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NEWS: Valve Comments on Steam's Content Policies, Promises to Allow Everything That is Not Illegal o

This certainly sounds like an improvement, especially since individuals are in a better position to decide what content they don't want to see than a company acting as a gatekeeper. That said, at most I think Steam will roll back to allowing censored eroge and the game maker can provide information for a patch. I just have a hard time seeing them going any farther than that, and they're probably figuring people won't complain since they backed off.

I wonder what Jim Sterling take on this will be?

The company will implement new systems for customers to override recommendations and hide content they do not want.

On the other hand, Valve's statement about some of this is a bit BS. They claim nothing automatic happened, no flagging systems were abused or anything, but then how did games like Kindred Spirits, which went through a rigorous review process, suddenly get told to remove vague content from it?

On the one hand, I hope this opens things up more for more games featuring erotic content on Steam, with less concern from devs that their games can be approved and then suddenly reversed.

On the other hand, Valve's statement about some of this is a bit BS. They claim nothing automatic happened, no flagging systems were abused or anything, but then how did games like Kindred Spirits, which went through a rigorous review process, suddenly get told to remove vague content from it?

In addition, "illegal" is a pretty big standard. I mean, hate speech is legal in a lot of places and circumstances. If someone makes a game called "Conversation Therapy Simulator" that's all about running a camp for "curing" queer kids, will that be allowed? Or will that be considered "trolling"?

Ultimately this seems like Valve is just gonna take even more of a hands off approach than before, but still potentially be open for abuse and other issues. So mixed feelings about this.

My only concern is the "trolling" part. It sounds like it could be their backdoor in case they ever do want to remove something, since it's such a vague term.

Predictably, this is not going well with most mainstream video game sites as they push for censorship usually. A lot of them are having meltdowns over this and are saying they wanted more censorship out of this controversy, not less.

-Stuart Smith

Oddly, some of those websites were the same that complained about Steam removing LGBT games. Can't we just allow both LGBT games and school shooter simulators? If you don't like it, don't play it or refund it if you did happen to buy it.