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. 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.
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.
They probably have infinite time because seemingly everything is too woke for these fucks, certainly seems like they don’t actually play games
what seems to “smell” funny more and more lately is that I can’t tell what is a full fledged game I want to play and what is AI/Slop created to jump on a bandwagon. Rimworld. Great game. Are the “rims in space” variants real? Just reskins? Why is everything in instant early access these days? And for years sometimes. Look, as a sw eng myself, I get it. But my adhd knows the game too. Something becoming “useable” before its finished means I never finish it. Looking at my own git repos… yep lol.
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.
It does get tiresome going to steam threads and seeing the same copy pasted “don’t ruin the game with woke shit” 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.
They removed the clown reaction, as well as the ability to get points for receiving reactions.
If that ever was an excuse, it no longer is.It does get tiresome going to steam threads and seeing the same copy pasted “don’t ruin the game with woke shit” 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.
I think we all need to stop communicating online on forums and discord and the like
They said while communicating online on social media.
No need to stop doing it, just be selective about it.
This whole “why don’t you do it first” reply is no more intelligent than saying “I ain’t reading all that” or “the curtains were just blue” or other dumb thought-stopping exercises vomited out by a generation with no attention spans. I reject it, I block those who dump that like they’re somehow doing some good by trying to find hypocrisy in an idea that makes them uncomfortable.
Steam forums are about game mechanics, advice and tech support right? Or am I being filtered the on-topic stuff?
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
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.
One of the problems with that is, many publishers don’t care about curating a discussion community. Many didn’t even want to generate a “forum” when publishing their small indie game. So, it’s entirely possible, and even likely, for many game discussion forums to be filled with hate speech, or even recruiting into extremist cults.
I’m all with you about word-based censoring, and I honestly want to see a bit more use of AI there to lower that burden; to better pick up hateful context separating “Fuck you, random user” and “This boss fight is fucking hard”. That should only be in place to better alert real moderators, though, since I’m sure many people don’t like getting directly banned by silicon.
The Steam forums have been full of Nazis for years now. The employees and Newell are just accepting or even embracing the fact that they give fascists a platform
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
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.
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?
That’s it? I kind of expected something worse with the whole stink your making about it.
It just your typical kiddie hater comment, not worth paying attention to and certainly not worthy of a moderator’s time.
Fucking hell. You were not kidding. This was posted five days ago! The comments on that review are even more vile, to the point where I don’t even think I can show them here.
That review is no longer there, probably someone reported it. I think lots of these suffer from bystander effect, where people see it get indignant about being there but don’t report them, so they stay there.
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.
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
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.
not at all surprising, we’re talking about a company that almostly solely hires white cis men and refuses to tackle that
