After the ban on the purchase of some erotic games on Steam and Itch.io due to new payment system rules, gamers "spam" Visa with letters asking it to reconsider its requirements. Visa's response only added fuel to the fire.
After the ban on the purchase of some erotic games on Steam and Itch.io due to new payment system rules, gamers "spam" Visa with letters asking it to reconsider its requirements. Visa's response only added fuel to the fire.
A few weeks ago, Valve added a new rule to its Steam platform policy that prohibits “content that may violate the rules and standards set by Steam’s payment systems.” As a result of these restrictions, dozens of Steam games with incest references in their titles, as well as several sex games featuring images of “slaves” or “prisoners,” have been removed from the digital store.
Gamers decided that the new rules were too vague and asked Visa to comment on the situation and take action, otherwise they would switch to competing companies.
“Visa has no right to dictate my or other consumers’ behavior or pressure free markets to abide by vague, morally based rules imposed by payment processing providers. If these draconian restrictions are not lifted, I will have no choice but to discontinue my business with Visa and instead switch to competing companies that are not directly involved in censorship, namely Discover and AmericanExpress,” is one example of a letter to the Visa payment system.
The number of requests was so high that Visa representatives could no longer simply ignore the situation, so the company began sending some users a response that left them frustrated.
“Visa does not moderate the content sold by merchants, and we do not have access to the specific goods or services sold during the processing of a transaction. When a legally operating merchant faces an increased risk of illegal activity, we require enhanced safeguards for the banks that support these merchants,” Visa said in a response.
In a Reddit thread with 800 posts and 23,000 upvotes, gamers are frustrated with Visa's response, saying the company is outright lying about the new rules not affecting content moderation. The players are outraged and are urging them to keep writing in support of Visa until they finally change the rules.
Previously, Ukrainian IT veteran Vitaliy, who joined the Defense Forces and is currently serving in the Marine Corps in the Unmanned Systems Battalion, created the website “Game Haven.” It promotes the spread of Ukrainian localization and provides a personalized report on the user’s game library.
