Thank you for the commentary (PCGamesN blocks IPs from Ukraine so I can’t read the article). Will need grab a copy of the paper.

Why is HoI 4 in the background…

Steam needs to shut down their forums. It’s clear they have no intention of moderating them and they are so incredibly toxic, hateful, and disgusting that I feel bad about using the platform at all.

Steam needs to shut down their forums. It’s clear they have no intention of moderating them and they are so incredibly toxic, hateful, and disgusting that I feel bad about using the platform at all.

The conflict of interests is that they are whales that buy games, but never play. This is why Valve doesn’t want to ban them.

Because of the group that they exemplified in the paper, the top 3 games that were common to right wing social circles on Steam were:

Counterstrike 2

HOI 4

Garry’s Mod

Now, this isn’t the same as saying ‘everyone who plays this game is a right wing extremeist’, its not that kind of analysis, but it is saying that if you are a right wing extremeist, these games are games you probably play.

You could however do some napkin math based on daily player counts and realize that CS2 has way, waaay more players than HOI4 or Gmod, and then realize that there likely are a disproportionate number of HOI4 and Gmod players who are right wing extremists, as compared to many other games.

The paper specifically says:

While most of these games are commonly played among all types of users, Hearts of Iron IV (HOI4) is an important exception. HOI4 is a strategy game developed by Paradox Interactive in 2016, and it was originally played primarily by hardcore strategy gamers.

However, since its launch, neo-Nazi and neo-fascist communities have increasingly adopted it as a symbol. Far-right communities have embraced the ability to play as Nazis and fascists in HOI4, and they have particularly celebrated the ability to create speculative fiction via the built-in story and user-created mods (White and Lamphere-Englund, 2024; Newhouse and Kowert, 2024).

Frankly, as a HOI4 enjoyer myself… they’re not wrong, go try to follow all the drama behind the New Order mod, and you will probably see what I mean.

And also, as a former Gmod player, I can absolutely personally tell you all about Nazis and grooming in roleplay servers, as I am unfortunate enough to have crossed paths with Spartan5150/ParadymShyft many times, to the point that I could easily doxx him and tell you his real name, just off the top of my head.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about: He’s a Nazi pedophile with a penchant for grooming underage girls and sending them pics of his oddly shaped cock, and then baiting them into sending him their nudes, and then him holding those over their heads to force them to keep doing weird RP shit… who then went on to be the lead community manager for “The Isle”, ostensibly an attempt to make some kind of ‘live as a dinosaur’ multiplayer simulation type game.

Anyway, here’s the full table from the study, the paper this article is clumsily based on:

You don’t need to ban whales on steam who have tons of games.

Just get rid of or massively downsize steam community forums and group discussions.

They don’t need to exist.

Whales can still be whales and write an angry game review or whatever, but we don’t need discussion forums on Steam for every possible fucking thing.

Because of the group that they exemplified in the paper, the top 3 games that were common to right wing social circles on Steam were:

Counterstrike 2

HOI 4

Garry’s Mod

Now, this isn’t the same as saying ‘everyone who plays this game is a right wing extremeist’, its not that kind of analysis, but it is saying that if you are a right wing extremeist, these games are games you probably play.

You could however do some napkin math based on daily player counts and realize that CS2 has way, waaay more players than HOI4 or Gmod, and then realize that there likely are a disproportionate number of HOI4 and Gmod players who are right wing extremists, as compared to many other games.

The paper specifically says:

While most of these games are commonly played among all types of users, Hearts of Iron IV (HOI4) is an important exception. HOI4 is a strategy game developed by Paradox Interactive in 2016, and it was originally played primarily by hardcore strategy gamers.

However, since its launch, neo-Nazi and neo-fascist communities have increasingly adopted it as a symbol. Far-right communities have embraced the ability to play as Nazis and fascists in HOI4, and they have particularly celebrated the ability to create speculative fiction via the built-in story and user-created mods (White and Lamphere-Englund, 2024; Newhouse and Kowert, 2024).

Frankly, as a HOI4 enjoyer myself… they’re not wrong, go try to follow all the drama behind the New Order mod, and you will probably see what I mean.

And also, as a former Gmod player, I can absolutely personally tell you all about Nazis and grooming in roleplay servers, as I am unfortunate enough to have crossed paths with Spartan5150/ParadymShyft many times, to the point that I could easily doxx him and tell you his real name, just off the top of my head.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about: He’s a Nazi pedophile with a penchant for grooming underage girls and sending them pics of his oddly shaped cock, and then baiting them into sending him their nudes, and then him holding those over their heads to force them to keep doing weird RP shit… who then went on to be the lead community manager for “The Isle”, ostensibly an attempt to make some kind of ‘live as a dinosaur’ multiplayer simulation type game.

Anyway, here’s the full table from the study, the paper this article is clumsily based on:

Sure, but they’ll congregate on 8chan, discord, kiwifarms, their websites, etc… You’ll also need to tackle Steam groups too. Too many of them.

Nazis are worse than roaches, you need to eradicate everywhere lest you suffer their mob campaigns.

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.