Valve has just announced that it will open up its Steam store to all developers. The company will no longer police its content, meaning that it will welcome all sorts of games to its library, unless they are illegal or trolling games.
As Valve stated:
“If you’re a player, we shouldn’t be choosing for you what content you can or can’t buy. If you’re a developer, we shouldn’t be choosing what content you’re allowed to create. Those choices should be yours to make. Our role should be to provide systems and tools to support your efforts to make these choices for yourself, and to help you do it in a way that makes you feel comfortable.”
As such, Valve will allow everything onto the Steam Store, except for things that it decides are illegal, or straight up trolling. Therefore, Valve is currently building the appropriate tools for users to use.
“Taking this approach allows us to focus less on trying to police what should be on Steam, and more on building those tools to give people control over what kinds of content they see. We already have some tools, but they’re too hidden and not nearly comprehensive enough. We are going to enable you to override our recommendation algorithms and hide games containing the topics you’re not interested in. So if you don’t want to see anime games on your Store, you’ll be able to make that choice. If you want more options to control exactly what kinds of games your kids see when they browse the Store, you’ll be able to do that.”
Valve also claimed that developers who create controversial games will need better tools. As such, the team will be building tools and options to support them too.
“As we mentioned earlier, laws vary around the world, so we’re going to need to handle this on a case-by-case basis. As a result, we will almost certainly continue to struggle with this one for a while. Our current thinking is that we’re going to push developers to further disclose any potentially problematic content in their games during the submission process, and cease doing business with any of them that refuse to do so honestly. We’ll still continue to perform technical evaluations of submissions, rejecting games that don’t pass until their issues have been resolved.”
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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so don’t make any games about trolls! Elderscrolls 7 has troll in it okay gone from steam!
You’re too dumb to live.
look who talking.
Me, the guy who realizes you’re too dumb to live. How perceptive of you.
You
oh great, the already cluttered store, its gonna get even more cluttered by trash unfinished asset flip games, you know how 7672 games were released in 2017 on steam, yeah expect that number and double for this year alone, ffs, i remember when the steam store was mostly AAA games with some indie games, and now its mostly trash indie games and some AAA games.
Steam is utter sht. I wish more quality AAA games made it to GOG instead.
Same, GOG is the best. If the majority of AAA, to AA and good games where on GOG I would ditch Steam all together.
Already I get what I can at GOG, but man it be incredible if they got all the AAA and AA games. Got keep our fingers crossed, well at Steam’s rate of change it may really happen sooner then we think or hope.
cant argue with gog.
the good games shine , the bad are lost. Who on earth goes through new releases to find something good. Youtubers is where its at.
Yay! More garbage!
You called it ^^^ this is really what the whole thing equates to 🙁 , and people thought Greenlight was bad LOL. I am willing to bet almost everyone would love it if Greenlight would return, sh|t just compare it to how it used to be to now it is insane. The constant flood of games and garbage is brutal. The fact is the whole thing is a free for all now and Valve is eating up that extra flow of a 30% cuts with out any care cause it is all about the $. If you release a game now you will be lucky if it is on the first page of new releases for half the day if that. Organic marketing…? yeahhhh nope.
Steam is brutal now if you don’t know what your looking for as a customer it is crazy to find stuff. Then if you are a small indie team or individual with no marketing good luck on selling and getting exposure for your game organically at the store. The reality is the sales windows is not even a day(unless you are a break out hit) and most likely chances are no one will even see your game released when it does.
Anyways, I 100% agree with you. They should of enforced you pay $500 to host your game and it has to go through quality control and some sort of approval system like Greenlight or better. Sad thing is almost everyone freaked out at that idea and wanted equal rights. Well you reap what you sow, enjoy the land fill I guess, I am sure there are a few diamonds in the rough if you look hard enough or have a full time job tracking good games + their release dates.
As long as they also expand their customer support section to cope with even more trash. This could back fire on Valve, as developers look for a more premium store.
It seems VALVE is taking a “neutral” lenient stance on the games offered on Steam.
Kind of a controversial decision made, as some may agree, whereas others may criticize this move.
I think last month, Acid and Revived Games, the publisher and developer for Active Shooter, was removed from the STEAM’s platform, claiming that the game’s developer was a known internet troll !
Not sure how much truth was there when VALVE took that decision ?
Anyways, this recent move might seem like a noble ideal to some, but I’m concerned about how this will play out in practice ?
Curation/Quality control used to be here, but in some ways it feels like Valve is just giving up, and waiting to see if the MARKET will correct itself ?
Don’t know though. I still prefer using GOG.
And while allowing Gamers granular control of what we see is a welcome touch, it’s simply a band-aid/ temporary solution of a larger problem. I could be wrong though.
That 1 gig of ram you save with GoG ?
I can see it not being a popular move with everyone (and tbh, what is?) but it makes sense considering Valve made a lot of curating decisions in the past that didn’t mesh out with some people repeatedly. Focusing on creating tools and enforcing dev behavior (correct tagging of the game’s content, etc) so people can get a better control over what they personally want to see in the storefront might just do the job.
I mean, the guest curator program is still there. If you just want non-controversial, Kotaku approved games, you can just follow them — I don’t see what would be so terrible in this move from a customer point of view at least.
Agreed. Expect the nannying and hectoring types to be spitting the dummy in response.
Anyways the will ban whatever content THEY THINK is illegal, so is they decide ero novels are illegal they will remove it
No they wont. I know you have the mind of a 6 year old, but get a GRIP.
Yes they will, it’s what their blog entry says
“except for things that we decide are illegal, or straight up trolling”
Trolling as In a Fan made half life 3 🙂
#based-valve
seriously, first good thing they have done in years
Sjws are so mad about this, Patrick Klepek on twitter:
“valve dedicates so much of this post to talking about how allowing a game onto steam doesn’t constitute an expression of values or taking a “side.” but the knowing creation of an all-is-permitted libertarian paradise ABSOLUTELY constitutes an expression of values”
SO WHAT YOU ARE SAYING HERE COMRADE TOVARISCH IS THAT LIBERALS GET THE BULLET TOO? WE ARE DOING COMMUNISM COMRADE, GET IN….looking at how Mat Lees made a presentation on gdc to make get developers to make games for non gamers because gamers are dead according to his buddy Leigh Alexnader and said that they should make games that dont promote capitalism like zelda…..freaking communists are in charge of gaming journalism.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e78797cb4a3c0aaf0dadf7b01d0adc66542ba5abe740552a91a7fb9dd66984b2.jpg
Indeed they are. Ben ‘Cuck’ Kuchera has railed against it at Polygon and PC Gamer are currently being roasted by pretty much every commenter in their article’s comments section. ?
pretty much then again you god sjws like mrsquifler supporting these nutcases
Vatniks always crying how in video games Russia is evil (it’s same since Cold War why cry now?) so they decided to make video game about school shooting. And since publisher is Russian company it’s clear anti US propaganda.
Am I the only one excited about being able to filter out anime games?
You are not alone.
off topic guys
******Totally Accurate Battlegrounds released on Steam (Free to keep for the first 100 hours)
go get itttttttt
Legal contents can garbage and illegal games can also be fun, it’s all about money.
Looking at the comment section I get the impression that quite a few people “shop for games” on Steam. I have never done that on Steam or any other service. It doesn’t seem like a good way to pick games to play. I get ideas about games from gaming news and check into the ones I’m interested in and when I log on to Steam I buy those games and download them and leave. I don’t have any interest in what games are on the front page or being promoted by Steam.
A common complaint that I’m seeing about Steam the last few years is all of the clutter of garbage games on Steam but really it’s not Valve’s responsibility to police what games are made available unless they are illegal or the Developer is trying to misrepresent their game or the game is a broken mess and Steam has to process a large amounts of returns.
Would you really want Valve to pick and choose which games they see as worthwhile and which aren’t and then to not make the games they deem unworthy available to buy? What seems like a garbage game to one person might seem like fun to another.
I am glad to see Valve let the market decide and not bow to SJWs.
Weebs and losers nationwide rejoice!
Awesome news.
well f***** , like steam isn’t already filled with worthless garbaaage, after this good luck finding a fresh decent game that isn’t a triple A release, the floodgate have been removed now, asset flips and shhh****ty simulators will drown the steam store
Yes finally valve this is great can we get some games like Bonetown and
Bonecraft that were not allowed on steam because sexual content.
It’s time for ppl to understand that games are not ,,just for kids” anymore so I would gladly buy games like those on steam.
For all ppl that will attack me for supporting this you have a choice don’t like them don’t buy them.
Basically plz don’t try to stop valve from giving me the choice to buy something
that you might think it’s offensive/crap/should not exist.
One person junk could be other person gold just vote with you wallet.
Have a nice day and peace out 🙂
I’d rather have real s*x than play a game about having s*x. You incels amaze me.
Honestly man “as a feminist” or “as a progressive” is the new “as a christian” new form of moral puritanism.
Hello Durka,
I think you are mistaking the above user with the “actual” Troll who was spoiling the forums by posting GORE and other dirty Pics.
NOT taking anybody’s side, but check the date of Joining in the profile, and you will come to know. The above user joined Disqus in 2014.
In my opinion, the Troll’s actual account and user name is this: @DeadN1GGERsoup, and he joined this May 19, 2018.
I think JOHN has banned him from DSOG, though this is just my guess.
No matter how many names you change, that doesnt change the fact you post the same stupid memes and trying to get a reaction. I am not even mad about your stupid post, nor i am suprised that mrsquifier who is a sjw moron upvoted though, i guess this makes him feel good upvoting a known troll who posts gore and gay p*rn in this site.
Show just how low the left has fallen trying to strike a win.