>>717092906
Initiating a lawsuit would have meant MasterCard would stop doing business with Valve for the duration of the lawsuit, which would inevitably go on for fucking years, you retard. If they won, it would go back to normal, obviously. But Valve couldn't survive in the meantime. They'd have to just about stop selling games altogether, and they might even have trouble paying Akamai and their other partners for their services that keep the rest of Steam running, too. Steam would shut down completely for who knows how long. People would leave, Valve would have zero revenue, and run out of money incredibly quickly.
>>717093152
Discover and AMEX have almost no market share in comparison to Visa and MasterCard. And if push came to shove, they'd probably also side with MasterCard and stop processing payments, because they'd like to have that kind of power, too, and they like that MasterCard is strong arming Valve on their behalf, while they get to pretend to be neutral parties.
And in any case, Valve probably couldn't survive with just Discover, or just AMEX, or even both of them together, even if they weren't on board with MasterCard.
That said, if one or the other were to come out and say "We'll never fucking do this shit, we believe 100% in your right to purchase anything that's legal" Whether or not that was true, they'd pick up a fucking ton of market share right now.
And that also said. I wouldn't be surprised if all the credit card companies have dirt on each other that could lead to huge fines or even criminal charges for major figures, and their hands might be tied from acting out.