How come major credit card companies are ok with explicit sexual content in steam but not comissions or patreon?

[n33ks]

From reading a bit online, it seems payment processors like paypal ban sexual content because the major credit card companies like mastercard and visa have an issue with the "high risk" nature of them thus charge a lot more for it, A quick browse in the adult only category in steam and you can see how extremely hard core some of these games are and they are super graphic but they are not ok with basically the same things but not through patreon and commissions?

 

[Hagatagar]

No, Steam will be a target sooner or later too.
They first went for the easy and obvious targets, like PornHub or OnlyFans. But they are working through all sorts of sites with a connection to porn or nudity. Or those with a rather vague connection like Imgur or itch.io.
It's just a matter of time until Steam has to deal with them.

 

[anne O'nymous]

From reading a bit online, it seems payment processors like paypal ban sexual content because the major credit card companies like mastercard and visa have an issue with the "high risk" nature of them thus charge a lot more for it, A quick browse in the adult only category in steam and you can see how extremely hard core some of these games are and they are super graphic but they are not ok with basically the same things but not through patreon and commissions?

Because Steam have a long history of strict regulation of their content and who have access to what.

Depending on the country, games can't contain blood, Nazi symbols, and so on. It's something that Steam had to integrate in all step of their business, from game acceptance to sales, in order to have the right to operate in those countries. It's not because you are seeing extremely hardcore content, that someone living in another country would have access to the same content than you. For regular games Steam present an alternate version, compliant with the regional laws, and I guess that for lewd/porn content they just don't show the games since there's no generally alternate version.
This mean that, when they decided to accept lewd/porn content, they had a reassuring image. Whatever the games they'll accept, there's near to no risk that it will be illegal where they'll be sold. And it's what payment processors want, because it lower the risk of frauds and remove all risk for them to be held co-responsible for law breaking.

At the opposite, when Patreon was forced to put some limits to the content they accept, there where absolutely no filtering of the available content. They where hosting prostitution, underage softcore lewd (like Tumblr in their time), as well as purely innocent lewd games. And just clicking on "I'm over 18" was enough to be able to pledge for it, and so put both Patreon and the payment processors at risk.

 

[n33ks]

Because Steam have a long history of strict regulation of their content and who have access to what.

Depending on the country, games can't contain blood, Nazi symbols, and so on. It's something that Steam had to integrate in all step of their business, from game acceptance to sales, in order to have the right to operate in those countries. It's not because you are seeing extremely hardcore content, that someone living in another country would have access to the same content than you. For regular games Steam present an alternate version, compliant with the regional laws, and I guess that for lewd/porn content they just don't show the games since there's no generally alternate version.
This mean that, when they decided to accept lewd/porn content, they had a reassuring image. Whatever the games they'll accept, there's near to no risk that it will be illegal where they'll be sold. And it's what payment processors want, because it lower the risk of frauds and remove all risk for them to be held co-responsible for law breaking.

At the opposite, when Patreon was forced to put some limits to the content they accept, there where absolutely no filtering of the available content. They where hosting prostitution, underage softcore lewd (like Tumblr in their time), as well as purely innocent lewd games. And just clicking on "I'm over 18" was enough to be able to pledge for it, and so put both Patreon and the payment processors at risk.

thank you for this explanation! This is actually helps to eliminate my confusion.

 

[tanstaafl]

This mean that, when they decided to accept lewd/porn content, they had a reassuring image. Whatever the games they'll accept, there's near to no risk that it will be illegal where they'll be sold. And it's what payment processors want, because it lower the risk of frauds and remove all risk for them to be held co-responsible for law breaking.

At the opposite, when Patreon was forced to put some limits to the content they accept, there where absolutely no filtering of the available content. They where hosting prostitution, underage softcore lewd (like Tumblr in their time), as well as purely innocent lewd games. And just clicking on "I'm over 18" was enough to be able to pledge for it, and so put both Patreon and the payment processors at risk.

What strikes me as odd about this or what makes me think that there is something more is that I know exactly how easy it is to apply these location based and role based filters/restrictions to a platform. In my job I work on a Learning Management System that has content management prioritized by location as well as access and role based filters. AWS (Amazon web services) provides tools to make this as easy as setting up an indexed list and plugging it in. You'd think that a platform like Patreon would take advantage of this if it was that easy to get around the restrictions put in place by the processors.

It implies that Patreon went the lazy route of "We don't want to bother with that" and just went with blanket restrictions or it implies that there's something else going on entirely.

 

[anne O'nymous]

It implies that Patreon went the lazy route of "We don't want to bother with that" and just went with blanket restrictions or it implies that there's something else going on entirely.

You are forgetting one factor.

I agree that it's (relatively) easy to put in place, but to deploy such solutions you firstly need to know that you need them. And it's where lie the difference between Steam and Patreon.

Steam was launched by Valve, an AAA game studio. They knew beforehand that there's restrictions in what you can sell in that or this country, because they experienced it with their own games. Therefore, they added the regulation rules to their business model and platform right from the starts.
Plus, Valve used their own games to promote Steam, what mean that they experienced most of the possible legal issues firsthand. This helped them to slowly improve their rules and the way they enforce it.
And, of course, Valve is Valve. They revolutionized video gaming with Half life, then a second time with Counter Strike. Therefore, when Gabe Newell came asking for funds to revolutionize video gaming a third time, I assume that he had no real difficulties to get them. It can seem anecdotal, but it mean that right from the starts the company have enough money to attach the services of some of the best international lawyers.

At the opposite, Patreon is the dream of a relatively unknown musician,

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, who teamed with a developer so unknown that his Wikipedia page directly redirect to Patreon's one.
It's just a guess, but it's rational to assume that they had near to no clue regarding what their platform implied in terms of Law. They surely didn't known better than what they saw on internet. Therefore they believed that globally everything was permit as long as you ask if the person is major.
And like they were near to nobodies when they started, they anyway didn't had the funds to pay the service of a lawyer that would have known better than them. Nor to hire enough people to ensure a strong enough moderation.

So, it's not that Patreon was lazy or whatever else, just that they were totally ignorant of the effective mess they had to deal with ; "we are hosting porn content, like Tumblr, PornHub, and so many other sites, are doing, they are fine, so we are fine too". When you base your business on this kind of thoughts, paying dozen of thousands to a lawyer, just to ask him if you're right, is something that rarely cross your mind.
And all this was fine until someone told the world, or more precisely the payment processors, that there were content that shouldn't be available. But as we all seen, the platform was already reliable enough, at least in terms of potential, for the said payment processors to ask for a better regulation instead of cutting off all supports.

 

[tanstaafl]

So, it's not that Patreon was lazy or whatever else, just that they were totally ignorant of the effective mess they had to deal with ; "we are hosting porn content, like Tumblr, PornHub, and so many other sites, are doing, they are fine, so we are fine too". When you base your business on this kind of thoughts, paying dozen of thousands to a lawyer, just to ask him if you're right, is something that rarely cross your mind.

Agreed. It does make sense that no allowances were made at the beginning through ignorance. But Patreon is older now, more successful. They most likely have teams in place for devops, development, and integrations. People who could switch their model to whatever is required to appease most any restriction.

And all this was fine until someone told the world, or more precisely the payment processors, that there were content that shouldn't be available. But as we all seen, the platform was already reliable enough, at least in terms of potential, for the said payment processors to ask for a better regulation instead of cutting off all supports.

So, that leaves me with the thought that this is just a "damage already done" kind of situation. That processors lowered the boom on places like itch and patreon before they could adapt and that's just how it is now.

Or maybe there's a way they could adapt through stricter regulation and recover some leeway in what they are allowed to provide. A person can hope anyway, lol.

 

[anne O'nymous]

But Patreon is older now, more successful. [...] People who can and could switch their model to whatever is required to appease most any restriction.

Yes and no. Patreon is now aware of the rules, but globally they didn't had the structure (technical and human) to apply them correctly, and apparently failed to find a way to correct this. It's not something too difficult to do, but it need a lot of competences.
You need someone that know and understand correctly the problem, and will be in charge of the team. Then you'll need someone who come from a Law school, and will (globally speaking) follow the Law all over the world to keep your service up to date. Finally you'll need someone who's a good coder, that will implement this. But, more important, you need those three persons to be able to fully understand what the two others are saying. Else it will always be just good enough.
It's a structure difficult to build on top of something already existing. What is probably part of the reason why Patreon finally decided, last year, to outsource their Safety and Security team, that was, among other things, in charge of the moderation. It's now on the hands of true professionals that were really trained for this, and works in a structure build to only deal with those issues.

So, that leaves me with the thought that this is just a "damage already done" kind of situation. That processors lowered the boom on places like itch and patreon and before they could adapt and that's just how it is now.

Itch.io is something different. Unlike Patreon, that secured deal with the payment processors to handle adult content even prior to the ban, itch.io never really had their authorization to deal with this kind of content.

Or maybe there's a way they could adapt through stricter regulation and recover some leeway in what they are allowed to provide. A person can hope anyway, lol.

I really doubt that it will happen. Once you banned content like incest, bestiality, none consensual sex, and underage, it's difficult to go back.
Even just something like "purely fictional games with incestuous content are now permit with many restrictions" wouldn't pass. You'll always find people to only read "incestuous content is now permit", and be loud about how wrong all this is.

 

[tanstaafl]

I really doubt that it will happen. Once you banned content like incest, bestiality, none consensual sex, and underage, it's difficult to go back.
Even just something like "purely fictional games with incestuous content are now permit with many restrictions" wouldn't pass. You'll always find people to only read "incestuous content is now permit", and be loud about how wrong all this is.

Again, I agree, but it wouldn't take any kind of announcement at all, honestly. Just quietly deleting a word here and there in the EULA and TOS contracts after some time passes and odds are nothing would be said about it except for maybe a few minor mentions here and there.

edit: I'll take off my wishful thinking hat now.