Award-winning Japanese adult game developer directly hit by credit card restrictions as VISA payment gets suspended on their web store 

Payment processors have been one-sidedly suspending payment options (most often credit cards like Visa and MasterCard) on Japanese platforms hosting mature content at an increasing pace since last year. Although this tended to target large-scale platforms like DLsite and Fantia at first, now even game developers are getting directly affected. 

Japanese bishōjo game developer Yuzusoft announced on January 27 that Visa cards can no longer be used for credit card payments on their web store, where they sell their games and related merchandise. At the time of writing, other payment methods like MasterCard, JCB and bank transfer are still available on the site, and the developer is looking into ways to get Visa payments reapproved. However, other Japanese platforms (like the now shut down Manga Library Z) have had little luck so far in getting the credit card suspensions rescinded. 

Yuzusoft is the developer of the award-winning title Senren*Banka, which has sold over 500,000 copies worldwide since its launch in 2016. Censored versions of some of their titles are available on Steam and My Nintendo Store, but for 18+ game creators, the ability to sell unrated versions to players directly, such as through web stores, is paramount. 

Visa Japan’s president Cietan Kitney has commented that while Visa’s policy is to make legal and legitimate purchases available as much as possible, it is “sometimes necessary to deny use to protect the brand,” implying that the company intends to continue with suspensions at their own discretion even when the content in question is legal. 

This attitude has earned widespread criticism from Japanese users and creators alike, with NieR creator Yoko Taro commenting, “Publishing and similar fields have always faced regulations that go beyond the law, but the fact that a payment processor, which is involved in the entire infrastructure of content distribution, can do such things at its own discretion seems to me to be dangerous on a whole new level,” suggesting that the practice endangers freedom of speech itself.