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Comment by giantg2 | Hacker News Reader

Lots of outrage at the card companies, but strangely, no outrage at the laws that actually caused this. One is the Australian law to remove that type of content and the other is the US law that says the payment processor can't participate in illegal transactions.

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Why would there be outrage at laws when the article we're talking about specifically says this isn't about any laws but instead about a Mastercard rule about damaging their brand?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banned_video_games_i...

Also, Steam Direct didn't update their policy on game content from what I see. Doesn't looked like Steam fought back. Seems as though Steam has never supported games with rape, incest, child exploitation, etc.

As opposed to a hypothetical scenario where it is legal to participate in illegal transactions?

Then they would just get removed in Australia, not worldwide.

My guess is that Steam wasn't able to adequately block the games in Austrailia. If people use a VPN to access the content, could Steam still be liable?

They absolutely do have that infrastructure. They implemented every country's content rating system, such as PEGI, ESRB, ... . Games are regionally banned, such as in Germany [1]. Games can also have regionally censored games, typically for violence/gore in Germany [2]. With the strange effect that if you change your account's region, it re-downloads some of the games.

The legal situation with VPNs and traveling between regions is the same as with any internet service.

[1] https://steamcommunity.com/groups/foruncut/discussions/17/41... [2] https://steamcommunity.com/groups/foruncut/discussions/17/39...

Steam already blocks games sufficiently for Australian law in some cases about ratings and drug use, as it does in many territories.

Your steam account has a record of the country it was created in, and so does your credit card when you use it. You'd have to also get a foreign credit card and create a new steam account to even use a VPN to buy games from another region.

No, it hasn't been the case. The group in question, Collective Shout, has been pressuring Mastercard. Not Mastercard Australia, not Steam Australia: it's a concerted action to take down things they don't want. It's not a one time thing either: sex workers have been under attack by similar extremist catholic bigots. Furries, porn, anything they see as deviant is being attacked. And MC/Visa are happy to help.

Do I mind that MDMA Date With Hitler was taken down ? No, I don't believe it's a massive loss. However, the way it was done, through payment providers threatening to shut off access to the entire payment system because of their rules, is incredibly dangerous to the whole world.

This so much. The problem here is not the content that was blocked, it's the completely unaccountable process that was used to block content worldwide bypassing any legal protection.

Steam Direct didn't update their policy on game content from what I see. Doesn't looked like Steam fought back. Seems as though Steam has never supported games with rape, incest, child exploitation, etc.

So what? Steam simply didn't want to start a fight with its payment providers over some niche content. The problem is that this incident has proven it's possible to ban whatever content you want, globally, by pressuring middle management in Mastercard and Visa.

"Steam simply didn't want to start a fight with its payment providers over some niche content."

Or the content was never supported by Steam, per their policy. You can check Wayback machine for support for my position. Dod you have any evidence of Steam's motive otherwise?

I don't think inferring causality here is far fetched. They were fine with the content before. And we know it because said content was banned in some countries (including Australia) to comply with local regulations, so they clearly knew what the games were about.

Given that fact we have two options: either they decided to change their approach to content moderation and remove games that previously passed all their checks, with these games being coincidentally the same that were requested by Mastercard; or they decided to remove every game requested by Mastercard regardless of Steam's own policies.

Content which already violated the policies of MasterCard and Visa. All Collective Shout did was bring it to their attention.

No, it's enough that they do basic geoblocking just like streaming and other companies.

Do you have info on the US law? I am curious if it follows the same trend Russia set years ago with requiring them to put a large deposit and if they break the rules they get to keep all the money.

It doesn't go that far. These are part of the Know Your Customer type of law. These have increasingly been pushed as part of anti money laundering onto banks, investments, and processors. If a company is selling illegal things or things that even could potentially be illegal, then they get blacklisted. Similar thing to pot companies.

Marijuana sales, at least in the US, are a whole different can of worms, because marijuana exists as kind of a Schroedinger's illicit substance: its legal at a state level in most US states, while simultaneously illegal at the federal level. Anyone with a multi-state footprint that exists in that transaction chain could be held liable.

And they have threatened payment processors, etc. basically anyone who gets to big.

But it wasn't illegal to put up a NSFW game if sold to a adult.

Were Steam selling it to kids?

How would Steam know?

And yes, that's a problem that they're dealing with right now. Bellular News : Steam Faces Financial Obliteration: Others Are Already Dead https://youtu.be/AlDkL3DndtM

The law being talked about in the video is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Safety_Act_2023 / https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/online-safety-act...

That said, not all NSFW content is allowed in all jurisdictions. Australia and Japan (for example) have laws about particular content that differs from US laws.

It is if it includes things like rape, which supposedly was what was removed.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banned_video_games_i...

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