The Mind Of OverlordTomala

Steam released a post on their blog yesterday regarding discussion and criticism of their storefront model. Let’s have a look at that first paragraph shall we?

Recently there’s been a bunch of community discussion around what kind of games we’re allowing onto the Steam Store. As is often the case, the discussion caused us to spend some time examining what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and how we could be doing it better. Decision making in this space is particularly challenging, and one that we’ve really struggled with. Contrary to many assumptions, this isn’t a space we’ve automated – humans at Valve are very involved, with groups of people looking at the contents of every controversial title submitted to us. Similarly, people have falsely assumed these decisions are heavily affected by our payment processors, or outside interest groups. Nope, it’s just us grappling with a really hard problem.

Unfortunately, our struggling has resulted in a bunch of confusion among our customers, developer partners, and even our own employees. So we’ve spent some time thinking about where we want to be on this, and we’d like to talk about it now. But we also think it’s critical to talk about how we’ve arrived at our position, so you can understand the trade-offs we’re making.

When I think about all of the discussions that have taken place regarding Steam’s sale practices the word “recently” doesn’t seem to surface. Kudo’s to them for at least looking the problem in the face though, that might mean there is some hope there.

The challenge is that this problem is not simply about whether or not the Steam Store should contain games with adult or violent content. Instead, it’s about whether the Store contains games within an entire range of controversial topics – politics, sexuality, racism, gender, violence, identity, and so on. In addition, there are controversial topics that are particular to games – like what even constitutes a “game”, or what level of quality is appropriate before something can be released.

Soooo a company that owns and runs a service pertaining to the sale of games (and movies, anime, etc) is having issues with what should be identified as a game? You mean to tell me that with all of the asset flips and games made with the sheer purpose of making a quick buck off of shock value and memes (or just pure laziness), they have issues identifying if those are games or not? Fucking really?

Common questions we ask ourselves when trying to make decisions didn’t help in this space. What do players wish we would do? What would make them most happy? What’s considered acceptable discussion / behavior / imagery varies significantly around the world, socially and legally. Even when we pick a single country or state, the legal definitions around these topics can be too broad or vague to allow us to avoid making subjective and interpretive decisions. The harsh reality of this space, that lies at the root of our dilemma, is that there is absolutely no way we can navigate it without making some of our players really mad.

I know! It’s almost like people have differing opinions or something… Can someone name to me one business that made everyone in existence happy and didn’t once piss someone off? No? Didn’t think so…

In addition, Valve is not a small company – we’re not a homogeneous group. The online debates around these topics play out inside Valve as well. We don’t all agree on what deserves to be on the Store. So when we say there’s no way to avoid making a bunch of people mad when making decisions in this space, we’re including our own employees, their families and their communities in that.

Shorter Valve: There’s so much shit on our store that we can’t keep up… Next.

So we ended up going back to one of the principles in the forefront of our minds when we started Steam, and more recently as we worked on Steam Direct to open up the Store to many more developers: Valve shouldn’t be the ones deciding this. 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.

Yes, bring forth the necessary tools to help both developers and memelords get their product onto Steam… Memes are a lucrative business and all that.

With that principle in mind, we’ve decided that the right approach is to allow everything onto the Steam Store, except for things that we decide are illegal, or straight up trolling.

Does this make asset flips perfectly ok? Or is that filed under trolling? Also, what is considered “straight up trolling?” and how do you know if it’s trolling? You guys have already admitted you don’t know what defines a game, what makes you think you can even handle this?

We are going to enable you to override our recommendation algorithms and hide games containing the topics you’re not interested in.

Shorter Valve: We’re going to give you the tools to build a wall around the shit you’re not interested in, it’ll be YUGE,

So what does this mean? It means that the Steam Store is going to contain something that you hate, and don’t think should exist. Unless you don’t have any opinions, that’s guaranteed to happen. But you’re also going to see something on the Store that you believe should be there, and some other people will hate it and want it not to exist.

Oh Valve, all kinds of places sell things that people hate… I hate lima beans but I don’t call for them to be outright banned from the local grocery store. But if they started selling Nazi Colon Cleansing Juice I might have a reason to complain. No ethnic colon cleansing!

It also means that the games we allow onto the Store will not be a reflection of Valve’s values, beyond a simple belief that you all have the right to create & consume the content you choose. The two points above apply to all of us at Valve as well. If you see something on Steam that you think should not exist, it’s almost certain that someone at Valve is right there with you.

Sorry, my brain shut down when they got to the part about “values”. I retract what I said earlier about there being hope for Valve…

Anyone else have thoughts on their blog post?