If anybody is bored:
this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2025
613 points (99.4% liked)
Lemmy Shitpost
33755 readers
4939 users here now
Welcome to Lemmy Shitpost. Here you can shitpost to your hearts content.
Anything and everything goes. Memes, Jokes, Vents and Banter. Though we still have to comply with lemmy.world instance rules. So behave!
Rules:
1. Be Respectful
Refrain from using harmful language pertaining to a protected characteristic: e.g. race, gender, sexuality, disability or religion.
Refrain from being argumentative when responding or commenting to posts/replies. Personal attacks are not welcome here.
...
2. No Illegal Content
Content that violates the law. Any post/comment found to be in breach of common law will be removed and given to the authorities if required.
That means:
-No promoting violence/threats against any individuals
-No CSA content or Revenge Porn
-No sharing private/personal information (Doxxing)
...
3. No Spam
Posting the same post, no matter the intent is against the rules.
-If you have posted content, please refrain from re-posting said content within this community.
-Do not spam posts with intent to harass, annoy, bully, advertise, scam or harm this community.
-No posting Scams/Advertisements/Phishing Links/IP Grabbers
-No Bots, Bots will be banned from the community.
...
4. No Porn/Explicit
Content
-Do not post explicit content. Lemmy.World is not the instance for NSFW content.
-Do not post Gore or Shock Content.
...
5. No Enciting Harassment,
Brigading, Doxxing or Witch Hunts
-Do not Brigade other Communities
-No calls to action against other communities/users within Lemmy or outside of Lemmy.
-No Witch Hunts against users/communities.
-No content that harasses members within or outside of the community.
...
6. NSFW should be behind NSFW tags.
-Content that is NSFW should be behind NSFW tags.
-Content that might be distressing should be kept behind NSFW tags.
...
If you see content that is a breach of the rules, please flag and report the comment and a moderator will take action where they can.
Also check out:
Partnered Communities:
1.Memes
10.LinuxMemes (Linux themed memes)
Reach out to
All communities included on the sidebar are to be made in compliance with the instance rules. Striker
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
This may be a valid usecase for AI, too
No.
Hard disagree, this and dealing with scammers are two of the best ones.
Payment processors have been censoring people due to politics for years, sad that them censoring porn is the only way to get this side of the internet riled up about it
Stoke the fire, don't complain it wasn't burning yesterday.
Might as well start using cash almost exclusively except for buying Steam gift cards.
Could they accept crypto? I can pay for my shady IPTV service with it, so why not games too? There's gotta be a way around this.
Steam gift cards can be paid in cash
They could easily accept crypto. The problem is paying devs and staff. You have to pay them with dollars or their native currency.
If crypto was mass adopted, this is the ultimate answer and would put them out of business anyways.
They could easily accept crypto.
No, they could not, not easily.
The problem is paying devs and staff. You have to pay them with dollars or their native currency.
... Yes. These are... the main reasons why this is not easy.
You're basically either running your own FOREX exhange, which is costly, complicated, expensive and intensive...
Or you are holding a significant chunk of your operating budget in... one, many, all cryptos? Which is extremely financially risky...
Or, you're paying people directly in crypto, which ironically, probably a vast majority of people and entities that publish on Steam would quit the platform if that was mandated... kinda like how MC+Visa making a unilateral decision forced Steam to ban a bunch of games.
...
You're doing magical thinking.
Stop that.
load more comments
(21 replies)
Wouldn't solve the problem.
If Steam republished all its now censored games, and magically developed and implemented a world class crypto payment system overnight...
Then Steam is still in breach of MC/Visas terms, and MC and Visa drop them, and now everyone has no choice other than to use GabeBucks or w/e to purchase Steam games with.
Also, Valve now pays employees and game publishers in GabeBucks.
Which would cause a fuck ton of games to leave Steam.
Then Steam is still in breach of MC/Visas terms
Are they even in breach of those terms right now? My understanding was that it only mentions illegal games. This was part of the reason why MC isn't even talking to Valve, because they have no leg to stand on.
Are they in breach right now?
Evidently no...
But the entire problem at this point is that no one actually knows what the actual, specific guidelines even are.
...
MC + Visa get pressured from Aussie Puritans.
MC + Visa basically have a Zoom call with Steam and Itch, and tap on the gigantic sign in the backdrop, at one specific rule... which is actually pretty vague.
Steam and Itch then do their best to interperet that as broadly as possible, update their own policies.
Gamers revolt, blow up MC + Visas phones and emails.
MC and Visa backpedal, claim that well actually, Step 2 didn't go down like that, they were actually pressured by... all their other partner client banks, whom they also largely lord over with an extreme power imbalance?
New local laws, which are not specified at all?
...
The entire problem is that MC and Visa just thought they could swing their dick around, make vague threats, leave Steam and Itch to ... figure out all the details... and then that blew up in their faces.
Had they actually done a legitimate amount of research, such that they could actually give much more specific guidelines, you know maybe involving Steam and Itch in the process, in a mutually collaborative way, instead of an authoritarian way?
Well then this mess would not have happened.
And now, actually doing this is the only way to fix the situation.
... They could have just done this from the get go, and not have caused mass confusion and a huge consumer revolt.
...
So this all isn't me disagreeing with you, its basically me agreeing, yes-anding, just expanding on how the entire fucking problem didn't even need to exist, the problem is the utter lack of clarity and specificity, was borne out of total hubris on the part of MC + Visa.
I just think, if it went to court, Valve would eat MC's lunch. So I'm not sure they should be worried about being in breach of terms (that they haven't even breached).
I hear you, but I wouldn't go that far.
You think Steam is a money printing machine?
MC and Visa are payment processors.
Literally every credit or debit transaction that involves them?
Oh yeah, they shave a penny or two or sometimes more off of that transaction, the business and actual banks involved usually eat it, not too long ago it would be much more common for retailers to pass some of it to the consumer as well.
Its the Office Space scam, but actually legit, at a muuuch grander scale.
Thats a fucking money printing machine, they unironically have at least 10,000x more money to throw at lawyers than Valve does.
It doesn't matter how many lawyers you have, when Valve is literally simply not in violation of the terms of their contract.
And it is the legal system that determines whether or not a contract has or has not been breached.
Just like it is also the legal system that determines whether or not a company is a harfmul monopoly.
Your opinion is one I agree with, but that isn't how things work, there has to be an official arbiter that agrees with or disagrees with that, and those arbiters are called courts, which are full of lawyers making arguments, and the best lawyers tend to cost the most money.
...
Also... what, is Valve going to sue Visa and MC for... Visa and MC choosing not to do business with them?
There is no legal mechanism that forces Visa and MC to do business with Valve, that punishes Visa and MC should they choose not to.
This is like suing a person at a farmer's market for not buying an apple.
Or, that is roughly what Visa and MC's lawyers would argue.
I don't think Valve would sue MC. They would just ignore the demands that conflict with their agreement (i.e. removing games that aren't illegal), and the honus would be on MC to sue Valve.
Which they probably wouldn't, unless I'm mistaken about the terms of the contract. Which is certainly possible.
Minor nitpick:
It's just onus, no h. English is inconsistent.
Herb, lol.
...
But anyway... so, this has yet to go to court.
If Valve just... does their own intepretation, unbans some games, Visa and MC can just say welp you violated the partner rules, no more payments for you.
Now, Valve has to do a prolonged legal battle to prove wrongful termination of contract ... while also having their money printing machine offline.
And also, all that would do is possibly award them compensatory damages.
A court cannot compel a business transaction (an ongoing partnership) or partnership anywhere near as much as it can compel people, corporations have more rights than people.
If it could, well then we have turned the economy on its head, now judges run businesses, not CEOs.
...
Maybe there is some kind of wrongful termination / non renewal of contract clause, but:
1 - I doubt it
2 - Well you'd be having lawyers argue the validity of that anyway.
Valve and MC + Visa both currently do not want to take this to an actual lawsuit because it would be extremely costly in financial / reputational terms for each of them.
Visa and MC and Valve would all massively lose financially if their agreements fell apart, Visa and MC and Valve as well could also suffer massive reputational damage depending on how exactly the public narrative forms around the lawsuit... and lawyers are quite expensive.
Nobody actually wants to pull the trigger, because its akin to a MAD scenario with nukes.
...
That is why we are getting this weird tap unfolding basically PR war, where both sides are angling snd making essentislly veiled threats... but not actually seeming to do much beyond posturing.
This kind of shit happens all the time between corporations, its usually just that it stays internal to the involved companies, you read about it two decades later in an autobiography named 'My life as a corporate big shot' or whatever.
Gabebucks
They sell them at gamestop and best buy.
Crypto is volatile, any volatile currency is not a good currency to be used, as most people will either hoard it or trade it. Alternatively people can use steam wallet.
DAI is pegged to the US dollar
But what is USD pegged to? 🤔
I believe last time I saw it it was hanging from Donnie's diaper, like a forgotten strip of toilet paper...
You can probably find a place to buy Steam gift cards with crypto...
10 or so years ago, Steam accepted payments in Bitcoin, for some reason they stopped, so they certinaly can do that but chose not to.
Also, 99% of people would not use it so wouldn't change much.
You might, but most won't.
Sure thing...jackass...
The fact I can hear their exact voices saying this says something.
view more: next ›