Poll: So Steam is not going to censor what games it will sell
- Thread starter DANEgerous
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If you mean the Quran yeah, we have sold that, yes Amazon does, to all the other questions barring the Homemade Avengers yes to an extent it is and very clearly censorship, and on the Homemade Avengers, no that is theft on behalf of both you and the BBC of whoever owns the TV right to the Avengers. How is none of that blatantly obvious? So that was hideously unconvincing care to try again?Avnger said:
Yeah I have to wonder where the idea only the government can censor came from but it needs to die. Ever found a censored song? Me neither that would have to be one hideous song likely tell you how to build an atomic bomb or something.CaitSeith said:
Those are illegal and would be banned just like the AIDS simulator that was also removed as it is clearly trolling.BreakfastMan said:
The government isn't going to waste time and money to create an agency to sift through things they deem obscene. Everything is self-regulated.DANEgerous said:
Moral panic happens. Government wants to get involved. Industries offer to self-regulate, because it would be in their best interest rather than having the government have that authority. What is being regulated has to conform to the demands of moral panics.
Pornography, video games, school internet, tv channels, etc are self-regulated. In some cases, nobody really knows what will get them in hot water, so the content they allow is all over the place. However they are all under the threat of very poorly enforced obscenity laws. That's where watchdogs come in. What gets pulled comes down to chance, whether or not the pastor or soccer mom has discovered such vile and improprietous content, and they will petition the government if the industry doesn't comply.
By the "only government can censor" definition, Steam pulling pornographic VNs is censorship. At the end of the day, things like Nekopara are obviously obscene, and by law, child pornography. When a conservative watchdog comes along and wants Steam to pull pornographic games, which is what happened, it's censorship by all definitions.
That's pretty much it. Like I've said elsewhere, this is the typical kind of technolibertarianism that's gotten Google, Twitter, and Facebook into big trouble and has caused PR NIGHTMARES for them. This kind of doubling down on the "free market" has never, EVER worked and has always backfired.Captain Marvelous said:
Well, 1. False. Censorship isn't just government restrictions on speech. If Valve were banning games on political or taste lines that would be censorship too. 2. In the USA at least where Valve is based the 1st amendment applies to games. We might not have any free speech in Europe but those countries are quite happy to send people to jail for insults and jokes anyway so this won't change much there. Germany already heavily censors games (Look up German TF2) for example.CaitSeith said:
Is that why all those company's own attempts at censorship have earned them such bad reputation? Facebook, Google and Twitter are more at risk from being reclassified as publishers if they censor and control what's allowed on their various platforms which brings them under government restriction in the USA.Aiddon said:
My personal opinion is I don't much rightly care, only insofar as people don't conflate merits of artistic and commercial validity with 'censorship'.
What I'm more worried about is bullshit like Youtube autodemonetising and auto-age restricting LGBTQ content regardless of actual content. Also allowing hate groups to target said videos with marketing campaigns, meaning people who want to access materials concerning LGBTQ resources get bombarded with evangelical bullshit telling them they're evil.
Funny you don't hear the freeze peach crowd about stuff like that. Why not give creators the capacity to choose available advertisers?
Also if Steam surrenders all quality control, it better make its refunds process a whole lot more accessible.
What I'm more worried about is bullshit like Youtube autodemonetising and auto-age restricting LGBTQ content regardless of actual content. Also allowing hate groups to target said videos with marketing campaigns, meaning people who want to access materials concerning LGBTQ resources get bombarded with evangelical bullshit telling them they're evil.
Funny you don't hear the freeze peach crowd about stuff like that. Why not give creators the capacity to choose available advertisers?
Also if Steam surrenders all quality control, it better make its refunds process a whole lot more accessible.
I wouldn't. I'd call it market suicide and theft. Assuming it didn't bar people from their own IP and marketed services however, just market suicide.Vanilla ISIS said:
ISPs do this already. Also, no it wouldn't... unless the government specifically orders them to. Whole reason we had net neutrality was to stop private first controlling the flow of information in an unknowable or multitudinal way.
Moreover Steam isn't censoring shit by cleaning up its storefront.
If I ran a dress shop and refused to stock a label you designed on my shelves, you wouldn't accuse me of 'censoring you', would you? Maybe I think your ideas of fashion are gauche, poorly hemmed, with atrocious fabric and colour choices, and your product is clearly derivative of our last winter catalogue. Low suitability for the standards I wish to maintain in my boutique...
Clearly not censorship, right?
No one is stopping you, however, from flinging your garbage elsewhere.
People really need to get it through their thick skulls that not putting something on your store front or removing it later is not censorship. I can't buy blue pepsi easily but that doesnt make it censored.
Sure it can feel very much like censorship when you realise its practically impossible to buy something because nobodies selling it, but it still is not censorship no matter how much it feels like it. People need to realise if they want to argue against private companies controlling what media they get to consume, they need to call it something else not censorship or they simply undermine themselves by using the wrong words.
Censorship is when its against the law. Not just hard to get a hold of.
The real problem here is monopolies, too much power in the hands of big companies means they can control what you have access to. Its like if there was only one supermarket in town and the owner hated oranges, so he never stocked them and thus the town cant easily get oranges. Its definitly something shit but its not censorship.
Sure it can feel very much like censorship when you realise its practically impossible to buy something because nobodies selling it, but it still is not censorship no matter how much it feels like it. People need to realise if they want to argue against private companies controlling what media they get to consume, they need to call it something else not censorship or they simply undermine themselves by using the wrong words.
Censorship is when its against the law. Not just hard to get a hold of.
The real problem here is monopolies, too much power in the hands of big companies means they can control what you have access to. Its like if there was only one supermarket in town and the owner hated oranges, so he never stocked them and thus the town cant easily get oranges. Its definitly something shit but its not censorship.
Weed is not hard to get a hold of and illegal so I guess it is censored while it is not censored. Removing things from being able to be sold is censorship, you have made a rather good case for that with this post. Controlling what one could consume wouldn't even be a bad definition of censorship to be honest.Fieldy409 said:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1666776116200553082
Had no idea what what any of you were all talking about
[hr]
This announcement got green lit by other Valve employees to be published
June 6 - EJ
Recently there's been a bunch of community discussion around what kind of games we're allowing onto the Steam Store. As is often the case, the discussion caused us to spend some time examining what we're doing, why we're doing it, and how we could be doing it better. Decision making in this space is particularly challenging, and one that we've really struggled with. Contrary to many assumptions, this isn't a space we've automated - humans at Valve are very involved, with groups of people looking at the contents of every controversial title submitted to us. Similarly, people have falsely assumed these decisions are heavily affected by our payment processors, or outside interest groups. Nope, it's just us grappling with a really hard problem.
Unfortunately, our struggling has resulted in a bunch of confusion among our customers, developer partners, and even our own employees. So we've spent some time thinking about where we want to be on this, and we'd like to talk about it now. But we also think it's critical to talk about how we've arrived at our position, so you can understand the trade-offs we're making.
The challenge is that this problem is not simply about whether or not the Steam Store should contain games with adult or violent content. Instead, it's about whether the Store contains games within an entire range of controversial topics - politics, sexuality, racism, gender, violence, identity, and so on. In addition, there are controversial topics that are particular to games - like what even constitutes a "game", or what level of quality is appropriate before something can be released.
Common questions we ask ourselves when trying to make decisions didn't help in this space. What do players wish we would do? What would make them most happy? What's considered acceptable discussion / behavior / imagery varies significantly around the world, socially and legally. Even when we pick a single country or state, the legal definitions around these topics can be too broad or vague to allow us to avoid making subjective and interpretive decisions. The harsh reality of this space, that lies at the root of our dilemma, is that there is absolutely no way we can navigate it without making some of our players really mad.
In addition, Valve is not a small company - we're not a homogeneous group. The online debates around these topics play out inside Valve as well. We don't all agree on what deserves to be on the Store. So when we say there's no way to avoid making a bunch of people mad when making decisions in this space, we're including our own employees, their families and their communities in that.
So we ended up going back to one of the principles in the forefront of our minds when we started Steam, and more recently as we worked on Steam Direct to open up the Store to many more developers: Valve shouldn't be the ones deciding this. If you're a player, we shouldn't be choosing for you what content you can or can't buy. If you're a developer, we shouldn't be choosing what content you're allowed to create. Those choices should be yours to make. Our role should be to provide systems and tools to support your efforts to make these choices for yourself, and to help you do it in a way that makes you feel comfortable.
With that principle in mind, we've decided that the right approach is to allow everything onto the Steam Store, except for things that we decide are illegal, or straight up trolling. Taking this approach allows us to focus less on trying to police what should be on Steam, and more on building those tools to give people control over what kinds of content they see. We already have some tools, but they're too hidden and not nearly comprehensive enough. We are going to enable you to override our recommendation algorithms and hide games containing the topics you're not interested in. So if you don't want to see anime games on your Store, you'll be able to make that choice. If you want more options to control exactly what kinds of games your kids see when they browse the Store, you'll be able to do that. And it's not just players that need better tools either - developers who build controversial content shouldn't have to deal with harassment because their game exists, and we'll be building tools and options to support them too.
As we mentioned earlier, laws vary around the world, so we're going to need to handle this on a case-by-case basis. As a result, we will almost certainly continue to struggle with this one for a while. Our current thinking is that we're going to push developers to further disclose any potentially problematic content in their games during the submission process, and cease doing business with any of them that refuse to do so honestly. We'll still continue to perform technical evaluations of submissions, rejecting games that don't pass until their issues have been resolved.
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.
It also means that the games we allow onto the Store will not be a reflection of Valve's values, beyond a simple belief that you all have the right to create & consume the content you choose. The two points above apply to all of us at Valve as well. If you see something on Steam that you think should not exist, it's almost certain that someone at Valve is right there with you.
To be explicit about that - if we allow your game onto the Store, it does not mean we approve or agree with anything you're trying to say with it. If you're a developer of offensive games, this isn't us siding with you against all the people you're offending. There will be people throughout the Steam community who hate your games, and hope you fail to find an audience, and there will be people here at Valve who feel exactly the same way. However, offending someone shouldn't take away your game's voice. We believe you should be able to express yourself like everyone else, and to find others who want to play your game. But that's it.
In the short term, we won't be making significant changes to what's arriving on Steam until we've finished some of the tools we've described in this post. As we've hopefully managed to convey, navigating these issues is messy and complicated. Countries and societies change their laws and cultural norms over time. We'll be working on this for the foreseeable future, both in terms of what products we're allowing, what guidelines we communicate, and the tools we're providing to developers and players.
Recently there's been a bunch of community discussion around what kind of games we're allowing onto the Steam Store. As is often the case, the discussion caused us to spend some time examining what we're doing, why we're doing it, and how we could be doing it better. Decision making in this space is particularly challenging, and one that we've really struggled with. Contrary to many assumptions, this isn't a space we've automated - humans at Valve are very involved, with groups of people looking at the contents of every controversial title submitted to us. Similarly, people have falsely assumed these decisions are heavily affected by our payment processors, or outside interest groups. Nope, it's just us grappling with a really hard problem.
Unfortunately, our struggling has resulted in a bunch of confusion among our customers, developer partners, and even our own employees. So we've spent some time thinking about where we want to be on this, and we'd like to talk about it now. But we also think it's critical to talk about how we've arrived at our position, so you can understand the trade-offs we're making.
The challenge is that this problem is not simply about whether or not the Steam Store should contain games with adult or violent content. Instead, it's about whether the Store contains games within an entire range of controversial topics - politics, sexuality, racism, gender, violence, identity, and so on. In addition, there are controversial topics that are particular to games - like what even constitutes a "game", or what level of quality is appropriate before something can be released.
Common questions we ask ourselves when trying to make decisions didn't help in this space. What do players wish we would do? What would make them most happy? What's considered acceptable discussion / behavior / imagery varies significantly around the world, socially and legally. Even when we pick a single country or state, the legal definitions around these topics can be too broad or vague to allow us to avoid making subjective and interpretive decisions. The harsh reality of this space, that lies at the root of our dilemma, is that there is absolutely no way we can navigate it without making some of our players really mad.
In addition, Valve is not a small company - we're not a homogeneous group. The online debates around these topics play out inside Valve as well. We don't all agree on what deserves to be on the Store. So when we say there's no way to avoid making a bunch of people mad when making decisions in this space, we're including our own employees, their families and their communities in that.
So we ended up going back to one of the principles in the forefront of our minds when we started Steam, and more recently as we worked on Steam Direct to open up the Store to many more developers: Valve shouldn't be the ones deciding this. If you're a player, we shouldn't be choosing for you what content you can or can't buy. If you're a developer, we shouldn't be choosing what content you're allowed to create. Those choices should be yours to make. Our role should be to provide systems and tools to support your efforts to make these choices for yourself, and to help you do it in a way that makes you feel comfortable.
With that principle in mind, we've decided that the right approach is to allow everything onto the Steam Store, except for things that we decide are illegal, or straight up trolling. Taking this approach allows us to focus less on trying to police what should be on Steam, and more on building those tools to give people control over what kinds of content they see. We already have some tools, but they're too hidden and not nearly comprehensive enough. We are going to enable you to override our recommendation algorithms and hide games containing the topics you're not interested in. So if you don't want to see anime games on your Store, you'll be able to make that choice. If you want more options to control exactly what kinds of games your kids see when they browse the Store, you'll be able to do that. And it's not just players that need better tools either - developers who build controversial content shouldn't have to deal with harassment because their game exists, and we'll be building tools and options to support them too.
As we mentioned earlier, laws vary around the world, so we're going to need to handle this on a case-by-case basis. As a result, we will almost certainly continue to struggle with this one for a while. Our current thinking is that we're going to push developers to further disclose any potentially problematic content in their games during the submission process, and cease doing business with any of them that refuse to do so honestly. We'll still continue to perform technical evaluations of submissions, rejecting games that don't pass until their issues have been resolved.
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.
It also means that the games we allow onto the Store will not be a reflection of Valve's values, beyond a simple belief that you all have the right to create & consume the content you choose. The two points above apply to all of us at Valve as well. If you see something on Steam that you think should not exist, it's almost certain that someone at Valve is right there with you.
To be explicit about that - if we allow your game onto the Store, it does not mean we approve or agree with anything you're trying to say with it. If you're a developer of offensive games, this isn't us siding with you against all the people you're offending. There will be people throughout the Steam community who hate your games, and hope you fail to find an audience, and there will be people here at Valve who feel exactly the same way. However, offending someone shouldn't take away your game's voice. We believe you should be able to express yourself like everyone else, and to find others who want to play your game. But that's it.
In the short term, we won't be making significant changes to what's arriving on Steam until we've finished some of the tools we've described in this post. As we've hopefully managed to convey, navigating these issues is messy and complicated. Countries and societies change their laws and cultural norms over time. We'll be working on this for the foreseeable future, both in terms of what products we're allowing, what guidelines we communicate, and the tools we're providing to developers and players.
Had no idea what what any of you were all talking about
[hr]
I for one can have an opinion of the Steam Store without it being about hating something of/on it and thinking it shouldn't exist
This announcement got green lit by other Valve employees to be published
That's stupid.DANEgerous said:
Choosing not to sell something on a private space is not censorship.
Choosing not to stock hardcore German porn from the late 80s in my AV entertainment store is not censoring the marketplace or creators of German porn. Steam having a robust best practices and standards for selling games over its platform is not censorship.
There are games on Steam that are purely asset flips. No artistic value, and of very grey ethical guidelines of their rightfulness to belong. There are content creators acting brazenly in ill will and trading practices in terms of their customers and using their social network infrastructure.
It stands to reason any private retailer or leaseholder of private market space is not committing 'censorship' by wishing its retail space or place of business has best practice standards.
Imagine being a leaseholder of a showgrounds commonly used for a popular yearly convention. Why should stall holders with a bad history and actively disruptive or abusive of the terms of their retail history be granted a place in it when other stall lease renters have a better history and of greater likelihood to promote a funner event and better presence of mind for future conventions?
Still Convincing me I am right, again if they are purely asset flips, that is illegal and banned. Sorry If i say I will not sell (X) that is absolutely positively %1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 pure unadulterated CENSORSHIP to THE MAX 200 X1,000 MAXIMUM SUPER HYPER ULTRA!!!Addendum_Forthcoming said:
So I ban your weird German porn and ban it. Yep, I just censored you. I think I should have but none the less I did censor you. It was justified but who cares? It was still censorship.
How?DANEgerous said:
Are you legitimately suggesting store owners have no right to tailor their store environment for targeted audiences and maintain their own standards of shelf space allocation?
Is Prada or Miu Miu stores censoring other designers by not carrying their labels?
What about the store owner's right to tailor their retail experience?
If I open a board games cafe, am I 'censoring' Magic: The Gathering by having a Netrunner and Legend of the Five Rings night? Sounds like you're """censoring""" my wishes to advertise and host routine Netrunner and L5R events and prioritize the seating of those players to me... what about my rights to maintain A:NR and L5R events?
The reason that its not censorship unless the government is involved, is because we have a capitalist free market in this country. You may have the "right" to buy something... but ANY company has the "right" not to sell what you are looking for. You can't claim that a McDonalds is censoring because you want a Pepsi and they won't sell it to you. When a government entity blocks your access to legally consume something (whatever it it) driving you to have to break the law to obtain that thing... that's censorship. "Censored" music doesn't really even apply, because that's just a company (music label) acquesing to the standards and practices of radio stations and retail sellers. And this is capitalism, both of those companies absolutely have the right to do that.
You can call it censorship if you like, but unless they are breaking the law the people "censoring" what you want are just exercising THEIR rights. I produce a talk radio program, I've had people claim I'm "censoring" them by not putting their call on the air. You can't call it censorship if I have the rights and YOU don't. My company gives me the responsibility of determining what goes on our air. YOU DON'T have ANY rights to speak on the air on MY station. I MAY deem you worthy of having something to say and ALLOW you to speak for a time. AND the law actually says I OWN that audio. Legally OWN what YOU said. I can record it, jumble up the words, play it back on the air any way I want. And I can cut anyone off at any time I want to... for whatever reason I want. I can do it if I don't like what they are saying, if I think they are badmouthing my station or one of our sponsors, or just if I think they have an annoying voice, or if I'm bored... and guess what. That's not censorship. That's me doing my job.
And that's where Steam is at here. They can say they aren't "censoring" what they allow on their service, but what they actually are saying is they can't be bothered and are too cheap to do their own quality control. Its irresponsible business practice and they are practically INVITING the government to come in and dictate what they can and can't sell. THAT'S censorship. THEN you can whine and cry about censorship. And you can thank Steam for it if it happens, they could have prevented it.
You can call it censorship if you like, but unless they are breaking the law the people "censoring" what you want are just exercising THEIR rights. I produce a talk radio program, I've had people claim I'm "censoring" them by not putting their call on the air. You can't call it censorship if I have the rights and YOU don't. My company gives me the responsibility of determining what goes on our air. YOU DON'T have ANY rights to speak on the air on MY station. I MAY deem you worthy of having something to say and ALLOW you to speak for a time. AND the law actually says I OWN that audio. Legally OWN what YOU said. I can record it, jumble up the words, play it back on the air any way I want. And I can cut anyone off at any time I want to... for whatever reason I want. I can do it if I don't like what they are saying, if I think they are badmouthing my station or one of our sponsors, or just if I think they have an annoying voice, or if I'm bored... and guess what. That's not censorship. That's me doing my job.
And that's where Steam is at here. They can say they aren't "censoring" what they allow on their service, but what they actually are saying is they can't be bothered and are too cheap to do their own quality control. Its irresponsible business practice and they are practically INVITING the government to come in and dictate what they can and can't sell. THAT'S censorship. THEN you can whine and cry about censorship. And you can thank Steam for it if it happens, they could have prevented it.
In that case, censorship becomes utterly unavoidable, and loses its negative connotations entirely.DANEgerous said:
Right! And since the creators have the ability to publish it themselves (or find an alternative publisher), a single storefront refusing to sell it does not constitute suppression in any meaningful way, and nor are the creators being prohibited from selling.StatusNil said:
Again we have this debate, and again, people are completely incapable of delineating between censorship and a storefront choosing what to stock.
Oh, and corporations are a government. They are not the State, but they govern a domain, therefore can be considered government. Censorship within that domain is still censorship, even by some people's rigid standards.
Oh, and corporations are a government. They are not the State, but they govern a domain, therefore can be considered government. Censorship within that domain is still censorship, even by some people's rigid standards.
I will never understand the relationship of internet commenter critics and Steam.
According to the internet:
Steam is a slippery slope, anti-consumer monster, who has several times come close to complete monopoly of digital distribution, allowing them to be the gatekeepers of what gamers can and can not play.
But also, Steam should curate what goes onto the platform, and keep out the undesirables. Act as a gatekeeper to keep out the trash.
WAIT....
According to the internet:
Steam is a slippery slope, anti-consumer monster, who has several times come close to complete monopoly of digital distribution, allowing them to be the gatekeepers of what gamers can and can not play.
But also, Steam should curate what goes onto the platform, and keep out the undesirables. Act as a gatekeeper to keep out the trash.
WAIT....
In my experience in the real world, not having trash and having customers suffer needless bullshit, misinformation of products, and outright theft of IP is called 'best practice' and having a healthy business. If Steam is going to forfeit quality control and ignore outright theft and product misinformation, it better at least emulate then the very best consumer law standards as seen in the world as standard faire.Elijin said:
Say, improving their refund policy and giving customers greater powers to point out where products are simply taking the piss.
The former businesswoman in me is screaming; "Why the fuck are we doing Steam's job for them?"--The consumer in me is screaming; "This is why GoG is a superior platform!"--The gamer in me is simply screaming; "This is why board and tabletop roleplay gaming market will always be best."