The Gog store offered free games for 48 hours against the recent implementation of a form of censorship on Steam and Itch.io.
The question of the weight of Mastercard, Visa and Paypal in the editorial possibilities of video games continues to create the debate.
During the night of July 23 to 24, the ITCH.IO platform deleted tens of thousands of games and comics for fear of losing access to payment intermediaries using Mastercard, Visa or Paypal.
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Since then, the Gog store has decided to publicly support Itch.io against “censorship”.
A free game weekend
From August 2 to 3, the GOG platform provided a dozen games entirely for free as part of the operation ” Freedom to Buy ». These are “NSFW” titles, reserved for an adult audience.
Some games disappear. Not because they break the law, but because someone decided that they should not exist.
For 48 hours, these games are free, because if a game is legal, you should be free to buy it.
The platform also invites to ” Share your protest »On the social network X.
MasterCard Botte in Touche
Faced with public pressure, Mastercard decided to publicly make a statement.
Mastercard did not evaluate any games or imposed restrictions on the activities of games and platforms for creating games, contrary to what some media and allegations assert.
Our payment network meets standards based on the rule of law. In other words, we allow all legal purchases on our network. At the same time, we require merchants that they set up appropriate controls to ensure that Mastercard cards cannot be used for illegal purchases, in particular for the purchase of content for illegal adults.
As we can read, Mastercard believes that it is out of the case in this story. The publication was quickly accompanied by a note from the community on X. It rightly indicates that Itch.io and Steam both featured the finger at Mastercard.
In addition, Mastercard has already been involved in other similar stories in recent years. For example, in France, the UTIP platform closed due to the loss of its payment intermediary, also concerning NSFW content.