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Valve must address swastikas and other hate on Steam, writes US senator in a letter to Gabe Newell (www.rockpapershotgun.com)

submitted 3 days ago by alyaza@beehaw.org to c/gaming@beehaw.org

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In the letter, Democrat senator Mark Warner argues that Valve's content moderation doesn't meet industry standards, and says he wants Valve to "crack down on the rampant proliferation of hate-based content".

The exact hateful stuff he's talking about was highlighted in that report by the Anti-Defamation League last week. Its many findings include swastikas in profile pictures, antisemitic images such as the "happy merchant", and instances of Pepe the frog, a meme appropriated by the far right that - let's be honest - has never washed the stink off. Steam is "inundated with hate" as a result of these findings, say the anti-discrimination group.

While the simmering bubbles of fascism won't be news to the average Steam user (or average internet user, to be frank) that doesn't mean we ought to get complacent about them. It's proof, says senator Warner, that Valve is lacking good moderation.

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[–] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 34 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

You literally just need to go into the discussion boards for trending games or check out the curation pages for groups like "DEI watch." Guaranteed to find comments and posts of huge ASCII swastikas eventually. There's next to no moderation for any given game's discussion board or comments for anything related to it (workshop, screenshots, other media, etc).

[–] Buttons@programming.dev 10 points 3 days ago (1 children)

You literally just need to go into the discussion boards for trending games or check out the curation pages for groups like “DEI watch.”

I just spent 10 minutes doing both of these things and didn't see any questionable content.

I did see gamers saying things like "this game sucks", but nothing worse.

At this point I think you should provide a link to an example.

[–] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Check out the comments on Helldiver's 2 's latest patch notes.

[–] atro_city@fedia.io 3 points 2 days ago

I think the moderation team has been working quite well. I'm 200 comments deep and only two mentions of LGBT.

[–] termus@beehaw.org 8 points 3 days ago

I frequent Steam discussions on and off to see what morons say. BG3, Veilguard, anything they accuse of DEI or whatever. In all of my scrolling I've never encountered a swastika or someone just straight up being a white supremacist. I'm sure it's there somewhere, but it's not rampant. I also see a lot of moderation in those discussions. Goobers getting banned all the time. So if it is, I do think it's getting moderated to some extent. That probably also falls on the game dev I guess. Not sure who controls the discussion forums.