Steam recently has been under-fire with backlash from theSteamcommunity as what games are deemed acceptable, with their actions to purge certain games for questionable content. They now have released a lengthystatementexplaining their new approach which outlines that games will be accepted as long as they aren’t “illegal” or “trolling”.
Steam Will Now Accept All Games Unless They Are Illegal or Trolling
Steam which is developed by theValveCorporation have recently tried to crackdown on the types of games that appear on the Steam store, however this has sparked controversy on the type of games that are accepted. In order to make things a little clearer, Steam shared a new blog post to help clarify their new approach by taking a step back from their requirements.
The post explains that the problem they face is not only the nature of the game whether it contains adult or violent content, but the topics that they contain. Controversial topics such as “politics, sexuality, racism, gender, violence, identity…” to name a few are the factors that they have to consider.
They go on to explain finding a balance between making players “happy” and what is “acceptable discussion/behaviour/imagery” is a difficult task. But the dilemma does not just exist outside the walls of theValvecorporation but inside them as well.
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.
With keeping all this in mind, Steam have decided to go back to their original mindset when they started Steam and are creating tools to allow a way for players to have more control over the types of games they see in the store:
…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.
Steam makes it clear even though they are accepting the games on their platform, they are in no way supporting views or “siding” with the developer and their content.
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.
You can read the fullblog poston the Steam community website.
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