"Recently there's been a bunch of community discussion around what kind of games we're allowing onto the Steam Store.
As is often the case, the discussion caused us to spend some time examining what we're doing, why we're doing it, and how we could be doing it better. Decision making in this space is particularly challenging, and one that we've really struggled with.
Contrary to many assumptions, this isn't a space we've automated - humans at Valve are very involved, with groups of people looking at the contents of every controversial title submitted to us.
Similarly, people have falsely assumed these decisions are heavily affected by our payment processors, or outside interest groups.
Nope, it's just us grappling with a really hard problem."

> falsely assumed these decisions are heavily affected by our payment processors, or outside interest groups
This was written in 2018 and they still claim the most recent sweep was "their own decision"

https://steamcommunity.com/app/593110/eventcomments/1628537372818538426/?ctp=1

>>717668092 (OP)
>or straight up trolling
>troll games get published anyway

I suspect they haven't thought of a workaround to payment processor demands. It would be simple to deny games with so-called "offensive content" to be bought utilising payment processors, that way people who still want to buy those games can buy credit (optionally with payment processors), then buy the games with that. Payment processors would have nothing to complain about, and steam could go on ignoring feminist activism attempting to interfere with the platform.

>>717668092 (OP)
the people that wrote this lost internal political battles with other employees long before payment processors showed up. anime games were getting banned all the time in like a year, the golden age of "everything is allowed" was a short one

it's a shame that steam was taken over by puritans

>>717668092 (OP)
Then I'll simply take my business elsewhere. I don't appreciate it when companies act like the moral police and try to censor what people can spend their money on. Don't even give a shit about the games that were delisted, but it sets a precedent where they might later on deem even less offensive things as "damaging to our brand" and remove games with any kind of fanservice, or violence, or language.

TLDR: If it's true this was Steams choice all along, fuck Steam.

>>717668521
>Then I'll simply take my business elsewhere.
sure thing, bro. good luck.

>>717668357
>a workaround
It`s a good idea, but who`s going to deal with the refunds then ?
>take my business elsewhere
I have a couple hundred games on Steam and i am still seriously considering just deleting the account
it got old pretty fuckin fast

>>717668680
Refunded credit goes back to the wallet. Easy.
>but then I can't get the money back
That's the risk you take with steam credit already.

>>717668092 (OP)
>they still claim the most recent sweep was "their own decision"
No they do not. Who told you that?

>>717668092 (OP)
thank you for circling half the page so I know what to read

>>717668485
>steam was taken over by puritans
kek
i was permabanned once for posting "explicit material" when i made screenies of some Skyrim babes

>>717668667
It's Simple. If an alternative to buying the game I want doesn't exist, I'll just go sailing. I refuse to reward a company for shitty practices, simple as that.

>>717668357
>Payment processors would have nothing to complain about
Yes they would. If people can buy "extreme porn" on a Steam, and Steam accepts MasterCard / Visa, that would make it look like MasterCard / Visa supports "extreme porn" and damage their brand name. Look at how Planned Parenthood got defunded from accepting Medicaid, even though they made sure federal funding never went to their abortion procedures. Finding clever, legally valid loopholes doesn't matter when optics are more important.

>>717668092 (OP)
>a really hard problem
fire the racist fuck who keeps banning t-rated japanese vita games, problem solved

this shit lasted less than a year
which is why it's not possible to completely buy valve being entirely "clean"
as they either harbored 'Rule 15' from coming to light through their review process, or they have sincerely been banning titles clearly neither "trolling nor illegal"

>>717668957
They're too big for optics to actually affect them. This is a liability problem.

I kinda understand it in a way
Take this game for example :
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3304770/Exposed_Livestream/
Looks all cute and innocent, have no mature rating on Steam, but there is a patch at the dev`s web site that makes it hardcore loli pron

>>717669409
>Nudity
>Sexual Content
>Hentai
>have no mature rating
Get a load of this retard over here.

>>717668957
>that would make it look like MasterCard / Visa supports "extreme porn" and damage their brand name

No it wouldn't. No human being on planet Earth, and I mean literally not a single one, sees someone buying porn games and thinks "wow I can't believe Visa supports that, I'm canceling my card immediately ".
This is a retard fantasy you've concocted to support your retard opinion.

>>717668092 (OP)
They already have the Steam Wallet integrated. In fact, nothing you actually buy is done with cash. You buy Steam Wallet funds, and the Wallet Funds are used to buy the games. The only thing being bought with VISA and Mastercard are Steam Wallet Funds. This is clearly shown when you check out the stuff in your cart. It converts cash to steam wallet before the transaction.

I have no idea what the fuck they're even talking about anymore. Any of them.

>>717668957
Nobody gives a fuck about the "brand reputation" of payment processors. They have no reputation, they're fucking middlemen. If anything, their reputation is automatically negative, and even moreso after censorship

>>717668680
Retard.

based gabe
he GETS me

>>717669409
This kind of sidestepping the rules should be a permaban with no appeal.

>>717668092 (OP)
Just put your game on EGS. Steam is shit and dying cause only 40 year old boomer millennials care about it.

>>717673054
They shouldn't have to be sidestepping anything to begin with.

>>717673257
The full product is considered illegal.

>>717673110
Does egs allow furry futa cock torture?

>>717673369
You're not paying for the full product

>>717673465
You try arguing a case like this and see how that ends up for you.

>>717669050
>>717669730
>>717672790
Most normal, sane people would agree with you. But this is the excuse that mastercard has been using all this time.

>>717669682
Those are user tags, not Steam or the dev`s
You can see it without verification
Did you take too many picrel ?

>>717673369
Make the courts prove it, then. Devs are owed due process, not this bullshit privatized corporate censorship with little transparency and zero accountability. Because the shit that Steam now routinely bans for has been bought and sold in America for decades through various mainstream storefronts. I'm not talking just loli hentai, either; literal T-rated console games and all-ages VNs are getting banned.

>>717668092 (OP)
>straight up
vernacular primarily used by absolutist liberals, the same kind of people pushing to dictate which content makes one a "good boy" or an "icky and problematic" when consumed.

>>717673369
Go ahead and tell me how this is illegal, retard. I don't buy this "ackthyually anime girls were illegal all along and we just didn't know" bullshit for one fucking second.

>>717673623
What exactly is the problem? I'm not allowed to sell a game with mod support?

>>717668357
This is not about payment processors not wanting to be associated with whatever. It's about controlling what you can and cannot buy. If you try and step out of your lane and bypass them they'll just pull out from your service entirely.

>>717673642
So now you can't use community tags to determine if a game is mature themed or not? It doesn't count unless the ESRB/PEGI have their stamp on it?

>>717668357
>payment processors would have nothing to complain about
That's not how this stuff works, just having those games on the platform would make you a target.

>>717673652
I think the problem is that the platform allows any studios in the world to sell their product on what is effectively US soil. There should be regulations in which countries Steam can serve customers based on each local laws on where it serves the content and also who is trying to access it.

>>717674328
And?
Are you saying they can't sell anime fanservice games (ports even, of games that were ALREADY SOLD) on US soil?

>>717668357
That doesn't cut it anymore, it's what they did to itch a few years back where now nsfw had to process their own payments and it ended up like this

They don't want any of that content on platforms they provide services to to begin with

>>717668357
>I suspect they haven't thought of a workaround to payment processor demands
>>717671674
>They already have the Steam Wallet integrated
This
Which is why it is Steams decision to allow the purge
i mean this is the company that hired several psychologist to "craft compelling gameplay experiences for future Valve titles” and ” Those hired will also be expected to conduct statistical analyses with regards to the company’s gameplay and financial data to uncover potential behavior patterns."
Steam is first and foremost a company driven by profit, no matter how much they like to portray themselves as based

>>717674328
They already have that. Adult games are automatically unavailable on Germany for example. The VISA and MasterCard shit is another level of censorship.

>>717674328
Pretty sure that's already a thing, Steam can block some countries from buying some games depending on local government. IIRC, several years ago some games were banned in Germany. Maybe Wolfenstein but it might've been some other game like Hatred or whatever.

>>717674642
Your a dumbass

>>717668092 (OP)
i mean... five night at cobson's still survived..

>>717671674
>you're not actually buying a game, you're buying the exact amount of in-store credit needed to purchase said game (which is then automatically spent on it without any additional prompt to the user)
Not only does that not make any sense, it's not even correct either. When you buy something on Steam it just subtracts however much money you have in your Steam Wallet first then bills the rest to your credit card. The only time you actually fund your Wallet before making a purchase is if it's a micro-transaction or from the Marketplace, and it explicitly has a separate screen and purchase buttons for adding funds to your account and actually paying for the thing you wanted.

>>717674770
Yeah but it's steam pre-emptively doing it themselves so they avoid lawsuits. If they had a proper channel directly with the german government then there would be granularity than simply banning all NSFW games.
For example let's say they suddendly have a link to the Japanese market, create a company called Steam Nihon that's operated in japan, obey to their law, then they can suddendly put all the loli hentai games and offer them to their local customers while still being somewhat of a "global store".

>>717675056
They don't need to set up a subsidiary in a country to be in contact with whoever decides which games are alright or to follow local laws. For one thing they already need to follow local laws to operate in the country. That's often why EU rules end up applying to the rest of the world, like with Australia's demand for refunds which the EU backed, since it's easier to just have everyone on the same page than it is to set up some separate version of steam that only operates for the EU and allows refunds and another for the US that doesn't.

>>717675026
>When you buy something on Steam
You don`t buy anything on Steam, what you buy is a license to rent and play it
If they goes bust, all your games are lost, unless some other company takes over the rubble

>>717675590
>and the Wallet Funds are used to buy the games. >>717671674
You said it, not me. Fuck off with your semantics bullshit, it's not even relevant to the discussion here.

>>717668092 (OP)
>>717668485
>>717668521
>>717668856
>>717668969

You're forgetful or newfags

The context of this statement was after Hatred came out, got removed, then Gaben overturned it's removal and they then released this article.

Then after this article came out, a bunch of journalists and e-celebs shat on them because they wanted Steam to remove games with problematic content like bigotry, certain types of sexualization, or even just for them to get rid of asset flip slop. After a few days/weeks of that they backtracked and gave in, and said they would remove certain games.

To be honest I don't recall if they had been removing anime visual novels and shit already by this point or that only came after, though, but this is the basic timeline of events. I also want to stress here I am not twisting the situation around to make journos look worse, I think a lot of /v/ and anti-woke talking points about them these days are bad faith or out of context, but in this case they really did collectively come together to push for Valve to censor stuff: A lot of current anti games media sentiment on /v/ is a lingering hostility from 2012-2018ish when puritanical nonsense was super prevalent, wheras these days journalists and LGBT activsts tend to not shy away from being coomers

Also when did we switch from saying SJW and coomers to Woke and gooners?

>>717668485
This. Valve employees have tons of freedom and agency, the post even acknowledges that. It's why Mary can ban a VN with characters over 18, but games like Konoha and Mad Island and other blatantly loli porn games get through.

>>717677821
Words change but the meaning still stays the same ("people that I don't like").