Submitted 3 weeks ago by Beep@lemmus.org to games@lemmy.world
https://www.theguardian.com/games/2026/feb/16/bigotry-steam-pc-moderation-developers-speak-out
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?”
To be fair, you don’t have to like spicy food to give ‘The Spicy Food Restaurant’ a reasonable review and even a ‘This restaurant was nice, but they did not have a non-spicy option’ is useful to people who like spicy food but have friends and family who don’t. If your review makes your bias clear, it can still be a quality review because the reader can take that into account.
I think, you missed the point a bit.
It’s a steam list of “woke” stuff to give bad reviews without intending to play any part of those games.
My comparison was getting a list of restaurants that serve spicy food without intending to even go there and try anything.
‘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.
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.
Stormfront is the first Dresden files novel 😀
Oh boy, more censorship.
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?
I believe the answer is simply to give better moderation tools to the developers on their own games’ Store and Forum pages, since it’s developers who seem to have an issue with current moderation.
Well ok, that sounds reasonable to me!
What kinds of tools do you mean?
Like, I’m not trying to be duplicitous, I genuienly want Steam to not be a cesspool.
partner.steamgames.com/…/community_moderation
There’s an overview of what currently exists.
Yeah, a lot of it is based on having to manually flag things as harassment or bigotry or something like that, especially when it comes to actual game reviews, and it is obviously the case that whatever automated systems Valve currently has in place to auto flag things… are not sufficient.
And just for more context, here is the feed of Steamworks itself, which… more or less, is the sprt of update pipeline for Steam itself, as game devs would interface with it, which is also the system that would be the thing getting updated with new content moderation concepts.
This solves the current problem but reintroduces the one that steam reviews exist to solve: giving the game’s developers control over the most visible discussion channels for the game allows for removal of negative reviews or user backlash. Think about how bad subreddits can be about “removing toxicity” after a GAAS cranks the monetization dial up when the devs are on the mod team.
Even if they had it, a lot of smaller developers don’t even want to be serving as chaperones for their playerbase. Some have even said they don’t want their game page to create a Steam subforum.
Your entire comment reeks of “we shouldn’t fight fire because that puts firefighters at risk”.
There are no 100% ethical solutions to every problem, real life is a compromise. You can get better ethical results by allowing those workers to get adequate monetary compensation for their work and seek medical help if they need it. Otherwise what’s the solution, allow everyone to read the same stuff? Why is that more ethical? Is it more ethical for the random user (who may also be a suggestible kid, or a person belonging to a persecuted minority) who reads that stuff? Is it more ethical for the developers who get their game review bombed by fascists and bigots, and see their source of revenue diminish or fizzle out because of it?
As for the legal responsibility, it becomes so when the platform is complicit with the users writing hateful stuff. You are not responsible for the random shithead declaring his love for Mein Kampf. You are responsible for the hundreds of users who do while repeatedly ignoring the reports of their misconduct, thus implicitly accepting and normalizing their behavior.
I think thats quite an unfair characterization.
Primarily because firefighters, firefighting, tends to be a fairly exclusive field, that requires a lot of training, that tends to pay pretty darned well.
Whereas the armies of content moderators tend to be incredibly poorly paid. The entire way this kind of work is done is that it nearly always either entirely or largely is done by the lowest bidder, in the poorest places possible.
As compared to firefighters, who… at least in terms of municipal firefighters, well that tends to be fairly local.
(* * * With the massive glaring exception of using prisoner labor to fill in gaps in often extremely dangerous firefighting conditions, which is more comparable to exploiting those who don’t really have better options * * *)
I am pointing out that yes, the problem exactly is that none of the potential solutions here are ethically wonderful, that this is not a kind of ‘oh well obviously they could just do this simple and easy fix and everyone would be happy’ kind of situation.
So… your ethical calculus seems to conclude that stopping the spread of bigotry and fascist rhetoric in richer countries is worth the cost of the sanity of workers in poorer countries.
Your ethical calculus seems to be that if 100s of users of a website/platform don’t get banned rapidly for violating TOS, then the website/platform should be held legally liable for that, which would mean that you believe that basically every website platform with over half a million DAU, that doesn’t use a complex layered system of LLMs with absurd economic and environmental costs, that they should all be sued or fined into non existence.
… Unless you maybe want to clarify more exactly what you mean here.
You also don’t directly address at all the idea of using an LLM for these tasks… which is what all of the megaplatforms with much more active consistent, rapid, and often overzealous or erroneous moderation do.
I’m just trying to present the actual totality of the moral ramifications of the involved systems and practices relevant to this topic.
If confronting the actual ugliness of them challenges you, makes you defensive and accusatory, good.
That means you likely never thought about the totality of the situation here that deeply.
Nima@leminal.space 3 weeks 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.
Aielman15@lemmy.world 3 weeks 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.
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.
doublah@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
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,.
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.
rushmonke@ttrpg.network 3 weeks ago
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.
Nima@leminal.space 3 weeks 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.
wizblizz@lemmy.world 3 weeks 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.