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Visa/Mastercard told two major game distribution services to remove certain games, because a religious organization pressured them. Gamers are pissed.

a year ago by ByteOnBikes to c/peoplebluesky

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cynar 180 points a year ago

For maximum disruption, phone, then email. If they don't respond in a timely manner (or it's boilerplate bs), another phone call to "clarify" things.

Just remember, the grunts on the phone aren't your enemy. Your goal is to maximise the amount of time you swallow, not to upset them. They could often be allies in hiding.

We don't have to truly break them. We just have to be more annoying than the religious nutjobs.

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TherapyGary 76 points a year ago

One-tap dial phone numbers:

Master card

Visa

PayPal

Stripe (unconfirmed)

Script:

I’m calling to urge [company name] to immediately end the policy that unfairly targets the adult content industry. I’m also asking that [company name] sit down with stakeholders- specifically sex workers and adult content creators- to develop solutions that ensure equitable access to financial services, create stability, and reduce harm for sex workers.

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LordKitsuna 26 points a year ago

Mastercard is now trying to get you to give your bank/card in order to take the complaint lol had 3 reps ask. Don't give em the info they might cancel your card or some shit in retaliation

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Fredselfish 19 points a year ago

Called both, both wanted me to email. I read script then told them to stay in their lane. They both said this matter has already been documented. Keep calling should call them every day if you have the time. Also its, 1, 1, then just hit # when they ask for card number. Then you get transferred. I had four minute wait with Visa.

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muusemuuse 16 points a year ago

I have a friend who runs starlight shop. She’s not allowed to use cards for many things because the payment processors are convinced she is running a scam since they have classes on reiki and palm reading and herbs and stones and other stuff they tell her they “don’t pay fortune tellers.”

This really should be regulated. Electronic payments must accept everything cash can be used for or nothing. None of this censorship bullshit.

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Bronzebeard 9 points a year ago

To be fair, that shit is a scam...

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muusemuuse 4 points a year ago

Yes and no. It can be, but not universally. As she explained it to me, it’s sort of a way of gaslighting people into being more critical about themselves, their lives, their points of view. Their idea is to push for positive change in the world by demonstrating they have that capacity in themselves. They never say “you can only buy magic rock or herb here” or “all palm readings done other places are wrong, you must come here” and they also turn away people who get waaaay to into it. I think it’s all hippy crystal-gripping nonsense and we respect each others viewpoints, but I do appreciate what she’s trying to do and for some people it does work.

On the other hand, look what we let Christians get away with. All she would have to do to get approval from payment processors is throw a cross on the logo. THATS the issue here.

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captainlezbian 1 point a year ago

But its an honest scam. Its what the customers want and they'll go elsewhere to get it if need be. Visa shouldn't be saying they wont have any part in someone's poor choices.

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squozenode 1 point a year ago

Hell does "we don't pay fortune tellers" mean? Remember miss Cleo? She made a crap load of money, and it definitely wasn't cash!

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mholiv -8 points a year ago

I mean a broken clock is right twice a day. No one should be spending money on such nonsense. I’m not sure to call it a scam though. Is it a scam if you yourself are also a victim?

At least with adult content you are receiving what you pay for. When you are buying magic you literally are not getting what you paid for.

Even if you believe in magic it has never been shown to exist.

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muusemuuse 21 points a year ago

By that logic they should be closing down all the Christian stores. Notice how they aren’t.

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Confused_Emus 11 points a year ago

I mean, if I want to spend my money on bullshit mumbo jumbo, that’s my prerogative. It’s not a payment processor’s responsibility to police what dumb shit I choose to believe in.

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pupbiru 5 points a year ago

afaik it’s not a new policy for mastercard/visa: what’s new is that valve, itch, and even visa and mastercard were just kinda ignoring it

worth noting it’s not all adult content either… things like fisting even are fine, but “bodily fluids” are not. it’s a bit of a weird one all round

i think that they just did a big over-correction

and to be clear, i absolutely DO NOT think even the policy as it stands/stood should hold: they shouldn’t be in the business of morality policing almost anything - if i want to pay for videos/games with bodily fluids in porn then they should facilitate that transaction

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DreamAccountant 144 points a year ago

Despite what religions say, this is what they actually do:

They attempt to control your life based on their fiction.

Every time. Every year. Every century. It never stops. This is what religion is about. Controlling everything and everyone. For the better? Nope. Definitely not.

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squozenode 8 points a year ago

Would be nice if any religion ever had even a shred of proof. Imagine if a Catholic priest actually could do the Healing hands?

Nope. Just controlling dicks.

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dsilverz -5 points a year ago

@DreamAccountant@lemmy.world @bytesonbike@discuss.online

It's a dangerous generalization, stating that "{all} religions want to control your life".

I'm somewhat Lilithian-Luciferian with many syncretic influences such as Thelemite and Hermetic concepts, and the very core values represented by Lilith and Lucifer are "do what thou wilt". Also, my belief neither chains me nor others, especially because I don't follow a religion or a religious group (and, well, having any dogmas wouldn't match the non-conformist, rebellious and anarchist values imbued by Them).

So, before conflating Abrahamic dogmas with the broad terms "religion" and "faith", be aware of how there are a plethora of different religions and belief systems around the world: some religions want to chain everybody, others want to break the chains.

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Whostosay -13 points a year ago

Id be all for benevolent authoritarianism.

That said, religion will never be that.

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explodicle 24 points a year ago

I'd be all for magical unicorns.

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Whostosay 4 points a year ago

This guy gets it

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dil -2 points a year ago

The only wed get any sort of idealized society is through force and through benevolent authoritariani, it's more likely to work than the joke that is democracy, ppl are too easily manipulated, and even just 50% of ppl are stupider than me (if standardized tests meant anything at all, it's a much higher estio than that) than I can't trust them to vote for my best interests or their own

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WorldsDumbestMan 15 points a year ago

There's no benevolent authoritanism.

Otherwise, I'd be in-charge.

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Kolanaki 25 points a year ago

World's Dumbest Man

Uh... You are in charge, Donald. 🤨

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WorldsDumbestMan 9 points a year ago

Yes. The greatest charge! The world has never seen such a great, bene-volent...benevolent charge! Obama couldn't do this!

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burgerpocalyse 9 points a year ago

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Whostosay -2 points a year ago

Nonsensin

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ChicoSuave 129 points a year ago

The reason they want emails is because the phone calls are slowing the call center SLA to a crawl and tanking their metrics for the quarter. If this keeps up, the payment processor will push back next time and Christian authoritarians won't be able to get away with shenanigans like this again.

They probably have their customer support laid out as phone, email, and maybe chat. Phone is the most expensive support channel because it's 1 person to 1 problem and it's impossible to scale, so they can't roll out a bot or ignore the metrics for long. Keep up the pressure!

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tmyakal 3 points a year ago

Do we think these payment processors are running their own call centers? Seems more likely that they're contracting the work out, and those firms just aren't going to get their contracts renewed.

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Awkwardparticle 5 points a year ago

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captainlezbian 2 points a year ago

Be sure to speak English if they transfer you to the French line

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elevenbones 2 points a year ago

Did they have a Canadian accent, eh?

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yourgodlucifer 1 point a year ago

Just because the call center is in the united states doesn't mean that the company did not contract the call center out.

I worked for 3 different call centers in the united states all of them were a 3rd party company and not the company I was providing customer service for.

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Awkwardparticle 1 point a year ago

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GaMEChld 2 points a year ago

I think call centers and answering services may be volume based pricing. I know at medical practices I've worked at, the answering services used charged by calls received. I don't know about at the scale of large companies like VISA.

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Goretantath 48 points a year ago

Censorship is the fetish of the rich and powerfull.

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Kolanaki 43 points a year ago

Also kinda weird it was just these two platforms. Browsing through the Switch 2 store the other day, I saw a few porn games on there, too. One of which was literally about the "step sister stuck in the washing machine" meme.

  1. It's Nintendo FFS; it's wild they even let such games on their store regardless of outside influence.

  2. Incest.

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irelephant 17 points a year ago

Sorting by new on the eshop shows a surprising number of slop games.

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Kolanaki 10 points a year ago

Quite a contrast to the Nintendo Seal of Quality that is largely responsible for saving the video games industry after the crash in '82.

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a_wild_mimic_appears 5 points a year ago

omg so much shovelware and cheapest porn

i expected that the Nintendo eShop would be more curated, but this is no better than other stores - no, it's even worse, because parents fully have the same expectation that i had before seeing that, and many will just hand a nintendo device over to the kid without checking.

and 70$ for cyberpunk 2077 - it's a new console, not a new game ffs.

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Kolanaki 1 point a year ago

I also can't tell if it's running on the device natively or if it's streamed. The store lists it as a "cloud version" and every single game with that label is something very new and with very high fidelity graphics that I can't believe run natively on the Switch 2.

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kuhli 1 point a year ago

Not sure where you're seeing cloud version, that's not showing up on my store. Regardless, cyberpunk runs natively

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leftzero 2 points a year ago

It's Nintendo FF

That's the point; the washing machine and the step brother are a metaphor for Nintendo, the step sister for their customers.

Incest

No, no, it's metaphorical criticism.

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itisileclerk 25 points a year ago

Is there hope for the US? They are looking more and more like Saudi Arabia. What's next, killing journalists and banning the opposition?

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PumpUpTheJam 20 points a year ago

Yes.

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boonhet 12 points a year ago

Americans have alternatives in the form of Amex and Discover card apparently. Do we also have any alternative that works EU-wide at least? And where does one even get a card that's not Mastercard or Visa, if that's all that the local banks and my neobanks offer?

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MrPozor 9 points a year ago

We Europeans should soon be able to pay with Wero online. And we can hope that the digital Euro and GNU Taler will establish themselves in the future.

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boonhet 3 points a year ago

That's great news for online, but I'd also like a card for offline and that still means either Mastercard or Visa :(

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a_wild_mimic_appears 4 points a year ago

AFAIK, Wero has planned payment per NFC, but it might take a while. I wish some Austrian banks would have already joined in on Wero, but alas...

Wero already can transfer money between people btw, sending to phone numbers - if the other side already has Wero, it's direct, if not, they can supply a bank account for deposit

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viking 2 points a year ago

You can get Amex in Europe fairly easily, but acceptance is spotty. I used to have a card in Germany, and while it was usually not a problem with online purchases (domestic and international), shops were 50:50 at best.

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febra 5 points a year ago

Wero is a fairly new technology on the market. They advertise it as being made in Europe. A bunch of major banks in Germany, France, and Belgium seem to support it. I haven't used it yet though.

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boonhet 4 points a year ago

It's a cool thing and will be great for online payments but I don't think there's a solution for in person payments yet, still need one of the big 2 for that

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seralth 1 point a year ago

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ltxrtquq 9 points a year ago

So hey, what are the actual alternatives to Visa and Mastercard, especially if you live in the US?

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phdepressed 13 points a year ago

Amex and discover for credit card. PayPal (has also done similar), crypto if accepted and debit.

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Goretantath 5 points a year ago

Paypal is not a valid alternative to this situation.

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MilitantAtheist 3 points a year ago

Are they a religious org? I thought they were explicitly feminist, or is that just the CEO?

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boonhet 25 points a year ago

Religious anti-choice feminists who protect the children by cheering for a show glorifying child sexual abuse, but banning video games that depict sex between consenting adults.

Yeaaaah...

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douglasg14b 1 point a year ago

These days?

That line is pretty blurry.

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vaguerant 3 points a year ago

Gamers said they wanted women out of games, I thought they'd be happy. /s

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Bronzebeard 2 points a year ago

A few incel bigots != Gamers

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vaguerant 3 points a year ago

/s != serious

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vga -9 points a year ago

Oh no, the gamers are pissed.

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WanderingThoughts -10 points a year ago

That's a good way to start the mass adoption of crypto as payment system.

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chunes 1 point a year ago

I said the same thing on another post and got upvoted to the top. Damn, lemmy is fickle.

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Draegur -46 points a year ago

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Jomega 1 point a year ago

Jessie what the fuck are you talking about?

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Draegur 1 point a year ago

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peoplebluesky

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People skeeting stuff.

Bluesky Social is a microblogging social platform being developed in conjunction with the decentralized AT Protocol. Previously invite-only, the flagship Beta app went public in February 2024. All are welcome!

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