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Valve are now removing a bunch of sex games from Steam to keep banks and card companies happy
(www.rockpapershotgun.com)
this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2025
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Virtually every payment processor uses VISA/MasterCard in the back-end. For EU users PayPal can be backed by SEPA mandates instead (direct bank pre-authorization), but otherwise VISA/MC is holding payment processors by the balls in virtually every other market. Without Visa/MC, there is no way to bring funds in or out of your account.
The only alternative is to negotiate interconnection with banks directly, but that's a very high bar for broad adoption. It has happened on a small scale (e.g. Payconiq in the Benelux) and the EU is attempting to broaden that to the rest of the continent, but it's a very tough sell because they have to convince every major bank to support the new standard.
This is a textbook case where capitalism isn't the solution because there are only two market actors and a virtually insurmountable barrier to entry.
Pornhub and other adult sites did pivot heavily to crypto after being cut off from traditional payment processors.
Also maybe digital euro and digital yuan might be an alternative to this darkness