Updated: 8/1/2025 4:18 p.m. ET: In a statement to Kotaku, a spokesperson for Valve said that while Mastercard did not communicate with it directly, concerns did come through payment processor and banking intermediaries. They said payment processors rejected Valve’s current guidelines for moderating illegal content on Steam, citing Mastercard’s Rule 5.12.7.
“Mastercard did not communicate with Valve directly, despite our request to do so,” Valve’s statement sent over email to Kotaku reads. “Mastercard communicated with payment processors and their acquiring banks. Payment processors communicated this with Valve, and we replied by outlining Steam’s policy since 2018 of attempting to distribute games that are legal for distribution. Payment processors rejected this, and specifically cited Mastercard’s Rule 5.12.7 and risk to the Mastercard brand.”
Rule 5.12.7 states, “A Merchant must not submit to its Acquirer, and a Customer must not submit to the Interchange System, any Transaction that is illegal, or in the sole discretion of the Corporation, may damage the goodwill of the Corporation or reflect negatively on the Marks.”
It goes on, “The sale of a product or service, including an image, which is patently offensive and lacks serious artistic value (such as, by way of example and not limitation, images of nonconsensual sexual behavior, sexual exploitation of a minor, nonconsensual mutilation of a person or body part, and bestiality), or any other material that the Corporation deems unacceptable to sell in connection with a Mark.”
Violations of rule 5.12.7 can result in fines, audits, or companies being dropped by the payment processors.
Put simply, we allow all lawful purchases on our network.
As Valve correctly points out, this is a blatant & outright lie. They have cut off any number of legal entities over pressure from politicians or groups. Now they have to own it.
I mean, their own Rule 5.12.7 has that “or” in it, which includes transactions that are fully lawful but “may damage the goodwill of the corporation”.
So obviously somebody is lying. I really don’t understand why Valve or Itch would be the ones lying about this. My money is on the group of self righteous censorship soldiers with too much time on their hands, and the payment companies. I could always be wrong I though.
MasterCard is so big they don’t even know what all their departments are doing. The PR department probably asked a couple of the top level execs if they were pushing for this and they said no so they claimed it didn’t happen.
MasterCard knows exactly what they’re doing.
executive leadership is varying degrees of Christian nationalist and trump supporters.
source: me, I know people.
they’re blaming it on the middle men
In a statement to Kotaku, a spokesperson for Valve said that while Mastercard did not communicate with it directly, concerns did come through payment processor and banking intermediaries.
Not necessarily. Valve says they haven’t heard from Mastercard directly. Is there evidence of Itch.io having been approached at all? It seems to me that they just made the move to delist and investigate to be safe in the wake of Valve’s rule changes.
We have seen the same behavior out of the credit card companies before. Its pretty clear that they do pressure companies to remove content they don’t approve of. Its censorship and its legal since the companies are not the government. They are just tied in at a high level to the banking industry. Its a good example of how lack of regulation harms both creators and consumers.
It lets a bunch of poorly adjusted individuals force their personal mental problems on us all.
If nobody takes responsibility, then they should all just agree that this was a big misunderstanding and reinstate the titty games.
Collective Shout says it wasn’t their fault, MC and Visa say it wasn’t their fault, Steam and Itch say it wasn’t their fault. Conclusion? No one is to blame! No one did it! What’s more, it didn’t even happen!! it was all a figment of our imagination!
I mean, PayPal has not denied responsibility so far. Which is pretty interesting
They must be like the guy who is involved in the mischief but since he is not as visible as the others, he pretends that the issue is not with him to see if he gets away with it.
Gee golly I accidentally dropped internet privacy into the garbage and almost threw it out with the trash. Oops didnt mean to! Silly me.
Gotta love it when companies put something in their legal agreements that just says “we can do whatever the fuck we want.” Is the rest of the wall of text just there to hide that somewhere someone won’t read?
I guess turn the boobs butts and dicks up to 10,000 then. In every game.
Its time for Gordon freeman to do unholy things with a headcrab!
Like this?
Lamar IS fully debeaked, after all… ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Oh god why did you have to put that image in my head. No wonder it hides in the vents
nonconsensual mutilation of a person or body part
I feel like a strict reading of this rule would also put a lot of fighting games, shooters, horror games etc in the not approved category
it would put circumcision too, but the USA doesn’t care
Right now in Rimworld I am sending child soldiers to bring more ammo to the mortars that are busy pounding away at some primitive tribesmen that are angry at me for dumping a few tons of toxic waste on their home or something.
Those that survive the mortar bombardment will be lobotomised and enslaved. If they have enough limbs remaining to be useful to me I will probably use a few of them as slaves and the rest will be sold to the empire. Any that the empire don’t want will be harvested for organs and dumped in a corpse pit.
I didn’t ask if the tribesmen consented to any of this.
I keep trying to learn rimworld. I drop out of most tutorials some time after building a refrigerator. Any recommendations on how to get further along? This is a game I’ll love once I know it but I’m not there yet.
Do the relaxed scenario girl and a lower difficulty for an easier time. Drop in a year round grow area, and mountainous area to mine a base into the mountain.
nonconsensual mutilation of a person or body part
All action movies should removed from streaming.
I think some christian items could also be affected, like the bible. Cane and Able, crucifixion, etc are all in that book
Also incest
Also encouraging your neighbors to rape your own daughters instead of the visiting angels.
And circumcision of children.
Good vibes all around
No cell phone, no internet. Just people being people. Really living in the moment. Really knowing what its like to be human.
The good old days.
Mortal Kombat is gone.
Oh did you not read the years and years of actions religious groups did to snuff games and movies?
Diablo 2, corpse explosion!
Rust, just rust in general.
Mutilation seems to imply more than just violence or killing. For example, Days Gone has a scene very early that involves flaying someone’s skin off, I would imagine that type of stuff would qualify.
Wouldn’t that have artistic value? Since that adds to the story.
That’s true but anyone agaimt its inclusion would just say it doesn’t add to the story. “Clearly it detracts from the story, as the player would be distracted by the horrific event instead of enjoying the game” -some hypothetical mastercard Exec, right before fining Valve.
It’s not a court, so there’s no appeal from that, unless there’s an appeal granted by the contract itself.
That’s the thing, who defines what artistic value is? I’ve seen some pretty creative pornography over the years. Is that artistic value? I’ve seen very creative depictions of violence and uses of profanity too. What about on the other end of the spectrum, Is Tetris have artistic value?
Tetris is artsy as shit, especially with that kickass score, Korobeiniki.
For a better example, maybe contrast it against the more generic marvel movies.
I was trying to keep it limited to gaming and Tetris was the most basic one that came to mind. How about Pong?
Also not knocking these games at all. Just trying to make a point.
They didnt have to show it so explicitly, although I’m not sure simply implying mutilation would qualify too.
Its hard to say what the right level of shock for that kind of thing is, it probably should just be restricted to adults only.
Direct link: Mastercard rule 5.12.7 Illegal or Brand-damaging Transactions
As much as we hate x, airing negative publicity over their attempt to deny responsibility by directly citing back their policy & asking questions might be good.
“Mastercard did not communicate with Valve directly, despite our request to do so,” Valve’s statement sent over email to Kotaku reads. “Mastercard communicated with payment processors and their acquiring banks. Payment processors communicated this with Valve
This whole thing reads like a telephone game where nobody wants to take any responsibility.
Honestly, I don’t care if MasterCard doesn’t want to take responsibility. It was their rule and their intermediaries that caused the situation and they did not intervene when valve tried to reach out directly.
They are responsible through action or inaction, no matter how they try to deny it.
they did the exact same thing in the porn industry. naturally Visa and MC didn’t communicate directly with the individual porn companies. So thats’ how places like CCBill and what have you took off. and then Visa and MC laid out their weird rules to CCBill who then passed it along to the individual companies.
At work when no one wants to pick up a task, I issue the “slopey shoulders” award.
CollectiveShout did
Why are they lying? I don’t understand what it’s accomplishing. We all know they’re lying. That’s obvious from their statement here.
I love how this has damaged Mastercards brand much more than anything Valve sells. MC would rather pressure Valve for selling NSFW games, than clean up billionaires buying and trafficking children.
Mastercard is living the corporate dream. They’ve colluded their way to a near monopoly and don’t have to care about the value of their brand. They just have to be invisible enough that they don’t pull heat for something or other from various governments.
Hey, Mastercard don’t deal with those transactions. Too traceable! Diplomatic narcotics and crypto have less of a paper trail…
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Pirate’s life for me then
Brilliant, just make your rules vague and force everyone else down the chain to self-censor. Surely this will result in the best outcome.
Fucking mastercard
It’s not even that vague.
Valve basically said: “we are not doing anything illegal”.
To which mastercard responded: “yeah but you’re making us look bad, so tough”.
To which mastercard responded
I don’t think you read this properly. Mastercard didn’t respond at all.
Of course they did.
They just did so from behind a veil of plausible deniability.
You think a citatation of a specific mastercard contract clause came from a concerned partner?
A lawyer for a processor like PayPal or Stripe could easily have gone “uh, the Mastercard contract clause prohibits this”.
And PayPal is well known for doing shitty things, so it wouldn’t surprise me.
Maybe.
But Valve asked mastercard directly.
A lack of a response is a also a response, in this case essentially an endorsement of whatever their partner was telling Valve.
So you think Valve is lying?
What?
Did you not read literally the first line?
In a statement to Kotaku, a spokesperson for Valve said that while Mastercard did not communicate with it directly, concerns did come through payment processor and banking intermediaries
Yes.
Plausible deniability.
“Oh so sorry that wasn’t us, one of our partners just overzealously applied our policies”
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If they just wanted to follow the law, they could have left it at “don’t sell anything illegal” without all the extra “brand damage” nonsense.
or any other material that the Corporation deems unacceptable to sell in connection with a Mark
which could be just anything.
NugganMastercard has decided the following things are abominations, and are therefore unacceptable to sell:Cats, the colour blue, oysters, mushrooms, chocolate, garlic, cheese, the smell of beets, jigsaw puzzles, and rocks
Obviously our solution here is to send a pissed off bard to beat up Mastercard, then.
A few of those even have actual real live victims, unlike video game porn. This whole debacle is truly absurd.
These comments are what is absurd ngl.
Get a grip.
wat
Up to the third comma, yes, but all the rest seems to go beyond that pretty arbitrarily.
When they say anything that “may damage the goodwill of the corporation”, and qualify that with “in the sole discretion of the Corporation” that just means “anything we don’t want to be associated with, and we will be the judge of that”.
That’s what makes it so vague, how is a Merchant or an Acquirer supposed to know what Mastercard might find damaging to the goodwill? They have to guess, or use trial and error*. Most will just err on the side of caution, which means customers get blocked from even more purchases, just to be safe.
* Or talk to Mastercard, which Valve apparently tried, but they wouldn’t respond.
When they say anything that “may damage the goodwill of the corporation”,
Looks like MasterCard is going to have to ban MasterCard because of all the damage they’ve done to MasterCard’s goodwill.
Their rules seem to just follow the law
Whose law? The US? UK? Netherlands? Japan? Or Singapore?
That’s why it’s vague.
It’s much worse than that. How they word it is “if it may damage the public image of mastercard”. And they don’t review the content, they review the means used to prevent the damage to their brand.
So valve doesn’t even need to have anything that actually damage mastercard brand, it just need to be that mastercard is not comfortable enough with the measures used to prevent it.
Like buying anything would actually damage the brand of Mastercard. It’s such a nonsensical excuse that I’m surprised nobody laughed in their face.
Yeah, right up until assholes start posting “MASTERCARD SELLS SMUT INCEST HENTAI GAMES” on TikTok. Then it’s a problem, and MasterCard considers that damaging to the brand.
There’s really nothing stopping anyone from posting that right now. That’s the quality level of most of the online content nowadays.
That’s my point. They are posting it, and MasterCard does consider it harmful to the brand, so now we’re here.
No, the rules don’t (that’s why it’s been fine for 7 years), and you used a derogatory term so cry harder about your downvotes.
Isn’t every game NSFW? Funny how language works.
Unless your work has been gamified. I play several games at work, one called Jira, another called GIT they aren’t super exciting but it’s a job.
Ironic though that gamification refers to features added to games to make them feel more like jobs (quotas, deadlines, milestones, certification etc).
Are you suggesting “professional gamer” is not a real/worthwhile job?
It’s like being a miner, the job isn’t safe for work
Don’t dig straight down
I only have about 20ish hours of work weekly and I’m on a hybrid schedule. My two days at home I’m essentially paid to game since I need to be available but don’t have anything to do. Am I a pro gamer now?
I think I did a whole 4 hours of work last week. Really pushing myself lately.
Dang, be sure not to overdo it. Don’t wanna burn out, y’know?
My first work from home job was a lot like that. My next two after that were only like that sometimes.
This same position in another company was a 60 hour job. They required all information to be shared in PowerPoint with images so I’d effectively spend 30 hours a week making presentations that lasted an hour or two at most, but could’ve been a chart in an email.
This spot started as 40 hours a week, but I automated most tasks and just don’t share the files and bi templates. They spend ten hours a week on a task I’ve automated to 30 minutes because their excel guru can’t figure out a formula I googled. They’re promoting me to a Sr. position with glowing reviews and I’ve never worked less in my life.
