‘This shouldn’t be normal’: developers speak out about bigotry on Steam, the world’s biggest PC gaming storefront

Comments

• lemmydividebyzero@reddthat.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Imagine having nothing better to do than writing negative reviews for something that is not even intended for you…

  Karen: “I don’t like spicy food… Can someone give me a list with restaurants in my area that serve it, so that I can give them bad reviews?”

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• sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Does anybody wanna know the actual mechanics of why Steam is poorly content moderated?

  Its because they primarily rely on automated systems, and a very, very small team of inhouse moderstors/admins, as opposed to other comparable platforms (social media networks, basically), that have armies of contracted moderators in low income countries, whose job is to get more and more PTSD every day.

  Thats how platforms with comparable amounts of user content do moderation.

  Valve absolutely should devote more time and energy to restructuring stages of automated review for user posted comments and content, to improving those review processes, and honestly, should probably just sunset the Steam Forums system, and rethink an entire new approach to it.

  But… at the same time, the scale is a significant problem.

  Steam has a comparable number of overall daily active users to a major social media platform.

  … and the ones that do content moderation, well, they have armies of poor people manually reviewing everything, getting PTSD from that work, and nowadays, likely training an LLM to be a better auto content moderator.

  Genuine question for everyone: Do you think that’s an ethically justifiable solution to the problem?

  Other genuine question for everyone: What actual technical solution do you think should be implemented?

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• Nima@leminal.space ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  it sounds like this developer goes out of their way to look for hateful comments to be offended about and report. you’re not going to magically fix trolling on on the internet by having people mass report individual comments.

  trolls existed before the internet and they will be annoying shits for centuries to come. this dev needs to stop looking for stress and learn to report and move on.

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  • Aielman15@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    This exact same article was already shared a week ago here, and it got this same reply.

    Negative reviews can have consequences on how the game sells. The article (which apparently nobody reads, because Lemmy has a hard on for Steam and refuses to admit that Lord Gabe can do wrong) is NOT talking about random comments, it makes very specific examples (with links) to specific games that have received negative reviews for things unrelated to the game at hand, such as antisemitism and political content.

    “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.

    Some games have been targeted by Steam curators. Ethan, the developer of Coven, a first-person action-horror set in the 1600s, says he has been targeted by “CharlieTweetsDetected”, a curator devoted to recommending games based solely on whether their developers are perceived to have correctly mourned the assassination of rightwing activist Charlie Kirk.
    CharlieTweetsDetected’s review of Coven, a first-person action-horror game set in the 1600s, read simply “Celebrated Sept 10th on blue sky [sic]”. This encouraged others to post further reviews and comments related to Kirk (and not the game). “I even mentioned it to Steam support,” Ethan says, “how it stemmed from that curator list, but they weren’t interested.” Instead, Steam support claimed that “off-topic” constituted “a recipe for cookies, or something completely unrelated to video games that is clearly trolling.” Reviews referencing Kirk, including one reading simply “RIP Charlie Kirk” alongside a negative rating, did not fit that criteria according to Steam; all remain in place today.

    The problem is not even that Steam forums are a cesspool (which they are, by the way), but that Steam adamantly refuses to moderate the shit that gets posted on their site, going so far as to ignore that shit even when it gets reported, because ultimately they gain money from those people, so they don’t care.

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    • doublah@sopuli.xyz ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Some games have been targeted by Steam curators

      Curators are hidden by default, only people who follow the curator see curator recommendations. They also don’t affect store visibility or the review score in any way,.

      The problem is not even that Steam forums are a cesspool

      Steam leaves moderation of forums to the developer/publisher to moderate as they wish, as if they interfered you bet they’d get complaints about Valve stepping on their toes. If a developer/publisher decides they want to allow hatred in their Steam forums, you should probably blame them.

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    • rushmonke@ttrpg.network ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Negative reviews can have consequences on how the game sells.

      And this is exactly why there’s a concerted effort to snuff out any negativity at all as it pertains to consumerism.

      Negativity is bad for business.

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    • Nima@leminal.space ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      actually, I did read the article. i wouldn’t have commented unless I had.

      my opinion still remains the same. steam forums can absolutely be a cesspool. a lot of internet places can. most of them in fact. moderation goes a long way, but it’s my opinion that if you go looking for shitty comments and behavior, you will find it.

      there’s a reason the saying is “don’t feed the trolls”. and I wouldn’t be surprised if harassment towards this developer increases tenfold due to this opinion article coming out.

      i sincerely hope it doesn’t happen, but I feel it will.

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  • wizblizz@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Active moderation requires effort and funds. Throwing up your hands saying thats how it’s always been and nothing can be done is enabling the bullshit. Victim blaming the dev when this is widespread is disingenuous at best.

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• 58008@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  ‘Steam Store Front’ should be shortened to ‘Stormfront’. At least then no one would be shocked when they discover it’s teeming with illiterate bigots.

  All I can suggest is that you report and block as much as you can. If there’s a game, like Relooted, that’s a bug light for scumbags, go to its forums when you have 10 minutes free and just report the shitstains you come across. Steam does take action sometimes.

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  • Kolanaki@pawb.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    It’s actually funny how many shitstains try to add me to their friend list so they can presumably harass me (my profile is VERY gay) but they have a gigantic notice saying they basically can not interact socially on Steam because they were softbanned for violating the TOS. It’s weird they can even send requests at all when they are literally blocked from using the chat system.

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  • CodingCarpenter@lemmy.ml ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Stormfront is the first Dresden files novel 😀

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• rushmonke@ttrpg.network ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Oh boy, more censorship.

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