Valve and Mastercard in dispute over banned Steam games
Mastercard denies having asked Valve to delete numerous questionable porn games. The Steam operator counters in a statement of its own.
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The case of banned porn games on Steam and itch.io continues to make waves. Mastercard is the first financial company to comment on the issue that has been on the minds of many gamers for two weeks: "Contrary to media reports and accusations, Mastercard has not evaluated any games or imposed restrictions on activities on game developer websites and platforms," writes Mastercard.
All legal sales are simply permitted, Mastercard explains. Merchants are only responsible for ensuring that no illegal purchases are made. With this statement, Mastercard rejects the accusations of having put Steam under pressure. However, Valve countered in a statement: although Mastercard did not get in touch directly, Mastercard's partner banks and payment service providers did.
Valve writes in a statement published by PCGamer that Mastercard built up pressure via these partners. It was pointed out to them that since 2018, only games that are legal under local legislation have been offered on Steam. However, this was not enough for the Mastercard partners. Instead, they pointed to Mastercard rule 5.12.7, which prohibits transactions that could cast the Mastercard brand in a negative light.
Valve had tried to contact Mastercard directly. However, these attempts were unsuccessful. In the end, the company decided to remove dozens of sex games from Steam so as not to risk its partnerships with payment service providers.
Mastercard not with itch.io
Mastercard is not the only payment service provider that has come under pressure anyway: Itch.io has also effectively removed numerous porn games from its own store via delisting. Itch.io also justified the action with pressure from payment partners – although Mastercard is not even offered as a payment method there. On itch.io, you can only pay via PayPal and Stripe.
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The titles removed from Steam are questionable sex games that often revolve around themes such as incest and rape. These titles were never available on Steam in Germany. The category for "Adult Only" games has no longer existed in Germany since 2020, when Valve blocked all titles that were labeled as "adult" and did not have an age rating following a complaint from the Hamburg/Schleswig-Holstein Media Authority. In order to be able to offer such games in Germany, Valve would have to integrate a reliable age verification system into Steam.
(dahe)
