In order to avoid any more controversies Valve has decided that it will stop moderating the content that is found on Steam. Recent controversies for the online store has included a game about school shootings and whether sexually explicit images are allowed on the service.
Valve explained its decision in a blog post.
Valve Will No Longer Moderate Steam
In a blog post outlining its decision to stop moderating games. Valve believes that it shouldn't be part of the process that decides what games should be available on Steam. The company says that it shouldn't stop players from buying the games that they want to buy and that they don't want to stop developers from making the games that they want to play. It says that it will provide the systems and tools for people to make choices for themselves.
Valve describes the process of moderating as difficult because it is carried by humans and is not automated. It says that trying to make these decisions have been a struggle for those moderators. The blog posts make mention of controversial topics such as politics, sexuality, racism, gender, violence, identity, and more.
Valve says that it will not police everything unless the content is illegal or trolling. This choice will be turned out to the players who can then decided whether they want to buy those controversial games. Valve also makes mention of algorithms that would hide titles that players wouldn't seem to like and that those algorithms will now be turned off.
Valve's answer will be to release tools that filter out games that players don't want to see in the Steam marketplace.
Valve Controversies
Valve suffered from controversy recently regarding Steam. A game called Active Shooter which was pretty much a school shooting simulator appeared on Steam and was going to be released on June 6 at a time when the US is gripped by a school shooting epidemic. Anti-gun violence groups spoke out against the release of the game calling is horrendous.
Valve took several days to remove the game from Steam. Instead of removing on moral grounds Valve removed the game due to the history of the publisher and developer of the game Revived Games. It cited Ata Berdiyev, the man behind Revived games as the reason for the removal.
In a statement Valve called Berdiyev a troll with a history of abuse. It said that Berdiyev was responsible for publishing copyrighted material in the past and manipulated user reviews. Valve removed the game when it found out that Berdiyev published the game on Steam under a different business name.
