Payment processor Mastercard is in this weird situation—trying to dodge blame for all those NSFW game bans over on Steam and Itch.io. What’s their deal, you ask? Well, yeah, so they popped a statement on their website claiming zero involvement in the whole censorship hullabaloo. They’re all like, “Hey, here’s our rules on what you can’t buy, but those decisions? Not us.”
Okay, their exact words were, “Mastercard hasn’t checked out any games or slapped restrictions on creator sites and platforms like rumors suggest.” Kind of makes you scratch your head, right? Anyway, they’ve got these ‘rule of law’ standards. Basically, “As long as it’s legal, we’re cool with it. Oh, but merchants have to make sure no fishy business is going down with our cards—no sketchy adult stuff.”
Valve chimed in—because, apparently, Mastercard didn’t bother dialing them up about this directly. Nope, the concerns about naughty content apparently came through a bunch of middlemen, those rascally ‘payment processors and banking intermediaries.’
Valve’s rep mentioned, “We wanted to talk to Mastercard, but nada.” They continued with some corporate spaghetti—that payment processors whispered to them, while Valve’s been trying to play by the book since 2018. Apparently, these processors weren’t buying that story, doing some serious finger-wagging about Mastercard’s Rule 5.12.7 or something. What’s that rule? It’s the one that forbids using Mastercard for illegal shenanigans. Super clear-cut, right?
Or not.
