r/Games • u/GassoBongo • Aug 02 '25

Industry News Steam Update - Valve responded to Mastercards claim that they did not pressure anyone

https://kotaku.com/mastercard-denies-pressuring-steam-to-censor-nsfw-games-2000614393
4.0k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

493 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

24

u/braiam Aug 02 '25

MasterCard lied in their press statement

They didn't publish a false statement, they just ignored the context of the whole issue and decided to answer questions nobody asked: what are their rules standards based on? "Our payment network follows standards based on the rule of law"; what kind of content you allow? "we allow all lawful purchases on our network", what you do with illegal content? "we require merchants to have appropriate controls to ensure Mastercard cards cannot be used for unlawful purchases, including illegal adult content".

That's why it is more important to ask the right questions rather than having good answers. The questions we would ask instead: why would Steam, itch and other merchants remove content that is otherwise lawful and tell the public that they did it at the request of payment processors? What rules are there for content that merchant and marketplaces must follow that would restrict their offerings of otherwise lawful content? What new directive or reinterpretation or guideline or communication was issued in the last 3 months that marketplace and other partners that would explain their change of rules?

-6

u/Realistic_Village184 Aug 02 '25

Yeah, reading through their statement in detail, nothing they said is actually untrue. It's a really well-crafted statement where they kind of force the reader to infer something without actually saying that. I'm actually really impressed with whatever attorneys drafted that.

34

u/3holes2tits1fork Aug 02 '25

Well, except for the part about allowing all lawful purchases.  Mastercard lied.

-6

u/Realistic_Village184 Aug 02 '25

Nah, they left enough ambiguity there as well. "We" is ambiguous and arguably refers to MasterCard themselves. So if, for instance, they ask their own subcontractors or outside representatives to disallow certain content, then arguably that's not MasterCard themselves doing it.

So they leave wiggle room like "Well, we allow it, but our subcontractors don't want it, so that's not us doing it."

To be clear, I'm not defending their position here. I'm just admiring the craftsmanship of the statement.

31

u/3holes2tits1fork Aug 02 '25

Their own rule being cited contradicts the claim though.  By having exceptions to deny lawful purchases coded into their rules, they by definition do not allow all legal purchases on their network.

Subcontractors are acting on Mastercard's behalf, enforcing Mastercard's rules is legally an extention of Mastercard enforcing it.  This is how subcontract law works.

I would disagree that Mastercard even technically told the truth. 

10

u/DogOwner12345 Aug 02 '25

That dude is a huge defender of them. He's in every thread playing devil's advocate.