Steam has a serious problem with a lack of moderation, which has made it a very attractive platform for fascists. Gamergate never ended, and remember that began with Steve Bannon realizing he could exploit gamer outrage to push propaganda. They keep inventing new scandals to repeat their past success.
One of my favorite games had a very minor patch to revise some cringier elements from early in the game’s lifespan. Years later, the forum is still unusuable because it’s been colonized by right-wing weirdos with 0.3 hours on record who have dedicated their lives to crying about a game they never cared about pre-patch, because they saw it as an opportunity to push their propaganda.
For anybody saying “it’s not a problem, just moderate it yourself”, look at Relooted’s steam forum. There are more than 700 threads there and most of them are really not kind. Tell me how you’re going to moderate that.
Just put yourself in the shoes of game publishers or studios that make a game which goes against the grind and gets attacked like Relooted is being attacked. Would you want to employ somebody just to moderate the forums? Should the onus be on the forum owners or should it be on the forum providers (Valve)? Do you think this has no effect on the types of games being released?
I mean, look at this game Tyrone vs Cops 2. Is this OK? What do you think the forum discussions look like. Are they OK? If it’s only devs that should moderate their forums, that means the KKK could make game about water lillies and then have their forums be the meeting ground for white power discussions. They won’t be offended after-all. That’s OK?
Steam provides the forums; not mods. The developers are supposed to moderate their forums. The only forums I actually see moderated are the Steam specific ones (like the support board). Game specific ones are hit or miss. Most devs just seem to ignore that they even exist.
The article is referring to reviews, not forums, which devs have no control over.
Multiple game creators describe ineffective moderation on the platform, resulting in unchecked hatred in forums and…
Reminder that The Guardian is a dogshit paper that pretty much systematically misgender trans people and keeps tripling down on backing up TERFs. You don’t get to talk shit about the bigots when you’re among them.
I would very much like to read something about it !
Thanks. I boycott all Guardian articles that talk shit about bigots.
The main reason Valve doesn’t step in on these is they have a firm philosophy of giving the community the tools to form their own outcomes, rather than directing them in every issue. So they might be dissatisfied with people writing “Woke TRASH!” braindead reviews, but also not want to take action on them.
The least they’ve done is remove the clown award so people have less incentive to troll. But I’d also like them to implement community blocklists; If you nag a game for “Having/not having LGBT representation”, you go on a blocklist 90% of the community is using.
They also famously allow you to work on whatever you want, I doubt many Valve employees want to spend their days cleaning shit like that
You know you can “block all communication” from users and it blocks them EVERYWHERE on Steam, right? Not just in games, but in Friends and on the forums, too.
I think what they mean by “community blocklist” is a blocklist maintained by the community which users can have applied to them. This means, rather than everyone having to deal with blocking the trolls individually, only one user has to and the rest get the benefit of that.
They also have guidelines for “user generated content” which includes reviews, and you can report people for violating those guidelines.
Sure Valve does not pay for moderators to check things proactively. I quite like that they don’t have AI or some other half-assed attempt at “moderation” like other platforms have. I hate the way that the whole Internet has moved to censor “fuck” and made up the word “unalive” because the automated systems of platforms I don’t even use have decided they are the arbitora of what language is allowed.
I think the responsibility to monitor reviews should lie with whoever controls the Steam page: I would assume the publisher most of the time? The publisher and developer should be looking at reviews anyways. Add in the ability for users to vote reviews as helpful or unhelpful and I think it’s one of the better systems left on the internet.
bigoted reviews posted on games’ Steam pages, which can hugely affect sales for their developers; and Steam curators (self-appointed taste-makers on the platform) directing campaigns against games they perceive to lean left or pursue inclusion.
This fucking shit again. Reviews affect sales? Well, good. You don’t get to carefully select a few most-read outlets who’ll give you the thumb up. Also, chud curators are “directing” only those who follow them. This argument is about a failing industry that’d like to control what can be said about their products.
To be perfectly honest, the odds of me buying a game are significantly higher if I see reviews about “toxic femininity” or “woke politics”
I occasionally go through the lists posted by chud curators for small indie titles that would have escaped my notice. I don’t have time to scrutinize every title on Steam, but these guys seemingly have infinite time to ensure every unheard of title with a case of LGBTQ+ representation gets criticism from them. Ironically, they’re fantastic for finding small, progressive passion projects I would have otherwise missed.
I use those “wokism tiers” that you usually see from bigoted idiots to check out new games that I’ll probably like
That is literally how I discovered Signalis.
You have to be way down the rabbit hole to think Signalis is too woke. Nothing it does would have been out of place in '02 or so.
Depends on where the curator draws the line, and you can’t apply sane criteria to what they consider “too woke”. Sometimes a game is put on a woke list because it has a female lead, or a physically strong female character, or non-heteronormative character dynamics, or people of color are present in it… I’ve seen one that was marked as woke because it referenced climate change and climate action. I think it was some popular shooter or something.
Some are more consistent than others.
Once you start making lists of games to avoid based on thematics, though, you’ve already taken a step to cuckoo land.
If you know that you explicitly disagree with somebody on certain aspects, their opinion will be just as useful to you as if you liked exactly what they like.
There’s a big list of “woke games” that would be a great source for finding new games to play, if it didn’t include almost every game ever made making it meaningless.
I dislike people normalizing hate speech through this kind of space, but I largely agree. If people want to follow a curator that will make sure they aren’t emotionally blindsided by a female protagonist showing affection towards another woman, for example, that’s a choice they can make. We wouldn’t want the chuds to get their feelings hurt, afterall.
But in all seriousness, that’s kind of their choice. Obviously, any comments that suggest violence against people who make/play/are represented in that kind of game needs to get shut down immediately, but you’re allowed to not like LGBTQ+ representation. It’s not illegal to clutch your pearls at the sight of non-heteronormative sexuality. It’s just reprehensible.
for a more recent example, the negative reviews under Relooted are fucking sickening. one of the top ones is a joke making fun of George Floyd’s death.
what does steam do? nothing. valve is one of the most profitable companies per employee out there, and they have no pressure from investors to botch their work, they could absolutely moderate.
they actively choose not to, because despite what bootlickers on lemmy would have you believe, gabe newell is a libertarian dipshit who values “free speech” over the safety of marginalized people.
What do you want Steam to do? Be the judge and executioner of what lives and what dies? There is no agreed upon guidelines for what is chud behavior and not so how does Valve make that call?
VALUE PER EMPLOYEE MEANS NOTHING IN THIS CONTEXT. You are saying that fact to imply “rich people need to be the adults if they are going to have that money” and that is absolutely Monarch/Authoritarian enabler thinking. Fuck that.
Valve is not responsible for the shit other people say. Report them if you don’t like it. As with democracy, with enough votes things will change. But one person mad at what another person says so they plead to a central authority to shut it down? The Internet has seen this decision turn into legal battles over speech after one trolling shithead decides to use the system against innocent people.
Stop listening to racists and this all goes away.
There are guidelines on Steam that ban such content, and you can report people for violating them.
So no, Steam does not do “nothing” as you claim. A very basic Internet search can confirm that.
Even better, users can rate reviews as helpful or unhelpful. Which is great for a wider variety of reasons, but is also good for reviews that get into a grey area or use dog whistles to hide their true intentions.
as the article mentions, if you’d bothered to read it, steam rarely enforces their guidelines, which is the problem here
The article is behind a paywall. Do they have any statistics or evidence backing that sentiment or is it just vibes?
You can find articles and reddit posts claiming this same exact thing going back years, and yet personally when I go through the store and look through reviews it’s really hard for me to come across hate speech, especially if you don’t specifically look at reviews that have been downvoted to hell. It’s never going to be perfect, but I encounter less hate speech on Steam than most other platforms.
i didn’t have any paywall, maybe it’s a regional thing? here’s a version that shouldn’t have it.
anyways, here’s a screenshot of the Relooted review i talked about. if you check the game’s negative reviews and sort by most pertinent, it’s the 3rd one. it was here yesterday, and despite me reporting it, it’s still here today, and in fact has been here since february 11th. as time of writing, it has 373 people who found it useful, and 115 who found it funny. some of the comments under that review are critical, but most just say “based” and the like.
CW: screenshot of a racist review, makes fun of George Floyd's death
it’s an anecdotal evidence, but as you said, “you can find articles and reddit posts claiming this same exact thing going back years”, doesn’t that mean it’s a recurring problem?
pressure from investors
This unfortunately trades one group of scumbags for another.
If you pump enough money into Linux gaming and do regular sales, a lot can be forgiven apparently. Steam Discussions are one of the most miserable places on the internet I go to semi-regularly and I don’t understand stand how Steam just gets a pass for the stuff that’s normal there.
Moderate your own forum, honestly its kinda based of Valve to be as hands off as they are. You set your own guidelines rather than having Valve force their own on you. It makes sense too given the variety of games on Steam.
It’s about reviews, not forums, which devs have no control over
They list both, and the developers have direct control over the forum. Less over reviews but you can report them if they are inappropriate.
Breaking News: Bigots increasingly comfortable, some mods bigots too.
It’s a shame there isn’t real moderation when people feel harassed, but I no longer care about those reviews as a consumer anyway. A negative review by some loser probably means I’ll like it more.
And I continue to support challengers to monopolies. Hope Steam gets a real competitor someday so I can take my money elsewhere.
