Post by Perverteer in Paid version cancelled due to itch.io policy changes comments

Paid version cancelled due to itch.io policy changes » Comments

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The way Steam works and itch.io used to work for me, is that all individual payments by customers are collected by the platform and paid out in bulk. So instead of a merchant receiving individual payments (detailing what exactly was bought and thus bannable), you get a more anonymous payout containing multiple payments at a certain interval or on request.

As Maravedis already mentioned, Knightly Passions switched to direct payments and I wonder how long that will last until their merchant account gets banned at Paypal. Some other developers also tweeted about it:

https://twitter.com/Deafpervs/status/1650155139041472512
https://twitter.com/Houtamelo/status/1650232406929035267

Vin691 year ago(+5)(-1)

well isn’t that some pardon my French but weapons grade bullshit. You can make a game field to brim with murder but god forbid you show a nipple .

Ponydragon1 year ago

Paypal allows adult content to be sold, but restrictions apply. Like the need to get approval of paypal, as it is written in their tos. If you have a company and actual porn is legal in your country, you should ask the terms for approval of your cartoon porn.

Or do you really think Steam and Itch silently hope that pp does not notice that they sell lewd games on their merchant accounts? You can sell hardcore porn dvds with paypal, if you have approval!

Perverteer1 year ago

Paypal's ToS explicitly forbid the selling of adult content, there's no clause where it says you can appeal or get approval. So I'm not sure where you've got that information.

Steam is enormous and has the power to dictate their terms to payment processors. Also, the process bulk payments to merchants and as such take on the risk of chargebacks and fraud, shielding companies like Paypal somewhat. Patreon is the same, they have an agreement with Paypal. itch.io worked similarly, but apparently they've decided they don't want to have the administrative burden of handling bulk payments for some of the developers on their platform. As for buying porn with a Paypal account, those transactions are handled through high-risk payment processors like Epoch and CCBill who take on the risk of chargebacks and fraud for the credit card companies and charge a hefty premium to their merchants.

Ponydragon1 year ago

I got that information from the paypal website. And from simple deduction. If you can pay for stuff, there are people accepting those payments.

If it were banned by paypal in general, you could not pay for it. They do ban certain stuff with clauses that are too broad to be accepted in any court of law in my opinion, but I am not a legal expert. Like "violate any law, statute, ordinance or regulation" "items that are considered obscene" "certain sexually oriented materials or services". The first, well, there are countries were basically everything is illegal. They do not specify wich jurisdiction. And what is obscene is in the eye of the beholder. And what certain materials they mean is not specified. It is all an arbitrary and unnecessary load of BS and pp need to be gone and replaced by a processor that gives the same functionality like the credit cards and banks that are used behind the scenes. It is shameful to impose your own agendas.

And to expose their hypocrisy on the same page they list a bunch of stuff they can approve your account for. Including "any" adult content delivered digitally. That includes real life hardcore porn videos. Your content on the other hand is not even real people. But I cannot tell you what is required to get approval. But apparantly you thought it is not possible at all, inferring that people doing those sales are either not caught yet or are so big that they are above the pp tos.

But do not get your hopes too high. Even though you only create cartoon porn, you might be too small for them or there might be tax problems or other stuff. I would naivly assume that getting approval for non-real porn is easier. After all, I am not even sure if they speak of porn, when referring to "adult content". But adult dvds is rather telling, because 11 out of 10 search results give porn. So what else could they talk about with mature audience content. Furthermore, while people obviously watch cartoon porn for similar reasons as the real porn, it is not real porn. This goes so far that in many sane jurisdictions not even loli is forbidden. Restricted from being watched by minors, of course, but not illegal, as the real deal would be. So why all the fuzz about cartoon porn merchants in the first place.

Itch could do a lot better. If companies manage to collect payments for real porn and manage to pay out to the creators (talking about camming), it should be possible for porn game indie devs. Similar situation. But they do pay out via other processors that require bigger sums to be payed and take a bigger share - wich itch does not. So no micro payments for direct payout. And micro here is less than 100 bucks.

https://www.paypal.com/us/legalhub/acceptableuse-full?locale.x=en_US

Activities Requiring Approval

PayPal requires pre-approval to accept payments for certain services as detailed in the chart below.

Mature Audience Content

Any adult content delivered digitally including video on demand (VOD) and web-cam activities. PayPal may be restricted from processing payments in certain jurisdictions for adult DVD’s, magazines and other adult themed products or services.

What they do ban is stuff like cigarettes and you can only get approval to sell

Tobacco

Non-cigarette tobacco products, e-cigarettes, cigars

Also Itch and Steam must have been approved for this as well, I guess.

Marketplaces

A marketplace is an e-commerce solution where third-party sellers can sell their products or services to customers.

I do not understand what you wrote about ccbill and epoch with paypal. I pay my paypal with my credit card. Not with a third party credit card processor. I could also send the money to paypal directly with my bank account. This gets important for currency conversion, because pp is too expensive.

Perverteer1 year ago (1 edit)

The possibility approval by Paypal seems to only apply to US merchants and for very specific goods only: https://www.paypal.com/us/cshelp/article/what-is-paypal%E2%80%99s-policy-on-tran...

Agreed on the hypocrisy of it all. But it seems safer for credit card companies to just sweep all adult content under the same rug and be done with it.

CCBill and Epoch are high-risk payment processors for merchants. As a customer you pay with your credit card or Paypal account, CCBill/Epoch handles the transactions and any risks attached and the merchant (that would be me, or any other adult content developer) receives the funds after they deduct various costs. The subscription fees for merchants are very high, unfortunately.

As you say, itch.io could indeed do a lot better. I believe several people have pointed out other payment options for them to implement, but they don't seem to be interested.

Ponydragon1 year ago

That help page is demonstrably wrong. If it were true you could not pay itch for the hentai games. Or steam. Steam does accept paypal, does it not? Or patreon for that matter.

You can pay digital sexual orientated "goods" with a paypal account. Even internationally. I should know because I even pay VAT for those hentai games on itch. Maybe they do not consider cartoon porn as sexually orientated? Maybe that help page writer ignored the approval thing? It is forbidden without approval, that is true. Does this vague talk even apply to lewd games? I suspect they want to avoid payments for hookers or webcam services. I live in Europe and paid actual physical sex toys with paypal for crying out loud. I know there are states in the US where such toys would be a problem, like legally. Wich tells me that this phrase is void in my opinion: "violate any law, statute, ordinance or regulation" . Sex toys are illegal in some states, they did violate those rules. But they did not apply. The items are legal where the buyer is and legal where the seller is, so pp should shut its cakehole.

But I know what you mean, so I specifically checked, if that pages is displayed differently if you give another location. I tried India and Japan. They display the same tos with the approval note. So if you would apply and get denied, my guess would be, that it is some other problem, like them not approving very small businesses, or for tax reasons. I did mention the VAT? If I pay for porn here on itch, I have to pay surcharge in taxes. I recently bought a game on itch for like 16 bucks. I had to pay over 20 before currency exchange. I saved a buck, because I did not use pp exchange, but the one of my credit card.