1139
Blamed for Steam games ban, Mastercard encourages censorship during Riot Games VCT livestreams
(www.notebookcheck.net)
looking forward to taler becoming a thing
this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2025
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rule34 MasterCard. it's the only way.
make it a bottom dollar bitch.
i have it on good historical authority that the nazis loved mastercard
I'm in Europe and following the news of the MasterCard and Visa censorship I activelly went looking for how else could I pay for things online without using their networks, and as it turns out there are plenty of solutions supported by both Steam and GOG which I was just ignoring before because they just looked as lots of "weirdly named" unrecognized payment options.
I'm now using those in my purchases and so far they actually look more convenient than the Visa/MasterCard (for example, with iDEA which is Dutch, I can literally pay from my mobile phone banking app by just taking a picture of a QR-Code on my screen). The problem in Europe is just there being lots of local solutions and no EU-wide one yet, though I'm lucky because I have bank accounts in different countries (having lived in several countries in Europe) so I have access to many options.
Keep in mind that outside Britain, the rest of Europe have long had their own debit card withdrawal and payment networks and not relied on Visa/MasterCard (to me Britain was, frankly, weird in that it relies on mainly VISA Debit and had no local payment solution, probably explained by lack of political will in the UK for that: most such payment networks in Europe were born out of political pressure on banks to come up with a standard and sometimes were even started as state-owned companies) so a lot of these local online payment options are extensions of those existing networks, which is probably why trying come up with an single integrated cross-border payment processor has been slow going.
That said, thanks to it having been mandated at the EU level, bank transfers are nowadays fully cross-border integrated and you can transfer money between accounts anywhere in EU with the same ease and for the same cost you can for local accounts (the banks really resisted that, by the way, as it took away most of their "international transfers" profits) so we're probably not far from a single EU-wide payment processor (or at least EU-wide account support on existing solutions).
There is a EU-wide payment option.
Not universal yet but heading that way. MBWay is gaining momentum as well and the eEuro could be a thing.
It's not EU wide.
It will be.
This is the EU timeline
9 October 2025
Payment service providers in the euro area will have to ensure that their clients are also able to send instant payments in euro, and verify the intended beneficiary
https://finance.ec.europa.eu/consumer-finance-and-payments/payment-services/payment-services_en
Cries in American
The banking sector is very competitive in the UK compared to pretty much any other country, so dodgy behaviour from banks/payment processors wasn't very frequent.
More recently, however, just like the EU, the UK is working on their own system right now. The EU doesn't have a unified payment processing system either, just a patchwork of different ones.
Seriously? You think the UK banking sector is competitive?
You must be smoking some powerful stuff.
I lived in the UK and worked in the Finance Industry there, as well as in a couple of other countries in Europe, and the idea that the UK banking sector is "very competitive [...] compared to pretty much any other country" or there not being frequent dodgy behaviours from banks/payment processors is hilariously.
Just look at how a physical payment with one's debit card (which goes directly to the bank account) can trigger oversized "uncovered overdraft fees" rather than just deny the payment if there are not enough funds in the account for that card like in countries like Portugal and The Netherlands: I literally dumped the first bank I had in the UK when I moved there from The Netherlands exactly because they charged me £30 overdraft fees on a payment ON A DEBIT CARD because my current account which was directly linked to it had £5 less than the amount I was trying to pay (plenty of money on the savings account though), rather than the payment attempt being rejected, even though when I first got that account I explicitly enquired about it I was told payments attempts on that card without enough funds would be rejected.
UK banking is riddled with insane fees for every little possible thing imaginable (especially user mistakes), from presential payments where the account doesn't have enough funds (where instead of the payment being denied they charge you money) to things like getting a paper bank statement from the bank and those fees are invariably many times more than the actual cost for the bank of it - "competition" between banks in the UK is purelly slimy "introductory rates" that change after a year or two for highly visibly stuff whilst everything that's standard with the account anywhere else costs extra in the UK and every customer mistake results in a punitive charge.
Even in my homeland of Portugal, where banking is pretty much a cartel where all the big institutions regularly buy politicians from both main parties with non-executive board memberships and gold-plated consulting gigs (in all fairness, in the UK it's the same), banking is nowhere as slimy and abusive as in Britain.
I get the impression you never had a bank account anywhere else if you think banking in the UK is "very competitive" and that the frequency of "dodgy behaviours" is low there, because comparativelly with where I lived and banked elsewhere in Europe, retail banking in the UK is a totally disgraceful leech-filled swamp.
Or maybe it's me having "lived a blessed life" in terms of my banking because I've only ever lived and banked in Europe.
As for the rest, Europe doesn't have a unified payment processing system but pretty much each country in it has one, whilst in the UK there is no such thing at all and instead mainly Visa is used. As for they're "working on it", in my personal experience in Britain it means nothing at all because all the cunts in leadership positions in both Government and Finance over there are liars who regularly get away with it: going with "it ain't happenning until it actually happens" when it comes to the promises of those people is the most successful posture over there if you're not an insider by far.
So much text here, and yet so incorrect. Little fees? Lol, so uninformed. The amount of little fees for things you get charged for by banks pretty much anywhere outside of the UK is pretty crazy.
Then topped off with a "they're working on it? Well I say they're not!!!" lmao
At least try to make your post believable if you're going to lie.
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Why do payment processors have the ability to control morality in our world? Easily the definition of a monopoly. Absolutely insane.
Because we, collectively as a society, gave them that power.
Clearly, that was a mistake.
What about everyone buy a share of thier stock. Then sue thier board for ignoring thier fiduciary duty to the shareholders. Turning down business is bad for revenue... and the games that got removed probably made decent money all together.
Make sure its not Class B
If it was about money, MasterVisa would have already given up. There are people who claim that MasterVisa bent the knee to Collective Shout for the sake of money, yet when a much bigger demographic speaks, MasterVisa tries to ignore it.
This is about the power to shape society.
The fact that multi-millionaires are doing to most heinous shit with their money and getting a way with it, meanwhile me, a wage slave, has a payment processor telling me what I'm allowed to do with my money, society is built on tiers.
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Ana Valens recently resigned from Vice following an article about the censorship of games. On social media, she shared communication between Mastercard and Riot Games.
Looks like Vice can't be trusted as a reliable source of information if they're willing to fire journalists after a little outside pressure is put on them.
This also goes to an entire new level. Before it was "only" censoring digital products and events. Now it is directly censoring media outlets.
This screams for an antitrust lawsuit, if a company has this kind of power.
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Could be great links to share over Riot Games streams.
- MasterCard has asked Riot to keep an eye out for negative sentiments on official Riot streams
- Riot has asked esports content creators working with official Riot properties to watch out for any negative sentiments toward MasterCard
- Moderators have been told to look out for any unusual activity around the MasterCard issue
No better publicity than getting their own efforts thrown back at their faces.
MasterCard is running an effective PR campaign against themselves. They can't stop giving their critics all this gold.
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Oh wow, it's like everyone who said MasterCard was lying to protect their image from reality turned out to be correct. Only someone with a functioning brain could have seen this coming.
IMO MasterCard leadership already agreed with the nazis and were just looking for an excuse to act.
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MasterCard lied? No they would never
Anyway, thanks MasterCard for introducing me to porn games a few weeks ago
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Stuff like this is going to make people mostly pay in cash and buy gift cards as needed. I already started buying most of my things in person anyway just to avoid paying for shipping. I'm seriously considering only buying steam games with gift cards I buy at the store and avoiding using my card as much as possible.
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Man wtf can we DO about this shit? I'm planning on calling and shit but damn they don't give a fuck.
Is it too late??
Do you have to have assloads of money to file a class action suit? Like would steam or GOG or itch be down to be a part of it or is that just a pipe dream.
I am not promoting it, but I will say that this is the exact reason shit like cryptocurrency exists. Stupid overreaching shit like this.
Keep calling. Tell your friends. It's already gotten MasterCard's attention enough to make a statement.
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