The Mastercard/Visa/Collective Shout Thread...

[Zed Clampet]

Overview:

Collective Shout​

Many groups, including Collective Shout, are constantly attacking Visa/Mastercard over what they are allowing payments for. Collective Shout is famous right now because of their continued attempts to police what games are available. They have tried to get things like GTA and Detroit Become Human removed from sale, along with a host of adult games. Collective Shout is largely ineffective. Most of their attacks are unsuccessful, although the recent Steam attack did result in some games being removed. They tagged over 500 games on Steam and Valve removed 81. Their previous efforts resulted in no games being removed.

Visa/Mastercard​

Everyone is after them, not just nutjob groups like Collective Shout. In 2020 the New York Times published a story detailing how they were supporting child abuse and non-consensual adult material on Pornhub, which had over 100,000 such videos. V/MC subsequently stopped processing payments for the site itself, but kept processing payments for the site's advertising program. A federal lawsuit was filed against them for processing these payments.

In 2022, a new report was released that showed that Pornhub's advertising program was paying for child abuse material and was installing malware on people's computers. Subsequently, V/MC stopped paying for the advertising program.

V/MC is constantly under threat due to the "wild west" nature of the Internet. For instance they are currently being investigated by the US Dept of the Treasury for allowing payments for underage material at OnlyFans. Here is a link to a story on that.

A brief history of V/MC activities:

2010(appx): Stopped processing payments for WikiLeaks

2013: Stopped processing payments for extortion websites that published mugshots and required people to pay a fee in order to remove them.

Early 2020s: Dealt with OnlyFans (child material) and Pornhub, as mentioned above.

2022: V/MC issued regulations for content providers and ordered them to remove "human trafficking" "child abuse" and other illegal material within 7 days. Notably, this has often included legal fictionalized material.

Current debate: Groups are mostly concerned with the legal fictionalized material that Visa/MC have recently started targeting, including in adult games on Steam.​

 

[Colif]

I disagree with anyone having the right to tell other people what they can spend their money on.
Collective Shout have some strong beliefs that aren't reflected by modern society. They shouldn't be able to enforce those on everyone. Evidence I have seen show they aren't balanced individuals.

 

[JCgames]

What i don't get is why cant people just pay cash for a pre paid steam card. A cc company has zero to do with that.

 

[Zed Clampet]

I disagree with anyone having the right to tell other people what they can spend their money on.
Collective Shout have some strong beliefs that aren't reflected by modern society. They shouldn't be able to enforce those on everyone. Evidence I have seen show they aren't balanced individuals.

They really do seem unbalanced and go way too far. I understand the groups going after child abuse material, but going after video games like GTA and Detroit Become Human is just overstepping. Fortunately, no one is listening to them on those demands.

 

[Frindis]

They also did their job here on https://itch.io/updates/update-on-nsfw-content. Pretty kakapo work of the card companies and collective shout. A bunch of kakapo organizations! The main problem is not Collective Shout and similar uber karen groups though, it is the horrendous behavior of these credit card companies and how they just do whatever they want.

 

[Zed Clampet]

They also did their job here on https://itch.io/updates/update-on-nsfw-content. Pretty kakapo work of the card companies and collective shout. A bunch of kakapo organizations! The main problem is not Collective Shout and similar uber karen groups though, it is the horrendous behavior of these credit card companies and how they just do whatever they want.

Maybe, but make no mistake, groups like Collective Shout are a huge problem.

 

[Frindis]

Maybe, but make no mistake, groups like Collective Shout are a huge problem.

They are, because they'll just keep on coming, using the "weakest" link to promote their narrow-minded views. I mean, it is smart of them to do it because it works for them, but it is just bad behavior and I do believe most agree on that. It's like a larger YouTuber bullying a smaller YouTuber, flagging countless videos because they know YouTube will have to do something about it. My point is that what they are doing is basically a form of bullying.

The worst part is that with Grok and similar AI tools, they can make thousands of different complaints without even having to use one brain cell. It is not going to get better ...

 

[Colif]

Trade practices of the Payment processes should stop them being able to do what they did. Their job is just as a middle man, they not supposed to be in the transaction in any way apart from to allow transfer of funds. We don't need them thinking they know better.
People soon choose another way to pay. Sounds like cartel... anti trust?

 

[Zed Clampet]

Trade practices of the Payment processes should stop them being able to do what they did. Their job is just as a middle man, they not supposed to be in the transaction in any way apart from to allow transfer of funds. We don't need them thinking they know better.
People soon choose another way to pay. Sounds like cartel... anti trust?

The Steam thing was very questionable, as these were fictionalized forms of entertainment. Their prior dealings with Pornhub and OnlyFans where they made them remove hundreds of thousands of child exploitation videos is a different story. If they would stick to that, it would be fine.

As far as the games go, there may well be countries where that content is illegal. I have no idea. But it just feels like a bad idea to give MC/V that much power.

 

[Colif]

They don't see a difference between fiction and reality. Anyone showing skin anywhere is bad to them.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Game developers association decries 'financial censorship' amidst payment processor crackdown on NSFW games, calls for 'greater transparency and fairness in how adult games are moderated'

The IGDA says the problem isn't the rules themselves, but their "vague" enforcement.

www.pcgamer.com

I suppose it isn't overly surprising that the Game Developers Association is as clueless as most gamers. Recommending that Valve get rid of Mastercard and Visa and replace them with porn friendly services like CCBill is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard. This kind of nonsense, equating Steam to a porn site, is just more proof that Valve should have never let these games on Steam to begin with. To the world, you are your worst action. No matter how many great things you do, if you stumble, you'll be associated with that stumble forever. You simply can't associate yourself with a borderline criminal industry (you wouldn't believe how many of these companies support, in one way or another, things like human trafficking, illegal drug sales, money laundering, etc.). Don't hang out with them if you don't want to be one of them.

Itch.io is 'actively reaching out to other payment processors' after pressure from credit card companies to curtail NSFW content, and that compared to Valve, it has 'limited ability to push back'

Clearing up the confusion.

www.pcgamer.com

Itch.io is in even worse shape and, unsurprisingly, not getting any sympathy from people, many of whom think that temporarily deindexing adult material is the same thing as an attack on the LGBTQ+ community of developers. Why? Do they have to make adult games? Isn't that stereotyping them? Yes, that community produces a lot of art centered around grooming, but you know what? You should stop doing that.

Again, I'm not in favor of Mastercard and Visa being able to remove legal content from stores, but the response to this happening has just been utterly baffling and bizarre. People respond to these sorts of things emotionally instead of thinking them through.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Itch.io is in even worse shape and, unsurprisingly, not getting any sympathy from people, many of whom think that temporarily deindexing adult material is the same thing as an attack on the LGBTQ+ community of developers. Why? Do they have to make adult games? Isn't that stereotyping them? Yes, that community produces a lot of art centered around grooming, but you know what? You should stop doing that.

I believe the general feeling is that when you open the door to banning games around things deemed perversions that opens the door for social conservatives to label LGBT+ as such and ban games containing that by proxy.

Dont know what you mean by 'grooming games' as I am not plugged into either porn games or LGBT+ stuff very much. At least some of what you call grooming, I suspect others might rather call normalizing. But thats a little close to the culture war.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Dont know what you mean by 'grooming games' as I am not plugged into either porn games or LGBT+ stuff very much. At least some of what you call grooming, I suspect others might rather call normalizing. But thats a little close to the culture war.

The only grooming I'm aware of is prepping children for sexual abuse. I never said "grooming games", and I am neither plugged into porn games nor am I into LGBTQ+ stuff. But I am into amateur art and fiction and this community creates a lot of this on the subject of grooming. I probably shouldn't say "the community" because I haven't taken care to notice whether these are being produced prodigiously by a single person or what is happening. I just notice the content is there and available, and I move on to something else.

As far as grooming goes, they might very well refer to this as "normalizing", I don't know. But they also just refer to it as grooming. In my opinion, the culture war, which I'm not a part of, has nothing to do with it. Most people can agree that child sex abuse is wrong. If there are people who like to fantasize about it, create art about it, etc. I don't actually have a problem with it myself, so long as it stays fantasy only, but you can't expect corporations to assist in the dissemination of this fantasy material that most people find detestable. A corporation's reputation is, in fact, quite important.

And I'm very well aware of the "slippery slope" argument. It has never, in my knowledge, proved to be accurate. And even if it did prove accurate, I think a lot of people would have a problem with endorsing child pornography just out of fear that getting rid of it would empower whackos to go after trans material.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

I probably shouldn't say "the community"

You definitely shouldnt, it makes it seem like you are equating LGBTQ+ people with paedophiles, which is a narrative popular amongst certain groups of people.

If someone is creating material about grooming young children, does it matter the gender or whether its the opposite sex to the 'artist'? I suspect there are many more heterosexual creeps of that kind out there.

Disclaimer in that I havent seen the art youre talking about, and dont want to.

And I'm very well aware of the "slippery slope" argument. It has never, in my knowledge, proved to be accurate. And even if it did prove accurate, I think a lot of people would have a problem with endorsing child pornography just out of fear that getting rid of it would empower whackos to go after trans material.

You asked:

many of whom think that temporarily deindexing adult material is the same thing as an attack on the LGBTQ+ community of developers. Why? Do they have to make adult games? Isn't that stereotyping them?

I thought you didnt know the answer, turns out you did and dismissed it off camera.

 

[Zed Clampet]

You definitely shouldnt, it makes it seem like you are equating LGBTQ+ people with paedophiles, which is a narrative popular amongst certain groups of people.

You seem to want to box me into a political category that I can assure you I don't belong to, but this is typical of those of your political persuasion. Either someone is all in and takes your poison or they are the opposite and the enemy. The fact is that I don't see this pedo material anywhere else, but then again I don't go to places like 4Chan where people claim it is popular. I am much more likely to visit sites where LGBTQ+ hang out. All I'm saying is that it exists in this group, and that they don't hide it, and that this is a very poor situation for them. They are already in a difficult cultural situation, why make things harder?

If someone is creating material about grooming young children, does it matter the gender or whether its the opposite sex to the 'artist'? I suspect there are many more heterosexual creeps of that kind out there.

I have no idea what you are trying to say here. If you are implying that I would somehow find this less distasteful coming from someone else, then this absolutely takes the cake as one of the most outrageous things anyone has ever said to me online.

The question to you is that if you have a lot of known enemies, why give them more ammo to shoot you with?

I thought you didnt know the answer, turns out you did and dismissed it off camera.

I have no problems following their logic. The question is why is this their logic?

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

You seem to want to box me into a political category that I can assure you I don't belong to, but this is typical of those of your political persuasion.

I was trying to point out that what you were saying could easily be interpreted that way, and to be more careful with your statements.

Either someone is all in and takes your poison or they are the opposite and the enemy. The fact is that I don't see this pedo material anywhere else, but then again I don't go to places like 4Chan where people claim it is popular. I am much more likely to visit sites where LGBTQ+ hang out. All I'm saying is that it exists in this group, and that they don't hide it, and that this is a very poor situation for them. They are already in a difficult cultural situation, why make things harder?

I cant speak to any of that other than to say I dont see that material anywhere I go thankfully.

I have no idea what you are trying to say here. If you are implying that I would somehow find this less distasteful coming from someone else, then this absolutely takes the cake as one of the most outrageous things anyone has ever said to me online.

I am pointing out what should be obvious: that pedos are pedos whatever their orientation. But the idea of corrupting children is a well known anti LGBTQ+ angle employed by phobes the world over.

What you said was that LGBT+ people make creepy grooming art, and you said that because you saw the work of possibly one person, as you admitted and tarred a whole demographic with that brush. If you'd seen something by a straight person would you have thought to mention that straight people make pedo art and maybe shouldnt do that?

The question to you is that if you have a lot of known enemies, why give them more ammo to shoot you with?


I have no problems following their logic. The question is why is this their logic?

Here I can meet you somewhere, because I dont agree with it fully either.

Obviously the fear is as I said earlier, if companies like Steam start to take moral stances, whose morals do they follow? If theyre banning explicit materials that could be damaging to tiny little minds, does that include for example a silly dating game which feature same sex kissing but isnt explicit? Do we stick to what is legal, and in that case by what countries laws?

Then we are back to the slippery slope you reject, I'm not so convinced, I definitely think there are lobbying groups who would push for that to go as far as they could.

There is stuff I would ban, but I dont think I should be the judge of it all. I dont think Steam would stay off of porn though, I assume those games account for quite a lot of their revenue at this point anyway.

 

[Frindis]

Want some free Adult games from GOG?

See https://freedomtobuy.games/


GOG and devs are fighting back after the mastercard/visa censorship.

Just thought I'd share this here also Excellent post @Johnway!