July 29, 2025 – Last week, on July 25, a gamer named dudeduck took to Reddit to share an interesting development. He had sent an email to Visa, the well – known card organization, inquiring about the recent quiet removal of a large number of extreme adult games from platforms like Steam and Itch.io. And to his surprise, Visa actually responded.
Here’s the full text of Visa’s reply email:
Dear Sir/Madam,
Thank you for reaching out to us and sharing your perspective.
As a global company, we always abide by the laws and regulations of the countries and regions where we operate.
We strictly prohibit any illegal activities on our payment network. At the same time, we are also committed to safeguarding legitimate business operations. If a transaction is legal, our policy is to process it. We never make moral judgments on consumers’ legal purchases.
Visa does not review the content sold by merchants, nor do we examine the specific goods or services being sold when processing transactions. When legally – operating merchants face a relatively high risk of illegal activities, we will request the partner banks behind these merchants to implement stricter preventive measures.
For more information about Visa’s policies, please visit the “Payment Network Integrity” page on Visa’s official website.
Thank you for your email.
Visa Website Administrator
Visa has responded to the controversy surrounding the removal of extreme adult games from platforms like Steam, stating that the main reason is to prevent illegal activities.
However, dudeduck was not satisfied with Visa’s response. He believed that Visa didn’t provide any substantial answers. He felt that the entire reply was just an attempt to deny that they were trying to “review platform content.” In his view, Visa’s action was like “using one finger to try and block out the sunlight.”
