Vice: Group Behind Steam Censorship Policies Have Powerful Allies — And Targeted Popular Games With Outlandish Claims
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Original link which seems to have been taken down: https://www.vice.com/en/article/group-behind-steam-censorship-policies-have-powerful-allies-and-targeted-popular-games-with-outlandish-claims/
Update from the author:
Ah, I thought it was strange for the payment processing companies to come out of nowhere.
Them being pressured by conservative prudish assholes masquerading as concerned feminists makes more sense.
HuniePop is a comedic masterpiece I will actually be upset about if it's disappeared.
This group is nuts. Wanting to ban Detroit Become Human because it depicts child abuse is completely insane. That's like solving sex trafficking by making it illegal to mention it.
Doubt they want to solve it. More like make it out of sight, out of mind.
This is exactly their goal. They don't wanna solve it. They don't want to make things better. They just want it to not be talked about or discussed or thought about. It's the same as your landlord painting over a patch of black mold.
I mean, their leader is literally under fire for saying the Epstein files never existed and people should just stop talking about it. Making it illegal to even mention sex trafficking is the next logical step to protect the Dear Leader, because lord knows tackling the real issues wouldn't end well for him.
It's actually a more ideologically consistent position than most reactionary groups. They want to be able to keep diddling kids while everyone shuts up about it and the queers get shoved in concentration camps. Now that's a Good Traditional Christian Nation babyyyyyy
Well, that's new: usually when I need the archived article it's because the original was paywalled, but this time the original seems to have been deleted completely. Is Vice getting censored too now?
The author posted three articles involving Collective Shout. The only one that didn't get removed replaces most of the detailing on Collective Shout with narration of the now-endangered benefits of "we both roleplay as giant women who consume our viewers".
Moral of the story: To avoid takedown, double down and eat people
It's weird, the link on the front page is still there, but it leads to a 404:
Archive.ph is always a great choice for this kind of bs. I was able to pull the the article before they decided to remove it. https://archive.ph/x5cGQ
Because VICE went bankrupt. Surprised their website is running at all.
To be honest, when this story first appeared especially with Valve being the ones to announce the censorship, I thought it was sort of a nothing burger with Valve (Gave Newell having libertarian values) being pissed that someone has control over what they can sell on their store or not.
I also personally believe in the past 5-10 years that there is so much adult content and so much gateways to adult content in non adult content spaces that I personally feel something needs to be done about it.
But after seeing the group behind it, it's basically the opposite extreme. We should be able to talk about sex and sexuality, and have media that dives into these topics without some of the extreme fetishism that is on the internet (e.g. cuckoldry, gooning).
While I feel conflicted about these games being on an extremely popular pc gaming store, the people who are trying to get it removed aren't helping - they are the problem by being so extreme in their views of sex and sexuality themselves.
without some of the extreme fetishism that is on the internet (e.g. cuckoldry, gooning)
What's wrong with those?
Is Detroit: Become Human on the list of removed titles (that's where the screenshot is from).
The game does deal with themes like child and spousal abuse, and has a part with a same sex couple, so it fits these fascists' MO.
If so, ridiculous. However, I kind of hope they do go after some bigger games so people get pissed.
I hope they fucked with wrong company. Watch Valve become the best payment processor simply out of spite. Although there is no solution for reactionaries everywhere targeting porn and sex work.
Honestly valve mishandled this issue. This sounded like a solid opportunity to be like "Okay, AO and NSFW games are no longer able to be sold via third party merchants" and then disabled the ability on the payment page.
Like they already offer an ability to pay directly, just require funding to be from steam wallet, then the transaction records are only "add funds" or "wallet payment" or whatever they use for steam wallet funding. Or if it is just paypal, make it so it has to be a first(wallet) or a second(credit cards) party instead of a third party(paypal)
they already removed a bunch of games
Where is this stage in the “first they came for” poem?
This far into the 21st century, paying people for art should have no barriers.
Why is there an Animal Crossing video attached to this? Also, what happened to the original article, did they delete it?
Cease and desist from said group?
What's next? Are they going to try to remove The Last of Us ? :/
This is why piracy is morally correct.
I dunno, the people making the games would love to sell them but they are literally deprived of a way to take money from you. Even if you wanted to give them money. For once it's not the publisher fucking you over.
This is a shit take if I've ever seen one.
GabeN has "fuck you" money. He doesn't need to kowtow to these uptight fucks
From Wikipedia about NCOSE
Doing the lords work by fucking up (lol) any discourse about sexuality.
A thing about how the group's goals are contradictory: Sex education is probably the best tool to protect children from sexual exploitation. So stopping sex ed aids child molesters, by making it easier to manipulate children.
I can agree with exactly ONE thing on that list which is worth campaigning against and that's sex trafficking. However, given that this lot voted in a fucking pedo rapist as the supreme leader of their country, I doubt their conviction.
Reminds me of enforcing the identification of all internet users for the sake of "protecting the children".
Generally, the "sex trafficking" these types of groups campaign against is the non-existent QAnon variant, where those people are somehow trafficking millions and millions of (white suburban) kids into sex slavery in those countries for more of those people.
Because fucking of course they're fascists. Of course.
Ah yes, because if there is anything that will prevent exploitation it’s not being educated about sex.
It's very weird to see "decriminalization of sex work" in there though. Because that's extremely progressive. (And positive in my eyes.)
"campaigning AGAINST"
they're against that...
They're against decriminalizing it