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.
‘This shouldn’t be normal’: developers speak out about bigotry on Steam, the world’s biggest PC gaming storefront
Submitted 10 hours ago by RubberDuck@lemmy.world to games@lemmy.world
https://www.theguardian.com/games/2026/feb/16/bigotry-steam-pc-moderation-developers-speak-out
Comments
Kolanaki@pawb.social 7 hours ago
dupelet_comments@piefed.social 5 hours ago
The article is referring to reviews, not forums, which devs have no control over.
Kolanaki@pawb.social 5 hours ago
Multiple game creators describe ineffective moderation on the platform, resulting in unchecked hatred in forums and…
Katana314@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
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.
Baguette@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 minutes ago
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
real_squids@sopuli.xyz 7 hours ago
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
paultimate14@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
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.
Kolanaki@pawb.social 6 hours ago
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.
GreyEyedGhost@piefed.ca 6 hours ago
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.
purplerabbit@piefed.blahaj.zone 7 hours ago
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.
rozlav@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 hours ago
I would very much like to read something about it !
carotte@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 hours 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.
paultimate14@lemmy.world 7 hours 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 6 hours ago
as the article mentions, if you’d bothered to read it, steam rarely enforces their guidelines, which is the problem here
ChicoSuave@lemmy.world 5 hours 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.
flamingos@feddit.uk 8 hours ago
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.
doublah@sopuli.xyz 2 hours 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.
Funksylvania@piefed.social 9 hours ago
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.
Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 6 hours ago
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.
dupelet_comments@piefed.social 5 hours ago
It’s about reviews, not forums, which devs have no control over
Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 5 hours ago
They list both, and the developers have direct control over the forum. Less over reviews but you can report them if they are inappropriate.
zecg@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
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.
JustAnotherKay@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
To be perfectly honest, the odds of me buying a game are significantly higher if I see reviews about “toxic femininity” or “woke politics”
AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor@piefed.social 10 hours ago
I use those “wokism tiers” that you usually see from bigoted idiots to check out new games that I’ll probably like
rtxn@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
That is literally how I discovered Signalis.
Paradachshund@lemmy.today 1 hour ago
I agree with that, but negative reviews also affect the algorithm. If enough of those reviews drown out positive ones it will reduce the chance you see the game at all.
Glide@lemmy.ca 7 hours ago
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.
Don_alForno@feddit.org 7 hours ago
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.
Klear@quokk.au 9 hours ago
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.
Glide@lemmy.ca 7 hours ago
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.