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Eurogamer: Valve allowing consumers to make choices is "arrogant", "cowardly",

MayauMiao

Member
I support Valve so journos like Eurogamers and others can go screw themselves. I don't need some of the so called "progressive" gatekeeper stop me from buying games that I find entertaining.

Look at how Eurogamer tried to demonize games like Kingdom Come because it didn't fit their "progressive" narrative.
 

EviLore

Expansive Ellipses
Staff Member
I think that would be the best parallel, there's a reason why Jordan Peterson is only invited and followed by alt-rightists and neo-reactionnaries: he tells them what they want to hear, but not the whole truth.

No one has the whole truth. The more you preemptively shut yourself down from other perspectives, though, the worse off your own will tend to be.

There's no such thing as "censorship" on Steam

False. Censorship is nearly omnipresent and it certainly is present on Steam, enforced by their terms of service and guidelines. Censorship is present here as well, based on our own terms of service and it is also directly informed by what the advertising industry permits ads to display on, since NeoGAF is maintained through ad revenue. A website that was supported entirely by, for example, Patreon, would still deal with censorship imposed by the ToS of the webhost in terms of illegal content etc., but less directly censorship pressure would still exist to conform to the standards of the Patreon patrons' acceptability for content. There is always censorship; it's just not a boogieman.
 

LordPezix

Member
Wow, what a ridiculous piece.

Valve didn't cave. That's all that matters. At least someone finally showed some balls and said we're gonna run things the way we're gonna run things. Fuck off if you don't like it.

Exactly, I canceled Hulu because I didn't like their programming. You don't like what is on Valve? DON'T FUCKING USE IT!.. Boom, end of story.

These wankers act like someone is forcing them to use their platform lol like whhhaaaaaa????
 
No one has the whole truth. The more you preemptively shut yourself down from other perspectives, though, the worse off your own will tend to be.

False. Censorship is nearly omnipresent and it certainly is present on Steam, enforced by their terms of service and guidelines. Censorship is present here as well, based on our own terms of service and it is also directly informed by what the advertising industry permits ads to display on, since NeoGAF is maintained through ad revenue. A website that was supported entirely by, for example, Patreon, would still deal with censorship imposed by the ToS of the webhost in terms of illegal content etc., but less directly censorship pressure would still exist to conform to the standards of the Patreon patrons' acceptability for content. There is always censorship; it's just not a boogieman.

I listen very carefully to what other people say, but people are talking in absolute ignorant and bullshit terms about basic political or societal concept.

I never denied that there is censorship, I argued and this is certainly true on this topic, that because people have been getting incredibly uneducated about these basic principles and more recently the radical left has started to impose a non-sanctioned censorship, people are confusing the legal limits of freedom of expression with censorship.

It was never illegal therefor never was censorship for a platform, media or government to prevent or remove illegal actions such as defamation, harassment, threats, discrimination, promotion of violence, abuse and so on...neither is it legal for any company to dictate what non-contractualised user can say or have their content removed unless propriety or speech infringement can be stated. But does that mean it doesn't happen? Well, when law is not enforced that's actually what happens: companies, groups or people abusing the law.

And that's why I'm very glad that Steam will not change anything in their guidelines (unless they want to do something illegal), I'm not preemptively shutting myself, I'm not a SJW and never been, but why should I fall into the opposite trap that seems to make people believe that it means racism, pedophilia or promotion of violence are or were ever okay? Because in the truth all that is the underlaying content of the debate.
 
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A.Romero

Member
No you don't, and that's good. Because if you were a pedophile advocate or a hate-incitation group, I'm very glad that everywhere in the world and since democracy, I'm glad there are institution coming after you. So yes you may be an alt-right if you think people have right to do antisemitic propaganda because you don't know the difference between the basic concepts of freedom and chaos.

You know what the problem is? It's not always about hate, racism and pedophilia. Most cases are not clear cut. On top of that, once you have the mechanisms of control is very difficult not to abuse them to favour your own perspective.

Just to be clear: I understand what you are saying. I'm aware of the risks of allowing the maximum amount of freedom possible and that in many cases it could lead to chaos. However, the sacrifice brought by not doing it is just too great...

It's easy to see why some things are bad in hindsight but if society didn't at least allow the sharing of ideas that bring new paradigms, there would be no progress at all. Let's say we decided that idea control is fair game... Do you think any social advance would be possible? Of course not, the status quo would suppress it just because it's different and threatens it's very existence.

Freedom is about having to tolerate a lot of stupid things being said and done, just to make sure a single good idea or action can exist. Sometimes there needs to be trash in order to give gold a chance to exist. This is unavoidable because a lot of the times its not easy to distinguish one of another immediately.

And the very core of this all is the fact that neither you nor me are truly capable of define exactly what should society say, read, write or even play. I'm glad Valve is humble enough to accept that.

In any case, they are still subject to local laws. To me this is the best position. I can influence my government through civic participation so my environment reflects the will of the majority (I presume you live in a democracy, as well as me). However, I cannot influence a corporation in the same way.

Why would I want a small private group be able to make decisions for me and influence what I can and can't do? It just doesn't make sense to me. If society doesn't want waifus in games, it will find a way to collectively stop them. However, I suspect society is in fact OK with waifus being a part of gaming on account that games with waifus still sell very good and the fact that people like Jack Thompson has failed miserably to change that.
 

Silver Wattle

Gold Member
I think that would be the best parallel, there's a reason why Jordan Peterson is only invited and followed by alt-rightists and neo-reactionnaries: he tells them what they want to hear, but not the whole truth.



There's no such thing as "censorship" on Steam, I don't really care that people are so degenerate (uneducated by not fault of their own) that they don't understand basic principles that republican societies are built on, but censorship only applies to speech that is legal and protect by freedom as for every other rights, what is illegal however is exactly where freedom insures that people can not harass, defame, aggress others...



No you don't, and that's good. Because if you were a pedophile advocate or a hate-incitation group, I'm very glad that everywhere in the world and since democracy, I'm glad there are institution coming after you. So yes you may be an alt-right if you think people have right to do antisemitic propaganda because you don't know the difference between the basic concepts of freedom and chaos.



Oh yeah I so remember the days in the 90s when people supported pedophile advocacy, racist propaganda and public bomb threats...what an era...which never existed and just shows how frighteningly ignorant you are about basic concepts of freedom of speech, just freedom in fact.
Jordan Peterson is alt right? Your world view is massively warped, are you part of the resetera crowd?

It's such a weird experience when seeing an extreme leftist spouting the same nonsense as the extreme right.
 
There is a huge line between a wanting uncensored Japanese games, with stuff that is distasteful to western cultures and quality adult games that are not straight porn, to shitty repressed slut muslim girl crap made by a dude in flash (referencing recent drama) or half assed asset games.

Issue is Valve just don't care to have a team to monitor, I think we all want quality games, even if there gamejam leftovers or simple stuff, just needs to be quality.
 
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Dunki

Member
That's exactly true. Fuck useless parasites that think they have no responsibilities and countries are build on cash and iPods. There's a reason why we have laws, justice and regulations.
there is nothing on there for long that is against the law. What these people want is that they d code what should be on there and what not. By writing articles how a game is problematic and needs to be gone. Games like hatred or superseducer. They called to remove these games. Ironically these kind of games would have been vanished very fast from sales pages but their butthurt articles made them gather attention
 

Shifty

Member
Sounds like somebody has a chip on their shoulder with regard to Valve and is quite happy to spin whatever they can to fit their agenda.
 
catering to the alt-right. valve is now the jordan peterson of gaming lol.
I think that would be the best parallel, there's a reason why Jordan Peterson is only invited and followed by alt-rightists and neo-reactionnaries: he tells them what they want to hear, but not the whole truth.

Catering to the Alt-Right by not pulling games you dislike. Right. On top of that, you can say about Peterson whatever you like, but he's generally hated by the Alt-Right and doesn't align ideologically with them.
 

Allandor

Member
Well I've mixed feelings about this. On one side, steam has really every shitty game on the other side, I have kids and steam have still not included good filters for their age. Also they don't have any kind of age-verification system.
They should at least insert a optional filter for everything unverified/unrated stuff, so I must not see it.
 

klosos

Member
good well played Valve , this move by them to me shows strength . They decide not to bend over and take it like so many over companies ( go look at the jack dude who runs twitter apologizing for eating at a chicken sandwich at some fast food place ) and decide we as consumers have the right to decide what we spend our money and time on.

What Steam needs to do is have a better storefront , where us the consumer can filter out the stuff we ain't interested and if Valve do that fair play to them.

The crying that journalist/bloggers are doing is hilarious to me , they are upset not because you might see or play the next controversial game , they are upset because Valve told them in no certain terms to go eat a dick.
 

nemiroff

Gold Member
Let the law decide is generally a good principle that generally all companies in sensible western countries should follow. Unfortunately, lately we've seen more politicization among private companies like f.ex. Google. And I guess that's the exact template for Eurogamer's wet dream; That all companies must follow a leftist doctrine.
 
Jordan Peterson is alt right? Your world view is massively warped, are you part of the resetera crowd?
It's such a weird experience when seeing an extreme leftist spouting the same nonsense as the extreme right.

Catering to the Alt-Right by not pulling games you dislike. Right. On top of that, you can say about Peterson whatever you like, but he's generally hated by the Alt-Right and doesn't align ideologically with them.

Jordan Peterson is a neo-reactionnary, that's a tad more complex and new, I never said he was alt-right, he simply caters to the alt-right since that's constituent of a good part of his audience an people who are influenced by him.

there is nothing on there for long that is against the law. What these people want is that they d code what should be on there and what not. By writing articles how a game is problematic and needs to be gone. Games like hatred or superseducer. They called to remove these games. Ironically these kind of games would have been vanished very fast from sales pages but their butthurt articles made them gather attention

Well that's the point: freedom works in both protected/sanctioned way and liability. If there was any debates as to whether Hatred or Superseducer should be on the store, it's because Steam didn't define their guidelines well enough so that there's no debate and it's either definitely authorised or removed
 

Dunki

Member
Jordan Peterson is a neo-reactionnary, that's a tad more complex and new, I never said he was alt-right, he simply caters to the alt-right since that's constituent of a good part of his audience an people who are influenced by him.



Well that's the point: freedom works in both protected/sanctioned way and liability. If there was any debates as to whether Hatred or Superseducer should be on the store, it's because Steam didn't define their guidelines well enough so that there's no debate and it's either definitely authorised or removed
Yes they did define their guidelines but eople also call hatred hatespech and Superseducer misogynisti. While I think its harmless

These days racist, sexist hate speech has lost so much power because its being way too overused. Everything is racist sexist, or hate speech. there is no middleground anymore And this goes for these "journalists as well. Both of these examples do not break any law or guidelines by Steam. They only break the guidelines of so called games "journalists"
 

Lanrutcon

Member
Gotta protect people from themselves. Well, only most people. Doesn't apply to you and me. We're fine. Right? Right.
 
You know what the problem is? It's not always about hate, racism and pedophilia. Most cases are not clear cut. On top of that, once you have the mechanisms of control is very difficult not to abuse them to favour your own perspective.

Never said it was clear cut, we're not having a debates on fine lines when people are ignoring the basic workings of laws and political concepts. Control is not the problem as you underlined it, abuse is. So it's something upstream: it's called LAW, like the original tablet of laws in judaism, the law in the first athenian republic (Plato's Republic being the basic), the renaissance revision of mercantile laws and so on.

Control is something very complex to achieve without having it easily corrupted, but without control or rule, I could go out in the street and kill an old lady, that could defend herself with a bomb while child are being raped on the sides. I don't understand what is not fucking clear about that: you either want control in a way that allows for the maximum or rather the best conditions of freedom, or you're simply asking for chaos.

It's easy to see why some things are bad in hindsight but if society didn't at least allow the sharing of ideas that bring new paradigms, there would be no progress at all. Let's say we decided that idea control is fair game... Do you think any social advance would be possible? Of course not, the status quo would suppress it just because it's different and threatens it's very existence.

Freedom is about having to tolerate a lot of stupid things being said and done, just to make sure a single good idea or action can exist. Sometimes there needs to be trash in order to give gold a chance to exist. This is unavoidable because a lot of the times its not easy to distinguish one of another immediately.

I agree with all that, but again, there is a vast difference between idea, concept, speech, influence, declaration, statement, discourse etc...but at the heart of it you're right: there's a need to allow a door open enough that some good idea passes but also limit the risk to too many wrong ones do.

And the very core of this all is the fact that neither you nor me are truly capable of define exactly what should society say, read, write or even play. I'm glad Valve is humble enough to accept that.

Why would I want a small private group be able to make decisions for me and influence what I can and can't do? It just doesn't make sense to me. If society doesn't want waifus in games, it will find a way to collectively stop them. However, I suspect society is in fact OK with waifus being a part of gaming on account that games with waifus still sell very good and the fact that people like Jack Thompson has failed miserably to change that.

I didn't call for a companies to decide, again I'm not american it's not even crossing my mind: I'm saying companies SHOULDN'T have a right, in fact they basically don't, in saying what's legal and what's not, the laws already defines that and they should simply respect it. My problem is that Steam seems to be trying not to respect it.

Yes they did define their guidelines but eople also call hatred hatespech and Superseducer misogynisti. While I think its harmless

These days racist, sexist hate speech has lost so much power because its being way too overused.

Whatever people call, they have a right, that doesn't mean anyone should cave into it. And you know why? Because people have completely forgotten the notion of enforced laws. It's been years that since SJWs have emerged, they've illegally infringe on the law and broken freedom of expression by using methods that are CONDEMNED by the law in the view of protecting rights: you don't have a rights to verbally harass, defame, verbally assault, intimidate to censor etc...which is what the radical left has been doing this past years without anyone doing anything.

And this is because of the Internet, how can you regulate that? Well Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter or whatever should have applied and exacted the LAW, meaning they should have blocked or ban people resorting to intimidation, harassement, verbal abuse or defamation when they didn't agree with others. Except they didn't and so now we're in a situation where people on the other side believe that since it's okay for the left to spew bullshit or abuse, then it must mean racism or sexism don't exist anymore, and you can spew false facts of discrimination.
 

Dunki

Member
And this is because of the Internet, how can you regulate that? Well Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter or whatever should have applied and exacted the LAW, meaning they should have blocked or ban people resorting to intimidation, harassement, verbal abuse or defamation when they didn't agree with others. Except they didn't and so now we're in a situation where people on the other side believe that since it's okay for the left to spew bullshit or abuse, then it must mean racism or sexism don't exist anymore, and you can spew false facts of discrimination.

Are you kidding me? They ban left and right sadly only the one side if you have a verified account and suggest that white pregnant women should abort their white male babies than nothing is happening. Also Twitter especially is shadowbannning people on mass you do not even notice this until you check. Twitter is not a free speech zone anymore except for the left. They can say and harass everyone they want without any konsequenzes.

I applaud Steam for not going this route and let customers decide and not "journalists" or triggerd people. As for Facebook no Idea since I do not use it.
 
I agree with Eurogamer.

This move will ensure that my kids will never use Steam in my house. The "Apple-like" status quo that Evilore mentioned, is what I am looking for with both myself and my kids.


I have already seen more "XXX" stuff pop up on the best-seller and trending lists. I don't need that in my life.
 

DunDunDunpachi

Patient MembeR
Except they didn't and so now we're in a situation where people on the other side believe that since it's okay for the left to spew bullshit or abuse, then it must mean racism or sexism don't exist anymore, and you can spew false facts of discrimination.
Nah, I think it's more along the lines of...

...during attempts to bring up facts, the Left shouts down anything -- science, history, shared culture, etc -- that disagrees with their ideology. They'll riot, actually. The reason why many people are touchy about issues of free speech is because we've watched people be butchered for exercising that right in recent history. This is not acceptable. If the Left is so concerned about safe spaces and the reduction of violence, they sure are going about it a funny way. You cannot silence someone's right to express an idea or question a norm. That is perhaps the most "Left" viewpoint that I can imagine, and yet it is being called into question... not by Right-wing zealots but by the Left establishment.

Who is saying "racism and sexism don't exist"? I don't think that's the argument on the Right. Most people on the Right (and in the Center) are grinding their teeth and wondering "why the heck can't we have a two-way conversation about this topic? How are you coming to the conclusion that everything is racist? Where is the evidence that things are imbalanced?". If they say this out loud, they are often shouted down as racists who don't believe the self-evident truth that white people control everything and minorities are oppressed.

I'm all for criticism. But when gaming journalists dogpile a company for not taking the particular moral stand that they wanted it to, that's sick.
 

Kadayi

Banned
The hilarious thing is Eurogamer is Steam syndicated, which means anything they write about a game (no matter how questionable) is visible in its steam news feed.
 

Dunki

Member
I agree with Eurogamer.

This move will ensure that my kids will never use Steam in my house. The "Apple-like" status quo that Evilore mentioned, is what I am looking for with both myself and my kids.


I have already seen more "XXX" stuff pop up on the best-seller and trending lists. I don't need that in my life.
ah yes protect your poor children from the evil boobies. I am so glad that I never had parents like this. We can see real boobs in our morning shows. Because it was something very natural.

Also there is not only an age restriction but you also can filter these kind of games.
 
Are you kidding me? They ban left and right sadly only the one side if you have a verified account and suggest that white pregnant women should abort their white male babies than nothing is happening. Also Twitter especially is shadowbannning people on mass you do not even notice this until you check. Twitter is not a free speech zone anymore except for the left. They can say and harass everyone they want without any konsequenzes.

I applaud Steam for not going this route and let customers decide and not "journalists" or triggerd people. As for Facebook no Idea since I do not use it.

I should have been more precise:

1. Restricting the speech, even illegal of some, and not of other, constitutes itself an act of discrimination, injustice and censorship. That's what I'm saying, there are account, verified or not, than should have been restricted in some way to the same extent of other people.

2. Shadow Banning, per the principles of free speech or even law in general, is illegal (again everywhere maybe except in the US), it's a form of silent censorship but also constitutes a vile, perverse form of harassment, manipulation and abuse.

3. It doesn't change the fact that Steam is compelled by law, to ban (not censor) illegal content, and that's my only point here, nothing else.
 
Nah, I think it's more along the lines of...

...during attempts to bring up facts, the Left shouts down anything -- science, history, shared culture, etc -- that disagrees with their ideology. They'll riot, actually. The reason why many people are touchy about issues of free speech is because we've watched people be butchered for exercising that right in recent history. This is not acceptable. If the Left is so concerned about safe spaces and the reduction of violence, they sure are going about it a funny way. You cannot silence someone's right to express an idea or question a norm. That is perhaps the most "Left" viewpoint that I can imagine, and yet it is being called into question... not by Right-wing zealots but by the Left establishment.

Who is saying "racism and sexism don't exist"? I don't think that's the argument on the Right. Most people on the Right (and in the Center) are grinding their teeth and wondering "why the heck can't we have a two-way conversation about this topic? How are you coming to the conclusion that everything is racist? Where is the evidence that things are imbalanced?". If they say this out loud, they are often shouted down as racists who don't believe the self-evident truth that white people control everything and minorities are oppressed.

I'm all for criticism. But when gaming journalists dogpile a company for not taking the particular moral stand that they wanted it to, that's sick.

As I said above: the people from the left who resort to harassment, verbal abuse, defamation, intimidation of any forms are in the illegality. And they should have been stopped and condemn. We all agree with that.

It doesn't mean that somehow, illegal speech has become part of freedom protection, and should still be condemned, that's the only thing I am saying.

The real problem in other words, is not "censorship" (well it kind of is, but comes second in the consequential chain), the problem is the lack of law enforcement and legal actions against the radical left and journalist either censoring other people by any illegal means or using the completely unbalanced bias to spew illegal speech too.

The lack of control and enforcing of the laws, in the only way it is intended which is equal and impartial, IS the reason why there's such a situation.
 

Fuz

Banned
I agree with Eurogamer.

This move will ensure that my kids will never use Steam in my house. The "Apple-like" status quo that Evilore mentioned, is what I am looking for with both myself and my kids.


I have already seen more "XXX" stuff pop up on the best-seller and trending lists. I don't need that in my life.
Why not, you know, just do your job as a parent and checking what they're doing, instead delegating it to steam and making your kids everyone's problem?
 
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Eurogamer previously complained about the existence of new Leisure Suit Larry and Deponia games, saying "the developers didn't get the memo" after 2/10 reviews.

They are strangely lenient with indie games that get rated more than all-time classics despite the gameplay, production values and bug testing that wouldn't even make it past Steam Greenlight, so it can't be because they long for the good old days of quality gaming either. They even clarified that point in the article.

Their intentions could not be more obvious.

After all, there was Super Seducer a while ago, by a "pick-up artist" where there are multiple choices and only ones where you're not a creep will not net you an early game over, so naturally it passed Sony certification. It is even less problematic than what a lot of Japanese visual novels have. However, circumstancial outrage over it (bad because picking up girls is inherently problematic, bad because who the developer associated with after the outrage, bad because who got offended by it) made Sony cower and judge the game by that, and not the game's content. The game is no longer available on PS4, but still is on Valve's Steam despite Valve being "approached" by press to "clarify" (and then ignored). That it is still sold there is the only reason its developer didn't go out of business yet.

Maybe in Eurogamer's eyes, that is the real problem that needs fixing.

Just to get this out of the way: Valve already removes unequivocally illegal (actual hate speech by legal definitions, stolen assets) and low effort troll games when reported. What's asked for here is more than that.
 
What's the end game here? All games will have to be approved by a Social Justice council? Valve will be declared a 'public good' and taken over by the government?
 
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What's the end game here? All games will have to be approved by a Social Justice council? Valve will be declared a 'public good' and taken over by the government?
If it's a public space in the US it would be held to the second amendement obligations (free speech) and censorship made illegal. The premise of what Eurogamer advocates for hinges on the corporation being a private entity that can do whatever it wants... but it should "want" what Eurogamer does otherwise it's incorrect and cue moral judgements on Valve.
However the instant Valve starts curating, it will be considered tacitly approving every single piece of content on their service they didn't remove... which has very serious implications.

I think the next game to go under if Eurogamer got their way would be Metal Wolf Chaos.
They used a MAGA hashtag for their social media campaign (which wasn't very smart since they want to avoid outrage this soon considering that game has a lot of it and then some), and that much of circumstancial offense is enough for them to call for the blood of the game, the developers or the service hosting it.
 
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Kadayi

Banned
However the instant Valve starts curating, it will be considered tacitly approving every single piece of content on their service they didn't remove... which has very serious implications.

I've already seen people arguing that through their lack of curation they are implicitly endorsing anything that might offend the easily triggered. Which is a ridiculous accusation when you get down to it because Valve has absolutely no means to scrutinise the content of every title that gets published. It's like taking Jeff Bezos to task for everything Amazon sells.
 
The issue here is that, to really solve the problem the "easily offended" have with Valve, the following measures would need to be implemented.

• Valve QA check needs to play the game, using checks similar to rating boards but with an ideological slant, to look for things that can potentially cause "people to be upset" ; which is by itself a very variable criteria, so anything likely to offend would be out. Considering companies are risk-averse, they will adopt a better safe than sorry policy and avoid altogether some subjects and genres (fanservice, visual novels, historical games, etc) Console makers, who are traditionally more controversy averse, outsource that task to rating boards and only check for gameplay usually.

• The developers, down to each single employee, would need to be vetted through an extensive background check. In western companies that encourage this sort of practice, they still need huge full time HR departments combing through that information for the dozen games they publish. Even for that "kekistan flag" controversy in some shooter game, the apology they made mention they had that department go over that small texture a year ago, and didn't find any problem with it, but still its meaning changed recently (most Sega games are 1.5-2 years old in their database uploaded feature locked, as a point of reference). Valve no only doesn't have as much access to that information, but has to deal with hundreds of such games, and even more developers behind each.

Is Eurogamer and friends' end-goal to bring back Steam Greenlight on crack with the opacity of GOG's curation system or even more (as consumer choice is problematic for them so even popular demand should not allow them in), and then once their favorite games inevitably get stuck in the curation pipeline (we very recently had the likes of Indivisibles denied from the Nintendo Switch) put out a few outraged articles to let those few chosen past the system?
That doesn't seem to be a sustainable model. It didn't help a lot of developers with the press at their side against GOG, PSN, Xbox Live and Nintendo.
 

Blam

Member
Why do all these news sites see Valve as doing wrong. Why does it seem like all of them are shoving opinions onto this and not being unbiased?

I dunno I sorta hate when every outlet joins the bandwagon and doesn't bother seeing the positive light in these situations.
 

Moneal

Member
Is Eurogamer and friends' end-goal to bring back Steam Greenlight on crack with the opacity of GOG's curation system or even more (as consumer choice is problematic for them so even popular demand should not allow them in), and then once their favorite games inevitably get stuck in the curation pipeline (we very recently had the likes of Indivisibles denied from the Nintendo Switch) put out a few outraged articles to let those few chosen past the system?
That doesn't seem to be a sustainable model. It didn't help a lot of developers with the press at their side against GOG, PSN, Xbox Live and Nintendo.

The end goal for Eurogamer and the rest is to be arbiter and gate keeper of gaming, not just steam. if they say something or someone offensive steam, ms, sony, and nintendo and well any game company better get rid of them or it no matter the reason. They want to deplatform anything or anyone they disagree with. Thats it period. They would have done the same with games like Kingdom Come because they didn't like lead developer.
 
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A.Romero

Member
Never said it was clear cut, we're not having a debates on fine lines when people are ignoring the basic workings of laws and political concepts. Control is not the problem as you underlined it, abuse is. So it's something upstream: it's called LAW, like the original tablet of laws in judaism, the law in the first athenian republic (Plato's Republic being the basic), the renaissance revision of mercantile laws and so on.

Control is something very complex to achieve without having it easily corrupted, but without control or rule, I could go out in the street and kill an old lady, that could defend herself with a bomb while child are being raped on the sides. I don't understand what is not fucking clear about that: you either want control in a way that allows for the maximum or rather the best conditions of freedom, or you're simply asking for chaos.



I agree with all that, but again, there is a vast difference between idea, concept, speech, influence, declaration, statement, discourse etc...but at the heart of it you're right: there's a need to allow a door open enough that some good idea passes but also limit the risk to too many wrong ones do.



I didn't call for a companies to decide, again I'm not american it's not even crossing my mind: I'm saying companies SHOULDN'T have a right, in fact they basically don't, in saying what's legal and what's not, the laws already defines that and they should simply respect it. My problem is that Steam seems to be trying not to respect it.



Whatever people call, they have a right, that doesn't mean anyone should cave into it. And you know why? Because people have completely forgotten the notion of enforced laws. It's been years that since SJWs have emerged, they've illegally infringe on the law and broken freedom of expression by using methods that are CONDEMNED by the law in the view of protecting rights: you don't have a rights to verbally harass, defame, verbally assault, intimidate to censor etc...which is what the radical left has been doing this past years without anyone doing anything.

And this is because of the Internet, how can you regulate that? Well Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter or whatever should have applied and exacted the LAW, meaning they should have blocked or ban people resorting to intimidation, harassement, verbal abuse or defamation when they didn't agree with others. Except they didn't and so now we're in a situation where people on the other side believe that since it's okay for the left to spew bullshit or abuse, then it must mean racism or sexism don't exist anymore, and you can spew false facts of discrimination.

I don't know man. You were the one mentioning hate and pedophilia. It sounded as your concern is mainly that.

When Valve says they will not publish illegal content, doesn't it mean that they will abide whatever applicable law? I don't see where they don't want to respect it.

I'm not an American either but I'm aware that they are a power player in this space and it is where Valve resides so their perspective seems to be very important for this case.
 
I don't know man. You were the one mentioning hate and pedophilia. It sounded as your concern is mainly that.

When Valve says they will not publish illegal content, doesn't it mean that they will abide whatever applicable law? I don't see where they don't want to respect it.

I'm not an American either but I'm aware that they are a power player in this space and it is where Valve resides so their perspective seems to be very important for this case.

That's the problem, Steam resides in dumbistan where people are the mot uneducated, and I don't mean just school I mean as a society, about basic principle that seem obvious or common-sense in Europe, like where freedom of speech ends even for radical leftists.

They already were compelled by law not to publish illegal content and that's why it was in their guidelines, so what does the new announcement means? It means they are rewriting their EULAs and contractualisation in order to avoid liabilities for illegal content.

Say the store gets flooded with racist propaganda games, what Steam seem to think it'll be able to do, is authorise and let all this content published on the store (because if anything, the complete haywire lack of quality control and filter was already a problem on Steam) while taking all the time to ban some games in some cases an maybe leave some other game or take more time, while avoiding liability for having accepted, hosted and promoted these games in the first place. That's the only thing their announcement is susceptible to mean.
 

Nicktendo86

Member
The Eurogamer article is slightly bizarre, not sure I like the direction they are going lately if I'm honest. They seem to think they are being funny on twitter now as well but just look like they are trying too hard.
 

BANGS

Banned
What exactly is the argument eurogamer is trying to make here? That steam should ban games because people can get them elsewhere if they wanted? Where is the logic in that?
 

Skyn3t

Banned
I don't care about Steam whatsoever, but lemme just throw one thing to the discussion - all of the major video game media are utter bullshit. From IGN, through Polygon, to Eurogamer. I don't even visit them directly newswise (sometimes via Reddit and GAF links to avoid shittons of useless filler like two new screenshots form whatever [HOT]), but in terms of articles, well, you gotta be mad to read and I enjoy pieces like the one on topic or angry rants about Witcher not having black people in it. Hell, I even saw an IGN article about about should play Geralt in the Netflix series with black actors listed. Just for the sake of political correctness and absurd diversity. Fuckin nuts.

DISCLAIMER

Nope, I'm not a racist, not even close and some of my favorite actors are black. But c'mon...
 
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They would have done the same with games like Kingdom Come because they didn't like lead developer.
Wasn't it already the case?
They tried to get him fired from his studio... which didn't pan out too well considering he was the leader.
Then they almost cost him his publisher before the game's release and he had to issue an apology for the harm his conversations on twitter caused for the devs.
Then it was a media blackout, after the game got too successful it was racism accusations for the game and claims it was an unplayable buggy mess (it wasn't that bad), and then some more personal attacks on staff members that caused them to decline invitations to game developer conferences over fears for their safety. I think the forum that shall not be named doesn't even allow for the staff talent to be acknowledged?

Eurogamer and friends proved that even without the power and cooperation of Valve and console owners they demand here, they were more than willing to make games disappear if they didn't approve of it -- which apparently means they are hate speech by default, and yes they went there indeed for Kingdom Come. If offensive-by-tumblr-conseus, rather than illegal by the rule of law or demonstrably hateful, is enough to get games banned, they surely have not demonstrated responsible use of those accusation labels to be trusted with that much power.
 
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radewagon

Member
It's all about the culture war. The left pretty much controls Hollywood, books, music, TV. comics, education, hell, even sports reporting. They are afraid that people, especially children, might be exposed to non-leftist viewpoints in gaming. Never mind that most large companies are fully onboard, they are afraid of indie games, you might get another Minecraft with its outspoken creator
The Fuck are you taking about? It's the Right that's all about controlling with people see and think mostly backed by Religious Dogma.
Both sides are controlling, using different methods. The right tends to use religious dogma. The left tries to use false "moral" high grounds. Trying to insinuate that only one side does it (when both do it all the time) is disingenuous.

Both sides are bad. You are kind of setting up a false equivalency between the right and the left. False equivalencies are dangerous because they create the impression that there is a give an take of equal footing that creates a sort of fairness through balance. Though it could be said that both sides do in fact aim to influence society, one of those two groups is actively lying to the public, casting (unwarranted) doubt on our institutions, and nurturing people's homophobia and xenophobia in order to do so.

More to the point though.... I guess I want to address the actual thing people are arguing about.

People think Valve's position of "publish everything" is awesome because Valve shouldn't choose what we get to play. On the surface, it seems like a libertarian paradise. The only problem is that this hands-off approach is not necessarily a good thing, nor is it realistic. Very recently Facebook came under fire for allowing misinformation to be spread via it's platform because Facebook did not want to take responsibility for what people do with it. It's a cowardly thing to do. They wanted all of the benefits of having all that content but didn't want to be bothered by the editorial responsibilities that come with it.

Valve is in a similar situation. As a curator of so much content, Valve (whether it wants to or not) has a certain editorial responsibility. This isn't about censorship. This is about curation and doing the hard work that comes with it. It's a difficult thing to define a brand, but that is what Valve needs to do. Is Steam where we go to get well-made games, or is it a swap-meet where I can get scammed by poorly made products? Can I trust that when I get my nephew a Steam gift card, he isn't going to use it to buy pornographic, homophobic, or racist games? Can I trust that when I play a game, it isn't a piece of elaborate propaganda? Basically, can I trust my Steam? And if so, what does that trust look like? Is it trusting that the content won't be morally objectionable? Or is it just trusting the overall quality of the product? Or do I just grow to not trust them and shop elsewhere?

These are questions that many companies have to struggle with. Valve's current position is one that tries to hide it's laziness and fear behind a mask of that libertarian ideal of letting the public and the markets decide what's best. Valve is pretending it is more than it is and that its decisions can/will stifle people's ability to access art/games that diverge from their curation. However, Valve is not the whole of the gaming industry and they are certainly not the guardians of free speech. They are essentially a storefront and storefronts need to make choices about the kinds of products they want to stock. Currently, Valve is afraid of making those choices. It's being cowardly. It's being lazy. Actually, this was all in the article. Not sure why everyone here got hooked on the "censorship" angle. It's like it's a gamer trigger.

Relevant quote from the article:
"Let us be clear: Valve has not made this choice because it thinks it is the ethically correct thing to do. It has made this choice because it does not want to think about ethics at all, and because it is afraid of making the difficult decisions that a company in its position must face. There exist much bigger companies than Valve who face much more existentially terrifying versions of the same problem - companies like Google and Facebook, who find themselves with the fate of the world in their hands - and though none of them is exactly doing a brilliant job, none of them is running away and hiding either. They are having conversations and they are trying."
 

xool

Member
The Eurogamer article is slightly bizarre, not sure I like the direction they are going lately if I'm honest. They seem to think they are being funny on twitter now as well but just look like they are trying too hard.

They've always had a some pointless try-hard think-piece articles from the career failed arts graduates on their team. Former Official Xbox Magazine and Kinect shill Edwin Evans-Thirwell immediately springs to mind, but there are others. They also have some better staff.
 
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