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[Spacejaws]

I'm sorry but Steam discussions are fucking awesome. To have a repository of years of discussions based soley on the game you are interested in. Problems in a game? Chances are someones already dealt with it and fixed it.

The amount of games I've got working using Steam community is fantastic. Go on the Ubisoft forums. Barren. The few times I've brought issues up here my post is ignored. I would say the real issue should be the ability to report users, steam reviews and discussion posts can be used as evidence and those users have warnings against them until they have those features removed (post in discussions, adding reviews etc).

Honestly though I'm almost inclined to think that there is some good that has came about through this. For years people have laughed at the immaturity of xbox live and vulgarity of players in CS players back in the day. Now these people think they have a platform(and white supremisits/hard right in general) in more avenues than steam, we are at a stage where the extreme white right has a public face and persona and feels legitimised, I believe it was always there but out of sight. Now these people are visible and the general public is no longer able to ignore them which has gone on too long. We censor that too much we don't fix anything.

 

[luulubuu]

They removed the old forums. A decision which I still don't agree with them. Stop people from posting there? Sure. But deleting it altogether? There were quite a few fixes for old games that could only be found there.

Somehow, they managed to do the worst outcome, good lord.

Glad I buy my keys elsewhere and I use other launchers daily

 

[Not Spaceghost]

They treat their own games the same way now. It's infuriating.

lol they do that with their own games.

Yeah, the way they treat CSGO is fucking embarrassing.

 

[CannonFodder52]

Two Twitter threads by devs, in regards to the Firewatch/Steam conversation.

https://twitter.com/Murderblonde/status/908136091529576449

https://twitter.com/UnburntWitch/status/908131453455626240

 

[frontovik]

Talk about cutting off the nose to spite the face. The author has misplaced his priorities if he's that concerned about the whims of the more spiteful elements of the gaming community. As long as people aren't doing anything overly outrageous, then Valve is likely to not do anything moderating the community.

 

[Nzyme32]

Because we are gamers

I'm out.

Regardless, throwing blame on Valve is pointless. Valve's MO, from the start of Steam is to utilise the internet, and their expansion and iteration just leads to more and more ways to open things up to what the internet is - community driven and prone to being twisted, bombed, and manipulated to suit a given time and set of people vs another silent set of people. It's obviously also open to free speech and expression in all manner of games as much as I will always hate any given set of things that I disagree with.

There's no winning. A service is either too closed or too open to this stuff, and naturally the worst comes from companies that try to open up to fast and have little in the way of ethical thought to user experience - such as Valve, Google, Facebook and alike trying to cater to everyone and reach the next big thing. Despite these massive downsides, I'd rather have an open system than a closed off one. When a system is open enough, you can at least have the data and freedom to make a choice.

 

[Pheace]

They removed the old forums. A decision which I still don't agree with them. Stop people from posting there? Sure. But deleting it altogether? There were quite a few fixes for old games that could only be found there.

It's a shame but they did announce it long in advance and warned people to back things up if they felt it was important.

 

[Abilidebob]

It's a shame but they did announce it long in advance and warned people to back things up if they felt it was important.

I mean sure, they did announce in advance. But how can I be sure what fix I'll need in the future? Giving the archives for someone else to maintain could've been an option.

 

[Sness]

I really like Valve and Steam, and am severely biased because CSGO might as well be religion. Although I wish some of these issues would be addressed, I don't necessarily think Valve is going out of their way to be unreasonable, or enable any of these issues. I've seen far more offensive text and images while searching google or scrolling through twitter, than anything I've ever seen on Steam. I'm always worried about Valve rocking the boat too much when trying to implement "improvements".

Not sure how it would be implemented, but I've always thought it would be great if there was some way to segregate toxic players/accounts, so on a given platform they are only interacting (matchmaking/servers/reviews/comments) with other toxic players. You would either be flagged a good player, a bad player, or banned entirely, instead of the current banned or not approach.

Also, I doubt the author's account was actually deleted (probably deactivated lmao).

 

[madjoki]

They removed the old forums. A decision which I still don't agree with them. Stop people from posting there? Sure. But deleting it altogether? There were quite a few fixes for old games that could only be found there.

In this age, It's big security risk to run non-maintained software. Anyways web.archive.org has it for download or online browsing for those who need access so those are still accessible.

 

[Dreams-Visions]

Two Twitter threads by devs, in regards to the Firewatch/Steam conversation.

https://twitter.com/Murderblonde/status/908136091529576449

https://twitter.com/UnburntWitch/status/908131453455626240

Seems like more moderation tools for developers to mod their forums + longer playtime required before you can review a game would significantly cut into these issues.

 

[Mushroomer25]

It's a shame but they did announce it long in advance and warned people to back things up if they felt it was important.

Still, the value of old forums for PC gaming is that they often provide a record of problems, and their solutions. Often the most obscure problems can only be solved via the recorded wisdom of somebody in the same situation ages ago. But nobody's going to take the effort to record and save that information, because it is inherently buried until it becomes valuable to one individual.

Keeping those records online would be a trivial expense for Steam, and benefit the community greatly. They deleted them anyways.

 

[Wolfgunblood Garopa]

Two Twitter threads by devs, in regards to the Firewatch/Steam conversation.

https://twitter.com/Murderblonde/status/908136091529576449

https://twitter.com/UnburntWitch/status/908131453455626240

Everyone should read these. When the gaming community shows it can properly behave, then maybe open things up. It's obvious that there needs to be some restrictions on community input and overall interaction.

 

[luulubuu]

Seems like more moderation tools for developers to mod their forums + longer playtime required before you can review a game would significantly cut into these issues.

inb4 the same 4 fucking accounts "but my free speech"

 

[MUnited83]

Seems like more moderation tools for developers to mod their forums + longer playtime required before you can review a game would significantly cut into these issues.

They did put some moderation tools since 2014. Banning people from your game forums is easy to do.

 

[family_guy]

I'm sorry but Steam discussions are fucking awesome. To have a repository of years of discussions based soley on the game you are interested in. Problems in a game? Chances are someones already dealt with it and fixed it.

The amount of games I've got working using Steam community is fantastic. Go on the Ubisoft forums. Barren. The few times I've brought issues up here my post is ignored. I would say the real issue should be the ability to report users, steam reviews and discussion posts can be used as evidence and those users have warnings against them until they have those features removed (post in discussions, adding reviews etc).

Maybe just have game wikis then.

 

[Raylan Targaryen]

Talk about cutting off the nose to spite the face. The author has misplaced his priorities if he's that concerned about the whims of the more spiteful elements of the gaming community. As long as people aren't doing anything overly outrageous, then Valve is likely to not do anything moderating the community.

because nazi groups and slave trade games aren't even outrageous, let alone overly

 

[Steeped in a Sea of Games]

Valve has been coasting on bare-minimum effort for years. It's getting to the point where it feels like they almost have a disdain for developers and gamers alike. Everything to them is just about keeping the gravy train going. They're complacent as fuck. Live long enough to become the bad guy, I guess.

 

[Sness]

Two Twitter threads by devs, in regards to the Firewatch/Steam conversation.

https://twitter.com/Murderblonde/status/908136091529576449

https://twitter.com/UnburntWitch/status/908131453455626240

Interesting, and sad, but I don't think the first one is comparable to the Firewatch situation as the devs didn't start by injecting themselves into a public situation and doings something underhanded (DMCA).

Why is Santo's actions tolerated without consequence? It's like this entire situation is people who want to speak and act without any consequence, backlash, or negative feedback.

 

[GhostTrick]

Maybe just have game wikis then.

That's the equivalent of "Close vocal chats because of idiots who abuse it".

Valve has been coasting on bare-minimum effort for years. It's getting to the point where it feels like they almost have a disdain for developers and gamers alike. Everything to them is just about keeping the gravy train going. They're complacent as fuck. Live long enough to become the bad guy, I guess.

I dont know where the "Valve's doing nothing" meme comes from but it has been factually wrong even today. The infrastructure never stops to evolve, features keeps coming and tools for developpers keeps developping.

 

[Interfectum]

They did put some moderation tools since 2014. Banning people from your game forums is easy to do.

Not when you have thousands of people spamming your shit. Also, banning people could just add more fuel to the fire. There should be a way to shut down all social elements for your game for a certain amount of time.

 

[Ionic]

Maybe just have game wikis then.

The PC Gaming Wiki is great for general information about fixing game problems, but the super specific stuff is really a thing only a forum can provide. Game specific forums are a wonderful asset overall.

 

[Steeped in a Sea of Games]

Interesting, and sad, but I don't think the first one is comparable to the Firewatch situation as the devs didn't start by injecting themselves into a public situation and doings something underhanded (DMCA).

Why is Santo's actions tolerated without consequence? It's like this entire situation is people who want to speak and act without any consequence, backlash, or negative feedback.

Maybe because some people agree with the part of the law that they have the right to control their IP and who profits off it?

 

[family_guy]

That's the equivalent of "Close vocal chats because of idiots who abuse it".

Well personally, the comments in Steam discussion forums mostly seem to involve complaints and what you would see in a tech support chat. I rarely see any discussions that are comparable to what you would see on NeoGAF. If the goal is to mostly get help with a game issue, then a wiki seems more useful.

 

[gabbo]

In this high speed world where everyone expects an answer instantly that is just too slow by their definition.

Bullshit.

It doesn't take this long to get even a half decent response to problems like white supremacy and racism on your client/storefront, and this has been a problem for years. They're turning away and letting the community/devs/etc deal with it, and won't do jack squat until such time as things go nuclear and they're forced to do so while playing the clueless card when they do. At such time they will either a)implement half measures that will still not involve humans dealing with the problems or b)remove the section wholesale until they figure something else out, which doesn't really prevent the underlying issues from coming back.

Their attitude towards handling Steam is terrible, leaving it up to users and algorithms makes more money, but leaves the user experience god awful.

 

[Steeped in a Sea of Games]

That's the equivalent of "Close vocal chats because of idiots who abuse it".


I dont know where the "Valve's doing nothing" meme comes from but it has been factually wrong even today. The infrastructure never stops to evolve, features keeps coming and tools for developpers keeps developping.

I didn't say they do nothing, I said they're doing the bare minimum to keep people on the platform because they know there's little other alternative right now. They may still be putting stuff out, but the fire in their belly is gone. As I said, complacency that comes from the very top, if not from within.

 

[Sness]

Maybe because some people agree with the part of the law that they have the right to control their IP and who profits off it?

Right, but Santo's action has been with consequence, as was PewDiePie's. The Firewatch team just seem to dislike their consequence much more.

And what about fair use?

I can't stand PewDiePie, but I personally don't find Santo much better, and I think he has other (business) reasons for making an issue of this and getting involved.

 

[Interfectum]

Right, but Santo's action has been with consequence, as was PewDiePie's. The Firewatch team just seem to dislike their consequence much more.

And what about fair use?

I can't stand PewDiePie, but I personally don't find Santo much better, and I think he has other (business) reasons for making an issue of this and getting involved.

aka "Both sides are bad." lol

Your true colors are shining through with every post.

 

[Ionic]

Well personally, the comments in Steam discussion forums mostly seem to involve complaints and what you would see in a tech support chat. I rarely see any discussions that are comparable to what you would see on NeoGAF. If the goal is to mostly get help with a game issue, then a wiki seems more useful.

There are quite frankly too many specific issues PC games can have with individual users to show on a wiki page. "Why does my game run poorly here are my specs" isn't something you'd find on a wiki page. Forums are very efficient ways of getting very specific help.

 

[Sness]

aka "Both sides are bad." lol

Your true colors are shining through with every post.

You're really adding to the discussion, thanks pal. Sorry people have opinions (and mine aren't racist ones) and are discussing it on a forum.

 

[Steeped in a Sea of Games]

Right, but Santo's action has been with consequence, as was PewDiePie's. The Firewatch team just seem to dislike their consequence much more.

And what about fair use?

I can't stand PewDiePie, but I personally don't find Santo much better, and I think he has other (business) reasons for making an issue of this and getting involved.

Let's see. Person A utilizes one of the only tools legally available to try and peacefully make a stand against racism in what's basically a David vs. Goliath situation.

Person B uses his platform of millions to disparage and dehumanize entire groups and races of people.

I wonder which side deserves more ire for their choices.

 

[Interfectum]

You're really adding to the discussion, thanks pal. Sorry people have opinions (and mine aren't racist ones) and are discussing it on a forum.

You are saying the Firewatch team deserves their punishment because they used legit tools to remove their content from a racist channel. The punishment being users being able to spam their game on Steam with garbage reviews and forum posts.

So you are fine with Steam harassment being used as a tool to silence and punish developers.

 

[Maintenance]

 

 

[Sness]

Let's see. Person A utilizes one of the only tools legally available to try and peacefully make a stand against racism in what's basically a David vs. Goliath situation.

Not true, at all. There are many other tools, and this really doesn't do anything, just low hanging fruit. Conveniently no one was talking about Firewatch anymore (because it's a nearly 2 year old walking sim), so they decided to conflate both situations, and this is the result - no one's happy.

Sounds a lot like when a developer does something underhanded, and customers can't get their voice heard - that's never happened before though.

Person B uses his platform of millions to disparage and dehumanize entire groups and races of people.

Again, I strongly dislike PewDiePie (his content is trash), but this is just extreme hyperbole.

I wonder which side deserves more ire for their choices.

Actions have consequence.

Edit--

You are saying the Firewatch team deserves their punishment because they used legit tools to remove their content from a racist channel. The punishment being users being able to spam their game on Steam with garbage reviews and forum posts.

So you are fine with Steam harassment being used as a tool to silence and punish developers.

"Legit tools" is a major stretch here, specifically when it really doesn't directly impact their game, as they seem to think. They disagreed with PewDiePie and looked for any method to impact him - boy that certainly sounds familiar, doesn't it?

I'm not fine with Steam harassment by users, but I'm also very much not fine with bullshit DMCA take-downs of fair use content due to a completely unrelated matter.

I'm not talking about punishment, I'm talking about consequence.

Edit2 -- Why isn't YouTube banning PewDiePie's entire channel then? And why aren't people boycotting YouTube, and Google?

 

[Hamster Plugin]

At this point I think we need to start counter-movements against this. Review bombs can be countered by going out by force, voting "Not useful" on every single review complaining about SJWs and whatever, and then mass voting "Useful" on every review that is actually about the game (even negative ones are fine if they're about the game, not drama).

We can even do our own extreme by posting our own reviews "10/10 trumptards got triggered" and mass voting useful on those.

Valve isn't doing shit, it's time for a counter-movement.

 

[Morrigan Stark]

Two Twitter threads by devs, in regards to the Firewatch/Steam conversation.

https://twitter.com/Murderblonde/sta...36091529576449

https://twitter.com/UnburntWitch/sta...31453455626240

Anyone saying "review bombs are a legitimate tool of dissent from gamers" need to read these.

Devs are completely helpless against review bombings. They can't do anything about it because Valve doesn't give a fuck. So if review bombs are based on entirely bogus reasons, like the example above, they can't do shit except hope the stupid angry mob goes away quickly. It's fucked.

 

[Tumle]

Well, there's a question to be made though: Is it feasible to hire a mod team considering there's a board for each games ? Considering there's already more than 10k games, I wonder how would it be feasible.

Although, I also think there's a wide gap between "having a team to moderate everything" and having no team to moderate nothing.

I also wonder about the tools available for this.

You could have an algorithm search out offensive words in messages that then would get flagged for moderators to read?
Hopefully It's the loud minority that are racist ass hats on steam..

 

[Interfectum]

Well, there's a question to be made though: Is it feasible to hire a mod team considering there's a board for each games ? Considering there's already more than 10k games, I wonder how would it be feasible.

Although, I also think there's a wide gap between "having a team to moderate everything" and having no team to moderate nothing.

I also wonder about the tools available for this.

Let the developer shut down their social sections on Steam until Valve can take a look at the game and properly moderate / slowly turn the social tools back on.

 

[DerpHause]

You are saying the Firewatch team deserves their punishment because they used legit tools to remove their content from a racist channel. The punishment being users being able to spam their game on Steam with garbage reviews and forum posts.

So you are fine with Steam harassment being used as a tool to silence and punish developers.

That's some pretty far reaching. Saying the Firewatch teams use of the DMCA is problematic doesn't mean condoning the harassment they've received or suggesting it's justified. The question of whether this is legitimate use is part of the question at hand, but addressing that fact in to way states that people abusing steam's features to attack them is justifiable by those asking the question.

 

[MUnited83]

Anyone saying "review bombs are a legitimate tool of dissent from gamers" need to read these.

Devs are completely helpless against review bombings. They can't do anything about it because Valve doesn't give a fuck. So if review bombs are based on entirely bogus reasons, like the example above, they can't do shit except hope the stupid angry mob goes away quickly. It's fucked.

But review bombs are a legitimate tool of dissent from gamers. Just because some people use it for evil doesn't really change this. Anyhow, how would one even solve this? Should each individual review be manually approved?

 

[CookTrain]

At this point I think we need to start counter-movements against this. Review bombs can be countered by going out by force, voting "Not useful" on every single review complaining about SJWs and whatever, and then mass voting "Useful" on every review that is actually about the game (even negative ones are fine if they're about the game, not drama).

We can even do our own extreme by posting our own reviews "10/10 trumptards got triggered" and mass voting useful on those.

Valve isn't doing shit, it's time for a counter-movement.

Once the review system turns into a battleground of people trying to drown out each other, might as well scrap the whole thing.

 

[MegaSackman]

Off topic but where is this gif from?

 

[Pheace]

Once the review system turns into a battleground of people trying to drown out each other, might as well scrap the whole thing.

You could leave the reviews and stop aggregating them into positive/negative.

I do believe the recent vs overall helps mitigate bombing somewhat, but only for the games that have way more reviews than the bombs leave. New games would still hurt badly if it happens.

 

[Steeped in a Sea of Games]

#1 Not true, at all. There are many other tools, and this really doesn't do anything, just low hanging fruit. Conveniently no one was talking about Firewatch anymore (because it's a nearly 2 year old walking sim), so they decided to conflate both situations, and this is the result - no one's happy.

Sounds a lot like when a developer does something underhanded, and customers can't get their voice heard - that's never happened before though.

#2 Again, I strongly dislike PewDiePie (his content is trash), but this is just extreme hyperbole.

#3 Actions have consequence.

#1 There are few options here that would mean anything to an actual racist. Hitting him in the pocketbook is one of the only things people like pdp pay attention to. The very fact they've showed that others could do this has got to register at least a little bit on his and other streamers radar, just as advertisers pulling revenue has as well.

#2 Not hyperbolic at all. Whether you mean to or not, using that kind of language or imagery (the Jews thing) furthers the disparagement of those peoples.

#3 Not all consequences to actions are justified or proportional in response.

At this point I think we need to start counter-movements against this. Review bombs can be countered by going out by force, voting "Not useful" on every single review complaining about SJWs and whatever, and then mass voting "Useful" on every review that is actually about the game (even negative ones are fine if they're about the game, not drama).

We can even do our own extreme by posting our own reviews "10/10 trumptards got triggered" and mass voting useful on those.

Valve isn't doing shit, it's time for a counter-movement.

Yelp started implementing rollbacks on certain review pages that would get targeted because of some sort of national spotlight. Seems like a pretty easy solution here.

 

[Nzyme32]

Everyone should read these. When the gaming community shows it can properly behave, then maybe open things up. It's obvious that there needs to be some restrictions on community input and overall interaction.

Or a better solution is simple to put the data right in front of the user so it is abundantly clear when review bombing is occurring, ie reviews over time, standard deviations over the time period since launch etc - which is actually coming soon (not soon enough if you ask me)

 

[Hamster Plugin]

Once the review system turns into a battleground of people trying to drown out each other, might as well scrap the whole thing.

It is what needs to happen to an unmoderated review system. When Valve isn't interested in doing anything about the alt-righters, we need the rest of the people to deal with it instead.

When Steam becomes a battleground of left-wing and right-wing trolls, Valve may do something as every single one of their tools becomes useless.

 

[Spacejaws]

At this point I think we need to start counter-movements against this. Review bombs can be countered by going out by force, voting "Not useful" on every single review complaining about SJWs and whatever, and then mass voting "Useful" on every review that is actually about the game (even negative ones are fine if they're about the game, not drama).

We can even do our own extreme by posting our own reviews "10/10 trumptards got triggered" and mass voting useful on those.

Valve isn't doing shit, it's time for a counter-movement.

Even that doesn't work though. When it happened to Baldur's Gate Siege of Dragonspear the devs said to people to go out and give positive reviews to counteract and for some reason that was an ethical problem and people not involved with the debacle critiqued the devs. Honestly its all a bit worrying because in some instances I would say review bombing is justified to send a message. GTA San Andreas 'updates' to remove songs and break saves yea I left a nasty review, nonetheless it killed my enjoyment of the game I had powered through 20 hours on to have to start again. Horrible DLC practices? Devs sitting on obvious problems while spending valuable time making horse armour? It can be a very interesting tool to get consumers point across, that is concerning the game and not for external reasons unrelated to the game.

Judging by those twitter feeds, as sad as they are (although I believe both games did well) it's evidence of the kind of power it does give the community. The devs actually listened and well almost feared it. I can't really think of any other form of media that consumers have similar impact. Maybe IMDB?

If you give out tools to regulate such things how far does it go? Who determines whether a negative review is for trolling or not? Especially if the control is in the developers hands, not all developers I would trust to use review moderation to keep the reviews fair.

 

[Khrno]

I pretty much use Steam just to launch games though and don't use any of the other features.

Isn't that what Steam is for? Just a storefront with a library to launch games?

That's how I use Steam, Uplay, Origin, PS and Nintendo consoles.

But I'm one of the few that don't care/have friends.

 

[Riposte]

Once the review system turns into a battleground of people trying to drown out each other, might as well scrap the whole thing.

May as well scrap every public review system, including Amazon and Yelp.


Also lol at him bringing up Hatred.

EDIT: Calling review-bombing "harassment" is pretty questionable.

 

[Hamster Plugin]

Even that doesn't work though. When it happened to Baldur's Gate Siege of Dragonspear the devs said to people to go out and give positive reviews to counteract and for some reason that was an ethical problem and people not involved with the debacle critiqued the devs.

That was a few years ago and limited to a couple of idiots. Now there's an entire board on 4chan (pol) dedicated to raiding sites with spam and even organizing real life Nazi movements like Charlottesville. We all know better now. It's no longer an ethical problem today.

The only way to combat this is to get organized with left-wing review bombs. When the system is broken and the administrator is not interested in doing anything to it, the only way is to kill the system. If this turns Steam reviews into a political battleground, so be it - it's Valve's fault.