It literally is not Valve’s problem to handle what goes on off their platform.

If somebody wants to attempt that, uh, good luck? The US is currently run by fascists, all the fascists in government probably are not going to prioritize policing younger, dumber fascists.

If you just put all this burden on Steam, what you end up with is Steam gets massively censored in way more ways than just discussion forums.

But yes, I agree, I say, also just get rid of Steam Groups, entirely.

Just, boink, gone, don’t need em.

Nobody ever uses them for anything serious, they are basically always shit post zones, at best.

Thats what I meant where I elsewhere more or less said ‘nuke everything that isn’t your personal profile and stuff you publish personally’.

Sure, keep some ability for commenting on like, user’s screenshots, stuff people upload to the workshop, mods, comprehensive guides.

But, its the uploader’s job to moderate them, just offer something like ‘hold all comments for personal vetting or keyword filter scan’ before they appear.

Pretty sure those options already exist in other contexts on Steam, but yeah, I am fully down with Steam just cleaning house on almost everything.

I also think that asking for more serious moderation on more platforms is a good idea, but the problem is always going to be having the resources to do that, as well as uh, facsists aren’t going to investigate themselves.

Only other paradigm is to basically require a kind of NetID that either is your government ID or is tied directly to it, for all kinds of public discussion software, and once you do that, well, again, the government is fascists, so now if you criticize them, off to jail for you.

The US is currently run by fascists

Valve Headquarters: PO Box 1688, Bellevue, Washington 98009

Yeah, that’s the precise whale I’m talking about. Imagine upsetting your landlord and despot.

Steam?

You mean the platform with critically acclaimed titles such as ‘Hitler My Friend’ ‘Heal Hitler’ ‘Hitler is my crush’ ?

I would never have guessed that the platform had a problem with far right communities. Surely the Sniper Elite folks have something to say.

I pretty much agree, I literally cannot think of a single time me engaging with the Steam forums has resulted in anything good at all.

Best case scenario you get absolute idiots who know nothing about how games work acting like they do, worst case scenario you run into something akin to Terrorgram.

How a Global Online Network of White Supremacists Groomed a Teen to Kill

The murders of two people outside an LGBTQ+ bar at first looked like the act of a lone shooter. A ProPublica and FRONTLINE investigation shows they were, in fact, the culmination of a coordinated, international recruiting effort by online extremists.

ProPublica (www.propublica.org)

EDIT:

I was completely serious in my other post when I said 99.9% of steam forums are worse than worthless.

Just say, hey, everything in any steam forum, discussion group, basically anything other than comments on steam workshop stuff and guides and your own posted screenshots and your own profile… yep, in 90 days, it all goes away, make your backups now, if you want to, here’s a tool thingy to do that.

We have other platforms for lengthier discussions now, if a game wants to run its own community, fucking buy a domain, set up some forums, set up a discord, a reddit, a lemmy, whatever, do it yourself, its not worth steam potentially getting nuked or massively censored because it allows basicslly auto generated forums for every half baked idiot that makes some game.

I don’t go there for discussions but have found useful fixes from it that wasn’t on pcgamingwiki, which I’ve added to pcgamingwiki linking back to the steam forum. So it has its uses.

Despite the terrible discussions which I don’t use it for it is still at the end of the day place people do ask for help and do receive it when that’s the topic of the thread.

I’m glad its helped you, but every time I am so desperate as to end up at the Steam Comm pages looking for help, I am met by a bunch of overconfident idiots explaining solutions to problems I did not describe, or just people telling me it isn’t a problem, it can be fixed by uninstslling my soul from my body, etc.

Can’t believe you havent included my all time favourite game - sex with hitler

I don’t follow.

You initially said whales who buy tons of games, I assume you mean individuals with 1000+ games on their steam account, buys all the dlc and mtx and loot crates, that kind of whale.

Now you are reffering to… the US government as a whale?

What are you suggesting… be done?

… and by whom?

Are you suggesting Valve functionally commit hara-kiri by … some kind of intentionally angering the fascist government?

What are you suggesting, that Valve fund investigators to link Steam accounts to other platforms and websites, and then… report that knowledge to… the government?

They wouldn’t do anything other than sue Valve out of existence for being antifa.

Valve cannot like… arrest people, issue themselves search warrants, … and if they did set up a system to do something like this, kablamo, now it is instantly turned around to hunt down trans people after Valve is sued into a government buy out or being purchased by fucking Larry Ellison.

Please, explain to me what you are trying to suggest, I don’t get it.

It’s weird I just never see any of this at all. Is it just for certain games? Admittedly I barely ever go into the forums and when I do I’m looking for a specific answers to specific questions, so maybe it’s just people who use Steam for General communication? But I don’t know why anyone would do that so…

I comprehend you’re saying that Valve should get rid off forums and groups.

I’m saying they can’t, the “US” will

sue Valve out of existence for being antifa.

freeze their assets, revoke their business licences, put them on a watchlist, and deathcamp Valve & affiliates.

Valve’s hands are fascistically tied to 🇺🇲’s RMVP.¹

¹ def. of RMVP

Steam?

You mean the platform with critically acclaimed titles such as ‘Hitler My Friend’ ‘Heal Hitler’ ‘Hitler is my crush’ ?

I would never have guessed that the platform had a problem with far right communities. Surely the Sniper Elite folks have something to say.

It’s weird I just never see any of this at all. Is it just for certain games? Admittedly I barely ever go into the forums and when I do I’m looking for a specific answers to specific questions, so maybe it’s just people who use Steam for General communication? But I don’t know why anyone would do that so…

Ooooh, ok.

I would think that them just getting rid of much of their discussion ‘zones’ would be something they could do without pissing off the fascists, and also just being a net good in general…

… whereas if they kept all their steam groups and discussion forums, but instead, specifically began to more heavily moderate / remove right wing extremists from those discussion zones, I would think that would be much more likely to piss off the fascists.

Basically, I don’t think the fascists in government really even understand fully what Steam is, everything it does, but, if they heard it was cracking down specifically on fascists, that would draw more heat to them than if they just removed features which are, imo, just a net negative anyway.

Suuuuuuuuure “Study”

I pretty much agree, I literally cannot think of a single time me engaging with the Steam forums has resulted in anything good at all.

Best case scenario you get absolute idiots who know nothing about how games work acting like they do, worst case scenario you run into something akin to Terrorgram.

How a Global Online Network of White Supremacists Groomed a Teen to Kill

The murders of two people outside an LGBTQ+ bar at first looked like the act of a lone shooter. A ProPublica and FRONTLINE investigation shows they were, in fact, the culmination of a coordinated, international recruiting effort by online extremists.

ProPublica (www.propublica.org)

EDIT:

I was completely serious in my other post when I said 99.9% of steam forums are worse than worthless.

Just say, hey, everything in any steam forum, discussion group, basically anything other than comments on steam workshop stuff and guides and your own posted screenshots and your own profile… yep, in 90 days, it all goes away, make your backups now, if you want to, here’s a tool thingy to do that.

We have other platforms for lengthier discussions now, if a game wants to run its own community, fucking buy a domain, set up some forums, set up a discord, a reddit, a lemmy, whatever, do it yourself, its not worth steam potentially getting nuked or massively censored because it allows basicslly auto generated forums for every half baked idiot that makes some game.

Yes. Study.

Frontiers | Extremist identity creation through performative infighting on Steam

The video game marketplace Steam has long hosted a lively social network for the purpose of connecting game players and game developers. Over the past 5 year...

Frontiers (www.frontiersin.org)

I honestly don’t think I’ve ever been on a steam forum.

This shits generally everywhere nowadays, there’s no hiding from it. It’s like a worldwide pandemic of brain rot at this point. Everyone is polarized, and that’s never going to lead to anything good. I’m still not sure we should all be this connected to each other.

Social media in moderation and with responsibility and rational thought, there’s nothing wrong with that. But people don’t seem to be able to self police themselves, it’s turned into a massive addiction that’s maybe somehow just as bad as the opioid crisis in some ways. It’s infection has circled the globe, turning a lot of otherwise decent people into mindless meme chodes and racism repeaters.