Another update from them, they are starting to allow free NSFW games (that presumably pass the new rule, though my guess is they might be a bit less strict with free games) to be visible again, also Stripe (a smaller payment processor I think) said no porn at all due to banking partners
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Whahoo! 
Keep the pressure on!!! 
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Looks like Iâm making a solo case at this point, but to avoid the impression that every dissenter from the majority consensus has been browbeaten into silence:
If it's the last thing you're writing on a topic...
Replace âfine, whateverâ with âIâm pissed but fine, whateverâ throughout my response â Iâd have written the same things, and I donât think it really affects my point.
A multinational payment processing behemoth is different to any single game publisher or platform, absolutely. But the arguments over Visa/Mastercardâs involvement can easily muddy the other issues at stake here. Weâre not talking about government censorship, and if youâll indulge the hypothetical where weâre also not talking about a duopoly that ought to be regulated as a public utility: Is it OK for companies like CoG, itch, or Steam to censor the media they publish? Always OK, sometimes OK, never OK?
PrinceJackalâs been arguing something close to âalways OKâ ⌠and maybe you are too? I donât want to understate your pissed-offness again, but you reiterated that youâd be âperfectly fine if Steam decides not to host stories involving unsavoury topics.â Even more than âfine, whatever,â I couldnât agree with thatâŚnot for anything other than an extremely constrained definition of the unsavoury.
Sure, Steam and itch have the legal right to impose blanket demonetization on all their NSFW material, but they shouldnât do that, because that throws out a small legion of babies with the (highly toxic[1]) bathwater. Iâd be pressuring them to reconsider their current redlines whether the credit card companies were involved or not. Of course I agree that no one should be âforcedâ to platform stuff⌠but customer advocacy against a destructive or tacitly discriminatory standard of censorship is pressure/influence, not force.
On the other hand, if the mainstream opinion here is ânever OKâ â if we really are contending for âthe freedom to publish anythingâ fictional, and contending not just against governments but against companies that try to impose ethical limits â then a lot of the rhetoric and arguments on this thread hold together pretty consistently.
It just makes an eyebrow-raising contrast with the tenor of the Aura Clash thread last week, where I was defending Team Censorship with a lot more company.
Yes, that was in the immediate case about forum and Discord posts rather than a publication. But if the inflammatory Discord posts had been part of a completed WIP, and the question was whether CoG/HG should publish something that arguably glorified racism and homophobia, would we see the same principles being invoked? Should CoG/HG just adopt a tagging system for potentially upsetting content, and embrace the âdonât like/donât readâ principle? If not, why not?
In discussing this, would it be relevant that no other publishing platform offers a better chance of commercial success in IF than CoG/HG? (âYou can always publish for free, or off in a corner where way fewer people are likely to see or buy it,â is the case with most corporate censorship, including the current direction of travel with the big game platform policies.) If itâs OK for HG to censor racism/homophobia, what about Steam or itch? Does the scale or nature of the company make a difference? And if we draw a line at racism or homophobia, why not rape or CSA?
Iâm not asking these questions rhetorically. Iâm aware that some folks on the thread will make a principled case for answering all of them differently than I would. (Some, like @vera, have AFAIK been consistent whenever the issue of censorship comes up in just about any form. Respect.) But I do think some of the questions are being obscured rather than answered⌠which tends to happen if we try to win an argument without having to bring our own /unpopularOpinions into it.
I also suspect a lot of folks are really on the side of company censorship being âsometimes OKâ⌠but then we should acknowledge that we expect companies to be in the business of drawing and enforcing red lines, even if weâd prefer them to be pretty minimal ones.
And it would be nice if we could all talk about that without anyone breaking out the rhetoric that implies any red lines are obviously wrong and anyone who argues otherwise is a bigot or fool. It may be too much for people to also let go of the idea that only âconservativesâ or âthe rightâ could want to censor rape sims, but disregard for peopleâs political self-identitfication is a relatively minor insult in the big picture.
First thing Iâll say on this: the position youâre staking out is a principled one. I donât share it, but it seems clear to me that it can be held by reasonable and ethical people. What Iâm about to say doesnât come from a place of moral panic or demonizing.
Second thing: I know sheâs left the thread, but you might owe VilsBae an apology for the combo of tone and substance here:
In your mind, âdepictions of pedophiliaâ might have included an unspoken âactual real-lifeâ in the middleâŚbut that wasnât you actually said, and it wasnât what VilsBae was talking about. Yet you responded to her with contempt and hostility, shutting her down by talking as if the point she raised was a distraction or non sequitur.
...might as well go long.
Of course it can be, whether weâre talking about rape or genocide or racism or homophobia. Thatâs what makes âglorificationâ a bad ingredient in law, and why youâll not see me defending any attempt to outlaw rape sims or rape games. But when it comes to people making publishing decisions, grappling with the ethical impacts of the media they put out into the world is a good and necessary thing, despite the fact that there isnât an obvious-to-everyone right answer.
Notwithstanding the fact that definitions of âglorifying racismâ are also flexible and contested, itâs a sign of a healthy society if most companies choose not to publish The Turner Diaries or The Protocols of the Elders of Zion or the movie/album/game adaptations thereof. In a liberal society, that doesnât mean itâll be impossible for anyone ever to find and consume those materials; and like I said above, thatâs a feature of non-government modes of censorship, not a bug. The moral consensus of the day can be wrong (indeed, we can be certain that on some points it will be), and allowing space for unpopular and marginal art to exist gives us the space to eventually realize that.
But meanwhile weâre probably comfortable standing behind e.g. our antiracist moral principles, and recognize that a broad moral consensus against publishing racist media can be a check on the commercialization and commoditization and normalization and mass extension of racist ideas, scripts, or practices.
Thatâs why itâs worthwhile organizing ourselves to affect the criteria media companies use when theyâre deciding what to put out into the public sphere. Not, again, because weâll ever convince everybody to follow our moral standards and censor the media we think are racist, sexist, homophobic, or otherwise grossly unethicalâŚbut the total eradication of bad things isnât the goal. Reducing their profile in the public sphere is the goal. Reducing the reach and scale of the market in them is the goal.
We shape that moral consensus by engaging in debate â not by throwing up our hands and saying, âWeâre never going to arrive at an absolutely correct and undisputed call on this, so letâs just agree to not have any limits on whatâs socially acceptable in mass media.â We argue against the puritans, rather than trying to rule their moral perspectives out of court[2].
We highlight the fact that so much NSFW material is actively good â part of peopleâs healing and thriving. We defend the importance of good stories about damaging and dehumanizing things, that explore them without glorifying them.
But for my part, Iâm not going to argue that the puritans are wrong about glorification of nonconsensual sex. The research on the societal impacts of porn is all over the place, with much of it failing to find clear evidence of damage â which is what youâd expect if you think thereâs nothing inherently damaging about most porn. But the normalization of nonconsensual choking is an exception, a harm that we can pretty confidently (though not 100% conclusively) link to the mass commercial spread of porn clips depicting the practice.
Letâs assume for purpose of the argument that none of those videos are depicting real, illegal violence â that itâs all acted, all fiction. Those stories are still providing a script for peopleâs behavior in ways that probably cost some lives and definitely lead to a bunch of unnecessary suffering, up to and including SA. (Notwithstanding the fact that theyâll have also led to a lot of enjoyment for some people engaging in consensual rough sex.)
Despite those harms, I donât think it should be illegal to make a fictional video about nonconsensual choking. The implementation machinery of government censorship isnât a magical finger-snap that makes bad stuff go away; itâs messy, catching up undeserving people who arenât doing any harm while inevitably leaving loopholes through which some (often much) of the harm continues. And outlawing writing because it inspires harm is a principle too easily abused.
But if I could, through a change in industry and social norms, make the publication of nonconsensual choking porn more like the publication of out-and-out racist garbage a la Turner Diaries â something most companies were ashamed to do because they recognized it was unethical â Iâd gladly do so.
Given the power of porn to shape behavior, of which the uptick in rough-sex-without-asking is one clear negative example, Iâm comfortable on precautionary grounds alone resisting the normalization of rape or CSA in commercially available porn â not by law, but by encouraging as many publishing companies as possible to adopt internal ethical standards that shrink the space where noncon is commercially available.
Thatâs my last word, though I imagine a bunch of you will make well-considered and passionate responses. Got to write more on the game, less on the forum. So: fire away.
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There was a majority consensus? O_o
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I think a pretty major difference is that the mods/staff of CoG are generally trusted by the community to be reasonable, unlike visa and mastercard and groups like collective shout who are generally quite unreasonable
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Well, because theyâre two entirely separate issues. COG/HG are publishers, so the content that they put out is directly attached to their name and theyâre directly involved in its publication. If they were to allow openly bigoted creators to thrive and publish on their platform, which goes against their own brand values, then thatâs naturally going to upset consumers and make them view the brand differently.
Itch is a storefront, any developer can put their products up there and itâs up to you as a consumer to decide whether you want to support a specific developer or not, Itch has no control over or involvement in what someone chooses to make. Thereâs plenty of things on Itch that Iâve found personally objectifiable, but itâs my choice whether I support those things or not. And, all that being said, Itch does moderate and review content that goes against their TOS when they come across it (though they have a small team and donât always catch it in time), and no one took issue with what they have removed or de-indexed in the past because it went against their TOS â it was their choice and their rules, not some puritanical group that cried wolf over fiction and has now led to thousands of perfectly good games with great indie developers being delisted and potentially removed. Pretty different from a single bigot being banned from a forum.
I wouldnât have even known these things existed if it werenât for CS crying about it because I donât spend time seeking things out that go against my personal moral lines.
Iâve never believed that they shouldnât be. Theyâre absolutely in control of what they do and donât want to allow. I donât expect nor even want every platform to be anarchistically anti-censorship like AO3 where everything legal goes. The entire issue is that these games being de-indexed and potentially removed were already allowed to exist before this.
Oh also last note, I actually think itâs, of course, completely fine that you feel this way. But itâs a moot point because neither of these topics are in commercially available âpornâ at all to begin with. You may occasionally come across themes of SA (regarding adults) in games on Itch but I would hardly call it erotica, not even the more romanticized versions â and actually, the ones that I would call straight up porn are very few and far between. But itâs possible I donât see much of it because again, I donât seek stuff out that doesnât interest me.
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Thank you @batmansrobin for saving me a lot of time typing out things that might have come from my own mouth and articulating them damn near perfectly. Props.
This. To add clarity from my perspective for @Havenstone Just because I donât want massive payment processors to be able to censor ALL platforms from the top down by crushing them does NOT mean that I feel every platform needs to conform to my personal will. I donât feel like writers should morally be able to force CoG to publish racist stories any more than I feel like I should be able to force a Christian/Muslim/whatever platform to publish my gay erotica scenes.
The content a publisher directly publishes to the world at large reflects on their brand. Nobody feels that way about Visa because theyâre not publishing anything.
Folks on this forum donât get pissed at Visa personally and vow to boycott them just because they process money for religious extremists. We blame the religious extremists and their publishers. Just like religious bigots arenât boycotting Visa because they fund companies like us who promote queer content. (And before Collective Shout is mentioned, no they havenât boycotted Visa; their explicit purpose was to leverage Visa as a weapon because they were positioned to be used as a blunt instrument. Thatâs not the same thing.)
Nobody looks at McDonalds and thinks: âAh, the company Visa partnered with!â
99.99999% of people donât think of Visa as anything other than a plastic card they use to buy whatever they want. Hell, thatâs half the problemâVisa can do whatever they want because nobody thinks about it.
Yup. Companies should absolutely be allowed to paint their own red lines.
The issue at hand in this thread isnât people saying they shouldnât be allowed to enforce their own standards, itâs that Itch and Steam were not allowed to make their own red line. The line was dictated by a massive outside source and imposed on them under threat of being wiped out.
This isnât new, either. Many, many years ago now, a website called Fetlife allowed people to discuss almost every kink under the sun (with the exception of publishing literally illegal content, which is also my personal red line) Then came the payment processors. From the top down, they stomped on Fetlife until the site gave in to their demands and removed entire topics of conversation and thousands of groups that didnât do anything against the siteâs TOS or against the law. All because of companies like Visa throwing their weight around.
I said at the time that if they can do that to Fetlife, they could do it to anyone. Now people are reaping what they allowed to grow. Cue the âThey didnât come for me so I did not speak outâ cliche.
I donât necessarily like the idea of individual publishers censoring the media they publish, but I think they have every right to. No individual or company should be forced to directly publish material that they donât feel comfortable with under their real name or their brand name. And at the risk of redundancyâno I donât think Visa/Mastercard are the same thing. They arenât publishers.
I see nothing wrong with that, either. People are allowed to let their voices be heard.
Iâll be honestâI have no idea what that is and I must have missed some drama. I donât use Discord and I rarely read every forum thread. Iâll have to dig into that when I have time.
I think Iâve been pretty consistent that I think publishers should be able to make their own red lines and that my issue is the red lines being imposed on them. Not sure I remember calling anyone a bigot or a fool. (Maybe you werenât referring to me, but the post was composed as a response to my comments, so⌠And no, I donât consider telling someone to âgive me a breakâ is equivalent to calling them a fool.)
There is no mass commercial spread of porn normalizing non-consensual choking. There IS a spread of porn with consensual choking, however. The problem is that moral scolds either fail to see the difference or pretend not to see it. This reminds me of the horror vanilla people often look at BDSM and some queer spaces withâthe âthey canât possibly be consenting to that!â moral panic. Just because it squicks someone doesnât mean itâs non-consensual.
Iâm old enough to remember when the censors were using this exact argument against gay porn, because it led to the normalization of âharmful behavior.â Believe it or not, there are a lot of people out there who like to be choked during sex. --signed a guy who likes to be choked during sex.
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It shouldnât be surprising that context matters, friend.
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Just saw this explainer on the situation. Mastercardâs rules are surprisingly vague and can probably be used more expansively than they already have.
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Not very surprising to me that monopolistic corporations give themselves expansive powers that they selectively enforce.
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From what I understand almost, all of the commenters agree that the power Visa and MasterCard have to force websites that uses card transactions, is scary and also that websites having to shut down or highly restrict adult countdown because of outside interference, as opposed to because of decisions made by them and their actual users, is a bad thing. While the discussion about to what extent there should be red lines and, if so, which ones and how they should be implemented, is an interesting and important one, I think in this instance, the most important thing is to focuse on what we can do to push back against current and future interference on outside actors on the content of adult websites or websites including adult content. And Iâm particularly talking about credit card companies.
The comment about credit card companies hating getting calls, if that also applies to Visa and Mastercard shows a potential strategy against dealing with this. But I also think that organizing could be a really good way of fighting against outside interferecence. Anti-porn organizations such as the one that put pressure on Visa and Mastercard in the first place shows how much power there is in organizing and putting together concerted campaigns. If they can do it, certainly people wanting to keep adult content ,and other content that may be targeted from conservative crsusaders,from being restricted by outside forces should be able to organize and run campaigns against outside interference leading to restricting or even banning adult content, should be able to do the same. Just take a look at the playbook of such crusader organization, so that you can use their own methods against them whenever theyâre trying to do something similar that they have done to sites with adult content. Whether you believe that there should be certain red lines or not(for the record, I do at least partly agree with @Havenstoneâs points) the focus should be on the wrongness of outside and excessive interference, not least how giving outside actors such an outsized influence on the content of a website is fundamentally problematic. And, in a similar way, thinking of actions that can lead to negative repercussions for the outside actors in question. If people have ideas for this or for other ways to stand up to such outside actors, I think it could be good to share them in this thread.
While I see your point, I used that word(AFAICR) one time in my comment, and it should be clear from the rest of my comment that I donât support their acts. I also have a hard time believing that people likely to support their actions browse this thread or would be more likely to support them because I used that word one time. Wouldnât it be better to instead focusing on how to fight them, as I suggested previously, instead on focusing on how we talk about them?
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Can we stop calling these people âanti-pornâ organizations? They are targeting mainly queer people and representation as well as sex-workers, and by calling them âanti-pornâ you are giving them ground under their feet for their claim of especially everything queer and sex-work being inherently pornographic.
Donât fucking do that, can we?
edit: Natwa, you still used the term, and it doesnât matter if these people browse the thread or not, or if you agree with them or not. You already saw no issue using that term and thus adapting that part of their narrative.
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If anyoneâs interested, not sure if anyoneâs posted about her yet, thereâs a chick on X/youtube called madam savvy and she is being an absolute thorn in the sides of all these companies/people. Like sheâs a pretty good place to stay caught up on if youâre following all this shit. 
glad sheâs on out side
Looks like the people behind this whole chucklefuck just hate games/anything that threatens their delicate sensibilities in general
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I want to voice my total support here. Thereâs a weird thing about noncon/dubcon that tends to get overlooked in these arguments; Those who view those fantasies in the shoes of the âvictimâ per se. Thereâs people out there who like to get approached by someone whoâs not backing down just because their anxietyâs flaring up.
Nobody wants that IRL because they know reality is gonna be more cruel than that, but thatâs usually what the fantasy is for; getting something reality canât, hasnât, or according to them, can never give them.
Things like Control, Power, the freedom to act on a whim without fear of pushing someone away, etc.
Or Things like Unconditional love, Someone who never leaves, the freedom to relax for several days, weeks, or months without the fear of someone drifting away, etc.
Culture completely aside, kinks have deeper meanings and connections to people as individuals that arenât gonna be easy topics to bring up with a psychiatrist. Because itâs a kink. You donât just bring it up. Even if the doctor pinkie promises not to judge you or report you to the local thought police.
Porn, tasteful or no, morally defensible or not, is a whole lot better for society as a whole than just letting things that likely came from some kind of trauma, fester.
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Porn and anti-LGBTQ+, anti abortion etc, is a very easy and popular handle for these groups to attach themselves to. Basically they are right-wing extremists, some of whom may be affiliated with religion, but are heavily financed by patrons it might be difficult to identify. When these groups unite, not by country but by philosophy world-wide, we are going to be in serious trouble. I donât know if we are fighting a losing battle because these groups thrive on dissent and hatred as well as fear, and there are more and more fear-inducing videos on social media like Youtube that target what are perceived as easy targets. So far, its mainly, in the case of Australia, aimed at pensioners and reading the reactions, trying to say its a bunch of lies simply doesnât work. They believe the AI voice and photos of cities not even in the country! These are exactly the same people who have incited racism here.
If our own right-wing extremists have joined up with Maga, then between them they have increased their area of influence as well as their financial resources and can use each other as âreputableâ sources to back up what they say. I canât think what thy hope to achieve, because they are playing into the hands of foreign interests who would love to see our countries in political disarray. Visa and Mastercard, through greed as much as anything else, have opened up things for these haters to interfere even more in how we live. They are the fall guys, stupid enough to agree simply because it helps their bottom line.
Iâve caught my own bank out trying to set up a shopping facility with a private company that aims to rival Paypalâs financial arrangement with brands and shops, however when I looked into it, I was going to sign up to something that had the right to download all my data and send it on elsewhere! This is the tip of the iceberg, with the big end of town slugging it out with foreign interests and governments, none of whom think of our rights or interests, and we are piggies in the middle unless someone can peacefully replace most of the governments in the so-called democratic countries with people who are not career politicians, because at the moment we seem to have no means of fighting such powerful interests.
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I had a blast of energy yesterday and called Paypal (sucked up 14 minutes!), emailed Visa & Stripe, and called all 3 federal government reps about KOSA. WE CAN WIN THIS!
Hereâs the webpage again with numbers, addresses, and petitions:
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Given the power of porn to shape behavior, of which the uptick in rough-sex-without-asking is one clear negative example, Iâm comfortable on precautionary grounds alone resisting the normalization of rape or CSA in commercially available porn â not by law, but by encouraging as many publishing companies as possible to adopt internal ethical standards that shrink the space where noncon is commercially available
Iâd like to just make a short counterpoint here - the idea that âconsensualâ noncon or fictional erotic noncon content has brought an increase in cases pertaining sexual violence is a debated issue, but as as most of the peer-reviewed consensus shows, the link between consuming porn by itself and commiting crimes, both of a sexual and violent nature, is so far quite weak. In fact, studies in Denmark testing showed that a increase in the consuption of porn, has, in pararel, showed a decrease in cases of rape.
Now, this is not to say there arenât cases where a study shows that those who have consumed violent pornography arenât actually more predisposed to violence, but careful interpretation is necessary here, as these studies almost invariably note that while this increased presence of violent attitudes amongst consumers doesnât mean that it was a causal effect - merely that they were already violent and were simply draw to the pornographic content in the same way a racist might be draw to hearts of iron 4. Is this a unanimous consensus? No, but itâs one of the most commonly accepted amongst them. And what leads to the whole âchoking-SAâ association.
If you ask me personally, this whole thing is a messy affair. Iâve seen many cases of SA victims who consume this kind of content, specially mixed with BDSM culture, because itâs cathartic to them, and that this can help with healing their trauma, if done under a controlled and proper environment. Again, that does not mean, of course, that every person will start seeing this kind of media as a survivor, and for plenty it can end up simply reopening the wounds and will find them an offensive caricature of what they went through - and thereâs nothing wrong with that.
Iâm firmly believe that in the realm of fiction, death of author reigns, and that every fictional story can have a positive impact within the eye of the beholder - yes, even the Turner Diaries, a book that teaches us that behind their bravado, people like William Luther Pierce are nothing but manchildren who have to resort to writing a wankish alt-his for his hateful ideology rather than doing anything meaningful with his life.
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âItâs not illegal so therefore Visa/Mastercard has no business interveningâ
I see this argument used a lot. But risk management doesnât start and end with whatâs legal or not.
Brand protection is also a factor.
But wait, weâre talking about NSFW content that isnât illegal. Yes but who do you think Visa/Mastercard is more scared of. A subset of gamers who want NSFW content or a New York Times articles with headlines like:
âHow your Credit Card is profiting from rape simulatorsâ
âI caught my 14 year old buying a Pro Genocide GameâŚâ
Or imagine the CEO of Visa or Mastercard before Congress and a Senator is like:
âSir, are you proud your company profits from incest and rape?â
Visa/Mastercardâs biggest clients are banks and big merchants like Walmart. This is where their money comes from. So why will they tolerate NSFW content that could harm their brand reputation when most of their money comes from non-NSFW stuff?
Visa/Mastercard can drop Pornhub, OnlyFans, Steam and Itchio and still make good profits. If these platforms donât care about the content they allow thatâs fine. Visa/Mastercard are still private companies who can refuse service from merchants who pose a higher risk for them and their big clients (the banks).
And just because something is legal in the US doesnât mean itâs legal every where else. Can Steam and Itchio prove to Visa/Mastercard that these more controversial NSFW games were not available in countries with stricter obscenity laws?
Again, Visa/Mastercard make most of their money from non-NSFW stuff. So why will they accept a higher risk for something that does not provide a high rate of return.
No private company is going to accept the high risk of being dragged to Congress or Parliament, have regulators breathe down their necks, have advocacy groups complain to the banks directly, being sued or fined by other countries with stricter obscenity law, all for NSFW content which doesnât bring in the big money.
So yes, you can call and complain to Visa/Mastercard. But then these companies are going to map out their risks and which side they want to land on.
The vast majority of lawmakers and people are normies. Theyâre not going to stand up against stricter NSFW content moderation.
The big clients of Visa/Mastercard are banks. I donât think JP Morgan and other banks want to be associated with rape simulators so I doubt any bank is going to tell Visa/Mastercard to ease off.
Had Steam had better content moderation around adult stuff, Collective Shout wouldnât have much leverage to force Visa/Mastercard hand. But once platforms are so lasses-faire about NSFW and it raises the risks for Visa/Mastercard for no real upside, theyâre going to crack the whip.
Even if there was more competition and more payment processors there is no way a payment processor can allow everything thatâs legal. Which bank will accept payments and associate with such a payment processor whose reputation is tied to known controversial stuff?
The cost benefit analysis on this is clear. Itâs safer to demand stricter moderation around NSFW content as both a legal and PR shield.
Thatâs why I highly doubt Visa/Mastercard are going to change their minds. The risks are too high and theyâre both risk averse.
EDIT:
How they got dominant and remain that way matters.
Iâll assume itâs that the people in that society refuse to believe the Earth is round and are all flat earthers. So why should a private company who is known to publish about flat earth and got rewarded for it by people choosing to go down to those stores, be forced to publish about round earth.
Round Earthers must create their own company and compete. If the Flat Earthers publishing company is using its dominance to squeeze out competition then yes the state must intervene. But if polls show 95% of said society believe in flat earth and actively refuse to listen about round earth then clearly the people have spoken. They donât want round earth propaganda 
. And they shouldnât be forced to accommodate round Earthers.
Of course I do believe there should be limits like said spreading misinformation about vaccines or giving medical advice. One has to show clear evidence of widespread harm due to said misinformation for society and government to intervene. The bar has to be set high so as to not kill a diversity of opinions in said society.
I think Alex OâConnor gave an interesting thought experiment.
Why doesnât GTA allow the player to press a button and just sexually assault an NPC.
Why arenât there NPCs who are children or babies. Can you imagine the videos of players putting a npc baby on a tank and blowing it up. Will such a scandal be worth it for Rockstar.
We can go further, GTA having a mission where player can go into a school and start shooting at pupils and teachers.
I think Rockstar knows there are boundaries they can push at. Thereâs only so much backlash from normie lawmakers and advocacy groups they can handle before it becomes too much. They too assess the risks of what they allow and produce.
To me this applies to payment processors too. Theyâre private companies assessing their risks.
âItâs legalâ is not going to be a great PR defense.
Besides, so many gamers already play safe games. Thereâs Candy Crush to make money from after all. Why stick out your neck over the most controversial NSFW content/game out there. It makes little business sense.
âThink about the childrenâ is a line laughed at online. But guess what, lawmakers will happily pass laws to âprotectâ the kids. Case in point Australia, UK, FranceâŚ
I think there should discussion around the boundaries of said content moderation and how to make the rules more clearer. But the idea that payment processors have no say on content that they facilitate is not realistic.
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Round Earthers must create their own company and compete. If the Flat Earthers publishing company is using its dominance to squeeze out competition then yes the state must intervene. But if polls show 95% of said society believe in flat earth and actively refuse to listen about round earth then clearly the people have spoken. They donât want round earth propaganda
How do you expect for the government to know whether a company is using itâs dominance to âsqueeze outâ competitors when in the same paragraph your attitude towards a society/nation where a company is technically not doing anything illegal to keep itâs supporters as the status quo even though it de facto holds sway over what society believes or not is to go âwelp, nothing you can do about it"?
Throughout history into this very day, itâs an objective fact companies hold sway and influence society and culture through propaganda and control over media. Remember that blue and pink colors werenât distinguished as being associated with boys and girls until around 50-60âs. This was all thanks to various clothing and toy brands pushing this idea (hi, Barbie and Hello Kitty), a fairly harmless one, but that can easily be turned nefarious under certain circunstances, as can be seen by the smoking industry horrid efforts to make the population believe it was a harmless habit.
So why should a private company who is known to publish about flat earth and got rewarded for it by people choosing to go down to those stores, be forced to publish about round earth.
For most people, âwe shouldnât cooperate with the nutjobs who are helping set promoting an idea thatâs proven to be false and harmful to society just because it means higher profitsâ would be good enough reason for them. Of course, if you are a Cyberpunk villain, feel free to disregard the last sentence.
To me this applies to payment processors too. Theyâre private companies assessing their risks.
âItâs legalâ is not going to be a great PR defense.
I think itâs important we make one thing straight - the one case where payment processors came close to having to pay compensation from a lawsuit (they didnât, by the way) was the pornhub case, where an actual, no-sweats crime was instigated as the platform was hosting actual SA videos.
This? Thereâs no crime involved. âItâs legalâ might not sound like a great defense as to why thereâs nothing wrong with hosting Little Loli Harem 3000, but the fact is that costumers, the people who consume and use the platform - they donât care. Until Collective Shout came along, nobody cared about any potential âfreakyâ games in the itch.io community outside of maybe YouTubers who make videos on things like, i dunno, LonaRPG. Hell, NO ONE outside of terminally online circles is talking about LonaRPG even though itâs the perfect example of a âgrape simulatorâ Collective Shout is making a fuss about.
Simple put - there was no relevant risk. Companies are bending to interest groups who are little better than Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church.
Besides, so many gamers already play safe games. Thereâs Candy Crush to make money from after all. Why stick out your neck over the most controversial NSFW content/game out there. It makes little business sense.
Jackal, this is why everyone is allienated to your takes, you keep talking about credit card companies not wishing to ârisk their businessâ and how itâs unfair to want them to stand up for creative freedom because it puts their âassets on the lineâ and yada yada - câmon dude, weâre here discussing the fate of the industry and youâre deciding right or wrong based on whether companies might offend their shareholders and lose on profits because they walked on eggshells put into place by the very same people who want to see the very same industry go down?
Yeah, itâs more profitable for them to bend down, assuming thereâs a real risk involved (i doubt it - see above and below) - so what? Art wasnât made to fit into the standards of a bunch of J.P Morgan corpos. This all ties back to my original point - if a company holds monopoly over a certain part of the industry and can decide what can be safely bought or not through them, them yes, that is a MASSIVE problem regardless of how the company came fo acquire that share of the market because costumers become hostage of the shareholders wallets.
âThink about the childrenâ is a line laughed at online. But guess what, lawmakers will happily pass laws to âprotectâ the kids. Case in point Australia, UK, FranceâŚ
Point me to a single time where Australia, notorious for itâs stringent and arbitrary censorship, ever ran afoul of a payment processing company being dragged into court because of them. Because thereâs a HUGE difference about laws like that affecting individual content creators and the people behind the credit card used to buy their works - and until now i failed to see any correlation between the two.
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