this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2025
317 points (100.0% liked)

Games

41137 readers
1873 users here now

Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.

Rules

1. Submissions have to be related to games

Video games, tabletop, or otherwise. Posts not related to games will be deleted.

This community is focused on games, of all kinds. Any news item or discussion should be related to gaming in some way.

2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil

No bigotry, hardline stance. Try not to get too heated when entering into a discussion or debate.

We are here to talk and discuss about one of our passions, not fight or be exposed to hate. Posts or responses that are hateful will be deleted to keep the atmosphere good. If repeatedly violated, not only will the comment be deleted but a ban will be handed out as well. We judge each case individually.

3. No excessive self-promotion

Try to keep it to 10% self-promotion / 90% other stuff in your post history.

This is to prevent people from posting for the sole purpose of promoting their own website or social media account.

4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts

This community is mostly for discussion and news. Remember to search for the thing you're submitting before posting to see if it's already been posted.

We want to keep the quality of posts high. Therefore, memes, funny videos, low-effort posts and reposts are not allowed. We prohibit giveaways because we cannot be sure that the person holding the giveaway will actually do what they promise.

5. Mark Spoilers and NSFW

Make sure to mark your stuff or it may be removed.

No one wants to be spoiled. Therefore, always mark spoilers. Similarly mark NSFW, in case anyone is browsing in a public space or at work.

6. No linking to piracy

Don't share it here, there are other places to find it. Discussion of piracy is fine.

We don't want us moderators or the admins of lemmy.world to get in trouble for linking to piracy. Therefore, any link to piracy will be removed. Discussion of it is of course allowed.

Authorized Regular Threads

Related communities

PM a mod to add your own

Video games

Generic

Help and suggestions

By platform

By type

By games

Language specific

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 34 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Yeah steams silence has been deafening through this. Itch came out and explained what was happening, GoG did this. All quiet from Steam.

[–] Essence_of_Meh@lemmy.world 27 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I mean, Valve's silence isn't really surprising to be honest. They generally tend to keep quiet and let things go away on their own whenever possible. I'd be more surprised if the came out in force on this issue.

They did respond to the recent claim by Mastercard about them not being responsible for this recent mess - that's something, I guess? Here is a Kotaku article (don't kill me, that's the source I have for this) and here is the relevant part:

“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.”

There's a bit more in the linked article but that's pretty much the gist of it.

[–] dormedas@lemmy.dormedas.com 17 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Valve relies on Visa/Mastercard to process billions worth of transactions occur every year. They’re not going to rock the boat unless they want to risk the whole business.

Their (relative?) silence, to me, is indicative of just how bad this duopoly is, and that Valve sees no alternative worth publicly mentioning at this juncture.

[–] Essence_of_Meh@lemmy.world 13 points 1 day ago

Oh absolutely, that's as much (if not more) of a reason for them keeping quiet. No big company will willingly jump into the pit against payment processors, there's way too much to lose.

[–] CosmoNova@lemmy.world 5 points 21 hours ago

Steam is criminally understaffed and always caves in with no resistance when any actor wants to block access to thousands of games to millions of potential customers. This is just the latest chapter in a long history of them neglecting their users.

For example a large number of affected games in this case have already been blocked in Germany for a while because Steam refused to implement any type of age verification. They didn‘t even want a dialog with authorities and flat out region blocked affected games instead.

Now, I will say that this move by Germany was complete hypocrisy because it only affected unrated games and porn, when other 18+ games are still perfectly available because they „only“ contain massive amounts of violence. Somehow age verification isn‘t necessary here for some reason and gambling with cosmetic items is fine too? Good to know we have our priorities straight. /s

Whatever the case, the point is Steam always choses the path of least resistance. Germany has a system that lets users verify their age anonymously. Sony has implemented it for their store no problem but Steam doesn‘t even bother to have a single German speaker in their support team.