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Steam is now blocking NSFW updates for published adult-only games, according to a raunchy RPG developer
(www.rockpapershotgun.com)
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this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2025
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Technology
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That wouldn't work. Visa and the others don't care what exactly someone buys on Steam. They're saying that Valve can't sell certain things on their store, or they will stop processing payments that go to Steam. Doesn't matter if you pay for "points" or games directly.
The only way to get around that would be to remove the option to pay with Visa, etc. from Steam entirely and only accept other forms of payment. This would include physical Steam gift cards that could then be bought with any payment option, but only as long as Visa, etc. don't start threatening stores that sell those.
Also, to your last suggestion: I don't see how that would help. Publishers and developers need to make money somehow and if that involves Visa, etc. at all we're back to square one.
At some point even visa is going to back off though. I wonder how much money goes through Steam? Maybe if them and some other orgs band together and say fine, we won't accept Visa or MasterCard at all then, there's going to be some hell to pay. This can go both ways. Lots of third parties would be caught in the crossfire too, like order payment processors.
Yeah, a mass exodus of an entire industry is more or less the only thing could work. Other than regulation from the government, but in the past the USA hasn't really been keen on regulating their precious "free" market.
As to how much money goes through Steam, consider this: Where I live, most banks only give out Visa cards for free, with alternatives technically available but costing money. So, if you have a bank account in my home country and use a card to pay, it goes through Visa. I'm fairly certain that we aren't the only country where this is the case. This poses the question: Does enough money flow through Steam for it to even be noticable compared to multiple countries worth of purchases? Maybe? Probably not though. But should enough companies simultaneously decide to stop using them, it'd at least give competitors a chance to take over.