Romancing alpacas is still taboo in a lot of places around the world.
Until human alpaca civil rights are recognised, there will.be no world.peace.
Same. I will go further, I think its a net positive for gaming.
One of the marks of an immature art form is a puerile reluctance to address human sexuality or even pretend it doesnt exist. I am delighted at Valve’s decision.
Doubly so in that this took some effort. If that list is accurate, then they also had to handle the pro censorship countries. Instead of folding and just banning sex in games they took the braver path to give customers the freedom to decide whats good or not. I respect that.
The unspoken big story here is how Valve has seemingly faced down PayPal with its regressive ban on adult entertainment. No small feat. Well played.
I did not know about this. What is this all about?
You cant use paypal for any service involving adult entertainment. They gave us a hell of a time at Second Life.
That in itself might end up being quite the long-lasting legacy of this decision, and it would be huge if it ripples. Right now the entertainment industry across the board has become so gun-shy about the effect of even hard R-rated entertainment equivalents on company asset valuation that it’s created this dulling effect on experimentation and envelope-pushing.
Don’t get me wrong: there’s never been a time when there was easier access to porn – and craaaaaazy porn at that – to the general public. But the continued segregation of sexuality in consumed art to a binary setting of porn/not porn everywhere (except France, you go Pierre) is so terribly dulling and uninteresting.
I’m curious as to why? Is it a political thing? What are they afraid of? Dollars is dollars.
No idea. Honestly. While I would like to blame Peter Thiel I in truth am not sure its his fault in this case :)
Agree. Totally. Its time to shake off this obsolete attitude to sexuality imho.
Interesting…
Interesting! I wonder if PayPal have changed? I didnt think so?
If anything, it’s probably gotten worse. That article, though written in 2015, seems to lay the blame squarely on anti-Sex Trade Worker advocates who (at the time) were hassling backpage dot com. And we saw what happened there. Those same advocates are usually anti-porn as well. That then translates to engines like paypal and whatnot seeing everything as a nail (or, as usually, not allowing for nuance). NSFW doesn’t mean “porn” or “Sex Trade Work”, for instance. But if you are relying on Algorithms…
What time is iti?
Titty time!
Will Humble Bundle sell porn games too?
Sad trombone.
Of course Germany is on the list. Which means it will, in typical EU “Squeaky Wheel” fashion, mean the EU restricts it.
Germany restricts it because online Adult entertainment online is considered to contribute to the persecution of women globally and trafficking (huh?).
Meanwhile in that very same Germany you can walk downtown and publicly hire a prostitute at a publicly licensed brothel, and choose a woman from Papau New Guinea (or any corner of the globe) and hire her to smack you with an electric blender while anything or everything is done to/for you/her/others.
Meanwhile in the US it isn’t restricted. But that whole blender thing is a no go, unless everyone wants to go to jail.
I just hope we see some quality games out of this. It might be wishful thinking, but I am convinced that adults can and should have access to something other than a visual smut novel.
I hope so too. Games need to be treated just like films or television. But they are instead in some weird binary place when it comes to sex or sexual themes.
Might sound kind of weird, but I liked the sex scenes in Wolfenstein: The New Order were really well done. They didn’t seem thrown in for the sake of “tee hee, bewbs” and made sense, a couple of people finding a bit of happiness in a pretty shitty world. I don’t even remember people getting worked up over it, just seemed to fly under the radar.