DDoS

July 19, 2025

The Valve Corporation is an internet company that sells video games. It used to sell its own video games on its digital distribution platform, Steam, but at some point in the past started offering third-party games as well. It boasts a rather large selection of video game titles, some of which are very low effort. When someone wants to buy a video game on Steam, they put in their payment information (e.g. their credit card number) and make a transaction, much like any other online store.

The issue here is that some of those games and/or game franchises deal with the subject of incest, as in they are degenerate porn simulators made by and for degenerates. The two biggest (and, more or less, only) payment processors in the world, Visa and Mastercard, have taken offense to this and asked Valve to drop any such games from Steam, lest they stop processing payments made towards Steam. Valve agreed to drop the video games, and the video games were dropped.

Hackers put on their favorite thinking hats for this one. Why would Mastercard and Visa care about what a consenting adult buys from a consenting platform, some ask. Now, this is actually a rather good question if you have no ability to use any Internet search engine (or even one of those fancy AI models that do Internet searches for you), so let's briefly discuss it. MindGeek is a porn network operator and owner of Pornhub, among other platforms. People and companies were paying for ads on Pornhub, TrafficJunky (which is the advertising arm of MindGeek) was handling these ads, and Visa was serving as TrafficJunky's payment processor. But it turns out Pornhub was inadvertently hosting CSAM, which caused MindGeek to be sued, and with it, Visa, for facilitating ad payments to a site that hosts illegal content under US law. Visa tried (and failed) to be removed from this case and has since suspended processing ad payments towards MindGeek. Mastercard followed suit. It is my opinion that ever since, Visa and Mastercard have been extremely careful with any payment processing regarding anything that could be deemed illegal. Hence, Steam incest simulators get removed. Rather straightforward cause and effect.

Most Hackers don't really make it anywhere that far and rather bother with much more mundane questions, such as "Who could ever pressure Visa and Mastercard to do this", or my favorite "Who voted for Visa and Mastercard", ignoring the credit cards in their wallet. Some suggest that maybe a new payment processor should be facilitated to fight this duopoly. Naturally, the subject of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin comes up in response to this. It bears noting that Valve did in fact accept Bitcoin payments for a period of time, until it didn't because your $10 game could be worth $1 or $50 USD on any given day and, well, Valve didn't want to speculate even if the people did. The most indignant of Hackers ask: "Why does the video game company not make a stand for free speech over my favorite incest simulators". Their posts are cast into the Internet void.