- cross-posted to:
- games@sh.itjust.works
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This morality police crap being carried out by the most immoral bastards on the planet needs to stop.
You realize that you’re defending a game that was literally a rape and incest simulator that was already banned in multiple countries before the payment processor issue occurred, right?
Yeah! Let’s sell pornos out of candy shops too! Fuck morality policing!
The issue at hand is that it’s being made impossible to sell them at all.
except nowhere on earth is your example happening.
Yep fuck morality policing and anyone who supports it, hope you all rot in hell etc.
Applause for such a brave opinion!
No one with a brain is suggesting this. It should be up to the service and government to create rules to allow or not allow harmful content. It should definitely not be a payment processor.
Businesses shouldnt be allowed to refuse service for any reason!
What if you refuse to bake a cake because you have no sugar?
Pure fraud, most likely.
Ah, ok, 99% chance you’re a troll. 1% chance that you’re deeply mentally challenged and it’s a miracle that you can type out sentences.
Dang, look at you coming up with not one, but TWO possibilities! Super proud of you!
When did they say “fuck morality policing”, or even “let’s all stop policing morality”?
Either you piggy-backed off a comment to be a whole weirdo. Or you neee to up your reading comprehension.
why not?
When did you jerk off last?
Right after I read your comment!
gamers, unironically, rise up. this isn’t going to end on niche porn games
It’s already expanded. It started as going after “rape and incest” but now it’s all adult games. But a bunch of lgbtq games have already gotten hit. I am beyond furious.
Shit. Would you provide a source please?
i don’t know if any source has caught up yet, but a few days ago it was indeed just taboo kink games that were being targeted, now it seems all of itch.ios NSFW games are disappearing
I think all games being hit is a temporary measure while they get some sort of new process in place. We’ll see where things land.
Either way, card processing companies shouldn’t be dictating what kind of art consumers can consume, even if I don’t personally agree with the content of some of the worst offenders. If it’s not outright illegal, they can fuck off.
Isnt that addressed in the post?
Here’s one example I came across on Bluesky
Direct link to the game because the creator restricted who can view their posts on Bsky. Only viewable via a link or from their profile now, searching the name only returns a bunch of other dress-up games, but not this one, presumably because of the „Transgender“ tag.
Thanks for the context. Might have been caught up in the crossfire, but very worrying indeed.
It’s gonna stop once they hit a category that includes big AAA games. Once they start cutting into the revenue of Call of Duty or Assassin’s Creed the big developers should take a stance.
I’ve already seen a pretty big YouTuber cover that they are targeting GTA 6 now. It was either moistcritical or mudahar
Since this is caused by activist pressure on the payment processors, perhaps a grassroots activist campaign of our own could change their mind. Especially if we threaten to stop using their services in favor of any competitor that allows all legal purchases.
Hopefully you’re referring to Visa/Paypal, not Itch.
One place that comes to mind is Verotel. I barely know them, but supposedly one of their star attributes is their use for adult businesses. Likely someone else knows them better.
visa have similar restrictions… the issue is that payment processor, merchant, card network, issuing bank, and acquiring bank (and a few more) are all different layers to facilitating a transaction… there are very few card networks in the world, and essentially people pay online using mostly either just visa or mastercard
technically you could probably run a site that only accepts amex, diners club, jcb, discover, etc but it really wouldn’t go well: people want to whip out their card (often their only method of online payment) and just pay and go
you’d also need to find a payment processor that would be comfortable taking on the risk of facilitating transactions around mastercard and visa… they might just cut them off from access to their network. sounds like extortion? yeah welcome to the world of banking, where in any other industry it’d be called a cartel
making things even more difficult is that by law in the US payment processors must offer at least 3 (i think? it might be 2?) “routes” (these things aren’t always straight forward - sometimes there are multiple card networks involved), so you probably have to have a pretty mature payment processor because they’d have to accept several of the alternative card networks
oh and you have to push various stats to the federal reserve which is a massive back and forth bureaucratic challenge even above the technical challenge of interfacing with some pretty awful systems. it often takes over a year to get things sorted unless you’re a “too big to fail” type customer
there are a buuuuunch of other spanners that get thrown into the works, but i’m not sure where the NDA line hits so i’m gonna just leave it there and say trust me, payment processing (distinct from payment gateway) is an absolute nightmare mess
I’m not sure that works, like on a purely game theory level. If gamers start to apply pressure, threaten to stop buying games, the stores need to make a choice:
A. Risk facing the wrath of the gamers, sales are likely to drop. Possibly by a lot, perhaps 15-20%. That could keep up for months before stabilizing.
B. Risk facing the wrath of the payment processors, credit card sales will stop immediately, only alternative payment types get through. Sales drop by 80% overnight, over time some users will seek alternative payment methods, possibly resulting in only 50% less revenue than expected…
While both of those options are bad, one of them is totally fatal to their business.
Those numbers are of course only speculation, but that’s my best guess.
I meant pressing the payment processors, like those prude activists are.
I find it offensive that the only effective way to combat this is to fight fire with fire and also make a big bitchy noise about this like the conservatives love to do. I have better things I would rather be doing with my life. But such are the times we live in I suppose.
In the short term, I think that collectively being Karens about it would be able to reverse the pressure, by steering the monopolists away from oppressing us. Because they are mainly motivated by money.
In the long term, take away their monopoly power.
How do I tell politely in a letter to MasterCard, that if I want to buy a horse dildo it’s only MY fucking business?
buy a horse dildo with bitcoin and flaunt how they didn’t get any money from your transaction? idk man, i’m good at vague ideas, specifics are harder
Any games with even mild nudity is next (like Nier)
Yep, then lgbtq games, then games with guns, then games with blood, so on and so on
Are you sure gun and violence culture is on the chopping block? In the American market?
The big payment processors won’t let you buy firearm parts
It absolutely is. We only encourage gun and violence culture in real life, especially by authoritarian figures and their representatives. Allowing such in virtual spaces where no one can actually be hurt or killed runs counter to our patriotic ideals.
It absolutely is, it’s naive to think these puritans will just decide to stop here
GUNS are you nuts… Murican “morale” apostles might have infuenced the media worldwide, but if you take away guns… you lose Murica!
Collective Shout is Australian.
Doesn’t matter… No guns… Murican outcry! 😁
Or they mope about you not wanting their “culture” and offer to bring their democrazy…
Activision, EA, Ubisoft, etc. would never let that happen.
Neighbors being kidnapped: I sleep
Taking my fetish games: Real Shit
most of the world isn’t american. we can’t do anything about your government
Capitalism is a global problem, its not contained to america. Replace neighbors being kidnapped with which ever country you’re in supporting a genocide and it still fits, and is likely accurate unless you’re like in Yemen.
Fuck religion.
Don’t you just love people that can’t mind their own fucking business?
Bro for real! Like I hate any porn game, as a game. Not as a societal flaw!
So you know what I do? Same exact thing I do about gay sex. I don’t do it, I don’t think about it very often unless there’s a funny joke to be made in a tangential way, and I don’t tell other people that they have to be exact like me.
Ffs, let people do what they want if they aren’t hurting anyone.
but if people are watching porn or having gay sex then they’re not making babies to sacrifice to the capitalist meat grinder.
They want people having more babies so the US president has more supply to pick from. It’s not been as easy since he lost his best friend that helped sort it out for him.
They cannot help it. They literally think about it all the time, and there’s no helping people like collective shout or the crazies on the street. The unwashed ones with the “you’re going to hell for gay sex” signs.
I see the same people on the street all the time. And they think about gay sex WAY more than I do, and I’m married to a person of the same goddamn sex, lol.
Some people really need to cut loose. Generally, I’m not pro-drugs, but damn, they need some hard party drugs to reset things and help them get back to a normal life. Go to burning man, get a good job, then go hike the Appalachian trail or something, for Christ sake.
I would argue that instead of party drugs (which I assume is X, coke, alcohol, pot, and so on), I think they need a good ego death trip. I’m talking like twenty caps(or two wavy bois) or an LD50 of LSA.
“If you sin you’re going to hell, I have to save you from yourself!”
I’m so sick of this. What if we don’t want saving? Just fuck off.
I’ve got friends in both places, and I highly doubt God is gonna give you extra karma or brownie points for converting someone to a made up religion that’s like, maybe 200 years old, lol.
Go gardening. Volunteer at a big cat rescue place. Stop wasting your life preaching something that deep down, you probably don’t even believe in, but is distracting you from something else in your life that could be resolved with therapy.
We got GoonerGate before the release of the Epstein files
Collective shout finacials year: 2024 revenue: 458043 employee_expenses: 107000 other_expenses: 215488 net_surplus: 135555 employees: total_fte: 2 full_time: 0 part_time: 1 casual: 4 volunteers: 15 donations_and_bequests: 389800 government_grants: 0 commercial_income: 0 expense_to_revenue_ratio: "70.4%" average_expense_per_employee: 39400 Leadership - name: Melinda Tankard Reist role: Founder, Movement Director public_socials: - Twitter: @MelTankardReist - Instagram: @collective.shout public_email_address: Not publicly listed salary: Not publicly listed - name: Caitlin Roper role: Campaigns Manager public_socials: - Instagram: @collective.shout public_email_address: Not publicly listed salary: Not publicly listed - name: Renee Chopping role: Campaigns Strategy public_socials: - LinkedIn public_email_address: r******@collectiveshout.org salary: Not publicly listed - name: Lyn Swanson Kennedy role: Campaigns Strategy public_socials: - Instagram: @collective.shout public_email_address: Not publicly listed salary: Not publicly listed - name: Coralie Alison role: Movement Operations Manager public_socials: - Twitter: @CoralieAlison - Instagram: @collective.shout public_email_address: Not publicly listed salary: Not publicly listedThis is exactly like the pearl-clutching we had back in the 1980’s around D&D and music lyrics. At least we moved the goalpost from satanic panic and thinly-veiled racism, over to “art that features sexual expression I don’t understand.”
If history is any indicator, their actions are only going to increase awareness of this kind of stuff.
Why are they doing a comprehensive audit on the content and not doing a comprehensive audit on new payment providers? I sure would be
Because they would basically die off without the credit card processors, I assume.
Yeah so they should shop around now that theirs seems to be problematic
What I meant is that simply excluding Mastercard and Visa would turn away tons of sales and donations, even if they worked with every other payment processor on the planet at once.
They… could. But it would hurt, maybe even kill Itch.
My biggest issue with this situation is: if they can get away with getting games they don’t like being delisted, where does it end? Delisting books with themes or authors they don’t like? Banning the sale of alcohol and cigarettes?
Honestly haven’t thought so far. But Media lacks that, as almost everything is clickbait.
And you got a point. There is questionable stuff. But killing off a whole area is like a bit shot on a small bird
I find it funny that a lot of the fediverse is anti-cryptocurrency, yet this is a perfect example of a problem cryptocurrency can solve. No one can stop you from transacting on a number of blockchains.
Too bad cryptobros are more interested in using it as a speculative investment/scam machine than an actual currency.
Yeah the wild swings in exchange value instantly preclude its use as a currency.
Yes you are right, there are always grifters everywhere, unfortunately.
In theory, crypto could be good for this, but crypto is used (and designed) more as an investment than a transaction tool.
Also, the issue here is not centralized currency under a government, it’s centralized payment processing under monopolistic private companies. Crypto is not required to solve that, all that is needed is an alternative payment processor (in an ideal world, probably a public one run by that government, since in a modern world that seems like an essential service to me).
It’s a good point, but a payment processor run by the government would also be under pressure (from voters) to wield its power to suppress marginal content.
Imagine a US-government-run payment processor right now - it would be blocking anyone that sells anything “woke” or “DEI”.
I am a strong believer in democracy. I don’t think that the answer to a bad government is to reduce the power of the government, because that power will inevitably go to undemocratic institutions. Only the government is accountable to the people. So even when the government is currently controlled by people I dislike, I still want more things to be brought under the power of the government rather than privatized.
The answer to bad government actions, in my view, is to fight for a more democratic government, and zealously advocate for good ideas among the voting population.
Yeah, that’s a good point. I guess in light of that what I would say is that, if you are going to have a state-run payment processor, you need to build in a) pluralism (enable and encourage multiple processors) and b) legal protections (legally guarantee that the payment processor has a limited remit in terms of allowing all payments unless instructed to block them by a court order) which would help mitigate or slow down anti-democratic backsliding.
Honestly, I am OK with payment processors being privatized, they always have been. What needs to happen is regulatory legislation that restricts the grounds on which a financial institution can reject a transaction to strictly what violates interstate commerce law.
Just because they always have been doesn’t mean it’s good. It’s definitely not good for private companies to have monopoly power like that. That power will only be used for their gain (and our collective loss).
Fair enough. I guess I am just so used to the way things are I struggle to see how a government payment processor works without running the risk of police overreach. I do understand that long standing agencies like the IRS and DoE do a good job of fending off advances of police trying to illegally obtain private info, but a new agency or new power for an agency wherein they have access to the exact purchase data of every transaction done using anything other than cash gives me strong pause. It would be trivial to put it under the executive branch and put in there that if someone uses it they waive their 4th Amendment rights in such a way that it is not unconstitutional. The police state already wants to push us towards a cashless society because getting the information is already borderline too easy and there are privacy laws in place to supposedly protect us from such intrusion. Taking out the middle man means I have to trust some department head who is probably a political appointee, and we all see how well that can go.
Rock meet hard place.
In theory, crypto could be good for this, but crypto is used (and designed) more as an investment than a transaction tool.
I would argue that while crypto is as investment now, it was initially designed and intended to be used for transactions.
Out of curiosity though, why do you think this situation would be any different if it were government controlled? Especially considering that you sometimes have administrations like Trump’s, which would do anything no matter how corrupt.
If it were government controlled, it would be accountable to the people, to the extent that the government is democratic (ideally, much more than it is now), and would also be run as a service rather than for profit.
True, but crypto is used very successfully all the time to purchase things online. Now just because most of those transactions are for drugs doesn’t mean it doesn’t work, steam should start accepting monero, the only truly secure and private crypto currency.
They do accept Bitcoin, so that’s something.
If it was used as an actual currency instead of an investment vehicle for speculators, that would help.
It also has zero protection from scams and fraud.
I mean you can use it as currency, and I do sometimes. I have bought plenty of steam games with Bitcoin. I’ve also bought a bunch of stuff on Newegg, and other places online.
It has exactly as much protection from scams and fraud as cash does, that’s essentially what it is.
Cash has zero protection too
And I don’t give cash to anonymous people online. I only use cash in-person for immediate services or products.
Crypto is so heavily regulated now, I don’t even know how to procure any cause all the sites I have used years ago are just dead now.
In KYC systems it is really easy to acquire—companies are willing to sell it to you with no problems.
If you want to get it anonymously, the easiest would probably be to buy via cash. In Switzerland, you can buy via some atms
If you are in the UK, here is one.
Couldn’t you just masturbate the normal way?
It’s more fun when it’s freaky
Monero
I get not liking a game about SA and incest, but how about just not play that game?
Reminder they do nohing about all thise fujoshi comics which has rape & incest. They like cuties too. So the goal was destroying men"s outlet for sexual pleasure.
Notice they didn’t go after onlyfans
Internet’s memory sure is short. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/aug/19/onlyfans-to-ban-adult-material-after-pressure-from-payment-processors
“They” here is CollectiveShout & they (as in Payment Processors) reversed the ban quickly (Because it affected women). Well Not in this case, this group also campaigned to deny SnoopDogg & Eminem Visas.
I thought it was obvious you meant Collective Shout.
deleted by creator
I mean, crypto is still not the answer so long as it is functionally a speculative asset even after all the proof efficiency improvements… Also it still has centralized points which keyholders could easily leverage.
So can I call the payment providers of the companies I don’t like and complain about them?
Can we crowdfund a big lawsuit against those responsible for this?
Against banks? I love the enthusiasm but this is not the way. Banks as a whole have many of the best lawyers in the game on retainer (possession is 9/10ths of the law, and this industry banks on that and make bank.) The best crowdfunding campaign in history* is 800 million. The banks would be willing to spend at least that in their own defence.
*not including investments (nor blockchain)
Plus, a progressive lawsuit in this environment? Might backfire spectacularly - right now banks are cautiously picking on ‘safe’ targets. But with a green light from the supreme court the banks could go full Nazi. Yeah - there’s nothing good I can reasonably expect here.
Or use cryptocurrency more
Does it have to be a lawsuit? Can it be a big guillotine instead?
Hmmm. Could porn once again because the medium catalyst for bitcoin to take off.
Miserable fuckers, the whole lot of puritans…
We should go back to sending the cash per physical mail…
Imagine mail-order catalogs of hentai games on CD-ROM, or even cheap flash drives, in 2025.
Well if it hurts those companies enough, they’ll ignore that organization (the same that led to pornhub deleting 80% in 2020 and removing sex ed from American schools) that’s the reason for this bullshit in the first place.
