Valve are easing up on what content is allowed on Steam

I don't think fraud attempts, hate mongering and racism need a legitimate platform, and neither does extremism of any sort.

Your extremism is somebody elses mainstream. And "not giving extremism a platform" is thus nothing else but an extremist position in itself.

Extremism isn't the same as having an unpopular opinion and it should never be allowed to be mainstream. You can be a staunch supporter of anarchist ideology for example. That's perfectly fine, regardless of how you feel about their opinions, and they should be allow to argue their stance. Or you can be an extremist advocating violent protests or let's say terror attacks on state infrastructure. The latter does not deserve a platform nor should it be tolerated.

I might be misunderstanding here, but "Advocating terror attacks" would very likely end up in the "illegal" part of the blog post.

True. Just trying to give an example of extremism. And saying that we definitely should not tolerate everything. I guess this is getting off topic though.

"...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..."

I've found Steam's store unusable for a couple of years now. I pretty much exclusively use this site. All the more reason to support Liam I guess. So, I suppose that in that regard things won't change. But, I do not think it is good that the store is not usable. Honestly, I just clicked on "Best Sellers" and one of the first things listed for me was Left For Dead 2. And of course, I already have it as well as half of the games I see listed in front of me. Now, I suppose instead of seeing old crap I already have, there will be NEW crap that I don't want presented to me.

I do appreciate the different perspective on this though. I saw several articles about this change, and this is the only one that shows it in a positive light. I am sceptical myself, but I do understand that other outlets tend to love to bash on Steam.

Speculative junk. Porn, shovelware, fraud attempts, hate mongering, racism, extremists political and religious agendas, and so forth.

And please note, This is content that I do not say should be BANNED - they just do not belong on the main street.

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.

That's part of what bugs me about Steam's announcement on this. They seem to be treating the hate mongering and racism, which we already know is on Steam and will increase following this policy change, as merely a disagreement between people with differeing tastes. Which seems at best hopefully naive, but more likely an attempt by Steam to avoid criticism by taking no position at all and pretending there's no issue in the first place.

But of course, not taking a position actually is taking the position that "this is all fine by us". Even with the thinnest possible disclaimer of "we aren't saying we agree with the content".

Your extremism is somebody elses mainstream. And "not giving extremism a platform" is thus nothing else but an extremist position in itself.

Really?
Karl Popper about the problem ( "paradox of tolerance" ):

You're talking about something completely different. "Extremism" per se just means you have in some area a position that goes far beyond what most people think even as outlying.

For instance, some people think copyright is not strong enough, others think it's way too strong, but the extremist positions in that debate are a) that copyright should last forever, whereas the other extremist position is b) that copyright should be abolished. Since my position is that copyright should not be abolished but return to pre-1841 levels, I think the idea that copyright should last after the death of the artist is already an extremist idea.


Last edited by Seegras on 7 June 2018 at 12:58 pm UTC

Finally they came to their senses. It took some time, but I knew they would arrive there eventually.

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

Ever played Hitman?

Your extremism is somebody elses mainstream. And "not giving extremism a platform" is thus nothing else but an extremist position in itself.

Really?
Karl Popper about the problem ( "paradox of tolerance" ):

You're talking about something completely different. "Extremism" per se just means you have in some area a position that goes far beyond what most people think even as outlying.

No matter if I agree with your understanding of the word, there's extremism that everybody should frown upon and that we should not call mainstream for whoever.

Karl Popper about the problem ( "paradox of tolerance" ):
Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.

Hooray, seeing Mr Popper cited outside of my philosophy class in school is cool!

It's important to understand that he is not saying anything about tolerating the extreme, it's about tolerating *intolerance*. Ie. accept (or at least don't reject them on this basis) even extreme positions if they aren't *intolerant*. This could be eg. "extreme capitalism" or "extreme communism" as they (per se) are not intolerant. However "extreme fascism" is intolerant, as is often enough "extreme anti-fascism".

But there are more facets to it than even this. And this is where I just cannot agree with Valve's decision, just looking away ain't good. "Leaving it to the educated adults on steam"? That's a lot of trust you put into those... "educated" "adults".

Good. I'm glad Steam has grown up and grown some huevos.

Good. I'm glad Steam has grown up and grown some huevos.

...by taking the most spineless position possible that avoids actually having to actually do anything.

I hope that they finally removing the "game must run on windows" rule. And we can see some linux exclusives on Steam.

My acquaintance (friend of friend) also tell me same thing but I still not find that in Valve's ToS/EULA (not big fan reading legal text).

If you do not mind, would you or anyone here pointed which section, para, number, etc., the requirement of rule is? You know, as our general knowledge on Linux gaming.

Thank You.

Valve is trying to completely disassociate itself from the things that it sells and makes money off of in it's own store? Maybe they should actually take responsibility for what they themselves sell and at least have a minimum quality bar?

At the end of the day, I barely rely on the Steam store page to find new games that I might be interested in. The avenues that make me curios of new games: GoL, Twitch, GOG, Co-Optimus.

I basically use GamingOnLinux. When a game is talked about here that seems like my kind of thing, I put it on my Steam wishlist. Never end up with Windows-only games that way!

During a Twitch stream, I actually asked Co-Optimus if they would add whether a game supported Linux or not on their website and they thought it was a good idea. It was on their site within two weeks!

I'm glad Steam isn't going full on SJW lol. Good job Valve!

The Store Preferences work really well for me. I once made an account for my dad, and he likes some games here and there (mostly during the winter time only though) but he doesn't like gore, violence or anime. So I checked the box to not show violence/gore and plus you have a setting there additionally to filter out up to 5 or so tags (e.g., "anime", "mature", "dating sim", and so on) and then we hit the Discovery Queue of the store and clicked a few times "Not Interested" for games and genres we didn't want to see that much -- and it works really well.

So I'm glad that Steam's default setting what is allowed in the Store are this customizable and in default I really like them being less strict than strict. So happy this whole situation about Valve somewhat "threatening" a few developers - and it look so randomly to me - is now solved with I guess a good ending. I'm all in for an open and customizable platform with as less restrictions as possible. Of course quality vs. quantity wise regardless of the content the 100% curated days of Steam also had their charm, but I guess with the flood of new titles these days certainly are over.

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

Ever played Hitman?

Oh yes, I did play some older ones. What I mean is doing a game where is used real person's name, place, date and time when they are going to be there and organizing a group IRL to attempt to kill him/her. IMO that should be illegal, since it's essentially planning a murder.

Honestly, it always seemed silly to me trying to censor "adult" games (those affected anime games on Steam don't even show anything, so label "adult" isn't probably right), but at a same time we have in so many games/movies brutality, murder, gore, litres of blood. It just feels arbitrary, to try to censor nudity/sex while violence is on every corner. In this case even more ridiculous, since it is all drawn, it is not even showing real people. I guess it is a work of "progressive" neo-puritans. If the trend continues (e.g. cancelling swimsuit part in some US miss show, firing grid girls and booth girls) US could live to see a law forbidding women to wear to indecent clothes. Such people should not be called liberals.

The corny argument "think of the children" is invalid in my opinion. It is responsibility of parents to shield children from such content, they have enough tools to do so (ratings, recommended age stickers, game descriptions, trailers, videos of gameplay). Nothing should be banned for adults/teens because of children.

The Store Preferences work really well for me.

Me too. I've basically allowed everything for Linux in the first place, and then I put "soccer" into the blacklist.

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

Ever played Hitman?

Oh yes, I did play some older ones. What I mean is doing a game where is used real person's name, place, date and time when they are going to be there and organizing a group IRL to attempt to kill him/her. IMO that should be illegal, since it's essentially planning a murder.

Honestly, it always seemed silly to me trying to censor "adult" games (those affected anime games on Steam don't even show anything, so label "adult" isn't probably right), but at a same time we have in so many games/movies brutality, murder, gore, litres of blood. It just feels arbitrary, to try to censor nudity/sex while violence is on every corner. In this case even more ridiculous, since it is all drawn, it is not even showing real people. I guess it is a work of "progressive" neo-puritans. If the trend continues (e.g. cancelling swimsuit part in some US miss show, firing grid girls and booth girls) US could live to see a law forbidding women to wear to indecent clothes. Such people should not be called liberals.

The corny argument "think of the children" is invalid in my opinion. It is responsibility of parents to shield children from such content, they have enough tools to do so (ratings, recommended age stickers, game descriptions, trailers, videos of gameplay). Nothing should be banned for adults/teens because of children.

This is a retarded cultural thing. I mean we all have nipples, yet it's acceptable to see man nipples, but not woman nipples?

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https://store.steampowered.com/app/772060/Harvester_of_Dreams__Episode_1/
/

They've answered, and put a Linux binary online. Yay!

Good. I'm glad Steam has grown up and grown some huevos.

...by taking the most spineless position possible that avoids actually having to actually do anything.

I hear you, but I'm an adult and fine with taking responsibility for my own buying decisions.