Starting on Tuesday, September 25th Valve will be actively moderating all game forums on Steam unless a developer opts to not have Valve do so.
So from then onwards if someone reports a post on a Steam forum, let's say for Streets of Rogue, it will then go into a queue for Valve's own moderation team to look over. They will then remove it if it violates their community guidelines.
It does make sense, since Valve already moderates other user posted content across Steam like screenshots, artwork, guides, user profiles, community groups and so on. They said they previously didn't want to step on the toes of developers, who ran their community their way. However, they said they've been hearing from developers that they need help. Valve's Tom Giardino mentioned on Twitter "Many of the changes are direct implementations of suggestions from devs at indie meetups, GDC, AAA studio visits, passionate twitter rants, etc. So, thanks for speaking up in all of those places and keep it coming.".
To go along with this, Valve has been actively expanding their moderation team to cope with the increased workload. Thankfully, they won't be relying on some special algorithms to determine what posts can stay and what goes in the bin.
I can certainly understand why developers want a hand with moderating their Steam communities for each game, as a lot of the time they really do up becoming a complete pit of arguments, trolls and all sorts of rubbish.
What do you think to Valve increasing their presence in the forums for each game? I think it's a welcome move. See the announcement here.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: 0aTTEven a game like Portal2 is censored in Germany. Fortunately only mild.Whoa, what? It's been a while since I played it, but isn't the game free of both nudity and violence? Does German law have something against paint?
Quoting: DrMcCoyValve is actually paying people to moderate things? Well, there's a first for everything, I guess.
Here's hoping they do it right, but I won't be holding my breath.
Quoting: 0aTTThe game was, of course, immediately banned in Germany
Nope, the game isn't banned in Germany. In fact, Germany (and many places in Europe) is way laxer than the US in terms of nudity and sexuality. The US is kind of...prude.
These games are perfectly fine and not-banned in Germany. They are, however, age-restricted. And there's the rub: it's just that the Steam age gate is, well, useless and not up to the German standards. Regulations in Germany require Valve to verify the age of buyers. Just saying "Yes, I'm 18" is not enough.
One way to do this for digital goods (for physical goods, our postal service offers age verification) would be, I guess, Postident, which is used for opening bank accounts, getting a mobile phone SIM, and things like that.
Although surely the US has much "better" legal protections for games than Germany. Plenty of games in Germany are either banned or somehow legally restricted and AFAIK games are not covered by the freedom of expression in Germany since they are not considered "art". Not so much in the US.
The first Portal game was lightly censored for a while, with blood generated when turrets hit you painted gray instead of red, but even that has been removed years ago.
Stop telling lies.
Last edited by DrMcCoy on 21 September 2018 at 1:02 pm UTC
Quoting: DrMcCoyNo, Portal 2 is not censored in Germany. At all.
The first Portal game was lightly censored for a while, with blood generated when turrets hit you painted gray instead of red, but even that has been removed years ago.
Stop telling lies.
I think he meant Postal 2... :)
Comandante Ñoñardo Sep 21, 2018
General discussion forums, that is another thing...
Quoting: GuestQuoting: Comandante ÑoñardoI think only game owners should be allowed to post on each game forum...
General discussion forums, that is another thing...
That feature does exist but the devs have to turn it on.
Tripwire turned it on for Killing Floor 2. It's pretty infuriating. You can't ask for status reports (e.g. on Linux builds) and you can't ask specific questions about a game before you buy. I mean, fair enough, their forum their rules, but I tend swerve away from any dev/game who actually does it.
Quoting: DrMcCoyValve is actually paying people to moderate things? Well, there's a first for everything, I guess.
Here's hoping they do it right, but I won't be holding my breath.
Quoting: 0aTTThe game was, of course, immediately banned in Germany
Nope, the game isn't banned in Germany. In fact, Germany (and many places in Europe) is way laxer than the US in terms of nudity and sexuality. The US is kind of...prude.
These games are perfectly fine and not-banned in Germany. They are, however, age-restricted. And there's the rub: it's just that the Steam age gate is, well, useless and not up to the German standards. Regulations in Germany require Valve to verify the age of buyers. Just saying "Yes, I'm 18" is not enough.
One way to do this for digital goods (for physical goods, our postal service offers age verification) would be, I guess, Postident, which is used for opening bank accounts, getting a mobile phone SIM, and things like that.
Yeah Germany is quite strict with their age limits. If a game or film is FSK18 then you have to prove without doubt that you are indeed 18 or over. Have had to mail in a picture of my drivers license on several occasions when ordering DVD:s from Germany and Holland back in the day when I was trying to get hold of some unrated films that where only released cut in my country due to how hostile our censor system was back in the 80:s.
The problem now is that even though we no longer have any censorship of films or games here in Sweden we are such a small market that distributors tend to group us together with the Germans and they sometimes want to get a FSK12 or 16 in order to wider the audience and thus releasing the same cut version also here.
Fun fact is that film censorship started in Germany 1906 due to police reacting to police officers being ridiculed in movies at the time. Here in Sweden it started in 1911 when a police officer (the police again) reacted with disgust on a movie where the kitchen aid was disrespectful to a landlord and woe if this kind of behaviour would get a foothold in the society as a whole... Thankfully the state censor-board got a CEO that had a secret plan to disband the whole thing, which she finally managed to do in 2011 but the last movie that was cut in any way was Casino back in 2009 (so much for the myth that Sweden is run by SJW:s).
Only really see this as a way for devs to remove posts that tell people to stay away from their games for very legitimate reasons.
Sure there is some toxic stuff out there, but it's usually triggered by some BS problems in the games to begin with.
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