Payment Titans Flex Muscle: Steam Forced to Pull Games Amid Rising Censorship Fears
Big Tech's financial gatekeepers strike again—this time taking aim at gaming. Steam, the world's largest PC gaming platform, just axed multiple titles under pressure from payment processors. No warnings, no appeals. Just corporate censorship dressed as 'compliance.'
Who controls the money controls the game
The takedowns follow alleged violations of opaque payment processor policies. No specifics were given—just the usual vague references to 'risk management.' Meanwhile, indie devs are left scrambling as their revenue streams evaporate overnight.
Banking cartels play platform police
Payment giants now effectively dictate content policies for entire industries. Steam's hands-off approach? Gone. The message is clear: toe the line or lose access to the financial infrastructure that keeps your business alive. (But don't worry—their 3% transaction fees remain happily intact.)
As decentralized payment alternatives gain traction, this heavy-handed move might backfire spectacularly. Nothing fuels crypto adoption like watching legacy finance strangle innovation in broad daylight.
What Happened to Steam
On July 16, 2025, Steam changed its rules to ban games that break the standards of payment companies like Visa and Mastercard. Steam’s parent company Valve said it removed games “because loss of payment methods WOULD prevent customers from being able to purchase other titles and game content on Steam.”
The company deleted games with titles like “Sex Adventures – Incest Family” and “Slave of the Police Officer.” Most removed games had words like “incest” or “slave” in their names. Steam confirmed that credit card companies flagged these games and threatened to stop processing payments if they stayed on the platform.
While the removed games might have been questionable, the MOVE raises an important question: Where does this control end, and what product or position might next be considered undesirable?
Source: Steamgames
The Group Behind the Pressure
An Australian group called Collective Shout took credit for the removals. The anti-pornography organization ran a campaign that got over 1,000 people to contact Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal. They asked these companies to stop working with Steam and other platforms that host adult content.
Collective Shout co-founder Melinda Tankard Reist called the removals a “major victory.” She described critics as “porn sick brain rotted pedo gamer fetishists” on social media. The group used a controversial game called “No Mercy” as their main example to pressure payment companies.
After Steam’s changes, another gaming platform called Itch.io also removed adult content. Itch.io directly blamed Collective Shout’s campaign in their statement to users.
Japan Fights Back
This type of censorship has hit Japan particularly hard. For years, Visa and Mastercard have pressured Japanese websites to remove legal adult content. The manga store Melonbooks can no longer accept Visa or Mastercard payments. Another site, Manga Library Z, shut down completely after losing all payment options.
The situation got so bad that Japan’s government launched an investigation into Visa and Mastercard. In July 2024, officials raided Visa’s Japanese offices. This marked Japan’s first antitrust action against credit card companies.
Visa Japan’s CEO defended blocking payments for legal content, saying it was “necessary to protect the brand.” Game creator Yoko Taro, who made NieR: Automata, called this censorship “dangerous on a whole new level” and said it “endangers democracy itself.”
The Bigger Problem
Payment companies control most online transactions. Visa and Mastercard handle so much business that most websites cannot survive without them. This gives these companies huge power over what content exists online.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation warns that when payment companies cut off services, it creates serious problems for free speech online. They point to past cases where PayPal blocked WikiLeaks, shut down accounts of news organizations, and even suspended someone for buying a shirt from the metal band Isis.
Mastercard keeps a blacklist called the MATCH list. Once added to this list, businesses find it nearly impossible to accept credit cards again. Critics call it a “black hole” with no way out.
The problem goes beyond adult content. Collective Shout has tried to ban mainstream games like Grand Theft Auto 5 and Detroit: Become Human using questionable claims about their content. Some worry that educational materials about sex education or LGBTQ+ topics could be targeted next.
How Crypto Could Help
Cryptocurrency offers a powerful solution to payment processor censorship. Unlike credit cards, crypto transactions happen on decentralized networks where “no single entity controls the network, making it extremely difficult for any one government or organization to control or censor transactions.”
Bitcoin achieved censorship resistance through economic incentives. If some miners refuse to process certain transactions, “they decrease the amount of blockspace available to them and drive up the fees they are willing to pay,” encouraging other miners to include those transactions for extra revenue. This creates a natural resistance to censorship attempts.
Real-World Crypto Payment Solutions
Gaming companies already have multiple options for accepting cryptocurrency. Gaming platforms can use crypto payment gateways like CoinGate, which charges just “1% transaction fee” and processes transactions “typically confirmed within minutes.” Services like NOWPayments offer gaming platforms “fast transactions with the lowest fees on the market” starting with “0.5% deposit fee.”
Major companies demonstrate crypto’s viability. Microsoft accepts Bitcoin for Xbox store credits, while Twitch allows direct Bitcoin donations to streamers. Even in restricted markets, crypto proves useful – Pizza Hut Venezuela accepts Bitcoin payments following economic sanctions.
Self-Hosted Solutions Provide Maximum Freedom
The most censorship-resistant approach involves self-hosted payment processors. BTCPay Server is “a self-hosted, open-source cryptocurrency payment processor” that is “secure, private, censorship-resistant and free” with “no merchant processing fees” and “no KYC/AML” requirements.
Self-hosted processors “run on your server and provide you with full control over the entire payment process and funds. There’s no third-party involvement – that significantly increases the censorship-resistance, privacy, and security.”
Other options include SHKeeper, which offers “zero fees and no middleman” while allowing businesses to “receive payments directly to your software or hardware crypto wallet.” These solutions put complete control back in the hands of content creators and platform operators.
Technical Advantages Over Traditional Payments
Cryptocurrency payments solve multiple problems that traditional systems create. Crypto payment APIs “enable instant, borderless payments using cryptocurrencies” and “simplify cross-border transactions” without “currency conversion fees, delays, and regulatory barriers.”
Censorship resistance in crypto “guarantees that all regulations ruling a network are set and followed by users equally, and cannot be changed for personal gains.” This prevents the kind of arbitrary rule changes that affected Steam.
The Freedom Convoy protests in 2022 showed crypto’s power against financial censorship. When traditional fundraising platforms “succumbed to governmental pressure, Bitcoin was used as a censorship-resistant money alternative,” allowing “millions in donations to reach the truckers despite governmental interference.”
Public Pushback Grows
A petition against payment processor censorship has gathered over 77,000 signatures. The petition demands that Visa and Mastercard stop controlling what legal content people can access online.
The petition asks payment companies to be transparent about their content restrictions and stop taking orders from activist groups. Many gamers are calling for boycotts of Visa and Mastercard or switching to prepaid cards and alternative payment methods.
What This Means Going Forward
The Steam controversy shows how a small group can pressure payment companies to censor legal content worldwide. When financial institutions control what people can buy, they effectively control what content can exist online.
As more transactions move online, this power grows stronger. Payment companies are making editorial decisions about legal content without transparency or accountability. The recent events prove that any website, game, or service could face similar pressure.
Cryptocurrency provides a technical solution, but adoption takes time. Until then, payment processors will continue acting as unofficial censors of the internet. The fight over Steam games might seem small, but it represents a much larger battle over who controls digital freedom.
