Mastercard Denies Pressuring Steam To Censor 'NSFW' Games
kotaku.com
The company said it only requires standards 'based on the rule of law'

Updated: 8/1/2025 4:18 p.m. ET: In a statement to Kotaku, a spokesperson for Valve said that while Mastercard did not communicate with it directly, concerns did come through payment processor and banking intermediaries. They said payment processors rejected Valve’s current guidelines for moderating illegal content on Steam, citing Mastercard’s Rule 5.12.7.

“Mastercard did not communicate with Valve directly, despite our request to do so,” Valve’s statement sent over email to Kotaku reads. “Mastercard communicated with payment processors and their acquiring banks.  Payment processors communicated this with Valve, and we replied by outlining Steam’s policy since 2018 of attempting to distribute games that are legal for distribution.  Payment processors rejected this, and specifically cited Mastercard’s Rule 5.12.7 and risk to the Mastercard brand.”

Rule 5.12.7 states, “A Merchant must not submit to its Acquirer, and a Customer must not submit to the Interchange System, any Transaction that is illegal, or in the sole discretion of the Corporation, may damage the goodwill of the Corporation or reflect negatively on the Marks.”

It goes on, “The sale of a product or service, including an image, which is patently offensive and lacks serious artistic value (such as, by way of example and not limitation, images of nonconsensual sexual behavior, sexual exploitation of a minor, nonconsensual mutilation of a person or body part, and bestiality), or any other material that the Corporation deems unacceptable to sell in connection with a Mark.”

Violations of rule 5.12.7 can result in fines, audits, or companies being dropped by the payment processors.

        • kadu@lemmy.worldEnglish
          6·
          4 months ago

          Monero, a decentralized censorship proof cryptocurrency, has no real utility with regard to solving MasterCard’s censorship and only depends on a pyramid of investors to function at all?

          Monero - the digital token with no real world value, yes. You don’t need crypto to fix this issue. Brazilians can use Pix and would not depend on MasterCard and Visa, and this includes everything from physical purchases to digital storefronts to paying in installments and more. All attached to currency that actually means something and zero crypto bros trying to pump the value up or down on their delusional subreddits.

            • kadu@lemmy.worldEnglish
              2·
              4 months ago

              Pix sounds trivially easy to censor, freeze, or control from the government’s perspective

              If the Brazilian government decided to go against the constitution to censor my online purchases like that, buying hentai games would be the least of my concerns. And then it wouldn’t matter if I’m using your fake crypto bro tokens or not.

              And we don’t have anything like it in the US

              Of course not. You live in a weird techno feudalism where the government can’t do anything because that’s socialism and the only solutions you trust are some random tech bro dependent crap like CashApp.

                • kadu@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  1·
                  4 months ago

                  so you agree that Monero has value then

                  Nope, I’d rather use seashells than something like Monero. Crypto is got negative value, the time wasted hearing people like you preach about it is never going to be returned to my life.

                  especially in countries like the US?

                  Seashells would be an upgrade in a country like the US, but failures of your payment systems do not change anything for the inherent value of random online tokens.