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Why I deleted my Steam account (gamesindustry.biz article)

Ravelle

Member
90% of the reviews are joke reviews that have '10/10 Would ____ again" and are single sentence reviews.

Just leave reviews to curators or remove the forums and review system all together, there's plenty of sources on the internet to get an opinion about the games.
 

MUnited83

For you.
90% of the reviews are joke reviews that have '10/10 Would ____ again" and are single sentence reviews.

Just leave reviews to curators or remove the forums and review system all together, there's plenty of sources on the internet to get an opinion about the games.

No thanks, and no there isn't. First because your percentage is made up bullshit. The forums have plenty of fixes that are not listed anywhere else. Steam has plenty of niche games that are barely discussed anywhere as well.
 

Slayven

Member
Yeah, I rather worship companies that tries to nickle and dime me in new ways! That's not weird at all!
You shouldn't be worshiping companies at all. They are not your friend or family. You give them money for a service that you desire, that should be the beginning and end of the relationship.

You are on a videogame forum that is largely console focused and this is the thing you find the weirdest? Not the expressions of worship and adoration towards CEOs and giant corporate conglomerates? Seriously?

See above.
 
You shouldn't be worshiping companies at all. They are not your friend or family. You give them money for a service that you desire, that should be the beginning and end of the relationship.



See above.



Right but the posters you quoted never said it was right. Actually, BernardoOne is the kind of poster to advocate against doing so.

What people are telling you is:
1) It's an old thing
2) That isn't specific to Valve/Steam, hence your comment about "weirdest thing in gaming".
 

Slayven

Member
Right but the posters you quoted never said it was right. Actually, BernardoOne is the kind of poster to advocate against doing so.

What people are telling you is:
1) It's an old thing
2) That isn't specific to Valve/Steam, hence your comment about "weirdest thing in gaming".

1) doesn't make it right
2) Figure of speech
 

EmiPrime

Member
I don't see how posting gifs of Reggie or Kaz is at all on the same level as people defending or making excuses for Valve allowing WN/Nazi/racist garbage on their platform.
 
1) doesn't make it right
2) Figure of speech


I never said it makes it right. I said it's an old thing, which means not a surprising one and more importantly, a widespread thing that certainly isn't limited to Valve/Steam.


I don't see how posting gifs of Reggie or Kaz is at all on the same level as people defending or making excuses for Valve allowing WN/Nazi/racist garbage on their platform.



Which wasn't the point made by the poster. The posting of Reggie/Kaz gifs is about worshiping. And yes, worshiping companies is neither something exclusive to one platform and neither a new thing.

Also, you're making a big reach here. You can say that Valve is terrible at moderation, but I don't see Valve allowing it. One means being bad at preventing it. The other means accepting this behaviour and declaring it right with your ToS.
 
More, better, more effective moderation/filtering would be great. If devs need more, better tools to mod their forums, Valve needs to make every effort to ensure they have them. New Steam UI is coming, hopefully with some features that will help address some of these sorts of things in a more timely fashion.

Such is the challenge of providing the community with so many more features than competitors, with so few restrictions.

Definitely not deleting my fucking Steam account because some groups or players are using offensive names or writing offensive shit that I never see. To me that makes about as much sense as selling my PS4 or XOne because people keep being racist on voice chat. On consoles, you party chat to avoid this shit. On Steam, you don't join those groups. And you keep on living.
 

Slayven

Member
No, just facts. It's not "what about", it's just "it's a thing about gaming. Not a good one, but an old one and widespread one". I mean, your original post is about "weirdest thing" as "unique".

And it shouldn't be used to give a pass for Valve Steam.
 
More, better, more effective moderation would be great. New Steam UI is coming, hopefully with some features that will help address some of these sorts of things in a more timely fashion.

Such is the challenge of providing the community with so many more features than competitors, with so few restrictions.

Definitely not deleting my fucking Steam account because some groups or players are using offensive names or writing offensive shit that I never see. To me that makes about as much sense as selling my PS4 or XOne because people keep being racist on voice chat. On consoles, you party chat to avoid this shit. On Steam, you don't join those groups. And you keep on living.


Better tools are important. Although Valve also has to step up their moderation team. The platform is getting bigger, so should they.



And it shouldn't be used to give a pass for Valve Steam.



Which... isn't what I said. It definitively doesn't give them a pass. Then again, words have a meaning: "weirdest" thing means "unique". I'm not telling you it's good. I'm not telling you it does give them a pass about the situation. I'm telling you "company worship isn't a steam thing, it's a gaming, even wider thing". It's not okay but it's not new or unique. Plain and simple.
 

Mael

Member
More, better, more effective moderation would be great. New Steam UI is coming, hopefully with some features that will help address some of these sorts of things in a more timely fashion.

Such is the challenge of providing the community with so many more features than competitors, with so few restrictions.

Definitely not deleting my fucking Steam account because some groups or players are using offensive names or writing offensive shit that I never see. To me that makes about as much sense as selling my PS4 or XOne because people keep being racist on voice chat. On consoles, you party chat to avoid this shit. On Steam, you don't join those groups. And you keep on living.

That's actually reason #1 why I'm not paying for online on consoles.
 
You shouldn't be worshiping companies at all. They are not your friend or family. You give them money for a service that you desire, that should be the beginning and end of the relationship.

See above.

I saw and I ask again: Given the level of fanboyism you have encountered on these forums, do you still maintain that Valve fanboyism is the weirdest?
 
Better tools are important. Although Valve also has to step up their moderation team. The platform is getting bigger, so should they.
That's fine. I don't really care how it's done so long as it gets steadily improved. But I for damn sure am not about to stress out about this, never mind deleting my account. That's just absurd. It's like moving out of Miami because there are a couple of houses on the other side of the city that I don't go to house nazis or gangs but haven't been raided by the cops yet. Hopefully the cops get around to them but their presence has no impact on my experience so no, I am not moving, lol.

If I were to delete my account for any gaming service it would be Battle.net. I've seen more racism playing Overwatch on their far less featured, far more restrictive platform in the last 3 months than I've experienced on Steam and it's games in the last 3 years. Of course I'm not deleting that account or selling my consoles either. Because that's fucking absurd.

That's actually reason #1 why I'm not paying for online on consoles.
That's fair. I'm not interested in letting racist dickheads affect my enjoyment of some shit I've paid for though. Fuck all that.
 
No but I def wouldn't delete my Steam account over it.

That's fair. I do think they should cut the forums if they can't manage it though. I don't think anyone is blaming folks for not canceling their steam accounts. I think there is just disillusionment that Valve allows this type of behavior to fester. Sony and MS would drop the banhammer for TOS.
 
It is disgusting how much Valve get away with. I didn't realise it got this bad for the Firewatch devs, with Valve still doing nothing about their moderation policy. To be fair GoG Galaxy is absolutely amazing, and even Origin is finally in my good books with the amazing value of Origin/EA Access. Seems like a great time to wave goodbye to Steam forever, so thanks for giving me that final reason I needed. All new games I buy will be from competitors wherever possible until they start taking some responsibility for their own platform.
 
That's actually reason #1 why I'm not paying for online on consoles.

Even if it were free, what would be the difference? You still paid for the game. You'd hear hate speech either way. Stop buying multiplayer games if you want to make a statement.
 

Canucked

Member
Valve wants ignore it and in turn everyone else should choose to ignore it. It's very easy for all the straight white male gamers to ignore this kind of stuff. That is the perfect solution for them, because it's so easy to do! And the people who get attacked should be worrying about the Streisand effect and shut up? Jesus.
 

Bogus

Member
M°°nblade;249038226 said:
As a libertarian I say: unless is legally finable, it should be allowed and up to the developers how much they want their business to be potentially damaged by the community they allow to infest their boards. I know some people who have the weirdest interests and fascinations.
I've chuckled about people I know irl who are into indianism, and I do the same when I see this kind of fanatism. If a marginal amount of people adore WWII nazi's, hey, each to their own.

It's very strange to liken the existence of neo-Nazi groups to a lust, fetish, or innocent "adoration" - or to say that Nazi ideology is simply a "weird interest" that folks should be able to indulge if their whims demand it. Your position normalizes Nazi ideology. The risk is that by allowing such an ideology to proliferate, there will come a day when we aren't talking about a "marginal" amount of people. There's actual historical precedent here.

I think you are. Nothing's 'running rampant'.
Overly censorship is exactly what thrives such extremists into concentrated places and creates boards like stormfront used to be. It's better to dilute these kind of views in boards all around where they are challenged with their views instead of reinforced by like/worse-minded individuals in a vacuum.

Same thing. Allowing hateful / racist / Nazi mindsets to exist in general conversation simply normalizes the belief that it's OK to hate black people, jews, and other minorities, and that it's fine to work towards the strengthening of an aryan nation. The motivation doesn't matter - regardless of whether the conversation is intended "for the lulz" or a "top kek", or with a legitimate intent to destroy - Nazis would still keep their strongholds like Stormfront or t_d, while simultaneously being empowered to freely recruit, taint, and corrupt the rest of the population.

We as individuals should demand a higher standard and constant improvement of those who hold positions of power. Valve, like any other business, is simply a group of individuals. And due to its significant stature and revenue stream, it - meaning Valve, the group of individuals - is in a stronger position and thus even more obligated (due to its wealth and influence) to pursue the same social justice that we as common members of society expect in our day-to-day lives. It is not afforded special protection or absolution from its civic duty by virtue of it being a "business".
 
Valve needs to start doing its part to contribute to cleaning the cesspool that permeates gaming. It has every opportunity to do so. Enough with these amoral companies who perpetuate hatred that has no business in mainstream gaming.

I applaud every developer, publisher and user who takes a stand.
 

MUnited83

For you.
It is disgusting how much Valve get away with. I didn't realise it got this bad for the Firewatch devs, with Valve still doing nothing about their moderation policy. To be fair GoG Galaxy is absolutely amazing, and even Origin is finally in my good books with the amazing value of Origin/EA Access. Seems like a great time to wave goodbye to Steam forever, so thanks for giving me that final reason I needed. All new games I buy will be from competitors wherever possible until they start taking some responsibility for their own platform.
Origin has exactly zero moderators.
 

Mael

Member
Even if it were free, what would be the difference? You still paid for the game. You'd hear hate speech either way. Stop buying multiplayer games if you want to make a statement.

Actually if it was free I probably wouldn't use it.
It's also why I like Splatoon and Spla2n, no issue there.
I won't stop playing Bloodborne because of that, I just won't interact with the community at all.
Multiplayer-heavy games are probably never going to be important for me :/
 

HK-47

Oh, bitch bitch bitch.
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...
You can't use community guides to post fixes for specific problems. That's in no way a feasible system
 

Morrigan Stark

Arrogant Smirk
I googled it and it looks like that group doesn't exist anymore, so it's not like Valve doesn't do anything.
...did you even bother to actually click on the link?
The reported group has been banned. Click on it. " This group has been administratively disabled."

About that...

That Nazi community was up for years and it was only taken down because a journalist wrote this article. If he hadn't it would still be up.
Yeah. Not impressed by Valve. They don't give a shit.
 

luulubuu

Junior Member
Valve needs to start doing its part to contribute to cleaning the cesspool that permeates gaming. It has every opportunity to do so. Enough with these amoral companies who perpetuate hatred that has no business in mainstream gaming.

I applaud every developer, publisher and user who takes a stand.

I think a proper karma or "Community" system would be cool featuring down the persons who are toxic and the ones who have been banned several times, but after the latest OW update I don't think that's the solution anymore.

Jeff said about "We don't want these people to be in a different section of the game, we don't want these people in the game at all" which I have been thinking about it, the karma system will be easily rigged and could mean an even bigger problem.

I think people should understand that companies have views and a mission, and they stand to some stuff, if we think we have the access granted to that stuff just because we can make an account easily and we deserve respect even if we are not being respectful to others, that's the way to ruin communities.

I don't think I have an idea or a better solution, this really sadnes me
 

Battlechili

Banned
Right now you can find Hatred, Playing History 2 - Slave Trade, and House Party on the storefront, showing that Valve has no problem with the glorification of mass shootings, the trivialization of atrocities, or the gamification of rape. We can give them some points for consistency though, as the availability of Paranautical Activity suggests Valve is unwilling to take a stand even against death threats to its own founder.
Once again, I like Valve's near hands off approach with regards to what sort of games it allows on the store and wouldn't have this any other way. I want the video game market to be encouraged to be open so that any number of developers can tackle any sort of artistic subjects they desire. (note that I don't mean to imply that the aforementioned games necessarily do a good job of this, just that such is a consequence of such an open policy). As long as the video game marketplace is extremely open in what it allows, writers, programmers, directors, artists, etc. will have a lot of freedom to pursue any number of unique ideas, controversial or no, which makes for a more varied, more diverse, and more unique selection of games available. While this might allow some really bad games on the store, it also opens things up to really good and interesting ones. Plus I don't want Valve deciding for me what games I want to play.
 

MUnited83

For you.
About that...


Yeah. Not impressed by Valve. They don't give a shit.
If you read the article they talk about two groups. One of them got banned because someone else actually reported it , quite recently even, doesn't seem to have anything to do with the article.
The other group is a dead community with about 6 total posts and no activity since 2015.
 

DerpHause

Member
Right now you can find Hatred, Playing History 2 - Slave Trade, and House Party on the storefront, showing that Valve has no problem with the glorification of mass shootings, the trivialization of atrocities, or the gamification of rape. We can give them some points for consistency though, as the availability of Paranautical Activity suggests Valve is unwilling to take a stand even against death threats to its own founder.

Perhaps rather than the refusal to take a stance what we're seeing is a stance of relative openness regarding what they allow on their platform as far as games go.

Or maybe it really is just a lack of moderation. Dunno.
 

//DEVIL//

Member
I wish I could separate myself from Steam but 99% of my PC games are connected to it. I should start buying more through GOG in the future.

you know. I am kinda in the same boat. . I have zero games on GOG and I cant just go there right now when I have like 122 games on steam.

even if I to found an amazing deal and started purchasing the same games on GOG ( which doesn't make any sense to begin with ) many of my games are not even on GOG.

then comes games like humble bundle or websites like cdkeys etc. they all sell their games on steam. going to another format is just more hussle for me. specially with all my pc friends are either on origin or steam. none I know even on GOG.
 
I dunno, I find it weird that cooking food seems to be a hassle for a lot of people. Especially college students. It just seems so easy to me. For example, I made this sopailla cheesecake for my coworkers and they loved it. But, the guy next to me fucked up a simple cake? Is cooking really a skill? My boss and fellow workers wanna pay me too cook take home deserts.

Fuck it I'm down, buy the ingredients, just seems like I'm taking advantage of directions, idk what do you shefs think?
 
I dunno, I find it weird that cooking food seems to be a hassle for a lot of people. Especially college students. It just seems so easy to me. For example, I made this sopailla cheesecake for my coworkers and they loved it. But, the guy next to me fucked up a simple cake? Is cooking really a skill? My boss and fellow workers wanna pay me too cook take home deserts.

Fuck it I'm down, buy the ingredients, just seems like I'm taking advantage of directions, idk what do you shefs think?
What
 

Hylian7

Member
If Neo-Fucking-GAF can be moderated in a rather successful manner, where the mods don't get anything out of it (other than keep a community they enjoy tidy), I'm sure Valve with its billions can get on the fucking moderation train.
Fuck, I'm sure there are plenty of alright people who'd do it for free lmao. It's just Valve being lazy fucks as usual.

While you aren't wrong for sure, Valve is lazy on this for sure, the population of Steam is much much bigger than the population of NeoGAF, and I would imagine is quite the undertaking.

Not making excuses from Valve, as at the very least they should try, but it is still worth pointing out.
 
Once again, I like Valve's near hands off approach with regards to what sort of games it allows on the store and wouldn't have this any other way. I want the video game market to be encouraged to be open so that any number of developers can tackle any sort of artistic subjects they desire. Plus I don't want Valve deciding for me what games I want to play.

The problem is that there is a market for hatred. It's not a matter of the community or the invisible hand of the market filtering it out, as there is a community and a market for it. If you don't mind gaming sliding further into it's reputation as a shithole of bigotry and hate, then enjoy access to the seemingly endless options available on the store, I guess.
 

Stuggernaut

Grandma's Chippy
You will find hate/racism/general-asshole-behavior in ever avenue of "public" Internet. These days you can't get away from it. Even when companies police it, or try to, it is still there.

Giving users the control the content they are exposed to quickly and easily is all I care to have. Let me block people, turn off features, etc and have the losers of the net screaming at a digital wall.

As for Steam (or other online communities), why should they moderate everything? That would be a monumental undertaking at this point. If they could, great, but it makes more sense for them to provide more tools for communities to monitor themselves. Better reporting tools, banning tools, whatever.

If some racist misogynistic hate filled idiot is posting their vomit of an opinion and I don't want to see it, I block them in those places I am allowed to do so. I should have same options in steam. I can report a user, but as far as I can tell, I can't block them completely within the forum vs going to their profile and doing it from there. Most of the time I just skip over shitty posts because I'm too lazy to go block them in their profile ;P

The shit storm of morons is everywhere, the larger the community, the more they are there. It gets worse every year. Not sure what can ever be done honestly.

Just watch a YouTube live stream and then see what you think ;P

For now, I just use Steam as a frontend for my games, GAF for my game opinions, and fuck the rest :)
 

MUnited83

For you.
The problem is that there is a market for hatred. It's not a matter of the community or the invisible hand of the market filtering it out, as there is a community and a market for it. If you don't mind gaming sliding further into it's reputation as a shithole of bigotry and hate, then enjoy access to the seemingly endless options available on the store, I guess.
But the whole thing against Hatred was completely and utterly overblown. The game is hilariously tame for what it's supposed to be. It's no different than a Postal game.
 

horkrux

Member
How do you even find that group? I search for the name, Steam returned no hits. Did a more general search and all i could find was edgy dumbasses with groups of 1 to 5 people at most.
Meanwhile I found Anti-Nazi group at over 1000 members and The only good nazi is a dead nazi at over 300. The presence of big nazi groups seems quite overstated.

Ehhhh

groupsnnp99.png

And that was just from the first page of results by searching for 'Nazi'. Who knows how many slightly less obvious Neonazi groups (say, without Nazi in the title) there are.
There was also one that was calling on people to kill all Jews.
 

Battlechili

Banned
The problem is that there is a market for hatred. It's not a matter of the community or the invisible hand of the market filtering it out, as there is a community and a market for it. If you don't mind gaming sliding further into it's reputation as a shithole of bigotry and hate, then enjoy access to the seemingly endless options available on the store, I guess.
I'm not so sure of that.
Hatred itself wasn't a very successful game. It garnered a lot of attention due to controversy, but in the end after release it was criticized for being...well, not a very good game in any regard.

I'd like to discuss the situation regarding that game a bit further as its partially relevant to the conversation with regards to how these games affect the overall gaming community, but as its desired that the game doesn't get any attention here, I think its best to drop this here.

EDIT: Just realized that you may be referring to not that specific game when you say "hatred", but as in the concept itself. If this is the case, please disregard everything I just said. As for the market for "hatred" as a concept, its certainly concerning, but I'm also not sure that these games necessarily translate to any actual feelings of hatred. (similar to the idea that violence in video games doesn't correlate to actual violence) With regards to the article and quoted text, I only want to take aim at the idea of games themselves being allowed or disallowed on the storefront. I've never liked the idea of quality control on the Steam store and I suppose it applies here in the sense that I don't believe the aforementioned games have substantial negative effects on the people that play them. I suppose one could make the argument that the people choosing to play these games, not the games themselves, are the problem and that the games simply make the gaming community inviting for certain types of people, in which case I do believe that is a legitimate concern. But I'm not necessarily sure that an effort to remove said games would be beneficial to the overall gaming community in the sense that I think such removal opens up the possibility of controversial yet artistic and non-hateful games to being disallowed on the store.
 

TheYanger

Member
And when that moment comes, they'd rather shut those features down alltogether. Why waste millions of dollars on moderating steamforums when they dont earn you any money back?



Steam has a userbase of 125 million people.

The toxcity in unmoderatorable amounts will always be there regardless of good or bad competition.

No, it's not unmoderatable. Neogaf is unmoderatable by your logic. Shit will slip through the cracks, that is not the same as literally not even giving a fuck.

It's not hard to police hot ticket games, or like, usergroups as opposed to individuals (which there are many less of). It gets harder every day that they don't do it though since they're letting it pile up.
 
But the whole thing against Hatred was completely and utterly overblown. The game is hilariously tame for what it's supposed to be. It's no different than a Postal game.

Apologies for the confusion, I was referring not to the game titled 'Hatred' but the bigotry/hate that is present in mainstream gaming.
 

Not Spaceghost

Spaceghost
I'm so glad more people are becoming vocally critical of steam and how valve is grossly mismanaging it all because they can just sit back and say "Well it just prints money so who cares?".
 

Zia

Member
I'm so glad more people are becoming vocally critical of steam and how valve is grossly mismanaging it all because they can just sit back and say "Well it just prints money so who cares?".

They treat their own games the same way now. It's infuriating.
 
Maybe I'm wrong but weren't they going to remove the whole forum system just because?

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.
 
No, it's not unmoderatable. Neogaf is unmoderatable by your logic. Shit will slip through the cracks, that is not the same as literally not even giving a fuck.

It's not hard to police hot ticket games, or like, usergroups as opposed to individuals (which there are many less of). It gets harder every day that they don't do it though since they're letting it pile up.



As someone said already: NeoGAF access is a lot more difficult: Paid mail address and accounts validated by the moderation team. For this very reason, the traffic for potential content to moderate is already a lot smaller.

I do agree though, that it's not unmoderatable. At least; they definitely can and should improve the situation.
 
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