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.

 

[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!

 

[Johnway]

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

No problem. just a warning that there is a deadline for these games. you have 48 hours to get your adult games.

Will i play them? probably not, but hey, when adult content is not allowed, i'll have my stash of adult entertainment.

 

[JCgames]

No problem. just a warning that there is a deadline for these games. you have 48 hours to get your adult games.

Will i play them? probably not, but hey, when adult content is not allowed, i'll have my stash of adult entertainment.

Huni pop is a really good game and its actially censored anyway. But a free code edit removes it. I like the mild version anyway.

Btw the "sex" scenes have a different puzzle system that run of your fps so the become impossible on fast systems you need to limit the fps.

If you like match games and funny one liners you actually might like this one. Its rather tame, barely rated R with out the tweak. The edit updates the art, but the story is the same. If you have seen bioware romance, id say they are on par with that. The uncensored pics are another story.