Steam Forums are one of the worst hellholes I’ve seen on the modern internet, and Valve does nothing. Any game that gets declared a target by the post-Gamergate crowd ends up having its board seiged until it’s unusable for any kind of actual discussion.
Valve’s hands-off philosophy with almost all of their social components is one of those massive double-edged swords, as anyone who trades steam items will tell you as well.
It allows anyone to take charge in participation, but that’s EVERYONE, including those who enjoy belittling others, which sucks.
Yes, but they are almost never exercised unless it involves legal requirements - Valve’s ideals are very much “We will not bother anyone unless we have to”, which is nice for people who want to forge spaces but sucks when people show up to be shitheads.
It’s not Valve’s job to provide a liberal education and loving community for the young’uns, the only thing Valve can do is censor discussions and ban people for what they are saying. Like tiktok is doing with “Israel is controlling the U.S. through AIPAC”.
the only thing Valve can do is censor discussions and ban people for what they are saying
Except they don’t, which is the problem. Moderation of the forums is pushed off on developers, publishers and volunteers, and Valve only gets involved if they absolutely have to. It makes effective moderation of the forums dedicated to games made by small and solo devs functionally impossible, and allows for rampant abuse of the systems by publishers, such as Take Two marking negative reviews as “off-topic”.
If they would, no one could ask anything pre purchase.
But I also don’t like the forum in there because of the bad atmosphere. Also I don’t know whether it is because of a special group or because the general communication style in games is toxic, dumb, aggressive and egoistical as fuck… Like in almost every ingame chat.
Every discussion board has several categories by default
General/bugs/events/trading
Simply moving the default category or locking it massively decreases trolling and appropriate category use.
The main problem with discussion trolling is that valve never deals with the rampant spam bots or people who continually post egregious material. I’ve seen bots last years posting update edits on every large game news post.
The only way to fix it is to lock it to game owners/account age/community engagement. But valve will never do this unless it negatively affects their image because their leadership have become deluded weirdos (exempting art lead and gabe newell)
Steam Forums are one of the worst hellholes I’ve seen on the modern internet, and Valve does nothing. Any game that gets declared a target by the post-Gamergate crowd ends up having its board seiged until it’s unusable for any kind of actual discussion.
Valve’s hands-off philosophy with almost all of their social components is one of those massive double-edged swords, as anyone who trades steam items will tell you as well.
It allows anyone to take charge in participation, but that’s EVERYONE, including those who enjoy belittling others, which sucks.
Don’t the developers have moderation capabilities?
Yes, but they are almost never exercised unless it involves legal requirements - Valve’s ideals are very much “We will not bother anyone unless we have to”, which is nice for people who want to forge spaces but sucks when people show up to be shitheads.
It’s not Valve’s job to provide a liberal education and loving community for the young’uns, the only thing Valve can do is censor discussions and ban people for what they are saying. Like tiktok is doing with “Israel is controlling the U.S. through AIPAC”.
Except they don’t, which is the problem. Moderation of the forums is pushed off on developers, publishers and volunteers, and Valve only gets involved if they absolutely have to. It makes effective moderation of the forums dedicated to games made by small and solo devs functionally impossible, and allows for rampant abuse of the systems by publishers, such as Take Two marking negative reviews as “off-topic”.
Valve could easily fix it by making game discussions default to owners only, but they’ve always been a shitty company so they dont bother
If they would, no one could ask anything pre purchase.
But I also don’t like the forum in there because of the bad atmosphere. Also I don’t know whether it is because of a special group or because the general communication style in games is toxic, dumb, aggressive and egoistical as fuck… Like in almost every ingame chat.
Every discussion board has several categories by default General/bugs/events/trading Simply moving the default category or locking it massively decreases trolling and appropriate category use. The main problem with discussion trolling is that valve never deals with the rampant spam bots or people who continually post egregious material. I’ve seen bots last years posting update edits on every large game news post. The only way to fix it is to lock it to game owners/account age/community engagement. But valve will never do this unless it negatively affects their image because their leadership have become deluded weirdos (exempting art lead and gabe newell)
I think it’s just the games you play I’ve just had a look at the town to city forum, and it’s fine, as to be expected.