In an interesting blog post written up today, Valve's Erik Johnson has said how Valve will be relaxing their rules for what will be acceptable on Steam.
You might have seen the discussion recently about how Valve sent word to a few developers, giving them notice that their games are going to be removed from Steam. Even we picked up on this, as it didn't really feel right.
There were people suggesting that payment processors were to blame, or outside groups like we had linked in our previous article's comments. Valve said this is not the case at all. It's also not an automated process, Johnson said they have "groups of people looking at the contents of every controversial title submitted to us".
Now, Valve will allow pretty much anything "except for things that we decide are illegal, or straight up trolling". The blog post read as a surprisingly personal insight into how Valve operate, something Valve has been starting to do a little more often lately (which is great to see).
This bit got me:
So what does this mean? It means that the Steam Store is going to contain something that you hate, and don't think should exist. Unless you don't have any opinions, that's guaranteed to happen. But you're also going to see something on the Store that you believe should be there, and some other people will hate it and want it not to exist.
Naturally, Johnson made it clear that being allowed on Steam doesn't mean Valve agree with the content themselves. However, it now means a human at Valve can no longer just send out warnings of a game being removed from Steam. The fact that they're making this step, this real progress towards being more open is a good thing for developers and for gamers.
They continue to be my favourite store and I'm personally happy they will so openly admit when they're wrong and they didn't have a good handle on the situation. Their previous rules seemed to be okay for some, not okay for others—just too vague. Let's just hope the words turn into a reality.
Additionally though, a valid complaint will be that with even less curation finding games you want to see could end up being a bigger problem, one they will need to solve. Obviously this is where the likes of us come in, to let you know about good games, but an improved way to filter the Steam store itself will help. No matter what though, someone won't be happy.
Post updated after publishing.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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The comments on this article are closed.
Quoting: GuestIf you enjoy playing asset flips and shovelware that is your prerogative. They still shouldn't be getting sold on a distrubution platform as big as Steam. Sites like Miniclip and newgrounds had better games then the shovelware sold on steamHe/she doesn't seem to be defending asset flips. Seems more like they are saying "I'd rather live with shovelware than censorship."
I'm sure not why you're even defending things like asset flips, what is your intention? Because I enjoy using both Steam AND GOG if your intention is to fanboy one over the other?
And remember: This is about content, and they do point out that titles that are "trolling" and/or "illegal" will get deleted. I doubt asset flips and shovelware manages to dodge those points.
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Quoting: rat2000I love Steam as a game store/content delivery, but I must admit, their client UI and website looks a bit outdated. I wish they would do something about it. itch.io looks a lot better(their website).Redesign is coming! There has already been leaks :)
Quoting: rat2000Also, I use steam since 2007 I think, and I have gathered a lot of game since then, I would love an option to delete a game if I don't want it anymore(not hide it, delete it).Contact steam support, they can delete games for you.
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Quoting: KeyrockHeck, Steam's had some games on it in the past with missing executables.
Right now. I have 32 games that are missing executables on Linux. All these have a Linux depot. Three of them have Windows executables in the Linux depot. Three others only have the soundtrack in the depot.
I've now written comments to those that claim their game runs on Linux but have empty Linux depots:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/550240/After_Life__Story_of_a_Father/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/496650/Antihorror/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/834890/Cheerleader_reverse_side_of_life/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/398970/Fasaria_World_Browser_MO/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/772060/Harvester_of_Dreams__Episode_1/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/453820/Hero_Quest_Tower_Conflict/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/504500/Hover_Havoc/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/802760/Mariko_Hot_Nightlife/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/836200/The_New_Girl/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/434380/Pixel_Z__Gun_Day/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/389460/Robot_vs_Birds_Zombies/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/360720/Soda_Star/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/434970/That_Dam_Level_redux/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/613370/UpsideDown_Dimensions/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/527800/War_Cube/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/845180/Woodstock_1969/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/828510/Yuko_tragic_love_story/
Last edited by Seegras on 7 June 2018 at 10:13 am UTC
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Quoting: BeamboomSpeculative junk. Porn, shovelware, fraud attempts, hate mongering, racism, extremists political and religious agendas, and so forth.Well, some of the stuff you just mentioned is deservedly illegal in most of the civilized world, so it really should be banned. I don't think fraud attempts, hate mongering and racism need a legitimate platform, and neither does extremism of any sort. Porn (with consenting adults) and shovelware are less of a problem IMHO.
And please note, This is content that I do not say should be BANNED - they just do not belong on the main street.
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qptain Nemo Jun 7, 2018
Quoting: rat2000Also, I use steam since 2007 I think, and I have gathered a lot of game since then, I would love an option to delete a game if I don't want it anymore(not hide it, delete it).Select the game in your library, click on the Support link, select "I want to permanently remove this game from my account". It will lead to removal of the game without requiring any human intervention.
Quoting: Beamboomextremists political and religious agendas, and so forth.What an ironic thing to say. Restricting freedom of expression for the sake of arbitrarily selected political viewpoints can be rightly viewed as an extreme political agenda in itself. Personally I think elevating and over-glorifying particular cultural and political views as somehow infallible and universally correct can have serious consequences (especially in the long run), much like letting "the crazies" speak, and in many cases is definitely the wrong choice.
Last edited by qptain Nemo on 7 June 2018 at 9:57 am UTC
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Quoting: SeegrasQuoting: KeyrockHeck, Steam's had some games on it in the past with missing executables.
Right now. I have 32 games that are missing executables on Linux. All these have a Linux depot. Three of them have Windows executables in the Linux depot. Three others only have the soundtrack in the depot. And most of them feature a Linux-icon in the steam store...
Out of curiosity, what happens when you report the ones with a linux-icon and no executable to valve?
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Quoting: noxYou don't even have to contact anybody. You can do it in the steam client directly by navigating to Steam Support -> Games, Software etc., then finding the game you want to get rid of and clicking "I want to permanently remove this game from my account". I've done that a couple of times and it works fine.Quoting: rat2000Also, I use steam since 2007 I think, and I have gathered a lot of game since then, I would love an option to delete a game if I don't want it anymore(not hide it, delete it).Contact steam support, they can delete games for you.
EDIT: I was slow.
Last edited by tuubi on 7 June 2018 at 9:32 am UTC
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Quoting: tuubiAh, thanks for correcting me. Last time I used that option I got contacted by a service representative to confirm, so I thought it just created a proper ticket with them.Quoting: noxYou don't even have to contact anybody. You can do it in the steam client directly by navigating to Steam Support -> Games, Software etc., then finding the game you want to get rid of and clicking "I want to permanently remove this game from my account". I've done that a couple of times and it works fine.Quoting: rat2000Also, I use steam since 2007 I think, and I have gathered a lot of game since then, I would love an option to delete a game if I don't want it anymore(not hide it, delete it).Contact steam support, they can delete games for you.
EDIT: I was slow.
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Quoting: noxQuoting: GuestIf you enjoy playing asset flips and shovelware that is your prerogative. They still shouldn't be getting sold on a distrubution platform as big as Steam. Sites like Miniclip and newgrounds had better games then the shovelware sold on steamHe/she doesn't seem to be defending asset flips. Seems more like they are saying "I'd rather live with shovelware than censorship."
I'm sure not why you're even defending things like asset flips, what is your intention? Because I enjoy using both Steam AND GOG if your intention is to fanboy one over the other?
And remember: This is about content, and they do point out that titles that are "trolling" and/or "illegal" will get deleted. I doubt asset flips and shovelware manages to dodge those points.
> "I'd rather live with shovelware than censorship."
Yes, exactly what I meant. I don't usually select games on Steam, but rather watch my favorite YouTubers playing random games and then if something looks interesting I look for user reviews (since GamerGame never big corrupt game media again) and reviews from more trusted YouTubers (I already miss Total Biscuit).
I am not a Steam fanboy, I have complained about their Linux client for a long time for being totally useless garbage in HiDPI environment (letters like 1mm, literally head of a pin). I disagree with their decision to limit APIs so now it's impossible to get nice statistics. I also think Valve should do more for Linux, but I understand that it might not be financially too much interesting, at least for now (reading recent article about devs and their opinion on Linux support was quite depressing). But I admit, I see Valve as one of those better companies, way above Google, Facebook or Microsoft.
You wrote that GOG is great, I responded that the price for having mainly good games is also missing some great games, even those best in its genre (e.g. puzzles from Zachtronics were initially rejected without any clarification, I really wonder what rule/standard they could fail, since they are obviously not trivial asset-flips).
As an other commenter mentioned, I think it's unreasonable to expect Valve to filter games for everyone's individual tastes and political viewpoints. I don't agree with censorship and my opinion is, that only a game (or any other medium) literally exciting violence in concrete context (e.g. "kill the man A today around 12" ) should be illegal and censored/removed from distribution platform like Steam. That's the sane definition of hate speech, not the nonsense we see in UK (obvious joke, even by judge's admission, is found guilty of "hate speech" ) and to my surprise even US is starting to head in same direction. But I agree Steam should continue improving their filtering capabilities, I find it still quite limiting and that's probably the reason I am not browsing Steam for games I could buy. When I find a game I want to buy (from other sources), I first check GOG (I dislike DRM, as probably many others here; what a Steam fanboy I am...), then Steam and then search for official site.
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Quoting: qptain NemoQuoting: rat2000Also, I use steam since 2007 I think, and I have gathered a lot of game since then, I would love an option to delete a game if I don't want it anymore(not hide it, delete it).Select the game in your library, click on the Support link, select "I want to permanently remove this game from my account". It will lead to removal of the game without requiring any human intervention.
Wooow nice. I did not know this. Thank you for the tip.
Is there a way to reset the achievements also ? I have some games I would replay and I admit, I have an "achievement addiction", where a lot of the time I play just to make some achievements :)))
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