Following some push back from the wider gaming community, Valve has announced that it won't clamp down on any kind of Steam content after all. That means that games featuring uber violence against innocents, as well as sexual content will be allowed, but Valve will still block anything that would be considered illegal or "straight up trolling."
The back and forth over what should and shouldn't be allowed on Steam has been going on for a number of years now. Games like Hatred and Active Shooter raised the ire of a number of communities within and without gaming and saw people calling for such content to be banned. When Valve seemed likely to consider such requests though, gamers pushed back and now Valve seems less keen to clamp down on anything.
"Decision making in this space is particularly challenging, and one that we've really struggled with," Valve's Erik Johnson said (via Eurogamer). "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."
As Johnson explained, decided whether to allow controversial content on Steam is difficult. It could easily be suggested that Valve makes this sort of content too easily accessible to children, or is encouraging bigoted behaviour. The sexual content makes for a curious bedfellow with more legitimate games too.
But if you censor one title, how do you justify not censoring another?
Moving forward Valve warns gamers that the store will have games and content that people don't like and that that will be the price they pay for having unrestricted access.
