and we don’t try to moderate reviews based on accuracy
Than, it’s not a review, it’s a social media feed. Calling that a review would imply that it must have passed some check. If there is none, it’s a post, on a social media. Even than they’d try to moderate that if they cared.
Removing reviews, the response claimed, could be seen as “censorship”.
Fact checkig and moderation isn’t censorship, it’s moderation.
Recourse for developers is limited. Some are looking into their own security, shoring up protections for developers on their team against being doxxed or hacked by trolls. Or, in the case of the developers of Caves of Qud, paying their own moderators to handle forums and the hate that spills out of Steam
Which is guess for small teams or single devs is less feasable the less resources they have. That is to say, you’re alone out there.
Part of the reason I don’t play many multi-player games is the idiocy and racism
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.
Skullgirls?
While I do question a lot of the changes they made to Skullgirls 2nd Encore, there was one context where censoring panty shots was entirely understandable.
Filia was one of the characters censored. She’s a sixteen year old schoolgirl, and while this may be a stretch, her name sounds like a reference to “paedophilia”, which makes the fact that some of her animation frames and concept art were originally drawn upskirted with clearly exposed panties even more problematic.
It does get tiresome going to steam threads and seeing the same copy pasted “don’t ruin the game with woke removed” post up voted to the top.
There’s a pencil thin line between farming clown emoji and overt bigotry getting pumped to the top of the reviews section by bad faith actors.
It does get tiresome going to steam threads and seeing the same copy pasted “don’t ruin the game with woke removed” post up voted to the top.
I don’t think I’ve read a steam forum post in close to a decade, and even then it was a very niche thing I was looking for. I have long since stopped feeling any enjoyment or novelty in seeing completely random people’s thoughts, since in the last few years particularly, people have no intention to communicate and broadly just want attention, which has become monetized so the problem is far worse than it used to be.
Seriously, at some point we’re going to have to accept that the internet is dead or too close to death to be useful for interacting with other humans. I think we all need to stop communicating online on forums and discord and the like, it’s all become weaponized and not enough people are left without agendas and campaigns they’re trying to push. Let’s go back to how we did it for thousands of years and just talk to each other and make real-world friends, leave the assholes and shills and sock-puppets to fight among themselves.
Imagine the power we will have if all the scum and assholes become the inferior population scared to actually do anything or go outside and we become owners of the day and become the ambulatory force towards goals and social progress.
Steam forums are about game mechanics, advice and tech support right? Or am I being filtered the on-topic stuff?
I’ve tried contacting gaming press about this. I contacted Valve (several times) citing their own rules, screenshots of blatant transgressions and they repeatedly closed my ticket and ignored me. I avoid buying games directly from Steam now. If I can find the screenshots later I’ll update my post.
Edit: So here is the ticket I opened (this was -months- after repeatedly reporting someone spamming the N-word in the Official Steam Deck group chat for weeks).
I agree valves platform moderation is terrible but getting upset over some negative reviews from “charlietweet” and “toowoke” is bubblewrap levels of soft.
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?
A controversial game has controversial community? Shocked I must say
It “controversial” because racists and bigots made it that way. There was no controversy about other heist games, there’s no “controversy” about games with all-white characters. But put in a diverse group of character, that steal back what was stolen and suddenly that’s “controversial”.
Well, that’s what controversial means. Things like lgbt rights, abortion rights, etc. are also controversial, but objectively fair/correct
If any group complaining about something makes it “controversial”, then everything is controversial and the word loses all meaning.
There are entire studies on “at which point does x become a controversy”, I’m not gonna go there
nobody is forcing you to play it, and nobody is forcing you to go to a forum and talk about it. If it bothers you so much just don’t go there?
You guys realise that censoring racist content doesn’t modify or remove the underlying belief right? just like closing your eyes doesn’t make you invisible…
We’re in a reality where groups like ISIS have actively recruited followers through gaming networks. There’s genuine, violent risk in allowing hate speech to reach across land masses and be granted some form of discoverability, even if some of the recipients are just looking for answers to the question “Man why no girl want me”
we’re in a reality where syria is controlled by isis-like headchopping terrorists, and our western governments drape these terrorists in liberal moderate language to make them more palatable to western audiences. By paying your taxes, by supporting your western country you are giving material indirect support to literal wahabbist terrorists. You going to your job and pretending to yourself and others that your silly middle class existence is somehow ‘civilised’ because your don’t say the n word or cuss is materially much closer to violent terrorism than some chud saying crude words on his day off.
What bothers you isn’t a proximity to evil or violence, your everyday ordinary existence materially entangles you in that process. What bothers you is strict conformance to civility politics. What bothers you is people saying uncomfortable things, because your bourgeois, performative morality places you and your paper-mache feelings at the center of the moral universe.
removed removed damn. removed piss removed. America was built on goddamn slave labor. Ooh boy, all that cursing was so, so difficult for my civilized upbringing.
This is what chuds don’t get, since they never read terms of use. Social networks don’t often oppose aimless expletives like “Let’s fucking kick a baby into lava haha!” They oppose pointed, meaningful intention like “I’m going to shoot up my school because it’s been infested with n%%%%s.” Hate is a language used everywhere, separate from curses, and it’s one I don’t mind blocking on every front possible.
The reason it got this bad was because they didn’t nip it in the bud sooner. If they had been more proactive from the start, there wouldn’t be 700+ threads.
At this point, just nuke them all and ban everyone who made a bigoted troll thread. It’s gonna be a game of whack-a-mole for a little while, but once you start handing out bans, the trolling will start die down.
Or it becomes a popular trolling target with a cry of “they can’t take us all down” and it gets worse.
I wouldn’t mind some moderation, but for the love of god I hope countries won’t block Steam over this. I have so many games there, and I can’t remember the last time I bothered to read a review.
No countries are going to block Steam for not preventing alt-right hate-groups from leaving hate comments on store pages. Reddit and TikTok are regularly censoring users criticizing alt-right hate groups and international Satanic pedophiles, and no nation has even considered blocking them AFAIK.
I hope you’re right! I saw something flashing by about the UK suing Steam over price fixing, with the threat of enormous fines or being banned if they don’t pay them. Steam has many flaws, but I believe the world is better with them than without them.
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 removed 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. Make no mistake, Steam’s openness in this regard is, for me as a customer at least, added value.
To be perfectly honest, the odds of me buying a game are significantly higher if I see reviews about “toxic femininity” or “woke politics”
That is literally how I discovered Signalis. It was included in one of those anti-woke curators’ “not recommended” list, then I saw that it was an indie title, and overwhelmingly positive… I was sold immediately.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah but what good is reporting when Valve themselves takes what feels like an eternity, getting down to dealing with just a few?
Eventually, they’re going to be faced with making one of two choices; Shut down the discussions board to a particular game for violating ToS or let it go unchecked for however long.
you can report them if they are inappropriate.
Which is what the entire article is about, reports being ineffective…
Its not, its about Valve not proactively moderating for the devs.
“I’m not new to online harassment,” says designer Nathalie Lawhead, who spent two years trying to get reviews removed from their games’ pages. Both reference allegations of sexual assault that Lawhead made in 2019. “I assumed reporting Steam abuse might have its own issues. But when people suggested that I open a ticket, I did have hope that this would be the way to get it resolved.”
One of the reviews, published in 2023, read, “cringe game, made by a liar”. The other, a review of Lawhead’s game Blue Suburbia posted in 2024, said: “A women [sic] who seeks to destroy other’s [sic] career made this. It’s very poorly put together. She also probably has dual Israeli citizenship with how pointy her nose is.”
Despite Steam’s code of online conduct and community guidelines prohibiting “abusive language or insults”, public accusations or “discrimination”, moderators initially cleared both reviews after Lawhead reported them.
What’s with Lemmy users and lying and bending backwards to shield poor indie dev company Valve from harassment? Does Gabe’s dick taste that good?
Honest question, do you think someone replying to a thing in a public forum “cringe thing made by a liar” is actually harassment and should be forcefully removed just because the dev doesn’t like it?
The seems too far censorship to me.
The antisemitism yeah get rid of that removed
Yes. Never in a million years I would consider “cringe game, made by a liar” an honest review, and I don’t know why anyone would consider it as such. It’s clearly part of a harassment campaign.
should be forcefully removed just because the dev doesn’t like it?
It should be removed because it’s not a review and has nothing to do with the game at hand, not because the dev doesn’t like it.
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.
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.
Does the clown award still exist on profiles? I used to get added by randoms everytime and they always had the clown award because that’s the easiest way for people to mark someone as a scammer
I used to get added by randoms everytime and they always had the clown award because that’s the easiest way for people to mark someone as a scammer
Profile clown awards say nothing more than some jerk spend points on being a jerk. Not at all a good reason to think people were flagged scammers, especially since you can just hide any profile awards with a checkbox.
But no, while clown awards are still there, you can’t give them anymore. Maybe “funny” will be the new clown, or maybe people will spend fewer points just to be jerks.
I’ve had a mildly expensive inventory in the past while trading so I’ve seen a lot of scammers. The clown award was the fastest way to tell if someone was suspicious. Obviously you don’t just base it on that, other telltale signs are no mutuals, private inventory, faked hours on cs, turned off commenting on profile, account level, 3p trust sites, etc.
I’ve yet to see a single profile that was legit that had the clown award. People usually don’t give out awards, at least the profile ones. The average person buys profile decor.
This was back in 2024 ish though, I don’t trade anymore so I block non mutuals adding me
That’s such poppycock I don’t even know if you’re subtly trolling. Anyone could put a clown on a profile for anything, and they come far more from bad actors than anything remotely legitimate. Steam forums are full of bad actors. Actually supporting that kind of petty toxicity by insinuating clowns mean something is gross.
Thankfully, profile awards can be hidden, and I’d expect they often are, so it’s hard to really say how many are given out. I certainly hid profile awards when the system was new, because it’s weird Steam just helps people deface your profile. Even having awards hidden hasn’t stopped the occasional spiteful clown award getting added.
So are you just gonna ignore all the other ways I’ve listed to tell a scammer?
Never said it was a one and dusted kinda thing if you had a clown award, just that it should immediately raise red flags if you have a relatively worth inventory and actively trading. MY experience is that all the randoms trying to add me that had the clown award displayed were in fact scammers.
This is in the context of trading once again, not steam forums or even general steam. Steam trading is functionally a different experience from general steam. No sane trader uses the forums to trade. Its all 3p sites. People adding you when you actively trade items are either people looking to trade or scammers. If you’re not trading in the mid to high tier range, none of what I’ve said applies to you. The clown award doesn’t mean anything then, because you’re not going to get 5+ daily friend requests
On a side note you should probably not use the forums, it’s been unmoderated for about 15 years.
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. IDK why you’d need community specific blocks over the normal blocking method already available.
The purpose of a blocklist is to have a large group work on the large task of identifying a certain set of trolls, and then share that list automatically with themselves.
Individually blocking 8 or 9 trolls yourself as you browse 20 new indie games becomes a laborious task. But, if a community of hundreds all knows “Yeah, every time someone posts the ‘Please include LGBT!’ comment on these block-matching puzzle games, it’s a troll” then 99 people don’t even have to wait until they’ve identified trolling and blocked it each time.
Bluesky uses these sorts of blocklists, and it works pretty well. By having members opt into them, it evades the issue of Valve “promoting an army of hundreds of highly opinionated moderators”.
