Valve have added a new rule to the Onboarding guide for game developers, noting that payment processors get a say in what stays on Steam.
Newly added rule is:
Content that may violate the rules and standards set forth by Steam’s payment processors and related card networks and banks, or internet network providers. In particular, certain kinds of adult only content.
Diff of the new terms https://github.com/SteamDatabase/SteamworksDocumentation/commit/fddd59b5395cc3c1c74574650dbf5784612d0521
:/ payment processors strike again (slippery slope etc)
They are USAian. Owners are most likely conservative and Christian --> imposing their values on others through money. It’s the rich people’s way.
Every payment processor on steam is a publicly traded company, not privately owned. So it wouldn’t really be up to any one individual’s moral preference about such things. Personal preference would only count in to it if one of the shareholders had enough shares to push the board around, but the only one where I could see that being the case would be PayPal from people like Theil and Andreessen. Like they’re both jack wads for other beliefs, but I wouldn’t exactly call them bible thumpers.
I doubt that it has anything to do with social preferences of anyone internal to payment processors. They won’t care.
Putting pressure on payment processors is a useful way to put pressure on any commercial service. The commercial service may operate in another country, but it needs the payment processor, and the payment processors don’t want to be ejected from countries. The payment processor can be a lever for laws passed elsewhere.