this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2025
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Alles rund um unser aller liebstes Digitalhobby, unabhängig von Plattform und Genre.
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That requires more than just dropping a card. Especially when dealing with game libraries, platform availability is a pretty big deal for some people. And the net effect of just ignoring this situation and buying elsewhere, is that legitimate speech, and all games devs involved, are being extremely impacted. There's no way devs will be getting the same sales elsewhere as they are on Steam, so if this persists there will be financial pressure against devs of 'objectionable' games. And then we're back to the same situation where a fringe Australian group has decided what morals to hold to for the entire world.
Has Discover ever been powerful enough to bully JCB or UnionPay into bullying Japanese or Chinese game developers?
I don't think so. I don't think it's even possible if I'm reading about this alliance system.
Mastercard/Visa doesn't give a fuck about your emails. Just hit them in the pocket book and switch off of them. Visa/Mastercard needs more transactions and to grow like any other company in USA. Deprive them of revenue and they'll notice.
The only way this outrage actually works in the long-term is if Visa/Mastercard loses money over this. So we need to think of how to make that actually happen.
The cost of your approach, is guaranteed financial failure for said devs, regardless of the outcome. To succeed, it would require enough users to change their purchase habits that finance companies would even notice. We all know the chances of that happening are miniscule. You'd be giving the crazies exactly what they want.
Have you not been paying attention to the campaign? That's exactly what they're doing, they're tying up the customer support systems in a way that will be noticed and can't be ignored. It's having an instant effect on their bottom line since they'll have to be scheduling more shifts right now to deal with the increased workload. Nobody's suggesting emails.
That's not how any of this shit works.
Visa/Mastercard aren't even known for good service (that's AmEx who cares about that). More realistically, Visa/Mastercard customer service declines during this protest period and 3 months from now everyone forgets about today's campaign.
And Visa/Mastercard can then feel big and powerful as we didn't actually do anything to stop them.
Switching to a different card actually deprives them of their fucking revenue. The thing Visa/Mastercard actually cares about.
Which is why I'm pushing either Discover or AmEx as the serious protest options. It seems Discover is better for this particular protest as we can still pay for stuff internationally for the international creators. (AmEx is not as good at that but is still a valid protest option if you prefer their customer service and/or travel lounges).
Keep in mind that this started because of a small telecall campaign by said Australian fringe group. There's no reason the finance guys would have upset the status quo on their own. If a few hundred people could annoy them enough to do this, what makes you think thousands of people wouldn't impact them?
As I noted, that guarantees financial death for the impacted game devs. Steam and Itch aren't just a point of sale, they're a discovery service. Wouldn't be surprised to hear 80-90% of sales for these devs come from a couple main platforms.
What? No.
Visa/Mastercard have been doing this shit for literally years. Then some small Australian fringe group knew they had allies in Visa/Mastercard to ban some porn so they emailed Visa/Mastercard.
The warnings were literally years ago. Pretending that Visa/Mastercard are allies or even neutral on this issue is naive.
Visa/Mastercard have been pushing Sony and other video games to be less sexy for several years now.
I don't expect Visa/Mastercard to cave on anything here. They've already made themselves a reputation on the more prudish side of things.