A number of adult games have mysteriously disappeared from Steam and itch.io platforms recently, and it is rumored that it is related to pressure from payment partners and credit card organizations. After a large number of user inquiries, Visa officials finally broke their silence and responded.
According to reports from the player community, some users directly made inquiries to the customer service of credit card institutions, trying to understand the inside story of this wave of cleaning operations against adult games on Steam and itch.io. Although the wave of delistings is clearly related to the intervention of financial institutions, responses from all parties have been vague.
itch.io has previously issued an official statement confirming that the removal of thousands of content from the platform was due to critical pressure from payment processing partners, and these payment institutions were pressured by complaints from certain anti-adult content organizations.
Visa's official reply leaked from the Reddit forum shows that although the company did not directly respond to the censorship incident, its stance is intriguing. Visa emphasized that its policy only prohibits illegal transactions and supports legitimate business practices - this explanation obviously has nothing to do with the removal of adult games, because none of the works in question violated the law.
The most critical statement in the response is the clear denial of content censorship: "As long as the transaction is legal, our policies will handle it normally." Visa specifically stated that "we will not make moral judgments on consumers' legal purchasing behavior."
This statement is in subtle contradiction with the recent censorship actions that Steam and itch.io have encountered. The subsequent development of the incident remains to be seen.