„Das sollte nicht normal sein“: Entwickler äußern sich über Bigotterie auf Steam, dem weltweit größten PC-Gaming-Shop | Mehrere Spieleentwickler beschreiben eine ineffektive Moderation auf der Plattform, die zu ungehemmtem Hass in Foren und gezielten Kampagnen mit negativen „Anti-Woke“-Bewertungen führt
https://www.theguardian.com/games/2026/feb/16/bigotry-steam-pc-moderation-developers-speak-out
32 Kommentare
Dumb bs article
Kinda of a junk article, because if anyone reads a review that says „Woman made this to ruin her career, woke is joke“ and it that sways them, they weren’t really interested
It’s called free speech.
Deal with it like an adult or ignore it.
“Conservatives are incapable of positively contributing to society so they shit all over everything they’ve been convinced is to blame for the failures of society that they themselves largely cause, More at 11.”
Companies will use this to silence criticism.
Get a bad review? Just get it removed.
I for one am GLAD I can read through what people think.
Often times, a negative review that’s obviously wrong is the reason why I decide to buy a game.
Unfortunately, meh. I obviously wish there was less stupid posts and reviews on the platform, but if the alternative is a high degree of overwatch from the company, then I think I’ll just be an adult and ignore things that aren’t useful to me or I disagree with.
tldr; UK (United Karens) publication crying about lack of censorship
Steam has always felt like an extension of 4chan in a way
Steam community is a safe space for petulant, insecure black-pilled chuds.
Zero tolerance for having an opinion or any amount of artistic expression; if you’re declared woke (by being anything other than one of them in any way) you’re targeted by a horde of brown shirts who work as hard as possible to troll you off the platform.
Valve’s tolerance of this behavior is shaping up to be a choice. The whole platform has lost all credibility; it’s too toxic to trust for any of the information it hosts.
Especially reviews. Zero discourse in good faith, the only metric that’s measured is whether the game is perceived as woke. It’s getting to a point where a negative review score is an accolade.
Gabe really comes off as a bigot, so it’s not surprising.
TLDR, the internet is doing what the internet will do. Specific developers are receiving bigoted/hatedful/racist/etc comments in game reviews or on their game’s Steam pages.
This whole article has the same energy as those that say YouTubers should be held responsible and punished for what their comment sections say. Valve cannot feasibly moderate all of the comments and game reviews on every single game listing or discussion board, just like YouTube cannot moderate the comment sections of every YouTube video.
Bad faith actors have and always will be around to have the worst opinions and takes on anything with the express intent of riling up others. I’d be curious to see if those hateful comments and reviews actually affect sales of these games, or if it’s just bothering these specific publishers/developers on an emotional level.
Big corporations don’t and will never give a shit about you. Sticks and stones may break my bones but words (from people that do not know me or care about me) will never hurt me.
You can draw a straight line from gamergate 4chan and the GQP culture wars and current white nationalist memeing from the various government agency xitter posts.
Try playing the actual games.
NOOOO I CANT PETITION STEAM TO REMOVE REVIEWS I DONT LIKE
Who cares, it’s just video games.
One of our problems is that a chunk of this activity is being paid for. Normal people don’t spend all their time ranting and hating online because we’re not getting paid to do that, but trolls are definitely getting paid (in Russian troll farms among other places) to sow discord and hatred inside various countries. So they’ve got more time and energy and can keep up the hate mongering all day.
I don’t see a fix other than draconian moderation.
As much as I think Steam’s community forums are a worthless waste of space, I’m getting the feeling that this article was written with the intent of nudging the reader toward eventually being in favour of ID checks for Steam accounts.
Steam forums are an unchecked cesspool of the shittiest people on earth mixed with a few normal people genuinely trying to solve troubleshooting issues or find others to game with, but mostly the former. It’s pretty insane how much people get away with doing or saying while automods basically protect them and ban those who speak up. It’s ridiculously broken.
If you don’t like what someone is saying just block them. I don’t understand why people refuse to use some self moderation for a change instead of expecting some politically motivated higher authority to step in everywhere.
If someone is being toxic, call them out for it and block them. Everyone sees it for what it is and their just making a fool of themselves most of the time.
Oh look another excuse for censorship and invasion of privacy on the internet.
And of course it’s a British news outlet.
Sorry but the devs themselves and their own mods run those forums, and ban any dissent for any reason whatsoever. So what they are claiming is BS. If the moderation is „ineffective“, then it’s their own fault.
Free speech.
I use steam, I have never read a review on steam about any game I play via steam. I dont look to see if a game has mostly positive or negative reviews; I dont even know where I would be looking for this information, nor do I care to know.
I do know if I was required to upload my ID to use steam, I would stop using steam; that applies to every single online service considering ID verification.
I mean, this looks like a very subtle attempt to get people more on board with the same ID verification stuff that is plaguing Discord.
The main argument makes no sense. You make a game about brown space lesbians and you get mad when Chuds call it woke? Then you claim it makes you lose sales? Those people were never going to buy the game in the first place, for god’s sake.
„People are brigading us, calling us woke!“ and it’s an LGBTQ dating sim, like come on now.
Is this something people actually care about? I don’t use Steam forums myself, but do developers actually read negative steam reviews? If you know it will insult you, why hurt yourself?
Well… PC users… y’see…
the forums are up top the devs to moderate, steam will help but devs should do their part too
Why can’t woke minded people just ignore reviews and comments? Or make their own? Instead of wanting to censor everything they don’t agree with.
Just another angle where other businesses want to take down steam instead of replicate its success
Doesn’t steam not let you review a game unless you purchased it?
Hot take: it’s low key good that there are pretty meaningless pockets of the Internet where losers can say nonsense to each other.
generally woke games flop because game is not up to par. For example the new climbing game cairn isnt doing bad.