[–] lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.com 24 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

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

As much as we hate x, airing negative publicity over their attempt to deny responsibility by directly citing back their policy & asking questions might be good.

[–] Electricd@lemmybefree.net 23 points 1 day ago

Maybe the payment processors lied?

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