Who Gets to Be on the Steam Store?
steamcommunity.com
steamcommunity.com
I don't like the "both sides are the same" tone in this response. Imagine someone who makes an explicitly-racist-game-for-the-sake-of-being-racist. What kind of game would they "hate and not want to exist"? Probably like a game with feminist messaging or something. The implication is that somehow these two games are equal in speech value and counterbalance each other?
It's basically saying: "There's awful shit here, but now YOU are allowed to say awful shit too!" I don't want to say awful shit.
There's a difference between allowing a full range of opinions, and allowing garbage. This is a storefront. Nobody would bat an eye if Valve set a moderation policy with clear guidelines. It's normal for a store. Instead they just say, "screw it, literally anything not illegal is allowed." To be clear, I'm fine with a fairly loose policy and with controversial games, but please have SOME policy to weed out the useless bits.
Now when a developer makes an honest game, they can watch it briefly blip by the "new releases" page as "Kill the Jews Simulator DLC #13934" floods the rest of the page. It's just another burden for honest developers who have to deal with their games getting diluted by shovelware; now it's diluted by horrifying shovelware.
I'm trying to think of any other app store or digital distribution platform that has taken this stand with the same voice Valve has.
Frankly I perceive this reinforcement of policy as a credit to Valve's staunch independence more then any societal influence.
Companies have no obligation to preserve your right to free speech. There is no concept of 'right to free speech' here, since Valve in not part of the government.
There's more than two facets, and you do not know yours is the right one.
> somehow these two games are equal in speech value
I wish I could tell the "speech value" of something over the next 100 years.
> This is a storefront
In my opinion, Steam is a marketplace. A store curates a shopping experience, whereas a marketplace contains stores where you can buy anything.
> I don't want to say awful shit.
I do. I want Spec Ops: The Line, This War of Mine, Papers Please, Doki Doki Literature Club, and Darkest Dungeon.
> Now when a developer makes an honest game, they can watch it briefly blip by the "new releases" page
>> We are going to enable you to override our recommendation algorithms and hide games containing the topics you're not interested in.
Just because someone has a contrary opinion to my idea doesn't mean my idea is now unknowable and equal in weight to their contradiction. I don't like this postmodern idea that "everything is subjective, so nothing has real value."
It would be easy to contrive an example of a degenerate game idea which only purpose is to harass specific people and serve racist desires. You are saying that our society is unable to ethically categorize this game differently than any other game? I don't think it's required that we mathematically determine what's "good" in order to set reasonable boundaries.
Just because something is subjective doesn't mean it's impossible to quantify their place in society. Sure, there's a fuzzy line that controversial topics straddle. Keep those all, I say. The games you mentioned are not even close to what I'm talking about. I'm not saying to get rid of controversial stuff, but to set an upper bound.
It just seems like a conflict of interest to have zero guidelines about a thing they will profit over.
I think Mark sums it up well:
The best hope of cleaning up the store is to increase the Steam Direct fee to $500. This will remove the low-end junk that is clogging it up and allow more breathing space for legitimate commercial games. I don't see how having thousands of games which sell single digits worth of copies is beneficial for anyone - Valve, Game Devs, or Gamers.
Valve should also have an annual clear out of games which have sold fewer than 50 copies.
Offering something for sale on a platform, or store, or "aggregator" as we're now calling it, is endorsement. If you take their money, you take the rest.
They draw the line at supporting anything illegal. What are the implications that are so damning to you?
Just because the law allows it, doesn't make it a moral thing to do.
Personally I applaud Steam for their willingness to let adults make their own decisions about what content they want to purchase and consume, rather than outsourcing that decisions to the loudest mobs. Given the nature of modern society I've no doubt that Steam will face attacks from many, like yourself, who would prefer that Valve act as the Thought Police. I'm hopeful that they have the backbone to stick with this policy and weather the storm.
This is the exact opposite of thought policing: Valve wishes that you decouple endorsement from sales, which is a hugely radical thing.
Free speech does not apply to private platforms. The game developers whose titles were banned could easily sell them elsewhere. But Valve has chosen to endorse them, so they have to take on any consequences.