What are your guy's thoughts on the NSFW games on Steam?

[Kyrian007]

In theory it doesn't bother me. Except...

Didnt they try to ban those games, only to back peddle?

At first they banned games without sex merely for having a certain aesthetic but then they cleared up their rules and made new search settings and also allowed things that they had never allowed up to that point. The idea being that as long as a game isn't trolling or illegal, mature adults should be free to experience any game they so choose, even if some person somewhere finds if sinful.

They may have tried to spin it like that is the way it happened. But Valve actually was just always following the path of least effort. At first they tried "policies" to determine what content was allowed and what wasn't... but that kind of curating takes actual human effort. And costs money. So instead they fiddled with the frontend, and forced everyone to curate Steam for themselves, ridding themselves of the need to curate or policy anything. Or do any work other than sit back and collect their percentage.

And just sitting around doing no work and collecting tons of money is good work if you can get it, so I hardly blame them. But it means I have no sympathy for any flack they get for the garbage on their storefront or the competition from competitors like Epic using "shady" tactics to steal market share. Valve is lazy and deserves all of that. But for an actual fix...

I'd rather see parental controls on Steam be opt OUT with ID verification necessary as opposed to opt IN. I don't mind a little runaround to get content kids shouldn't. And if that was the case I say go nuts, grossly explicit sex games, make and distribute drug games, real money gambling games, actual murder simulators (stalk victims, leave notes toying with the cops, orchestrate your capture like the guy from Seven...) whatever would be fine. Wouldn't have a problem with any of it.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

In theory it doesn't bother me. Except...

Didnt they try to ban those games, only to back peddle?

At first they banned games without sex merely for having a certain aesthetic but then they cleared up their rules and made new search settings and also allowed things that they had never allowed up to that point. The idea being that as long as a game isn't trolling or illegal, mature adults should be free to experience any game they so choose, even if some person somewhere finds if sinful.

They may have tried to spin it like that is the way it happened. But Valve actually was just always following the path of least effort. At first they tried "policies" to determine what content was allowed and what wasn't... but that kind of curating takes actual human effort. And costs money. So instead they fiddled with the frontend, and forced everyone to curate Steam for themselves, ridding themselves of the need to curate or policy anything. Or do any work other than sit back and collect their percentage.

And just sitting around doing no work and collecting tons of money is good work if you can get it, so I hardly blame them. But it means I have no sympathy for any flack they get for the garbage on their storefront or the competition from competitors like Epic using "shady" tactics to steal market share. Valve is lazy and deserves all of that. But for an actual fix...

I'd rather see parental controls on Steam be opt OUT with ID verification necessary as opposed to opt IN. I don't mind a little runaround to get content kids shouldn't. And if that was the case I say go nuts, grossly explicit sex games, make and distribute drug games, real money gambling games, actual murder simulators (stalk victims, leave notes toying with the cops, orchestrate your capture like the guy from Seven...) whatever would be fine. Wouldn't have a problem with any of it.

I do believe that the final system they arrived to was indeed opt out but without the ID thing. The setting was made to exclude stuff and if you tried to find it it would tell you you had to allow the content first in your profile or whatnot. Also, since your account is tied to a credit card, I think asking for ID too is kinda excessive.

But yeah, it is indeed the path of least resistance, it just also happens to be the right thing .

 

[CaitSeith]

I don't know. It's been a while since last time I used Steam.

 

[DeliveryGodNoah_v1legacy]

It seems like parents just let their kids do just about everything completely unsupervised, so if a kid gets access to these kinds of games thats the fault of the parents and not the platform.

I'm in full support of Steam selling NSFW content. There are age locks, though I realize like always they're easily bypassed, but its not like this stuff is just completely out in the open for anyone to see. Any of the naughty stuff, and even violent stuff, is censored with spoilers until you actively click on the product. And even then, most screenshots are softcore at best.

But it's only a matter of time before some group of moms gets REALLY REALLY upset that their unsupervised, horned up teenagers were using their credit cards to buy these sinful, disgusting games, instead of, you know, paying attention to their children and maybe not giving them free access to their credit card in the first place.

I really have no idea how these parents even let their shitty kids have access to these things. I delete my credit card information from stores even on my personal computer, there's not a chance in hell I'd let that info stay entered on my kids PS4 or computer.

 

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

Well I try not to play them at work.

Really though I'm not terribly bothered, though have had a bit of a giggle looking at the screenshots provided on the store pages.

 

[Kyrian007]

I do believe that the final system they arrived to was indeed opt out but without the ID thing. The setting was made to exclude stuff and if you tried to find it it would tell you you had to allow the content first in your profile or whatnot. Also, since your account is tied to a credit card, I think asking for ID too is kinda excessive.

But yeah, it is indeed the path of least resistance, it just also happens to be the right thing .

All it seems to do is ask for a birthday in a drop down menu before accessing nsfw or just overly violent (rated M) content... and frankly that's no bar to anyone. What they need to do is never display any of that content until you opt in AND verify age and ID and set up the parental controls. And use and verify that same ID information at checkout. That's what the ESRB expects retailers to do, Steam should be held to the same standard.

 

[Trunkage]

I haven't bought anything on Steam in a couple of years. Discounts are pretty terrible and prices for games no longer go down over time. The homepage is a shitshow and it deliberately goes out of it's way to destroy indies instead of giving them exposure. I've got $20 bucks in my Steam wallet for about a year now and I have no reason to use it on that platform

Look, this may effect my kids as they grow older. It's good for me to know as a parent. It's more likely that Steam will die

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

I do believe that the final system they arrived to was indeed opt out but without the ID thing. The setting was made to exclude stuff and if you tried to find it it would tell you you had to allow the content first in your profile or whatnot. Also, since your account is tied to a credit card, I think asking for ID too is kinda excessive.

But yeah, it is indeed the path of least resistance, it just also happens to be the right thing .

All it seems to do is ask for a birthday in a drop down menu before accessing nsfw or just overly violent (rated M) content... and frankly that's no bar to anyone. What they need to do is never display any of that content until you opt in AND verify age and ID and set up the parental controls. And use and verify that same ID information at checkout. That's what the ESRB expects retailers to do, Steam should be held to the same standard.

No, that's different, that's just the thing they do for rated M stuff which they had done for a while ago. For things with tags like "sexual content" or "nudity" you have to click a box in your settings to allow them to show in your search results (I believe it's an "adult content" box) and by default it's not shown, if you go out of your way and type the name of such a game yourself it'll tell you you have to adjust your settings.

And really, if a child has unsupervised access to a machine with steam on it, it also has access to all the porn on the internet irrespective of what steam does.

 

[Worgen]

I haven't bought anything on Steam in a couple of years. Discounts are pretty terrible and prices for games no longer go down over time. The homepage is a shitshow and it deliberately goes out of it's way to destroy indies instead of giving them exposure. I've got $20 bucks in my Steam wallet for about a year now and I have no reason to use it on that platform

Look, this may effect my kids as they grow older. It's good for me to know as a parent. It's more likely that Steam will die

You do realize that everything you said is wrong. Like just looking at the Id games sales this weekend, Rage 2 is on sale for 50% off and it just came out a few months ago and its pretty great. Not to mention that game prices are controlled by the publishers so them not reducing prices is their thing, not steams, and actually its not uncommon for the prices to go down, really just depends on the publisher. The homepage works quite well and they are putting in new features for discoverability like the steam labs experiment they have going on right now.
https://store.steampowered.com/labs/

 

[Worgen]

In theory it doesn't bother me. Except...

Didnt they try to ban those games, only to back peddle?

At first they banned games without sex merely for having a certain aesthetic but then they cleared up their rules and made new search settings and also allowed things that they had never allowed up to that point. The idea being that as long as a game isn't trolling or illegal, mature adults should be free to experience any game they so choose, even if some person somewhere finds if sinful.

They may have tried to spin it like that is the way it happened. But Valve actually was just always following the path of least effort. At first they tried "policies" to determine what content was allowed and what wasn't... but that kind of curating takes actual human effort. And costs money. So instead they fiddled with the frontend, and forced everyone to curate Steam for themselves, ridding themselves of the need to curate or policy anything. Or do any work other than sit back and collect their percentage.

And just sitting around doing no work and collecting tons of money is good work if you can get it, so I hardly blame them. But it means I have no sympathy for any flack they get for the garbage on their storefront or the competition from competitors like Epic using "shady" tactics to steal market share. Valve is lazy and deserves all of that. But for an actual fix...

I'd rather see parental controls on Steam be opt OUT with ID verification necessary as opposed to opt IN. I don't mind a little runaround to get content kids shouldn't. And if that was the case I say go nuts, grossly explicit sex games, make and distribute drug games, real money gambling games, actual murder simulators (stalk victims, leave notes toying with the cops, orchestrate your capture like the guy from Seven...) whatever would be fine. Wouldn't have a problem with any of it.

Steam actually has pretty good bots for filtering out the crap, to the point where I'm not sure they do have that much just asset flip crap uploaded anymore. If they do then I don't see it when I look for upcoming games, even if they aren't the popular ones.

Keep in mind that back when Steam was much more heavily curated there were a bunch of games they just assumed no one really wanted and were actually surprised at how well they did. So they came up with greenlight so the players could help curate and tell them what they wanted, people found ways to exploit it to the point where valve was just like fuck it. So instead of curating they focused more of making the tools to help sort through things and they seem to work pretty well.

 

[Leg End]

I haven't bought anything on Steam in a couple of years. Discounts are pretty terrible and prices for games no longer go down over time. The homepage is a shitshow and it deliberately goes out of it's way to destroy indies instead of giving them exposure. I've got $20 bucks in my Steam wallet for about a year now and I have no reason to use it on that platform

...Are we using the same Steam? The sales get stupidly low for games that came out within a few months and older games are nearly free at times. The homepage still features a lot of non-big studio stuff in general.

What they need to do is never display any of that content until you opt in AND verify age and ID and set up the parental controls. And use and verify that same ID information at checkout. That's what the ESRB expects retailers to do, Steam should be held to the same standard.

That's effectively an issue with online ordering as a whole. Pretty much no one is going to want to have to re-verify all that crap every time a indie title they want goes on sale.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

The whole concept of NSFW (death good, sex bad) is bullshit and entirely the fault of America's prudish, Puritan roots. Movies can depict graphic, explicit pain and death in a million different ways but god (literally) forbid we hear a swear or see two people fucking, from which everybody comes, by the fucking way.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

The whole concept of NSFW (death good, sex bad) is bullshit and entirely the fault of America's prudish, Puritan roots. Movies can depict graphic, explicit pain and death in a million different ways but god (literally) forbid we hear a swear or see two people fucking, from which everybody comes, by the fucking way.

Society in a nutshell.

 

[Silvanus]

Fine with them being there. It's a genre, even if it's one I don't care for. So long as parental controls are available.

Steam needs curatorship, but on quality, not content (well, within reason obviously).

 

[SweetShark]

Very positive even if the most of them need a patch to "fix" them.
However they don't include some of the obscure feitishes I was hoping seeing with curiosity and seeing the reaction of the "pure" players.

I REALLY want to see reaction of Stething porn on Steam hahahahaha!!!

 

[wings012]

I'm overall not too fussed, but my issue is all the cheap crap ported over from DLSite. There's just mountains upon mountains of garbage porn games. There's heaps that's just a vehicle for a few naughty images with some voiceovers, from the 'visual novels' you can speed read through in an hour and all the nonsense RPG maker stuff.

But honestly this is an issue with Steam in general.

 

[Erttheking]

They?re like most things on Steam nowadays, 90% crap.

 

[Bilious Green_v1legacy]

Not my cup of tea, but good luck to the folks that are into them. More choice for the consumer is good in my book.

 

[Kwak]

Why would you be playing computer games at work anyway?

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

Why would you be playing computer games at work anyway?

To fuel those wacky office hijinks, of course. To say nothing of cheeky shenanigans. Perhaps even some zany misschief.

No tomfoolery though. Not after last time.