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Valve to begin moderating game forums on Steam next week

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Starting on Tuesday, September 25th Valve will be actively moderating all game forums on Steam unless a developer opts to not have Valve do so.

So from then onwards if someone reports a post on a Steam forum, let's say for Streets of Rogue, it will then go into a queue for Valve's own moderation team to look over. They will then remove it if it violates their community guidelines.

It does make sense, since Valve already moderates other user posted content across Steam like screenshots, artwork, guides, user profiles, community groups and so on. They said they previously didn't want to step on the toes of developers, who ran their community their way. However, they said they've been hearing from developers that they need help. Valve's Tom Giardino mentioned on Twitter "Many of the changes are direct implementations of suggestions from devs at indie meetups, GDC, AAA studio visits, passionate twitter rants, etc. So, thanks for speaking up in all of those places and keep it coming.".

To go along with this, Valve has been actively expanding their moderation team to cope with the increased workload. Thankfully, they won't be relying on some special algorithms to determine what posts can stay and what goes in the bin.

I can certainly understand why developers want a hand with moderating their Steam communities for each game, as a lot of the time they really do up becoming a complete pit of arguments, trolls and all sorts of rubbish.

What do you think to Valve increasing their presence in the forums for each game? I think it's a welcome move. See the announcement here.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Steam, Valve
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Klaus Sep 22, 2018
I am a bit surprised about the comments on Germany. I would have expected all those same things to apply in Austria too, and while I know that censorship’s usually is the same, I haven’t yet seen age-restricted games being not available on Steam in Austria.

Then again, even the image search on google looks quite different when accessed in Germany for some reason... (No interactive interface with keyboard support).
lucifertdark Sep 22, 2018
Have they never heard of an ignore button? or a block button? other places if someone is giving you grief you can block their silly ass. This moderating of speech is only going to get worse & one day YOU, yes all of YOU reading this will be on the wrong end of it, because some Social Just-us Wheenie Participation Trophy Winner didn't like the way you said something & reported you to the moderator & they agreed with them.

What's next? banned from the forums then banned from playing the games you've paid for?


Last edited by lucifertdark on 22 September 2018 at 1:31 pm UTC
tuubi Sep 22, 2018
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Quoting: lucifertdarkThis moderating of speech is only going to get worse & one day YOU, yes all of YOU reading this will be on the wrong end of it, because some Social Just-us Wheenie Participation Trophy Winner didn't like the way you said something & reported you to the moderator & they agreed with them.
Funny how this has never been a problem for me. I guess I don't go out of my way to offend people. You can capitalize words all you want, but what you said is baseless FUD.
lucifertdark Sep 22, 2018
Quoting: Guest
Quoting: lucifertdarkHave they never heard of an ignore button? or a block button? other places if someone is giving you grief you can block their silly ass. This moderating of speech is only going to get worse & one day YOU, yes all of YOU reading this will be on the wrong end of it, because some Social Just-us Wheenie Participation Trophy Winner didn't like the way you said something & reported you to the moderator & they agreed with them.

What's next? banned from the forums then banned from playing the games you've paid for?

I'm going through a years community ban because of some of those types of people hating my guts for disliking denuvo and expressing that on steam forums

All I did was share a screenshot of one of them admitting they've pirated things before to me in a private steam chat, along with another screenshot of them following me to my friends profile to throw abuse at me.

The person was also literally on a Volunteer Moderators steam profile, posting in their comments claiming I was posting their personal information, when all I was posting was that user admitting to piracy, and him and his friends constantly harassing me and baiting me (along with anyone else who dares question denuvo software)

People should be allowed to criticize a game (or a software that game uses) without being harassed, but a lot of folk simply can't handle a game they like being criticized, personally some of my FAVOURITE games are the ones I will criticize the most

https://i.imgur.com/jxMBknZ.png

Take a look at that, right? To you, does that post break any rules? It literally didn't break a single rule, yet this person banned me because of a certain person who kept spamming up these volunteer moderators profiles trying to get me in trouble. When I messaged that volunteer moderator back he basically told me to go F myself

Yet the one who reported me, the user has made remarks about people who dislike denuvo being part of the alt-right and being nazis, yet that sort of behavior is somehow allowed. That same user used the recent florida mass shooting to troll some anti-denuvo folk as well, and all the volunteer moderators did was remove the post for the user to allow him to continue trolling

https://i.imgur.com/agWkFC1.png

"Any of you trolls have insider information on the Florida shooting" - apparently isn't breaking the rules

I'm sure it's just a coincidence though that he has posts ALL OVER various different volunteer moderators profiles, apparentely brown nosing is acceptable, saying it how it is.. isn't.

I've seen another volunteer moderator admit to changing his profile picture to anime literally just to bait people.

My friend knows someone who got perma-banned from Life is Strange forums for calling the story mediocre.

So in all honesty I don't think official Valve employees can do any worse in censoring things they don't like, voltuneer moderators already do that from my experience. Valves volunteer moderators should be scrapped altogether for people on an actual pay-role to mod the forums.

Sorry for the long post, but I doubt the steam forums will ever be a nice place to have mature discussions about PC gaming, that's why places like GOL are so much better.
BINGO! the rot is already there & it's only going to get worse. They need to get rational people in instead of those who think receiving a partition award is a good thing. Just wait till they start going through all older posts to find something to ban you for that you said 5+ years ago.
lucifertdark Sep 22, 2018
Quoting: tuubiFunny how this has never been a problem for me. I guess I don't go out of my way to offend people. You can capitalize words all you want, but what you said is baseless FUD.
I wish it was baseless, you'll see it for yourself before long.

Oh & being offended is a way of life for these people.


Last edited by lucifertdark on 22 September 2018 at 2:32 pm UTC
DrMcCoy Sep 22, 2018
Quoting: lucifertdarkJust wait till they start going through all older posts to find something to ban you for that you said 5+ years ago.

Oh, no, not personal responsibility! Whatever shall we do?!?

Quoting: lucifertdarkrational people

lol

EDIT: Aww, GOL cut out my emoji use here :P


Last edited by DrMcCoy on 22 September 2018 at 2:40 pm UTC
Comandante Ñoñardo Sep 22, 2018
Talking about toxicity. What happened with Meraco?
1xok Sep 22, 2018
Quoting: DrMcCoyNo, Portal 2 is not censored in Germany. At all.

The first Portal game was lightly censored for a while, with blood generated when turrets hit you painted gray instead of red, but even that has been removed years ago.

No, that was at the end of last year. I think censorship was removed from all games of the Orangebox. This included TF2 and HL2. Be that as it may, Left4Dead2 is still heavily trimmed until today, so it's no fun at all.

Also it's paradoxical that Portal2 was uncut all the time, while the first part was only available in a reduced-violence version for years. I played Portal for the first time in 2016 or 2017. And the blood was definitely not red. And yes, I bled a lot. :D

Quoting: DrMcCoyStop telling lies.
I don't think this is about lies. Censorship takes place in Germany. And with dozens of affected titles, you can lose track of it.
tonR Sep 23, 2018
Quoting: Guest
Quoting: lucifertdark
Quoting: Guest
Quoting: lucifertdarkHave they never heard of an ignore button? or a block button? other places if someone is giving you grief you can block their silly ass. This moderating of speech is only going to get worse & one day YOU, yes all of YOU reading this will be on the wrong end of it, because some Social Just-us Wheenie Participation Trophy Winner didn't like the way you said something & reported you to the moderator & they agreed with them.

What's next? banned from the forums then banned from playing the games you've paid for?

I'm going through a years community ban because of some of those types of people hating my guts for disliking denuvo and expressing that on steam forums

All I did was share a screenshot of one of them admitting they've pirated things before to me in a private steam chat, along with another screenshot of them following me to my friends profile to throw abuse at me.

The person was also literally on a Volunteer Moderators steam profile, posting in their comments claiming I was posting their personal information, when all I was posting was that user admitting to piracy, and him and his friends constantly harassing me and baiting me (along with anyone else who dares question denuvo software)

People should be allowed to criticize a game (or a software that game uses) without being harassed, but a lot of folk simply can't handle a game they like being criticized, personally some of my FAVOURITE games are the ones I will criticize the most

https://i.imgur.com/jxMBknZ.png

Take a look at that, right? To you, does that post break any rules? It literally didn't break a single rule, yet this person banned me because of a certain person who kept spamming up these volunteer moderators profiles trying to get me in trouble. When I messaged that volunteer moderator back he basically told me to go F myself

Yet the one who reported me, the user has made remarks about people who dislike denuvo being part of the alt-right and being nazis, yet that sort of behavior is somehow allowed. That same user used the recent florida mass shooting to troll some anti-denuvo folk as well, and all the volunteer moderators did was remove the post for the user to allow him to continue trolling

https://i.imgur.com/agWkFC1.png

"Any of you trolls have insider information on the Florida shooting" - apparently isn't breaking the rules

I'm sure it's just a coincidence though that he has posts ALL OVER various different volunteer moderators profiles, apparentely brown nosing is acceptable, saying it how it is.. isn't.

I've seen another volunteer moderator admit to changing his profile picture to anime literally just to bait people.

My friend knows someone who got perma-banned from Life is Strange forums for calling the story mediocre.

So in all honesty I don't think official Valve employees can do any worse in censoring things they don't like, voltuneer moderators already do that from my experience. Valves volunteer moderators should be scrapped altogether for people on an actual pay-role to mod the forums.

Sorry for the long post, but I doubt the steam forums will ever be a nice place to have mature discussions about PC gaming, that's why places like GOL are so much better.
BINGO! the rot is already there & it's only going to get worse. They need to get rational people in instead of those who think receiving a partition award is a good thing. Just wait till they start going through all older posts to find something to ban you for that you said 5+ years ago.

Tbh I probably have made some toxic posts myself on steam forums a few years ago, maybe even some on the Sonic Maniaforums, in-fact when that volunteer moderator banned me for that post, I asked him why since the post clearly didn't break any rules and all he kept doing was mentioning previous offenses made years ago on entirely different forums.

I initially only wanted to express that I wanted denuvo removed from my copy of Sonic Mania that I paid for, seeing as how it had already been cracked. It ended up turning into a HUGE shit-show, one that still carries on to this day over a year later. The real trolls in that forum never got banned imo.

But I've always tried to just say it how it is, and as you can see for yourself that user who had it in for me, constantly reporting me.. He used some recent shooting in america to troll people, which is pretty messed up.. yet the moderators don't do anything. I have many screenshots of that same user being VERY active on these moderators profiles, reporting other people.

I know 100% for a fact that if you want to get people banned while also breaking rules yourself, brown-nose the volunteer moderators by posting on their steam profiles. Seemed to work for those guys :-\
This is why I never post anything on Steam. You cannot have any dissent view against the game or it will become like what you'd experience right now. BUT, if you have "licking the butt" attitude, you're basicly got a permanent "free pass". I'd seen this poop getting worse every day based on my observation.

Another sad things is the developers/game companies inaction regarding on this. We don't know either they agree or disagree on this kind of moderation, but generally if you (the devs) staying quiet, you're agree or enabling this to happens. So, It's like they give the community (especially moderators) blessing to keep on going making poops.

p/s: I'm looking on that game's Steam community hub. They agreed to Denuvo? What?!
Yeah, this kind of community behaviour.... probably?
razing32 Sep 23, 2018
Haven't spent much time on steam forums/community myself , expect to maybe ask for tech support.
All these stories make me glad I never tried to socialize there.
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