(The protagonist is the sword btw. Psychic flight, so his catgirl wielder gets a lot of benefits)

Apocalypse Hotel from last season.

A bit of a depressing start but pivots hard into ‘thinking’ comedy and philosophy. It’s got your over the top anime characters but the overall situation demands the thinking parts of your brain to activate.

Discover has an alliance with JCB, the #1 credit card of Japan. https://www.jcbusa.com/adding-jcb-card-acceptance/

And the reverse: https://www.discover.com/credit-cards/international-use/

Discover (mostly) works on JCB, and JCB (mostly) works on Discover terminals in USA.

This means that Discover is a ‘guest’ on Japan’s credit card network. It’s JCB that will have the main say of what is or isn’t allowed in Japanese payments.

That’s why I’m pretty sure Discover can’t fuck around. They literally aren’t powerful enough. JCB is the credit card power in Japan who is stronger than Discover. Even if they have Capitol One backing Discover now (and Diners Club International… And Pulse), Discover is too small to bully.

But the alliance system (JCB allowing Discover cards to work on most JCB terminals in the country) naturally allows Discover to still be used in the vast majority of Japanese transactions.

Discover has enough ‘alliances’ to be a card worth using. But also isn’t big enough to bully like Mastercard or Visa. Maybe that changes in the future but today I think Discover is our best move at a reasonable alternative.

Could you explain?

I’ve heard of years of examples of Visa/Mastercard DIRECTLY going after the Japanese Doujin market. Never have I heard of anything from Capitol One.

https://boundingintocomics.com/video-games/video-game-news/nier-creator-yoko-taro-voices-concern-over-rise-in-credit-card-companies-refusing-to-handle-adult-content-if-they-have-control-of-the-clearing-house-they-can-even-use-it-to-control-speech-in-o/

This isn’t a new issue at all. I’m glad that the Internet suddenly cares about it but there’s so much shallow shit and bad thinking right now I’m worried that this movement dissipates before any serious change happens.

But yes, please find me an example of Capitol One being a problem. I can mostly think of Visa, Mastercard issues with maybe one or two AmEx (but much more rarely and maybe those few exceptions AmEx had a point).

This is a payment processor issue. Not a bank issue. PayPal, Stripe and such are also issues, as well as Google Pay and Apple Pay in theory.

Steam suggests that ‘Payment Processors cited Mastercard Rules’.

Itch.io suggests that Visa specifically sent them a note, but more importantly that Stripe forbids sexual content.

We need to be smarter about this. We cannot just let random Twitter and Reddit outrage memes control us.

Fortunately, Visa and MasterCard have been assholes to a large number of international folks so I’m kinda okay with this? But the controversy this past month on these sexy games is poorly researched in general IMO.

We are seeing big tech (Reddit and Twitter) flex their muscles and see how easy they can attack other companies. It’s not even clear if the correct targets were chosen in this instance.

EDIT: my method of protest is to get a Discover (or AmEx if you prefer) so that we stop giving 3% of all of our commercial wealth to Visa or Mastercard. At least we can hit them in their revenue stream.

I don’t believe that Discover or AmEx is big enough to seriously bully these organizations around. So there’s safety in picking the distant 3rd and 4th place credit cards, just economically speaking.

There is also the fact that Discover has an alliance with JCB (Japans credit card) and RuPay (India) and UnionPay (China), meaning Discover is likely too weak to have gross international influence. (Relies upon local processors to get their card around the world).

Why? My research upon the Manga Library Z issue says that when Visa/Mastercard cut off Manga Library Z last year, both Discover and AmEx continues to support that controversial store. So that sets Visa/Mastercard as the troublesome ones, while Discover/AmEx might not have the strength to be troublesome yet.

Manual curation is the criteria. If you think something is best it’s enough for a topic.

If it’s problematic or low quality, we can discuss options. But manual curation and the feel of just talking about what interests a person immediately is the point of this place.

That being said, it seems like the original topic was deleted or something. I can’t read it… That’s certainly a problem but not the one I expected.

Itch.io is currently saying the problem is Stripe, and maybe Visa.

Historically (ex: https://otakuusamagazine.com/visa-and-mastercard-refuse-to-work-with-another-doujinshi-retailer/), I’d say Mastercard and Visa are both to blame. But the jury is still out on wtf is going on here.

I’m not sure who pressured Steam. But Itch.io (https://aftermath.site/steam-itch-porn-censorship-collective-shout-visa-mastercard-paypal) is claiming Stripe and Visa are pressuring them.

(Speaking with Aftermath, Itch’s founder, Leaf Corcoran, specifically cited a notice from Visa as an incident that led to the sudden deindexing of so many games).

While Hercules is impressively wrong, I knew Aladdin was a fun original read when it began with ‘In the Far East Kingdom of China…’

Hercules, for all of its faults, actually takes place in Greece. Which is kinda sorta close to Rome (Hercules is his Roman name lol. Heracles is his Greek name).

On the other hand, Aladdin might be a fake story all together. As in, some French Guy may have made up Aladdin as part of his translation of 1001 Arabian Nights. IIRC, Arabs don’t know wtf that story is doing in the (French) book.

So Aladdin might be an entirely fake addition to the 1001 Arabian Nights novel. Canonically fake. So it’s in the true spirit of Aladdin (and 1001 Arabian Nights) to screw with the story anyway.

Btw: the original Aladdin story had no three wishes rule.

Aladdin just spammed the heck out of wishes. Got everything he ever wanted.

The only part of the Disney movie that’s accurate is when the sorcerer returns, teleports the Sultan (of China) palace to Africa, and Aladdin needs to use the weaker Genie of the Ring to steal the Genie of the Lamp back through trickery.

The princess of China (yeahhhhhh) helps Aladdin out a bit IIRC.

But yes, palace teleportation, sorcerer wishing to be Sultan, that’s the legitimate part lol

Keep in mind that this started because of a small telecall campaign by said Australian fringe group.

What? No.

Visa/Mastercard have been doing this shit for literally years. Then some small Australian fringe group knew they had allies in Visa/Mastercard to ban some porn so they emailed Visa/Mastercard.

As I noted, that guarantees financial death for the impacted game devs.

The warnings were literally years ago. Pretending that Visa/Mastercard are allies or even neutral on this issue is naive.

Visa/Mastercard have been pushing Sony and other video games to be less sexy for several years now.

I don’t expect Visa/Mastercard to cave on anything here. They’ve already made themselves a reputation on the more prudish side of things.

Remember that Discover is self-banked (unlike Visa/Mastercard that banks sign up with). This means that every credit line needs to be backed by… well … A bank.

Bigger banks mean more credit opportunities, better interest rates (etc. etc). Deeper credit lines.

Have you not been paying attention to the campaign? That’s exactly what they’re doing, they’re tying up the customer support systems in a way that will be noticed and can’t be ignored. It’s having an instant effect on their bottom line since they’ll have to be scheduling more shifts right now to deal with the increased workload. Nobody’s suggesting emails.

That’s not how any of this shit works.

Visa/Mastercard aren’t even known for good service (that’s AmEx who cares about that). More realistically, Visa/Mastercard customer service declines during this protest period and 3 months from now everyone forgets about today’s campaign.

And Visa/Mastercard can then feel big and powerful as we didn’t actually do anything to stop them.

Switching to a different card actually deprives them of their fucking revenue. The thing Visa/Mastercard actually cares about.

Which is why I’m pushing either Discover or AmEx as the serious protest options. It seems Discover is better for this particular protest as we can still pay for stuff internationally for the international creators. (AmEx is not as good at that but is still a valid protest option if you prefer their customer service and/or travel lounges).

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Has Discover ever been powerful enough to bully JCB or UnionPay into bullying Japanese or Chinese game developers?

I don’t think so. I don’t think it’s even possible if I’m reading about this alliance system.

Mastercard/Visa doesn’t give a fuck about your emails. Just hit them in the pocket book and switch off of them. Visa/Mastercard needs more transactions and to grow like any other company in USA. Deprive them of revenue and they’ll notice.

The only way this outrage actually works in the long-term is if Visa/Mastercard loses money over this. So we need to think of how to make that actually happen.

Discover seems to be the best bet to me so far.

Discover is on the JCB, UnionPay, Troy and RuPay. (japan, China, turkey, and India respectively). Probably many more.

Similarly, a JCB card should work wherever Discover is. It’s a billateral alliance.

Oh, and all Discover cards work on Diners Club International because those two networks completely merged.

Alliance members are not 100% acceptance. It seems like 95%+ acceptance though (most JCB will accept most Discover cards and vice versa, though you will get confused looks from the locals). It sounds like there’s a lot of old equipment around the countries that break compatibility but cities and other urban areas with new equipment shouldn’t have any problems.

I’ll probably get a Discover card and start testing this out. I already have Visa and Mastercard but this new censorship issue seems serious enough to make me start supporting a 3rd place competitor.

Between Discover vs AmEx, it seems like AmEx is about elite club / customer service / returns etc. etc. nice features but I’m not sure if it’s worth the price.

Discover is free of annual fees, reasonable cash back, mediocre costs for the merchants (better than AmEx anyway and comparable vs Visa) and a surprisingly huge offering of international compatibility (RuPay, JCB, UnionPay, etc Etc). It seems like the winner to me as a 3rd card to experiment with.

There are other, Japanese or Chinese only, storefronts that accept JCB or Union pay.

Just because you’re too lazy to find them doesn’t mean they don’t exist. What I’m saying is it’s totally possibly to buy some of these games direct from China or Japan storefronts using Discover cards with their alliance with UnionPay and JCB.

You’re acting like it’s impossible to buy a game from a not-Steam location. Well how about finding the same sexy game from Good ol Games and paying for that with a Discover card??

https://www.discoverglobalnetwork.com/our-network/global-cardholders/

Discover claims some kind of alliance with UnionPay, RuPay, and Troy.

I’m still trying to figure out the whole situation. It seems like “Discover” is more of an alliance system, rather than a “one person controls the whole network” deal (like Visa or Mastercard). It means that they cannot give as strong guarantees, but members of the alliance seem to be largely compatible.

What’s wrong with Capital One? I feel like Discover/Capital One / Diner’s Club network is a good thing for Discover customers.

Discover and Diners Club merged a few years ago btw. Discover also has an alliance with JCB.

So Discover network is actually really, really big.