Why Gamers Are Suddenly Lashing Out At Mastercard And Visa
There’s been turmoil in the gaming world after a mass delisting of games on Steam, which followed a change in policy regarding what games are allowed on the platform. Itch.io implemented a similar change to its policies a few days later, which caused even more games to be taken down. This created concern in the gaming community, as several of the games were pulled despite not containing outright adult content. These moves were made to appease payment processors, such as Visa, PayPal and Mastercard.
This has led to gamers mounting a campaign of their own, using social media platforms such as Bluesky and Reddit to organize. There’s currently an effort underway that seeks to bog down the companies’ customer support lines by having to field calls and emails regarding the situation. Aalthough the preferred method for maximum disruption is a phone call. One Redditor advised others to “get the call back, to gum up the call back queue. Then call in again and wait to gum up the live queue.”
This campaign seems to be achieving its intended effect. A user in the Steam subreddit posted about their experience after placing a call to Visa. The customer service representative shared that the company has gotten a lot of phone calls regarding this specific issue, and that the concerns are being “heard.”
Time will tell if these companies are willing to bend on their policies after hearing from gamers the same way they were willing to bend for Collective Shout.
