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

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• CaptainBasculin@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Game platforms should act neutral towards player reviews, because If people who have bought the game cannot express how they feel about the game, that would kill what makes Steam better for the players.

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  • Beep@lemmus.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Read the article before pretending to understand what it’s talking about.

    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.

    Elsewhere, campaigns chase games that include trans or LGBTQ+ characters. A trans developer included on a curation list titled “NO WOKE” cites frequent discussion threads, including one that referred to them as a “transvestite” and asked whether their game included “woke faggotry.” Plane Toast’s Émi Lefèvre points to reviews and discussions of Caravan SandWitch, a sci-fi action-adventure and driving game, which frequently approach its queer characters negatively. “Too LBGTQ [sic] … There is no future or continuation for these sad gays and lesbians,” reads one among many that remain visible on the game’s store page.

    “For sure, the ‘anti-woke’ curators brought insincere negative attention to the game,” Lefèvre says. “Valve’s refusal to moderate any of this is making Steam reviews and forums the battleground for some kind of culture war, and is making them unsafe for marginalised people and regular gamers trying to simply enjoy the game they bought.”

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  • SpikesOtherDog@ani.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    I think player reviews should not include allegations of lying about being raped, transphobia, or political comments.

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  • orclev@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    The tricky part here is that many of these reviews aren’t about how they feel about the game but rather how they feel about the developer or publisher, often based on wildly inaccurate speculation. Valve has a particularly tight rope to walk on this one because it does seem problematic to dogpile some game because of a perceived opinion that has nothing to do with the actual game itself.

    One possible solution would be to add a category system to reviews that let’s reviewers correctly categorize their reviews, purchasers exclude categories they don’t care about, and only remove miscategorized reviews. Categories could be something like “game contents”, “game bugs/technical issues”, “drm”, or “publisher/developer opinions”. Maybe make an entry form on the review itself for each category and you can just leave anyone you don’t care about blank in your review.

    This might also help solve one of the more long standing problems with Steam reviews which is that reviews of early buggy builds often longer long after those bugs have been fixed and can provide a somewhat inaccurate impression of the current state of the game.

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• GraveyardOrbit@lemmy.zip ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  [deleted]

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  • Holytimes@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    It’s more steam just does fucking nothing. Everyone is equally allowed to be as awful as they want.

    Which means the far right who are the worse of us all, get to be infact the worse of everyone on steam. And because they are the worse they stand out the most.

    Valve has ALWAYS basically been as hands off as possible in moderation. For the worse.

    Gabe has always been behind this too. He believes pretty publicly that people should be allowed to say what ever the fuck they want.

    Death threats, racism, sexism? All allowed. Just as positivity, kind gestures, and inclusivity is allowed.

    Just the negative assholes are Infinitly louder then positive people. Because positive people just shut up and go quiet instead of defending themselves or engaging with the assholes.

    Which to be fair is the right call you can’t beat an asshole at his own game. He has more experience shit talking.

    Dota, counter strike, and now deadlock all are pretty great examples of valves moderation style even beyond steam.

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• Beep@lemmus.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Gabe Newell fanboys incoming…

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  • Zomg@piefed.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Lol why did you link his Wikipedia for? Strange choice imo

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    • Yttra@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Yeah, I dunno about this either… It’s got the energy of attempted ragebait over a pretty serious issue lol

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    • Beep@lemmus.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      You hate Wikipedia for some weird reason?

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