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[kiguel182]

Given how much money Valve makes is incredible how they can't simply get some humans to moderate and curate their storefront. Everything is done using algorithms or is community driven.

Like, even Apple has Editors that recommend games! And usually good games too. And they aren't even a game company at heart. Itch.io also has recommendations on the front page made by actual people.

These days I buy stuff on itch.io (or Switch) if things are available there. Itch is great platform that is both open to everyone while trying to surface the best things possible at all times. It's also a great place to find new experiences and there's no lack of good games there.

 

[Stygr]

Scratch that. Let's all move to Uplay and save Ubisoft from the evil hands of Vivendi.

Being honest though, of the four clients, Uplay has the best GUI.

uPlay by far is still the worst PC client to date, i still remember my day one issues with Watch_Dogs and fucking Unity, i will never buy a game on uPlay, and i already own like 23 games on that platform.

 

[ZeroCoin]

I have hundreds of games on there, I'm not deleting my account.

Not deleting my account, sorry.

Yeah I'm not deleting my account.

Notice the headline of the article isn't 'Why you should delete your steam account'?
Maybe try reading the article?

Having acknowledged that, it would seem unreasonable that my "call to action" be for everyone to delete their Steam accounts, or for developers to pull their games from a store that provides an overwhelming majority of their business. Instead, I would simply ask that everyone do what they can to foster viable alternatives. As consumers, we can stop buying new games from Steam if they are available on GOG.com, itch.io, or an alternative storefront. Developers, make it a priority to get your games on as many storefronts as possible, even if they only incrementally boost the bottom line. Because right now the PC gaming industry is entirely too dependent on a company with entirely too little interest in basic human decency, and it's hurting us all.

The article isn't about staging some giant boycott of Steam and getting everyone to delete accounts. It's about bringing attention to the things that Valve allows to continue on their platform. Asking for some basic moderation to prevent user and developer harassment isn't too much to ask is it?

 

[AcceptableGhost]

There are issues with Valve but I don't really think forum moderation is one of them. The developer/publisher is supposed to handle moderation of their game forums. If you don't have the resources to do that (or don't want to) then you can lock your forums and make them read only.

 

[Slayven]

Even more so are these companies are rich as fuck and perfectly capable to hire actual humans to mitigate shit like that.

Right, reasonable people know you will never catch aeverything. But damn thwy dont even trt

 

[Famassu]

Valve is only a monopoly in the same sense as Usain Boly had a monopoly on running the fastest, i.e. he didn't, he just dominated by being way better than the competition.

Lol no. Steam is utter shit in so many ways. They've got cheap games & free cloud for saves. That's about all the good things you can say about Steam.

 

[chrominance]

Honestly what do you expect they have 10000 games on steam there's no way to moderate everything, and pay people to do all of that. It would require insane amounts of cash. And even then they do have community moderators who have higher power then moderators for specific games. Those guys have contacts at valve so it's much easier to report em like that. Their moderation system is fine. If you introduce paid moderators then things get out of wack and then people will become elitists in a sense.

[citation needed]

You do realize that many social networks and online publications have paid teams of moderators, right? It's an industry that's been around long enough to have multiple articles written about the effects of burnout on its workforce.

Yes, there are sites that can and do run on volunteer moderation. Personally, I don't think it's ideal because I know from experience that you can't and don't ask as much of volunteers as you do from someone you pay, because the person who volunteers can walk away on a whim and you have no recourse. Which is 100% their right because you aren't paying them anything and they are volunteering their time and effort. Also, I don't understand how people being paid a living wage leads to "elitism." Does the fact that we pay McDonald's employees lead to fast food elitism? Does the fact that we pay janitorial staff lead to cleaning elitism? What even does "elitism" mean in this context?

The idea that Steam is "too big" to moderate effectively is bullshit. You think Facebook is smaller than Steam? But they have a huge pool of paid moderators. Facebook's troubles with dealing with hate speech and related communities is well documented, but at least they recognize that it's an issue and are trying to combat it. Steam doesn't even seem to be doing that. You get what you pay for, and in Steam's case that means a shittier community.

 

[Yohane]

I love how everybody blame everything on Steam, Appstore, Google Play etc etc.

Do you guys blame your local supermarket for selling not fair trade food or other items from unethical companies?

 

[Atomski]

I understand that Valve does not have a ton of employees.. I do understand they have a shit ton of money though. Either use that to hire more people or outsource someone trusted.

 

[Szadek]

Scratch that. Let's all move to Uplay and save Ubisoft from the evil hands of Vivendi.

Being honest though, of the four clients, Uplay has the best GUI.

I stopped using UPlay after it deleted all my games and I'm never coming back.

 

[Famassu]

Do you guys blame your local supermarket for selling not fair trade food or other items from unethical companies?

I support an entity that tries to push supermarkets to go for more ethical alternatives. Most recently they got one super popular coffee brand to switch to Fair Trade sources.

And sure, I do vocally criticize stores for some shit they do.

Still, your analogy sucks donkey balls.

 

[Hilbert]

I love how everybody blame everything on Steam, Appstore, Google Play etc etc.

Do you guys blame your local supermarket for selling not fair trade food or other items from unethical companies?

Look at the Nazi groups hosted on steam and give your example a little more thought. Come back tomorrow with the results of your exercise.

 

[chrominance]

I love how everybody blame everything on Steam, Appstore, Google Play etc etc.

Do you guys blame your local supermarket for selling not fair trade food or other items from unethical companies?

1) People do, in fact, do this via boycotts. It's not some obviously ridiculous notion.

2) Yeah, I'd probably stop shopping at my local supermarket if they routinely let a bunch of white supremacists protest in the dairy aisle.

 

[vazel]

At least Valve finally made it so that people can't spam invites to troll groups anymore. That's some progress.

 

[FRS1987]

Steam just feels like no one is at the helm of the ship and its just a free for all. Anyway I still use Steam and love Valve but they haven't made a game or overhauled their UI in like years. The games they do have are muddled with cosmetics to the point that they are barely functioning games.

 

[Nev]

Sure, I'm deleting my Steam account with 100+ games because some trashy kid has a swastika avatar so he and the people making these racist games/memes/whatever can keep the platform for themselves and my money down the drain.

No thanks. I'd rather keep my account and report these people while also using the review system to flag the crap games.

Then Valve might or might not ban them but these scummy pieces of shit are not kicking me out

 

[capylikesgames]

To be honest, if Valve wasn't supplying the only trackpad controller on the market and the only comfy UI for TV use on PC, and if more releases I have interest in would hit GOG around their launch, I'd be more than glad to leave Steam behind me. The community of the storefront is nonexistant to me because of how vile it is. It doesn't really make sense that Valve doesn't have their own moderation staff, especially with user reviews. It's difficult to take user ratings seriously when it doesn't need any amount of criticism towards the game itself to get approved. Their negligence in supporting people generating income for them isn't a new development, though. I recall them acquiring free translation for their titles by masking it as "community efforts" fans were asked to join.

I think going as far as deleting your Steam account is silly, as its presence isn't validating the awful community there. Loading up a Steam game doesn't really do anything for Valve. Building your library there is what shows them you're OK supporting their platform. I've definitely been buying less from them nowadays. I wouldn't say GoG has a wonderful community in comparison, though. I recall seeing some curation lists with gross context recommended to me during my last visit, which was offputting. Though I've seen little to no push towards GoG in regards keeping their community clean, so I'd be willing to give them the benefit of the doubt for now, whereas Valve has their arms crossed tight about these problems for years.

 

[kswiston]

I understand that Valve does not have a ton of employees.. I do understand they have a shit ton of money though. Either use that to hire more people or outsource someone trusted.

Ya. The "not a lot of employees" excuse is BS. A very conservative estimate puts Steam revenue at $3B. Steam Spy estimated $3.5B last year, and that didn't count microtransaction cash. They might have been over-estimating, due to key sellers, but probably not by a ton.

So if their staff is 300 people, that's about $10M an employee in revenue. Even after paying devs their cut, Valve takes in millions for every person they employ. Hiring moderation would not break the bank. They just know that they can get away with not doing so.

 

[GhostTrick]

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.

 

[Yearsoflurking]

Valve does absolutely nothing to police their community or help developers. Like, it's really frustrating how little they seem to care.

Yet people are ok with this and loves that value has damn near a monopoly

 

[flkraven]

I love how everybody blame everything on Steam, Appstore, Google Play etc etc.

Do you guys blame your local supermarket for selling not fair trade food or other items from unethical companies?

I would blame my local super market if they allowed a guy to jerk off in one of the aisles while screaming 'F*** Blacks', or if they allowed Nazi recruitment/propaganda out front.

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.

GAF has an OT for most every game yet somehow functions with moderators. Not identical, but it isn't the impossible task that some are making it out to be. Or maybe Evillore is richer than Gabe and pays his mods billions every year.

 

[Hektor]

Lol no. Steam is utter shit in so many ways. They've got cheap games & free cloud for saves. That's about all the good things you can say about Steam.

Steamworkshop
Refund systems
Easy acessible sharing tools
Steam Family Sharing
Built in in-home streaming
The ability to resell and trade ingame items

Truly spoken like someone that never uses it.

 

[entremet]

People using "They are too big" excuse for steam, Facebook, Twitter, etc are sad. They are a multinational, billion dollar company they can put in SOME effort. I mean even in clear examples like firewatch and the lizard game/jontron they do nothing. Not even a token effort.

Facebook and Twitter do have human moderation. You're talking about billions of post per day, though. The issue is scalability. People can only do so much.

Youtube has some, but really Youtube gives moderation powers to channel owners. You moderate your own channel.

I would blame my local super market if they allowed a guy to jerk off in one of the aisles while screaming 'F*** Blacks', or if they allowed Nazi recruitment/propaganda out front.



GAF has an OT for most every game yet somehow functions with moderators. Not identical, but it isn't the impossible task that some are making it out to be. Or maybe Evillore is richer than Gabe and pays his mods billions every year.

Not comparable. Everyone can't post on GAF. Presumably anyone can post on Steam, just create an account. GAF has more moderation than you think. Not anyone can become a member, you need paid email address, there's waiting period, and a mandatory probationary period.

 

[GhostTrick]

I would blame my local super market if they allowed a guy to jerk off in one of the aisles while screaming 'F*** Blacks', or if they allowed Nazi recruitment/propaganda out front.



GAF has an OT for most every game yet somehow functions with moderators. Not identical, but it isn't the impossible task that some are making it out to be. Or maybe Evillore is richer than Gabe and pays his mods billions every year.

Right, but GAF is one big forum with threads. Each game has its own big forum with its own sections. It'd be like having a Gaf subforum for each game. And the more game releases, the more of this happens.
Then again, I agree with you, it's not like there was that much nazi/racist posts that they cant afford to have a report tool and have a team of 20 to 50 person to treat these reports.

 

[Zafir]

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.

I feel like the point is you use a combination of both non-human and human moderation.

You don't need a human to look at every single tiny thing. What you do want is for humans to look at activity which could be considered unusual behaviour. Lots of people reporting the same comment, group, post, or review. A sudden spike of reviews being posted when there hasn't been a update, sale or something which could cause an influx of new players.

 

[KorrZ]

I personally don't really give any merit to the idea that Valve should be responsible for the bullshit people post. Especially if they've given Developers the access necessary to moderate themselves.

It's unrealistic to expect Valve to be a watchdog for the millions of users and hundreds of thousands of individual games available on their service.

 

[Rizific]

Valve offloads moderation of game-specific forums to the developers.

AND THEN GETS MAD AT VALVE FOR NOT MODERATING FORUMS. yeah, ok. i should probably get to throwing out everything ive bought from best buy because i know racists and bigots also bought stuff from best buy because they clearly support racists and bigots as evidenced by best buy not caring that they shop there. good lord.

 

[vazel]

Steamworkshop
Refund systems
Easy acessible sharing tools
Steam Family Sharing
Built in in-home streaming
The ability to resell and trade ingame items

Truly spoken like someone that never uses it.

Another benefit is that steam groups are a fast and convenient way to setup pugs in old games without matchmaking.

 

[Slayven]

Facebook and Twitter do have human moderation. You're talking about billions of post per day, though. The issue is scalability. People can only do so much.

Youtube has some, but really Youtube gives moderation powers to channel owners. You moderate your own channel.



Not comparable. Everyone can't post on GAF. Presumably anyone can post on Steam, just create an account. GAF has more moderation than you think. Not anyone can become a member, you need paid email address, there's waiting period, and a mandatory probationary period.

Billions of dollars, no one is asking them to hire Gods and seat them in thrones of Gold and Platinum with hundreds of servants.


Developers should start demanding more for their 30%

 

[benicillin]

I personally don't really give any merit to the idea that Valve should be responsible for the bullshit people post. Especially if they've given Developers the access necessary to moderate themselves.

It's unrealistic to expect Valve to be a watchdog for the millions of users and hundreds of thousands of individual games available on their service.

No one is expecting Valve to be Big Brother, but they don't even give developers tools to combat forum and review brigading (you can't even bulk delete threads) or harassment and there is literally no one at Valve to escalate any community problems to. They have white supremacist community groups (which are blatantly against Valve's community guidelines) but those guidelines aren't enforced at all.

I think anyone who is criticizing Valve would be happy if they even nodded in the direction of offering any kind of help or solution.

 

[Sini]

I wish the report profile function actually did something anymore. 5 years ago they'd community ban people I've reported and even email me thanks for the help for x amount of cases. But in last 4 years they haven't taken any action for any profiles I've reported.

 

[Zia]

Yeah, Valve's fucking pathetic in its response to toxicity. I'm slowly quitting CS:GO because of the incessant racism and homophobia in Casual matches. Reports apparently disappear into a black hole based on the amount of people running around with guns named "Nigger Killer."

But you know, free market and consumers creating value yada yada.

 

[orava]

the issue is steam's monopoly.

You claim that steam is a monopoly. If this were true, what should happen so that they would not be a "monopoly" anymore? How would valve fix this?

 

[WarRock]

I am talking solely about the moderation situation here. I personally see it as working fine. It's worked for reddit for 7+ years. Surely it'll keep working. People on there have massive amounts of push back to any moderators making any cent off of their subreddits and there's arguements about it all the time.

You can't honestly believe this.

 

[Kyougar]

Whats wrong with reviewbombing a game after a dev does something questionable? It's the only real method left of disagreeing with something that one has if they don't want to delve into the argument cesspool. You can only lose if you want to criticise something and you are automatically a racist and that bleeds the moderate liberal heart.

 

[Gentleman Jack]

I love how everybody blame everything

???

 

[flkraven]

I personally don't really give any merit to the idea that Valve should be responsible for the bullshit people post. Especially if they've given Developers the access necessary to moderate themselves.

It's unrealistic to expect Valve to be a watchdog for the millions of users and hundreds of thousands of individual games available on their service.

Valve earns 1/3 of every game sale. It is unrealistic to expect them to do a little more, since they do no where near 1/3 of the work?

 

[Chairmanchuck]

Lol no. Steam is utter shit in so many ways. They've got cheap games & free cloud for saves. That's about all the good things you can say about Steam.

And regional pricing. And "Gamesfaqs" like guide sections in their API. And ways to make money by playing the game. And Games that are available whereever I am and on how many PCs I want it to have. And Family Sharing (my wife uses my library a lot).

 

[Pagusas]

Guess we all need to feel important in some way, cant help but roll my eyes at this though.

 

[SapientWolf]

Even more so are these companies are rich as fuck and perfectly capable to hire actual humans to mitigate shit like that.

Why would they spend millions of dollars on the cesspool that is the Steam forums? I think they're going to go away.

 

[Sini]

Lol no. Steam is utter shit in so many ways. They've got cheap games & free cloud for saves. That's about all the good things you can say about Steam.

There's ton of good features, Valve just doesn't care about developing them further.

 

[Trace]

Steam itself is a fantastic platform.

Valve seems to enjoy fucking it up more often then not though between how they handle reviews, groups, and an almost total lack of moderation.

 

[KorrZ]

No one is expecting Valve to be Big Brother, but they don't even give developers tools to combat forum and review brigading (you can't even bulk delete threads) or harassment and there is literally no one at Valve to escalate any community problems to. They have white supremacist community groups (which are blatantly against Valve's community guidelines) but those guidelines aren't enforced at all.

I think anyone who is criticizing Valve would be happy if they even nodded in the direction of offering any kind of help or solution.

Fair enough, I definitely think it's reasonable to expect Valve to at least provide a better tool set for developers to moderate their own communities. That's definitely something that should be addressed.

As long as they provide a proper tool set, I think it's more than reasonable to expect developers to moderate themselves.

 

[RichiRamjag]

Should have seen the racist bullshit on the assassins creed origins steam page. Heaven forbid Egypt has citizens of various shades with some being darker. All of a sudden, every goofball on there was a historian that only cared about "historical accuracy".

Those forums are shit and if steam isn't going to handle it, then someone does because no one should have to go on there and see that bullshit.

 

[Hektor]

Why would they spend millions of dollars on the cesspool that is the Steam forums? I think they're going to go away.

From a business perspective (And valve is a business) that would indeed make a lot more sense than to invest into moderation.

 

[Maintenance]

 

 

[kswiston]

Why would they spend millions of dollars on the cesspool that is the Steam forums? I think they're going to go away.

They can't afford to actually kill the forums, because that's the only way to discover fixes for hundreds of their titles that would otherwise be broken. Especially games right at launch, and legacy stuff.

Those forums most definitely mitigate some potential refunds due to incompatibility.

 

[chrominance]

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.

I agree that there's a huge gap. You could have a small team or a large team or no team. That team could be full-time employees or it could be one CSR who doesn't even really have "community management/abuse" in their job description and only devotes time to it where they can. You can have proactive community management, where moderators actively scan the community for issues and address them ahead of time, or reactive community management where people wait around for shit to hit the fan and then clean up the mess. Anything that Valve can do to move towards the "large team of proactive moderators with a mandate and tools to combat community bullshittery" is welcome.

I don't think the fact that there are 10k+ games with individual boards necessarily presents a problem. Remember that social networks have to deal with groups and individual accounts that are all able to churn out prodigious amounts of content. Part of effective management is developing tools that makes it easier to scan large amounts of content and address issues quickly. We're basically talking about improving and streamlining moderator workflow. This is not new territory, though it's obviously an evolving one.

 

[Seronei]

They can't afford to actually kill the forums, because that's the only way to discover fixes for hundreds of their titles that would otherwise be broken. Especially games right at launch, and legacy stuff.

Those forums most definitely mitigate some potential refunds due to incompatibility.

Community guides could still be a thing. Although it's just as badly moderated, one quick look at the CS:GO community guides section and I spot scams/gambling ads...

 

[2blackcats]

A 1 week ban from your account would stop a lot of this.

I wish uplay, origin, etc would combine their efforts.