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.
We totally didn’t do that! Valve and other merchants obviously kept receipts.
I almost love how normalized flagrant lying has become in the corpo-political sphere. They’ve become so emboldened by just telling whatever unbelievable lie they want and expecting to get away with it. If it’s not catastrophically illegal to do so, they just lie. I don’t take anything not said under oath seriously anymore, and even then, I take it with a grain of salt.
since they deny it, then everyone should just revert whatever was done to censor stuff.
I’m voting for Donald Trump because of Collective Shout.
Since neither candidate represents the working class and all we have is a culture war, I’m going to fight back against censorship wherever I can.
All of the people on the left pushing censorship and attacking freedom of speech are directly responsible for driving me further to the right.
reddthat please please add a downvote option
You mean the guy that is president right now, while this is happening, that is doing nothing about it because he’s too busy dealing with his pedophile rape escapades becoming public knowledge?
Not to mention: the guy that can’t run for president again (yet)
I’m sorry. Did you just say you want to vote Trump because you think they’re against censorship? The guy that threatens journalists, and politicians that report or say bad things about them. Do you not think that’s censorship?
I don’t even have a bone in this fight. I just want to understand the thought process.
Censorship means different things to different people. For those on the left censorship means suppression of liberal ideas, suppression of journalism exposing corruption and brutality, suppression of peoples history. For those on the right censorship means they can’t say the n word anymore.
Would you care to guess what censorship means to haloduder?
No don’t want to guess. I’d rather ask him directly instead of making assumptions.
Voting for Donald Trump in which election?
He’s on his last legal term
Don’t feed the trolls.
This is what we call ragebait! There’s too much going on in the news to even bother with this type of ‘person’.
Not really. You don’t like what I have to say, so you’re trying to get me censored by crying ‘ragebait.’
You’re another example of why censorship on the left drives people further to the right.
I’m going to block you now since I can tell you need the last reply.
That’s not censorship. That’s just social consequences.
That’s some strong protection. You’ve spent the last hour getting the last word in on everyone replying to you.
Collective Shout is a conservative, forced-birth anti-trans sex-nagative women-patronizing christian organization masquerading as feminist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melinda_Tankard_Reist
They call themselves “feminist” but they are as “feminist” as the guys who finally allowed women to drive in Saudia Arabia.
Collective Shout is a conservative organization you numbskull.
So that means the left isn’t censoring me as much as the right?
Tbh liberals love censorship as much as conservatives (see the proscription of Palestine Action in the UK).
But it’s a bit silly saying you are going to vote for a conservative because a conservative group is censoring you.
I guess only in a country that is so far leaning on the right thinks that liberals are “on the left”.
Well that’s why I didn’t say “leftists.” But if we’re continuing to be honest, leftist governments also censor. I don’t think you can find any ideology that doesn’t censor, actually.
These are Australian conservatives, they don’t value freedom of speech as much as American conservatives.
They are willing to abuse censorship to push their agendas, just like American liberals.
Hi. Texas conservatives in Houston took over the city schools and removed libraries to create a prison inside the school itself. Fuck you and your talks of censorship. You don’t know censorship and think the conservacucks don’t do it because they ain’t targeting your white cis heterosexual ass. You have no opinion worth censoring because your just that white bread bland.
You’re a good example of the average dumbass American.
You know that American conservatives have been banning books from libraries, and banning topics like racism and homophobia from being talked about in schools, right? American conservatives love censoring anything they don’t agree with. They are the original snowflakes.
I suspect your butt is just chapped because you can’t drop a hard “r” on BlueSky.
But the people on the right are also pushing for censorship. You’re just choosing what flavour of censorship.
In America you don’t have any other parties with more moderate idealogies either. It’s either the one or the other.
So before you go voting for a literal criminal as the opposition, why not first burn down your shitty system and rebuild something better.
The people on the right aren’t censoring me for disagreeing with them.
You’re really not paying attention, then. Because that’s exactly what they’re doing.
Where? I can say whatever I want on 4chan, but I come to any of the liberal social media sites and get banned for disagreeing with the crowd.
You aren’t being banned. You’re are being fact checked, cuck.
Freedom of speech is not the same thing as "freedom from consequences for saying something idiotic’
Sure buddy. Let’s just ignore Twatter and Facebook like that.
Upset about conservatives and their puritanical practices. Votes for puritanical conservatives. What, do you think because he fucks kids he will allow your gooner game?
Useful idiots on the left are the only ones attacking freedom of speech, saying its a dogwhistle.
Useful idiots on the left are the only ones trying to control narratives by controlling what information people are allowed to share.
You are one of the worst cucks I’ve ever seen. Go read this guy’s comment history, holy shit.
Ah yes, because the left wing is famous for the proliferation of requiring a government issued ID to use the internet in ways that make them uncomfortable.
My brother in Christ they are a self proclaimed anti queer conservative organization. Do you want to be right? Do you care if you’re correct or not? Or do you want to blame everything on the ghosts in your head?
So much fucking censorship and agenda-pushing on the internet.
It makes me sick how many useful idiots are being herded like sheep just to satisfy those with more money than them.
Put simply, we allow all lawful purchases on our network.
As Valve correctly points out, this is a blatant & outright lie. They have cut off any number of legal entities over pressure from politicians or groups. Now they have to own it.
I mean, their own Rule 5.12.7 has that “or” in it, which includes transactions that are fully lawful but “may damage the goodwill of the corporation”.
You will find such language pretty much everywhere. And there are reasons for it. A good example are certain drugs that are technically not illegal. Because they have not been officially classified yet.
That used to be a thing here in Sweden some time ago, where they’d just change some little compound and could technically, legally sell it online until it was deemed otherwise. Because it’s now technically a new formula. Once it was classified, they just repeated the proceas.
MasterCard might not want to be seen as an enabler in the drug trade. So while it’s technically legal. They don’t want anything to do with it. And would like the option to take action.
And according to the articles. It’s not MasterCard pointing to that regulation, but the processors. As MasterCard notes. They’re not a bank, they’re not processing your payment. They just provide the technology to do so.
Furthermore. I’m quite amazed that people seem to think Valve is this really good company that we can all trust and take their word on. Valve says one thing. MasterCard says another. I wouldn’t take either one of them on just their word. Better to take a step back, and see how it develops so you don’t make yourself a useful idiot.
“Cryptocurrency is only a pyramid scheme and has no real utility!”
Cryptocurrency is a pyramid scheme and has no real utility.
Monero, a decentralized censorship proof cryptocurrency, has no real utility with regard to solving MasterCard’s censorship and only depends on a pyramid of investors to function at all? That is not my understanding.
Yes, most cryptos are treated like pump and dump scams. 99% of usage is like that. Absolutely does not change the underlying utility nor would I recommend “investing” in them.
Monero, a decentralized censorship proof cryptocurrency, has no real utility with regard to solving MasterCard’s censorship and only depends on a pyramid of investors to function at all?
Monero - the digital token with no real world value, yes. You don’t need crypto to fix this issue. Brazilians can use Pix and would not depend on MasterCard and Visa, and this includes everything from physical purchases to digital storefronts to paying in installments and more. All attached to currency that actually means something and zero crypto bros trying to pump the value up or down on their delusional subreddits.
Pix sounds trivially easy to censor, freeze, or control from the government’s perspective. Unless I’m missing something that makes it easier for the government to censor innocuous NSFW content. And we don’t have anything like it in the US so it’s useless to me.
Monero can be used immediately without storing a balance for longer than a few minutes, although a correlation attack would be trivial like that. But at best it is not subject to market whims any longer than you decide is necessary for your anonymity needs. It’s the perfect case for purchasing NSFW software, where you want the purchase private and uncensored even when it’s perfectly legal. That sounds like an incredible real world value, even after the crypto bros are long gone and the value dumps (imo) 99%. But it’s a tool that needs no real world value.
Pix sounds trivially easy to censor, freeze, or control from the government’s perspective
If the Brazilian government decided to go against the constitution to censor my online purchases like that, buying hentai games would be the least of my concerns. And then it wouldn’t matter if I’m using your fake crypto bro tokens or not.
And we don’t have anything like it in the US
Of course not. You live in a weird techno feudalism where the government can’t do anything because that’s socialism and the only solutions you trust are some random tech bro dependent crap like CashApp.
Yes, so you agree that Monero has value then, especially in countries like the US?
so you agree that Monero has value then
Nope, I’d rather use seashells than something like Monero. Crypto is got negative value, the time wasted hearing people like you preach about it is never going to be returned to my life.
especially in countries like the US?
Seashells would be an upgrade in a country like the US, but failures of your payment systems do not change anything for the inherent value of random online tokens.
Its used like one.
It’s mostly used like that, but doesn’t mean it has no utility whatsoever.
The other 5% are used for drugs and other illegal stuff. So Yeah it is used for trading but 90% is just scam or investment
Source?
afaik the least pyramid scheme crypto coin is monero, bitcoin is used almost purely as a speculative asset which is just sad
Bitcoin does have some more utility based proposals but for the foreseeable future, I agree. Most cryptos are like that too.
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.
Taking away our freedom of speech is something to go to war over.
If this trend of giving all the government power to companies continues, well, let’s just say I’m glad we have the 2nd amendment to fight back against tyranny.
I’m not going to live in a reddit cuck-world without a fight.
Why are they lying? I don’t understand what it’s accomplishing. We all know they’re lying. That’s obvious from their statement here.
Pirate’s life for me then
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.
they’re blaming it on the middle men
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.
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.
MasterCard knows exactly what they’re doing.
executive leadership is varying degrees of Christian nationalist and trump supporters.
source: me, I know people.
Not necessarily. Valve says they haven’t heard from Mastercard directly. Is there evidence of Itch.io having been approached at all? It seems to me that they just made the move to delist and investigate to be safe in the wake of Valve’s rule changes.
If nobody takes responsibility, then they should all just agree that this was a big misunderstanding and reinstate the titty games.
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?
“Mastercard did not communicate with Valve directly, despite our request to do so,"
Well now how did you make that request?
Direct link: Mastercard rule 5.12.7
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.
I guess turn the boobs butts and dicks up to 10,000 then. In every game.
Its time for Gordon freeman to do unholy things with a headcrab!
Like this?
Lamar IS fully debeaked, after all… ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Oh god why did you have to put that image in my head. No wonder it hides in the vents
