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.
carotte@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
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.
flamingos@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
doublah@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
Steam discussions can be moderated in any way a developer/publisher wants though? Their choice to not do so is weird to blame Valve for.
flamingos@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
So devs not only have to give Steam 30% percent of every sale, but they also have to provide the additional labour of keeping hate speech of the platform in perpetuity.
If Valve doesn’t want to do moderation, they shouldn’t have got into the social media business. It’s their platform and they’re ultimately responsible for it.
Iceblade02@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
they also have to provide the additional labour of keeping hate speech off the platform in perpetuity.
The developers can choose to lock down and effectively disable discussions entirely if they want.
Steam simply provides devs a service, easy access to host a forum for their game w/o having to manage that separately. Using it is completely optional.
doublah@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
Social media is an apt comparison, as Steam is at the size where human moderation isn’t really viable so they’d have to use AI like everyone else in that space.
And I’d rather a few anti-woke weirdos shout into the void than have to type “unalive” in the Steam forums.
Not to mention if Valve moderated every game developers would complain about Valve stepping on their toes and moderating their forum in a way they dislike.
ChicoSuave@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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 staying that fact to say “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.
Clbull@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Nibodhika@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
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.
TyrianMollusk@infosec.pub 2 weeks ago
It’s also easy to think nothing is happening because Valve takes their sweet time getting around to reports, and while they will eventually tell you “something was done” if something was done, they won’t give you any way to find out what was done or what report they’re even referring to. You just get that generic “something was done” message.
paultimate14@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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.
carotte@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
as the article mentions, if you’d bothered to read it, steam rarely enforces their guidelines, which is the problem here
paultimate14@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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.
carotte@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
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
Screenshot of a negative Steam review, with 0.2 hours played. It reads: Ugh, what a game. It stinks. I cant breathe, I caaant breathe!
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?