Well, if they block whole Steam, it will create way larger outrage. I am sure they will dare not.

I'm sure they do. Who would last the longest, VISA or Valve? The court proceedings would drag out long enough the kill Valve. Afterwards VISA and MasterCard would just ask "How else would you pay?".

As long as VISA and MasterCard are only targetting adult content they are pretty much free to do whatever they want because no politician is going to go out and defend pornography.

I'd pay for Steam content however they wanted me to. Up to and including hooking up my bank account details or buying gift cards in a store.

Steam has a large and dedicated user base. They are one of the companies that has access to enough users to conceivably build their own payment processor with enough volume to be profitable from the start.

Industry giants are often toppled by companies who started out in some niche the giant is ignoring/avoiding.

When it looked like Microsoft might close off Windows, Valve built their own SteamOS Linux distro. It now runs many AAA and indie titles, making Linux-based gaming very practical. This is something which was at one time considered impossible.

Valve also have an extremely loyal customer base. If they have to open an account at the Bank of Gaben to get their fix of smutty games, they just might.

Valve has an extremely loyal customer base, but only a subset of that customer base is interested in smutty games.

>only a subset of that customer base is interested in smutty games.

the topic up chain was " if they block whole Steam, it will create way larger outrage. I am sure they will dare not.". But it seems Valve doesn't want to take the gamble there.

I wonder how feasible would it be for Valve to start a campaign that they will add a 10% discount on everything you purchase with an international bank transfer, instead of a card.

I'm quite sure it would cause a massive amount of people to start paying using bank transfer.

Honestly, in Europe, if they added SEPA transfers to fill steam wallet I think they would do fine. This is the company that has — albeit not singlehandedly — made Linux a viable alternative to Windows for many gamers. They are used to taking on much bigger fish than themselves, and being a private company not beholden to shareholder profits they have a lot more room to weather a short term loss.

The Proton / Steam deck play was a decade long strategic play that has clearly paid dividends and made Steam much less dependent on Microsoft. It would not be surprising to me if Valve in 10 years time has positioned itself to be much more independent of Visa and Mastercard than it is today.

Bank Transfer, Bitcoin, etc. Maybe even work with debit card rails, my local grocery store only takes debit and Discover. Steam could even include an error message, "Sorry, Mastercard has not approved purchases from Steam. You can call their customer support for more information."

Perhaps Valve will create their own payment processor, just as they created their own app store for games.

To the extent there is someone gamers can pressure in this system, it's Valve. (Who would, in turn, take the mantle of organising gamers' interests against Visa and Mastercard.)

Given the rabid audience there, I'd bet on Valve to be honest. They are causing this much issue over a niche section of games. Imagine if every steam purchase was affected, there'd be legitimate riots.

It would mean some bad PR for Visa/MC for awhile, and it would absolutely decimate Steam.

If I were Steam, I would not call that bluff.

> I am sure they will dare not.

I think Visa/MC very much would dare.

Valve isn't ready for this battle ... yet.

I imagine they are girding for it, though. It simply wasn't a feasible battle until probably this year. FedNow and other things are just coming online. I suspect that Valve will begin incentivizing using that system rather than Visa/MC extremely strongly.

Huge companies don't care about lawsuits, but are very sensitive to dramas. They very much prefer quiet no-fuss money-making.

It's more like huge companies have a lot of internal politics, so public dramas are good occasion to fire a few managers here and there by their opponents.

It would also basically shut down steams income for a while, so neither one of them really wants to test it right?

They could still accept crypto/other methods as far as I’m aware steam has a low upkeep for the amount of profit they generate. Gaben has a whole fleet of gigantic yachts I’m sure they could stay a float for awhile ( pun unintended ) but now they gave them an inch and the next time a payment processor doesn’t like something they will take that down aswell until visa just becomes a second moderation team if they aren’t already.

The problem of Visa/Mastercard blocking Steam is not the loss of revenue per se, but a potential viable alternative could capture this niche market and use it as a base to displace them entirely. To buy games, we have to set up GamerPay, then why not use it for the next online shopping?

In China, where more than two competitors exist, many are willing to subsidize their customers just to have their service used.

Stablecoins and FedNow instant payments are options. Walmart is about to offer Pay by Bank using FedNow instant payments rails to avoid credit card interchange fees, for example. Does Coinbase offer payment processing yet? Could be the next Superapp competing against PayPal’s global digital wallet.

Coins, maybe. FedNow is US-specific, though.

In any case, as it stands right now, Steam losing Visa/MC processing entirely would be catastrophic to their business.

Visa and Mastercard are for profit companies. Harder for commercial banks and the Federal Reserve to block payments unless you’re straight up breaking the law or KYC/AML.

(payments are adjacent to my day gig, and I have to talk to FiServ and other FIs occasionally on the topic of moving money at a fintech)

>Harder for banks and the Federal Reserve to block payments

That will vary by country, and the Federal Reserve is also US-specific. There are gamers in more countries than just the US :).

But yes, I certainly agree that the duopoly of Visa/MC needs to go.

How does this work with UPI and Pix?

Steam has recently added UPI. Since it is completely interoperable, one company/bank can't block it. Govt. may block some account, but than they can do so much more.

I'm not sure. I live in Canada, we have a system called Interac, but it is not an accepted payment method on Steam the last I checked.

Do they have any history of gating or censoring payments?

I am not aware of any situations, no.

But this is getting a bit into the weeds, I think. The point is that as it stands right now, today, Visa/MC is what Steam runs on. It would take a long time (months, if not years) for Steam to roll out support for every country that has their own system (Interac, Pix, etc.). We also can't forget that not every country has systems like that.

The most reasonable course of action today is to hope that Visa/MC can be forced into providing payment processing for all legal goods and services. Meanwhile, Steam will hopefully roll out other payment methods, other countries will adopt non-Visa/MC systems, and the duopoly can slowly be broken.

Given how Canada interprets a few things, and the actions the govt took to protesters, I'd be more surprised if they didn't.

You're welcome to be surprised then. Only cases I've heard of Interac blocking accounts is KYC/AML and actual fraud. E-transfer (the Interac's name for bank-to-bank online transfers between different people) is about as close to handing somebody cash as you can get, albeit with amount limits varying between $2k and $20k.