PC’s premier digital distribution platform Steam has posted their new vision forward, on how they will allow games to be published on their service. In a blog posts, Seattle based juggernaut of PC gaming Valve, has published a lengthy article titled Who gets to be on the Steam Store?.
Steam has been criticized for a while now, for not implementing better quality control in terms of games that were made available for purchase on their digital storefront. Youtube personalities like Jim Sterling spared no harsh words when showing their audience the plethora of unprofessionally made “asset-flips”, games whose only merit were being tasteless and offensive for shock value alone.
Some folks online were curious to see if and what Valve was going to do about the droves of new titles that were added on Steam on a daily basis. It looks like Valve themselves had a hard time coping with the situation and find a good solution.
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.
It’s an understandable dilemma. One between free-speech, artistic freedom, a wide spectrum of games and maintaining a certain quality, not allowing hateful rhetoric and ideologies. So how did Valve decide to solve this rather tricky problem at hand? Simple they step back and let you make the decision.
So we ended up going back to one of the principles in the forefront of our minds when we started Steam […]: Valve shouldn’t be the ones deciding this. […] 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.
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.
That is a very interesting choice and as Valve puts it in their blog:
It means that the Steam Store is going to contain something that you hate, and don’t think should exist. […] 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.
[…]
To be explicit about that – if we allow your game onto the Store, it does not mean we approve or agree with anything you’re trying to say with it.
Despite Valve explicitly stating the above and that they will not allow games that are “illegal, or straight up trolling”, some people were quick to jump at Valve for their stance, with Youtube critic Jim Sterling already posting a very heavy-handed titled video on how “Valve endorses AIDS Simulator“, so we can see not everyone is happy with this decision.
No doubt, this direction Valve is taking now will have affects for the foreseeable future.
