Two of the biggest global financial gatekeepers, Mastercard and Visa, are reportedly up to no good while wearing the mask of morality, creating a slippery slope scenario that should be monitored very closely.
In a recent turn of events, the two companies have deemed certain games to be in violation of their payment processing standards, and threatened Steam's parent company Valve to take these games down, or they would remove their services from the company.
This would effectively cripple the platform in a massive way.
What's more, the two card giants are doing so at the behest of an Australian activist group called "Collective Shout," a group founded in 2009 that act as today's morality police.
According to PC Gamer, the Australian-based feminist group has attempted to get various video games pulled from shelves, including Grand Theft Auto V:
Collective Shout began in 2009, co-founded by self-described "pro-life feminist" Melinda Tankard Reist. Collective Shout describes itself as "A grassroots campaigning movement against the objectification of women and sexualization of girls in media, advertising, and popular culture". To date, it has been involved in:
- Unsuccessful efforts to ban Snoop Dogg and Eminem from Australia.
- A successful 2015 campaign to prevent Tyler the Creator from touring Australia.
- A successful 2015 campaign to pressure Target and Kmart to stop selling Grand Theft Auto 5 in Australia.
- A petition to ban the game No Mercy from sale, which ultimately led to the developers pulling it from Steam.
- An unsuccessful petition to ban Detroit: Become Human from sale in Australia.
Side Note: I have no idea why they would want Detroit: Become Human banned, as it's a civil rights story from the perspective of AI robots a la iRobot.
The group reportedly leans "conservative" and takes an interest in limiting the porn industry as much as possible in order to halt the dangers of trafficking that come with it. However, the group is on record having defended the Netflix movie Cuties, which raises some questions.
Its not a meme, its not a “they want fiction censored, I bet they defend Cuties”
— Perma Banned (@GiveMeBanHammer) July 21, 2025
Collective Shout quite literally did in fact, defend Cuties. pic.twitter.com/cxv9gHuBaY
While I agree with the group that some of the games that were on Steam were detestable and disgusting, with themes and mechanics that no sane person should ever want to take part in, we run into two issues. Firstly, these are fictitious titles, and secondly, they were for adults only. Consenting adults make these games to sell to other consenting adults, and what two consenting adult parties do is none of my business.
Moreover, Steam is a platform that treats its customers like adults and lets you decide what you want to buy with hard, definable lines drawn about what it will and won't allow on its platform.
However, Collective Shout pressured Visa and Mastercard to enact no-go policies against these adult titles, and thus the card companies told Steam to get rid of them or face consequences.
For some of you, the alarm bells are already sounding.
Many of my readers can agree with me that many of the games being pulled are horrific in nature, but when card companies begin making the decision of what is and isn't acceptable to purchase, we run into a major issue. It further becomes a major issue when it's being done thanks to pressure from a foreign activist group.
Today it's these games, but if all it takes to get Mastercard and Visa to start telling you what you can and can't buy are complaints from a feminist group.
This is censorship, pure and simple, and these two giants are moving their way into gatekeeping artistic expression. Though it's grotesque today, it opens up a Pandora's Box of issues for tomorrow. These are global payment processors that permeate almost every level of Western society in terms of exchanging money, and the fact that they can just unilaterally decide what kind of art or content is "acceptable" — outside illegal boundaries, of course — should be absolutely chilling.
What group may come along and decide that the violence, "intolerance," or factual inaccuracies of the Bible should be curbed? Would Mastercard or Visa be able to change their policies to limit the kind of Biblical content we can purchase and consume?
You might say this is a pretty big leap from what's happening on Steam to Biblical content, but for activist groups capable of applying social pressure and enough connections, a private company may bend to only allow certain "approved" deliveries of content around any number of topics. They don't have to outright ban the subject (there are still adult-rated games on Steam) but they can limit what is and isn't covered specifically on the topic.
Take this principle and apply it to any number of topics, and you have a soft level of censorship that begins growing over time.
Again, you can agree that the content Collective Shout wants gone is deplorable in every way, but opening the door to allowing credit card companies to become moral cops is a slope too slippery for society to function as a free one. Just to remind you, these card companies already tried to create a sort of gun registry by flagging purchases of firearms and ammo.
Their job should be to hold our money and keep it safe until we deem it's time to use it. They should not be inserting themselves into the private business of a private citizen. Period.
