In the case of games such as Yang’s, Valve’s devotion to openness will solve the problem. “They’re already picking bad moral norms, they’re already governing, they’re already giving tacit support to steam nazis to call me a degenerate.” “You’re assuming this is still some kind of abstract ‘slippery slope’ hypothetical?” Robert Yang, a developer of queer sex games who’s had a bumpy relationship with Steam in the past, said on Twitter in response to the idea that it could be bad if corporations got to decide what was and wasn’t moral. Our ban buttons are ready.”Ĭritics’ fears that Steam will become a cesspit of gross content aren’t just hypothetical: Steam isn’t just a store, and Valve has already done similar things with other portions of Steam, often to disastrous results. “Please keep your malicious, derogatory, discriminatory, bullying, harassing, demeaning content off Itch.io.

“A platform that allows ‘everything, unless it’s illegal or straight up trolling’ is ridiculous,” said Leaf Corcoran, creator of indie game storefront Itch.io, a Steam competitor. “Shit, Valve, if your new platform content policy is the policy even the toxic hellfires that social media are slowly backing away from after years of troubles, that doesn’t bode very good for the content of your platform,” wrote Vlambeer’s Rami Ismail on Twitter. Since yesterday, there’s been tremendous blowback to Valve’s decision from developers, critics and journalists. Critics’ fears that Steam will become a cesspit of gross content aren’t just hypothetical: Steam isn’t just a store, and Valve has already done similar things with other portions of Steam, often to disastrous results. This is because, he wrote, good moderation of Steam looks vastly different depending on who’s doing the looking, and “there is absolutely no way we can navigate it without making some of our players really mad”. He explained that the company is reacting to controversies surrounding potentially “offensive” content such as Active Shooter and a bevy of explicitly sexual games not by hiring more people to do a more comprehensive job of moderating Steam, but by opening the floodgates even wider. In this particular case, Valve’s Erik Johnson espoused meritocratic, libertarian-style market openness while pointing to a vague notion of “controversy” as a key factor in Valve’s decision-making process. Valve’s post laid bare a set of ethos that have been driving Steam nearly since its inception, even if Valve rarely discusses them: A desire for openness, a hands-off approach to platform ownership, and an irrational fear of controversy that directly implicates Valve.

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