Good. Lawyers for companies are too quick to demand that you get rid of things that might make anyone slightly upset, and it ruins online places. It’s why NSFW games went away, and why everything needs a thousand warnings. It’s why companies are so happy to add age verification, because it "CYA"s them.
Good on Gabe there. That’s your job, to protect the company if they get sued, not make content decisions
Least likely to get Valve sued lose Valve money in a lawsuit*
Frivolous lawsuits happen all the time. You’re never going to avoid all of them, and shouldn’t be trying to. The lawyer’s job is to make sure that all their ducks are in a row for WHEN they get sued so that the judge can review all the information and throw the lawsuit out.
No. Their job is to find the legal gray area to operate in so that if they get sued they’re not instantly guaranteed to lose. Do you think Meta hires lawyers who tell them “maybe don’t spy on people” instead of lawyers who will fight all the fines EU throws at their way? Companies don’t hire lawyers just so they could say something can’t be done, they’re hired to find a way to get it done or find an irrefutable point why it can’t be done. The fact that Valve did go ahead with the hands-off approach shows that the lawyer didn’t do their job properly when they presented their opinion.
Have you seen what Steam’s forums look like? They NEED better moderation. They need to put an end to all the racism and other hateful shit on there. It’s a fucking disaster.
why do you care if there is bigoted games on steam? i have never been advertised such games on steam. the only place i learn about it is when there is some news story, let them die on the vine. they may get positive reviews, but only because the people who seek these games out buy them and get to leave a review, they are not popular.
you start trying to police that stuff, and it gets worse. and then stream starts having to decide where the line is, and what is parody, and there is no decision you can make that will be free from negative consequences
They allowed this game on their platform for two weeks and only removed it because the developer requested the removal lol
Plantation Simulator is a simple farming simulator where you motivate friends with kisses to pick your crops! Maintain a beautiful farm by repairing fences to keep friends focused. Choose multiple crops to grow and enhance upgrades to maximize your success!
it’s not even the only one. a few years ago People Make Games made a video on valve, mentioning among other things the game “tyrone vs cops” which is a blatantly racist “satirical” game, which was allowed on steam. i checked recently, to see if the game had been removed since.
not only is it still there, it’s gotten multiple sequels, and is officially rated as playable on steam deck. valve does not give a shit about racism on their platform.
a horrifically misogynistic rape simulator was left there untouched until a group of anti-porn puritans got the payment processors involved, which is what got us into this whole mess with nsfw games. had valve given a shit about moderating hate on their platform this likely wouldn’t have happened.
As long as it’s not illegal content like csam, they should allow it. Why not let the racist shitheads out themselves? It’s not like valve would be forcing anyone to buy them, and don’t need to promote it.
Besides, when you get into the area of banning simply “distasteful” content, then you get people asking to whitewash everything, including history. I don’t want a historically accurate game to get censored. I don’t want content to be arbitrarily censored by lawyers and credit card companies, or any dumbass individuals’ sensitivities, for that matter.
I’m not asking for Steam to have to allow such content, either. If there’s a game that’s just celebrating being vile trash, I’m also fine with Steam telling them to fuck off the platform.
As is usual in the real world, the correct answer is no extreme.
I personally encourage you to learn more about which you speak before forming such passionate stances. There’s merit to what you say, but it’s not relevant to the context of the discussion you responded to.
That ain’t what the topic is about. Though for your topic specifically, Valve did remove gaining points from community awards. This was in direct response to people posting intentionally controversial stuff in order to farm clown/saucy awards.
A big part of legally protecting a company is being proactive about things that will get you sued. The lawyers were correctly operating in our bad criminal Justice system.
Good. Lawyers for companies are too quick to demand that you get rid of things that might make anyone slightly upset, and it ruins online places. It’s why NSFW games went away, and why everything needs a thousand warnings. It’s why companies are so happy to add age verification, because it "CYA"s them.
Good on Gabe there. That’s your job, to protect the company if they get sued, not make content decisions
To be fair, their job is also to recommend the course of action least likely to get Valve sued.
Least likely to
get Valve suedlose Valve money in a lawsuit*Frivolous lawsuits happen all the time. You’re never going to avoid all of them, and shouldn’t be trying to. The lawyer’s job is to make sure that all their ducks are in a row for WHEN they get sued so that the judge can review all the information and throw the lawsuit out.
No. Their job is to find the legal gray area to operate in so that if they get sued they’re not instantly guaranteed to lose. Do you think Meta hires lawyers who tell them “maybe don’t spy on people” instead of lawyers who will fight all the fines EU throws at their way? Companies don’t hire lawyers just so they could say something can’t be done, they’re hired to find a way to get it done or find an irrefutable point why it can’t be done. The fact that Valve did go ahead with the hands-off approach shows that the lawyer didn’t do their job properly when they presented their opinion.
Only if they ask for that advice, presumably
Dont be too hard on this lawyer, though, as his advice has saved Valve big time in the past.
(If you’re not familiar, there is a small amount of info about it in the article.)
Have you seen what Steam’s forums look like? They NEED better moderation. They need to put an end to all the racism and other hateful shit on there. It’s a fucking disaster.
Article is talking about what games they have on the platform. Separate moderation issues.
they need to do better there too. there have been multiple explicitly racist games on steam, and valve has done nothing.
Okie-dokie, still not the conversation they were having in this article.
why do you care if there is bigoted games on steam? i have never been advertised such games on steam. the only place i learn about it is when there is some news story, let them die on the vine. they may get positive reviews, but only because the people who seek these games out buy them and get to leave a review, they are not popular.
you start trying to police that stuff, and it gets worse. and then stream starts having to decide where the line is, and what is parody, and there is no decision you can make that will be free from negative consequences
This is regarding the porn games, chucklenuts. They already removed Hatred and the like.
https://steamdb.info/app/4495510/
They allowed this game on their platform for two weeks and only removed it because the developer requested the removal lol
Slavery simulator is an allowed genre on Steam.
This has always been the case. Here’s an incredibly popular game that allows slavery.
https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Slavery
Rimworld also includes forced organ harvesting and a host of other war crimes
They also allow murder simulators, drug dealing simulators, genocide simulators, etc
As far as games go, a game that dresses up slavery with a bunch of innuendo is incredibly mild.
I don’t think I need to go into detail how those two games differ, right?
It’s just about the same difference as between the games “Prison Architect” and “KZ Manager”.
But surely KZ Manager just dresses up systemic mass murder with a bunch of innuendo. It’s just some silly satire!
It’s crazy that people are genuinely offended by low effort ragebait shovelware.
it’s not even the only one. a few years ago People Make Games made a video on valve, mentioning among other things the game “tyrone vs cops” which is a blatantly racist “satirical” game, which was allowed on steam. i checked recently, to see if the game had been removed since.
not only is it still there, it’s gotten multiple sequels, and is officially rated as playable on steam deck. valve does not give a shit about racism on their platform.
a horrifically misogynistic rape simulator was left there untouched until a group of anti-porn puritans got the payment processors involved, which is what got us into this whole mess with nsfw games. had valve given a shit about moderating hate on their platform this likely wouldn’t have happened.
As long as it’s not illegal content like csam, they should allow it. Why not let the racist shitheads out themselves? It’s not like valve would be forcing anyone to buy them, and don’t need to promote it.
Besides, when you get into the area of banning simply “distasteful” content, then you get people asking to whitewash everything, including history. I don’t want a historically accurate game to get censored. I don’t want content to be arbitrarily censored by lawyers and credit card companies, or any dumbass individuals’ sensitivities, for that matter.
I’m not asking for Steam to have to allow such content, either. If there’s a game that’s just celebrating being vile trash, I’m also fine with Steam telling them to fuck off the platform.
As is usual in the real world, the correct answer is no extreme.
that is different kind of moderation
Steam provides publishers/developers tools to moderate their forums.
I personally encourage you to learn more about which you speak before forming such passionate stances. There’s merit to what you say, but it’s not relevant to the context of the discussion you responded to.
That ain’t what the topic is about. Though for your topic specifically, Valve did remove gaining points from community awards. This was in direct response to people posting intentionally controversial stuff in order to farm clown/saucy awards.
A big part of legally protecting a company is being proactive about things that will get you sued. The lawyers were correctly operating in our bad criminal Justice system.