huh, scrolling through the comments I mostly see comments calling them out for being TERFs, I’m not really seeing any defense of the games themselves.

Excuse me if I’m a bit sensitive, though - I’m both gay and trans, so this group in particular is dangerous to me and I don’t really care if the broken clock is right twice a day, I think it’s best to call the clock broken.

We don’t have any argument here, though - we agree that vile games are vile and it’s good they’re gone.

Oh boy, you’ll learn

i agree with that research, and i agree with where you’re coming from but i’m not sure you can apply the same research to violence. there’s an argument that it gives people an outlet, but afaik also people that commit these crimes often escalate. making it easier for them to try out their fantasy could easily mean they escalate faster

Citation?

You are entitled to that opinion, but it is in defiance to what science says about the topic.

Escalation in the Seriousness of Crime (Chapter 13) - The Criminal Career

The Criminal Career - November 2002

Cambridge Core (www.cambridge.org)

this suggests that skill level plays a part in escalation. i’d argue that refining the “fantasy” is absolutely part of that (the same is true of the psychology of all fetishes: you start with something you’re not sure you’re into, and as you refine what it is about it you like you can dive deeper)

Just a moment...

(journals.sagepub.com)

this paper suggests that both thrill seeking and self control have different impacts on people’s desire to commit crime

And again, a stawman.

We are talking about rape porn (games) normalizing sexual violence.

This article is not talking about rape porn. By the way, it is an article from 2016 who uses studies from 2011 and younger. Here is a Meta analysis of the timeframe, suggesting that many stdies suffert from a metholodical weekness.

The question, if violent porn causes sexual violence is debated, but as of now simply not enoth good studys exist to confirm or denie such a link.

This study, for example, hints towards it. It is also a good example for methodological muddiness though:

Data was collected from 247 college men who completed self-report surveys at baseline, 4-month, and 7-month intervals. Higher gender inequitable attitudes, greater problems with alcohol use, and lower levels of responsibility assigned to men for rape mediated the relation between exposure to violent pornography at baseline and endorsement of sexually coercive behavior at the 7-month. Findings highlight the need to address pornography literacy in sexual assault prevention programs for college men.

I can only repeat: there is evidence towards violent porn causing violent behauvior, but it is weak and more studys are needed. Untilh then both of our standpoints are just opinions. Either of us might be right. Personaly, i wouldn’t risk it.

Because letting extremely biased ideological groups dictate worldwide policy is always a bad thing that comes with negative consequences.

I’m not personally familiar with any of the games in this ban wave, but Steam’s stance prior is that these games are free expression of art, made by adults and it’s not Steam’s job to police art. If a group does want to impose limitations on art on a worldwide storefront - that should be a national limitation performed by an appropriate body - Australia already has a stringent games rating system, and if these games do not meet any approved standards they would be hit with ‘Refused Classification’ and thereby restricted to be sold (banned from sale or import) to Australia and Steam would region block them for sale to Aus. As is the case for many games already.

However, this group deemed following the appropriate channels too much work, so instead went for a Karen smear campaign of the payment processors on social media - stating that they supported the sale of rape and incest games (simply by working with Steam), thereby pressuring the payment processors to put lobby Steam to remove the games entirely as the easiest path for Steam to avoid financial processing impacts.

I see where you are coming from. I still think that it is a net positive that they got rid of those games. I quoted the description of one game above. That aint no art. That is just the glorification of rape. And i’m glad it’s gone. Glad it’s gone everywhere in fact, not just in Australia.

Are these good people? Rather not. I still have to see them campaign against queer or trans folk, but seeing their connections that is a valid fear to have.

I will fight for diversity, in any form, beeing part of gaming culture. But i won’t cry a single tear about games that have a glorification of rape and incest as their main topic.

If your job is honestly comparable to that of a reluctant sex worker, you really need to switch jobs.

Spoken like someone who’s never struggled.

This is a completly wrong conceptualization. Porn “stars” often are often locked into filming increasingly extreme and often increasingly violent content. Many are left back traumatized for life.

This isn’t the 90s. OnlyFans creators aren’t beholden to an agency, which the paper you linked to mentions about.

About 70% of consumers are men.

30% is still pretty damn big, especially in context of how many human adults there are. That’s still a potential of over a billion people by rough estimate based off a set of 4 billion.

Please feel free to back up your claim with data.

Looking through the comments here, it seems you already have been, but still don’t care.

yeah it’s hard to come to any other conclusion on people who constantly think and talk about pedophilia unprompted.

what the fuck

people who play games usually don’t have time for shit like this and would rather play games in their free time. that’s why whenever you see people shriek about “wokeness” in games it’s always a bunch of incels who clearly never play them. they’re posers.

I can think it’s a messed up fantasy, but that doesn’t mean it should immediately be banned by a payment processor.

Regardless, there are tons of studies showing that consuming this kind of porn actually helps prevent people from acting on these fantasies. The net result is likely less sexual abuse, not more. Because it’s fantasy media, it likely is able to keep the fantasy a fantasy, it gives people an outlet.

That would mean that they actually are responsible. I don’t think that’s correct, at best they complained to payment processors to make them enforce their pre-existing bullshit rules. That’s where the problem lies IMO, those corporations should not be allowed to ban paying for legal goods and services, especially since they have formed a cartel.

Porn made with the willing consent of all parties involved, where everyone is compensated appropriately. No harm = no ethical problems as far as I’m concerned. Most big studios these days make sure of this. But there have also been pioneers that push the bar further up (e.g. Lustery, Ersties or Erika Lust).

Sir: If it’s illegal, please notify the authorities. If it’s not illegal, then I’ll have to politely ask you to fuck off.

That logic falls apart real fast. Hitting children, for example. Legal, but is it right?

Some places have legal laws that are horrifying. You can see the other implementation of your logic there. Like, is being gay a bad thing, as long as it is illegal?

there are tons of studies

Show me a meta study that supports this claim, please. Not a single study, but something that looks at those alleged thousands of studies and comes to the conclusion you are implying here.

These “feminists” have connections to TERFs, anti-LGBTQ+ groups, and the same NCOSE, that when it was called Morality in Media, labeled non-sexual representation of interracial couples as “pornography”.

If we’re at right-wing appropriation of leftist talking points, then you can also let chuds to call black protagonists in video-games the hard-R N-word, and let them harass indie video game devs until they remove said characters, all in the name or “being anti-corporate”. Maybe even let big AI corporations to scrape intellectual property and then profit off from it, displacing millions of workers (hopefully only until the hype lasts), because “patent trolls” and “Disney has enough copyrighted material to create their own model” (that argument relies on speculation, that a future model can work off of less data, but still creating good results).