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Senator Mark Warner’s letter follows an ADL report about extremist content on the platform.
US Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) has sent a letter to Valve CEO Gabe Newell asking if the company intends to take measures to curtail extremist content on Steam. The letter references a report by the Anti-Defamation League that identified a large number of user accounts and user-created groups “that glorified antisemitic, Nazi, white supremacist, gender- and sexuality-based hate, and other extremist ideologies” on the PC gaming platform.
The letter features a high-level view of the kind of hateful content the ADL found on Steam. That includes “40,000 groups with names that included hateful words, with the most prominent being ‘1488,’ ‘shekel,’ and ‘white power’.”
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Hopefully Steam reply, “Hey Senator, what’s with all the Nazis in congress?”
Has the Senator been on Xitter recently ? Always trying to paint games and gamers black.
The overwhelming majority of the symbols they counted as hate speech were Pepe. They are cherry picking data and running with it. Racist shit is a problem on steam but they’re blowing this way out of proportion.
They can’t attack Twitter. They’re too old and dumb to switch to anything else.
Ahem said the senator who voted no for Bernie Sander’s stop arms sale to Israel:
https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1182/vote_118_2_00292.htm#name
I wonder for him people who criticise Israel are also included in the set of Nazis while literal Nazis are running rampant in the government.
Shekel? Since when is that a hateful word…? It’s a currency!
“What’s with all the Nazis in government?”
Fine, but this guy just teed himself up perfectly for Gabe to come back with, “What’s with all the Nazis in your senate?”
Nazis do not just spring fully formed in the Aristotelian tradition from nothing specifically into the Steam forums. All of these motherfuckers are actual people with actual odious viewpoints. A lot of them probably voted for your colleagues. Maybe a better question is, “Why are there still Nazis, and what do we do about it?”
Why are there still Nazis, and what do we do about it?
Social welfare programs, like in Nordic countries. Fascists have been exploiting the poor for their rise to power for eons.
Yes. We 100% need this, badly. But fascism has been on the rise even in countries with strong social programs like Germany and France, so you really can’t blame this entirely on capitalism run rampant, though it certainly fanned the flames and needs to be addressed.
I think a bigger part of the problem is silicon valley fomenting fear and outrage for profits. Tech bros like Elon Musk and Zucc the Succ are manufacturing this crisis because it makes them ungodly amounts of money, power, and influence.
Germany and France are fucked by neoliberals so the problem remains
Sure but a game of whataboutism isn’t a strong argument. If Steam has a Nazi problem they should be outlining how they’re fixing it. They can definitely compare themselves to other platforms, but you lead with what YOU’RE doing. If the majority are coming from Twitter you can point that out. But at the end of the day either prove how you’re fixing it or why it isn’t as big of a problem as stated.
They sure do have a lot of leeway on steam. It’s time we recognize that it’s a form of social media with the same real-world consequences.
We have Nazis in the White House. I guess America is a Nazi country.
Senator to Valve: what’s with the kid in my Black Ops lobby saying he had relations with my mom? I don’t think he did, did he?
The Steam forums are fucking awful. Filled with bigotry and nazis complaining about gaming be woke. There’s literally a list of “Woke games” for people to avoid, it has thousands of games on there.
When people talk about the new Dragon Age, it’s filled with people calling it woke propaganda and pushing the transgender ideology all because it has a trans character that you can’t not accept.
If you ever wonder “should I go on the steam forums to check this one thing I’m curious about?” The answer is always no.
It’s so annoying while trying to troubleshoot issues I may have with a game. I used to get upset when a dev goes nuclear and deletes a bunch of comments or moderates the forums like a hawk, but the forums are basically overrun to the point that I hope they do since I can’t find solutions to my problems without reddit, which usually isn’t helpful either. It’s not like steam is particularly the majority fault, it’s the people using it for what’s it’s not meant for. Seriously dumb brick idiot just need to go to 4chan and complain there, they are far more likely to get positive reinforcement there.
I’m just surprised anyone uses steam forums for anything beside troubleshooting.
Troubleshooting yes. But you’re missing the other 90% of the forums which is just constantly bitching about the games.
I’m kind of curious about that list so that I can use it as a source for recommendations.
I find that I almost always enjoy movies, TV shows, games, etc. that get conservatives all riled up and in the mood for brigading.
I saw it. I thought it would be good for recommendations, but it’s enormous and contains almost every game, so not helpful.
They put Bloons TD6 on that list. They’re schizo for sure
I agree with most of what you said, but your example could probably serve as a textbook definition for “pushing an agenda”. A still very controversial real life topic that you must engage with and can only respond to in one way.
I think it would have been more elegant if the player can choose to treat the trans person negatively, with negative story impact down the line as a penalty for being a dick. Much better way to get the point across without feeling like a lecture.
Can you treat the women negatively because they are women? Can you treat the Grey Warden Davrin badly because he’s a black elf? Can you treat the Dwarf Harding badly because she’s a Dwarf?
The answer to all of these is no. Why should someone being trans be any different?
Edit: is it purely pushing an agenda because it’s a “controversial” topic for some people? Would the same be said if accepting Black rights in our society was more recent and the game had allowed you to simply accept a black person for who they are? Making your character accept your companions for who they are is a core theme of the game, Taash is no different.
Can you treat the women negatively because they are women? Can you treat the Grey Warden Davrin badly because he’s a black elf? Can you treat the Dwarf Harding badly because she’s a Dwarf?
Fuck that’d actually be really cool of them to let you play a shitty racist for real, more games need to let you actually be a truly vile piece of…
The answer to all of these is no
😞of course
You can be a truly vile piece of shit without having to resort to prejudice. If anything, resorting to racism to be a piece of shit is cheap, as if the writer didn’t want to think of an actually shitty thing the character could do. For instance, if you could turn one of your companions over to a bounty hunter who wants them because of some gambling debts. But you’ve gotten to know them and understand those debts were only a result of them being blackmailed into gambling by some mobster. Then when the bounty hunter comes a knocking, you say “Don’t care, you shouldn’t have gambled” and turn them over. Mind I’m not a writer so this isn’t the best example. But that’s still being a piece of shit without having to be racist. There are more ways to be a piece of shit and have it be interesting than resorting to prejudice.
Doesn’t mean I can’t want the option to be a racist asshole to every race in a video game
Bonus points if I can pick a race to consistently (or not) not hate rather than just always being a general racist or not
It’s like people forget that Valve has been enabling this for a long time. When people suck off Valve, remember half of them may be Nazis who appreciate that Valve gives them a place to be a pile of shit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatred_(video_game)
The fact that this got released, immediately was a top seller on Steam, is indicative of how popular the anti-woke narrative is and how long it has been going on, since Hatred was released in 2015 which means it was at least developed through 2014, if not 2013.
Why is it Valve’s job to police game content? That’s a shitty precedent for any platform.
If you don’t like it, don’t buy it. Whether it’s ultraviolent stuff like Postal or Hatred, ww2 games where you can play as literal Nazis, or the opposite side of the spectrum where you have LGBT centric content.
Bear with me, that previous sentence isn’t intended to equate those two things, but the reality is a lot of people find LGBT content objectionable. By putting the publish/not publish decision up to platform owners, you’re setting up a system that getting your game published is according to the political whims of whoever is in charge of that process. Any system you make here can easily be abused.
If you think banned books are dumb the same should apply to games. I for one appreciate knowing that freedom of expression is alive and well on Steam, and if I don’t want to engage with content I find objectionable, I simply don’t. Why is that such a foreign concept?
Should Valve be required to publish each and every game submitted? Even if they are absolute bare minimum shovelware garbage?
Valve decided a while ago that it was easier to just take the $100 and have some basic verification that a game runs rather than do any curation themselves.
If it’s not malicious software like a bitcoin miner or whatever, yes. If people want to buy shovelware, that’s between them and whoever made it.
From the headline I assumed this was yet another Republican complaining about Wolfenstein, but no they have a point
The gaming world has shrugged away hate speech, misogyny, and abuse for way too long. It’s embarrassing. We have to stop with the “boys will be boys” 1990s attitude already.
Republicans wouldn’t complain about nazis
They complain about Nazis being the enemy and games being “political”
“what’s with all the Nazis on steam”
They are called gamers. And them buying pedophile anime visual novels and CSGO crates make up 80% of Valve’s turnover
Personally, I think people shouldn’t be communicating in public forums for every service. There’s no reason steam needs forums. That’s what Reddit and Lemmy are for.
I think there is some merit to this notion but the Steam Community forums are actually quite helpful sometimes. Yes, having more discussions move to Lemmy (not Reddit!) might be good. But my main point is that Steam has a lot of nooks and crannies for Nazis to hide in, e.g. Steam groups. Those are entirely separate from the actual game discussions and could be easily done away with at no loss to the average gamer.
Next time I need tech support for an obscure indie game that probably sold less than a thousand copies I’ll be sure to check the Lemmy community for that game.
5th most populous country in the world has probably a whopping 10 users on lemmy to represent themselves lmao.
I don’t use the forums, are they meant to be the support forums for each game?
Yes. Well, it depends on the game. A lot of games know that their users will use the Steam forums to complain or ask questions so they’ll attend them in a formal manner. Others are just chaotic cesspools that are completely ignored by the developers/publishers.
The Steam forums really are kinda garbage but I don’t think it’s because of lack of moderation. It’s because they’re the most minimal interface with no good search function, no good way to figure out what’s changed, and it’s missing zillions of other features that exist in modern forums.
So really they are just like any other online forum. Better to have them than not. Reddit or Lemmy is probably a better way to get more useful information however.
There are some niche games though that won’t have subreddits and that’s where steams forums can be useful
Better UX would be nice, but that’s not what would solve the Nazi problem.
I guess? There’s a little social network. It shouldn’t exist.
