MC: It's not us.

Steam & Itch: It's the payment processors.

Gee, I wonder who people are going to believe.

Instead of linking the actual statement, we have a 3 and a half paragraph "article". Here is the actual statement from MC

https://www.mastercard.com/us/en/news-and-trends/press/2025/august/clarifying-recent-headlines-on-gaming-content.html

Mastercard has not evaluated any game or required restrictions of any activity on game creator sites and platforms, contrary to media reports and allegations.

Our payment network follows standards based on the rule of law. Put simply, we allow all lawful purchases on our network. At the same time, we require merchants to have appropriate controls to ensure Mastercard cards cannot be used for unlawful purchases, including illegal adult content.

"Unlawful" based on what? American law?

These are global payment companies, they can't just have a "we don't allow payment for illegal content" cause that varies by country (and by state even).

What an absolutely nothing statement.

MasterCard's and Valve's statements seems to point at Stripe and PayPal as the ones who folded to the pressure. These payment processors then cited MasterCard's rules to back up their change in policy.

MasterCard now clarifying that the payment processors are over-interpreting the rules and anything legal is ok seems a very good thing here. Valve should be able to go back to Stripe and PayPal with this and say: "Hey, you've misunderstood the rules you are quoting; MasterCard themselves say anything legal is ok, and that is the exact policy we've been using!"

So Valve says the processors - such as Stripe and PayPal - pressed the issue based on pressure from MasterCard (and possibly Visa). MasterCard says they had nothing to do with it. Itch says that Stripe was directly responsible in their case with a blanket ban on anything generally sexy, but that Stripe blamed their banking partners.

So Stripe, at least, is directly responsible but insists they are under outside pressure. This means the pressure is coming from one or more actual banks. Since we don’t have names, we have to do some research to find out who Stripe works with. The possibilities I was able to dig up on a quick search include:

• Citigroup
• Wells Fargo
• Barclays
• Goldman Sachs
• Evolve Bank & Trust

It seems clear that this has nothing to do with legality in any jurisdiction and that some powerful financial institution is forcing their twisted, puritanical morality on anyone they can at the behest of like-minded authoritarian terrorists. One or more of the above institutions are most likely at fault.

By that standard, I ought not be able to use the card to buy booze (might give it to a minor or use for a Molotov Cocktail) a gun (obviously could use for crime) , and probably a million other things they let people buy with cards.

If this is true then I honestly hope Steam and Itch go "ok, then, PayPal and Stripe are banned from the store as payment forms until we can figure out a way of limiting content you can pay with them". Honestly I don't think enough people use either of those payments forms, and even if they do currently they almost assuredly have a card they can use instead, and are more likely to switch payment methods than to stop buying games.

There's been two decades worth of lawsuits because PayPal has a history of withholding revenue and blocking small e-commerce stores.

I'm talking about e-commerce sites selling a board game, making $40k in sales through paypal, and PayPal refuses to give them money.

PayPal's stance has been, "Fuck you sue us."

I'm not saying this because I think Peter Thiel, who was one of the creators of Paypal, is a fucking evil villain.

Funny, it turns out it is more brand damaging not to sell adult games, than to sell them....

That's not a statement. It's just a lame excuse and attempt to escape the blame for their behavior.

I do kind of wonder of any of these game devs could go after these payment processing companies for loss of income? I'm not a lawyer, but I'd definitely be looking into it if I was a Dev that has been effected by this.

It's time for Steam to launch their own payment processing company, and apply pressure directly on the card networks and the future competition.

It won't be nearly as profitable as their current business model, but sometimes industries need a shakeup.

Has anyone else noticed that the MasterCard logo kinda looks like a butt?

Ima quote Serj on this: "La-la-la-la-la-la-la-la, lie, lie, lie 🎶"