Mastercard Denies Role in Steam’s NSFW Game Purge — Valve Disagrees
Mastercard rejects allegations to be responsible for the removal of Steam’s NSFW games. However, Valve contradicts and claims that the credit card company has explicitly rely on a Mastercard rule.
Mastercard fought responsibility for the Steam-Zensur
Mastercard has in an official opinion contested to be responsible for the youngest wave of game distances on Steam and other platforms. The controversy emerged after the Australian Lobbying Group Collective Shout had started a campaign against games with explicit, i.e. sexual and pornographic content that led to hundreds of distances. The credit card company said: “Mastercard has not rated games or restricted activities on game developer pages and platforms, contrary to media reports and accusations.” The company emphasized that “all lawful purchases in its network” allow it. But that seems to be a brazen lie.
Valve contradicts Mastercard
But Valve, the operator of Steam, tells a different story. Loud PC gamers a Valve representative said: “Mastercard did not communicate directly with Valve, despite our request to do this. Mastercard communicated with payment service providers and their partner banks.”
The payment service providers had rejected Valve’s statement on Steam policy since 2018, cited “especially Mastercards Rule 5.12.7 and the risk of the Mastercard brand”. This rule states that retailers are not allowed to submit transactions that “damage the goodwill of the corporation at the sole discretion of the corporation or could have a negative impact on the brands”. In other words: if the image harms it, then you can refuse your services.
Who is Collective Shout?
The argument began with a campaign by the Australian group Collective Shout. The organization, which sees itself as a feminist activist group, specializes in combating the “sexualization of women and girls”. In July 2025 she started an open letter to credit card companies and PayPal after she had not received an answer to Valve on 3000 emails. After this campaign, hundreds of games were removed from Steam, while ITCH.IO all NSFW content is de-indexed. Collective Shout had argued that these games represented topics such as rape, incest and sexual violence. The group focused particularly on so-called “Adult Visual Novels” and anime-style games, which often come from Japan.
The group has a controversial story with gaming content. Already in 2014 she protested Grand Theft Auto 5 and described it as a “video game that encourages players to brutally murder women for entertainment”. In 2018 Collective Shout started a petition against Detroit: Become Human because of alleged “child abuse and violence against women”, although the game is critically treated and designed as a narrative drama. In particular, scenes were criticized in which domestic violence is discussed – but without taking into account the context. The discussion about financial censorship and the role of payment service providers in content control will certainly continue.
