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.
But stray from politics and there are always necessary limits; a naive extension of free speech absolutism about political expression to other realms just doesn't work. Examples of speech that nobody ever worries about criminalizing: Speech intended to seduce minors, speech in the service of fraud (eg phishing), false advertising . . . speech rights can come into conflict with other rights. The question is always just where to draw the lines, not whether there are any. Personally, I've found for instance that well moderated discussion lists which draw some lines are way better than "anything goes" lists because while in theory "anything goes" allows more freedom of speech, in practice what it allows is intimidation and the tactical use of offensiveness to drive away people who aren't megacombative. Given that, it could be argued that in largely declining to draw any lines, Valve are copping out, failing to protect other things, as much as they are protecting speech.
But it's all about the specifics. I don't really see the need to put a lot of limits to "speech" in the case of offensive computer games. There are very few games I see as posing a huge issue offensiveness-wise, and those few are probably covered by Steam's "trolling" category. Everything else might cause someone who stumbled upon it with tender sensibilities some mild shock, but that's about the least important reason for limiting speech and just not good enough IMO. Further, most games that could be a problem are only offensive if they are pushed at a customer against their will. But those games aren't going to be--the headline games you just see on the front page aren't like that (unless you can't handle the basic computer game foundation that ultra-violence is OK, but then you should maybe go play scrabble), and the "recommended" games are generally only going to show "offensive" content of types your history suggests interest in. So for the most part, if you want to be offended by a game you're going to have to search for it. In which case, your problem--if someone actively goes looking for things to be offended by, they can live with what they get.
Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 15 June 2018 at 11:36 pm UTC
Quoting: Purple Library GuyI believe what Eike is getting at is that there are cases in which free speech creates actual harm. There are always edge cases--the main point of free speech is to protect expression of political opinions in disagreement with either the authorities or the majority of the citizens.
But stray from politics and there are always necessary limits; a naive extension of free speech absolutism about political expression to other realms just doesn't work. Examples of speech that nobody ever worries about criminalizing: Speech intended to seduce minors, speech in the service of fraud (eg phishing), false advertising . . . speech rights can come into conflict with other rights. The question is always just where to draw the lines, not whether there are any. Personally, I've found for instance that well moderated discussion lists which draw some lines are way better than "anything goes" lists because while in theory "anything goes" allows more freedom of speech, in practice what it allows is intimidation and the tactical use of offensiveness to drive away people who aren't megacombative. Given that, it could be argued that in largely declining to draw any lines, Valve are copping out, failing to protect other things, as much as they are protecting speech.
Exactly, some call "anything goes" als "positive freedom" in the sense as looking from the pov of the individual, there are no boundaries to their specific free speech.
But there's also negative freedom: How does the freedom of others impact (and limit) your freedom.
Quoting: Purple Library GuyI believe what Eike is getting at is that there are cases in which free speech creates actual harm.
That's my takeaway from Eike's latest post as well---and now that I know English is not Eike's first language, I can see that what I thought might be glib generalizations was in fact mere linguistic awkwardness.
Likely Eike's responses to my initial posts were similarly hobbled by Eike's limited command of English. Had I been aware, I would have never even replied.
And yes, I'm quite aware of the "dark" side, if you will, of free speech/expression---and I feel like that's the precisely why Valve has wisely reserved the right to remove content at their discretion---it's their company, so it's their call.
slaapliedje Jun 16, 2018
Quoting: NanobangQuoting: Purple Library GuyI believe what Eike is getting at is that there are cases in which free speech creates actual harm.
That's my takeaway from Eike's latest post as well---and now that I know English is not Eike's first language, I can see that what I thought might be glib generalizations was in fact mere linguistic awkwardness.
Likely Eike's responses to my initial posts were similarly hobbled by Eike's limited command of English. Had I been aware, I would have never even replied.
And yes, I'm quite aware of the "dark" side, if you will, of free speech/expression---and I feel like that's the precisely why Valve has wisely reserved the right to remove content at their discretion---it's their company, so it's their call.
My thought on this is that if Valve let something into it's store in the first place, it shouldn't be able to randomly remove it because of some shift in someone's sensibilities. Granted, that doesn't help with some of the ones that crept in under Greenlight, but even those probably had some sort of final say.
I think of them yanking out the ones with animated breasts to be the equivalent of Utah stores banning all the nude magazines. Something that shouldn't have happened.
Patreon
PayPal
See more from me