Aielman15

I already answered your questions, but you seem more intent at discussing abstract ethics like an armchair philosopher rather than the real problem at hand.

Whereas the armies of content moderators tend to be incredibly poorly paid. The entire way this kind of work is done is that it nearly always either entirely or largely is done by the lowest bidder, in the poorest places possible.[...]So... your ethical calculus seems to conclude that stopping the spread of bigotry and fascist rhetoric in richer countries is worth the cost of the sanity of workers in poorer countries.

Why is the assumption that those workers must be poorly paid? If Valve, the multi billion dollar company whose owner owns multiple yachts as well as the company producing them, doesn't pay its workers adequately, then Valve is at fault. The solution shouldn't be to throw up hands and go home. There is a solution but they aren't willing to take it because it would require them to spend money, which is what I said in my first comment.

Your ethical calculus seems to be that if 100s of users of a website/platform don't get banned rapidly for violating TOS, then the website/platform should be held legally liable for that [...]

You know damn well what I meant but you keep this enlightened bullshit going on.

Valve literally got reports about those reviews and ignored them. They are at fault. Full stop.

If confronting the actual ugliness of them challenges you, makes you defensive and accusatory, good. That means you likely never thought about the totality of the situation here that deeply.

Please stop this enlightened philosopher bullshit. It's painful to read and makes you look dumb.

It's the dictionary definition of whataboutism.

"Steam has a problem with moderation, these are hateful reviews that have been reported but ignored by Steam support team""But what about fascists?"

The original user didn't answer and ran with their tail between their legs q, because they didn't want to admit that Steam has a problem with moderation.

Your entire comment reeks of "we shouldn't fight fire because that puts firefighters at risk".

There are no 100% ethical solutions to every problem, real life is a compromise. You can get better ethical results by allowing those workers to get adequate monetary compensation for their work and seek medical help if they need it. Otherwise what's the solution, allow everyone to read the same stuff? Why is that more ethical? Is it more ethical for the random user (who may also be a suggestible kid, or a person belonging to a persecuted minority) who reads it? Is it more ethical for the developers who get their game review bombed by fascists and bigots, and see their source of revenue diminish or fizzle out because of it?

As for the legal responsibility, it becomes so when the platform is complicit with the users writing hateful stuff. You are not responsible for the random shithead declaring his love for Mein Kampf. You are responsible for the hundreds of users who do, while you repeatedly ignore the reports of their misconduct, thus implicitly accepting and normalizing their behavior.

Additionally, when hateful behavior is accepted and normalize, human shit stains will come in drove and multiply the problem tenfold. By moderating their spaces, they would prevent a lot of those hateful messages from being written in the first place.

Do we have any proof those reviews were from people following that curator? I imagine that information has also been posted elsewhere online.

Why does that curator exist in the first place? Why are those reviews still up?

Do you think off topic reviews or curator recommendations should be allowed for things you approve of? Say if a review points out the developer is a secret fascist?

Great comeback! I really love whatabaoutism.

Oh please, moderating a forum unpaid for 5 mins every now and again is so easy it's how this whole platform and Reddit function.

Please, kindly refrain from talking about things you know jack shit about.

If you're truly an indie dev without the resources to moderate your own space, Steam allow you to simply close the forums and forbid discussions.

Steam forums are a resource for devs to interact with the community, get feedback, etc...Closing them means losing a resource. What you suggest is that devs big enough to employ a community manager should have access to that resource, while small/solo devs should just accept that they can't have it. Sounds like second class citizen treatment to me.

It would be a lot easier if Steam got their shit together and started moderating their online spaces, which is something they should've been doing this whole time.

Alabaster Dawn! I'm eagerly waiting for it.

Curators are hidden by default, only people who follow the curator see curator recommendations. They also don't affect store visibility or the review score in any way.

Cool! Will you also read the rest of the quote?

This encouraged others to post further reviews and comments related to Kirk (and not the game).

But apparently nobody wants to read the article, so here's my screenshot:

spoiler

Steam leaves moderation of forums to the developer/publisher to moderate as they wish, as if they interfered you bet they'd get complaints about Valve stepping on their toes. If a developer/publisher decides they want to allow hatred in their Steam forums, you should probably blame them.

Yes, I also blame the poor indie dev who barely gets enough money to keep existing instead of the multi billion dollar company that apparently is content with misogyny, racism and bigotry running rampant on every facet of their platform.

Ha ha, you're right, sorry :P

It was CrossCode! It single-handedly reignited my interest in gaming after a few slow years. Then left me disappointed when no other game managed to capture my heart as it did :(

This exact same article was already shared a week ago here, and it got this same reply.

Negative reviews can have consequences on how the game sells. The article (which apparently nobody reads, because Lemmy has a hard on for Steam and refuses to admit that Lord Gabe can do wrong) is NOT talking about random comments, it makes very specific examples (with links) to specific games that have received negative reviews for things unrelated to the game at hand, such as antisemitism and political content.

“I’m not new to online harassment,” says designer Nathalie Lawhead, who spent two years trying to get reviews removed from their games’ pages. Both reference allegations of sexual assault that Lawhead made in 2019. “I assumed reporting Steam abuse might have its own issues. But when people suggested that I open a ticket, I did have hope that this would be the way to get it resolved.”One of the reviews, published in 2023, read, “cringe game, made by a liar”. The other, a review of Lawhead’s game Blue Suburbia posted in 2024, said: “A women [sic] who seeks to destroy other’s [sic] career made this. It’s very poorly put together. She also probably has dual Israeli citizenship with how pointy her nose is.”Despite Steam’s code of online conduct and community guidelines prohibiting “abusive language or insults”, public accusations or “discrimination”, moderators initially cleared both reviews after Lawhead reported them.

Some games have been targeted by Steam curators. Ethan, the developer of Coven, a first-person action-horror set in the 1600s, says he has been targeted by “CharlieTweetsDetected”, a curator devoted to recommending games based solely on whether their developers are perceived to have correctly mourned the assassination of rightwing activist Charlie Kirk.CharlieTweetsDetected’s review of Coven, a first-person action-horror game set in the 1600s, read simply “Celebrated Sept 10th on blue sky [sic]”. This encouraged others to post further reviews and comments related to Kirk (and not the game). “I even mentioned it to Steam support,” Ethan says, “how it stemmed from that curator list, but they weren’t interested.” Instead, Steam support claimed that “off-topic” constituted “a recipe for cookies, or something completely unrelated to video games that is clearly trolling.” Reviews referencing Kirk, including one reading simply “RIP Charlie Kirk” alongside a negative rating, did not fit that criteria according to Steam; all remain in place today.

The problem is not even that Steam forums are a cesspool (which they are, by the way), but that Steam adamantly refuses to moderate the shit that gets posted on their site, going so far as to ignore that shit even when it gets reported, because ultimately they gain money from those people, so they don't care.

Thank you a lot for your work! I agree it's difficult to discover indie titles. Most channels only cover either AAA games, or the "famous" indie games (Hollow Knight, Hades, etc...). It's a lot more difficult to discover truly obscure stuff, which is a shame because a lot of great games get ignored and forgotten quickly. My favourite game from the last decade was an indie game that I discovered randomly, and it's a shame I could have missed it just as easily. Makes me wonder how many "favourite" games I missed over the years.

I hope this becomes a series. I would enjoy reading of new indie games every day.

Phil actually made games

He did???

Like, seriously. The guy was in charge for 10 years. He did jack shit, and none of his first party studios managed to create something worth under his leadership.

A few years after shutting down Lionhead, he and Bond talked about "learning from past mistakes" so that it wouldn't happen again. Years later, he shuts down Tango (the day before Matt Booty praised their game as something Xbox needs more of), Toys for Bob (and then, when they buy back their independence, contracts them for an Xbox game, because what is consistency?), Turn 10 (now a support studio), Arcane Austin. Rare spent half a decade working on a game that never got past its pre-production phase. He hyped Coalition as the "world's first AAAA studio", then unceremoniously shut it down with nothing to show for it despite working for 7 years and with outside help on one game.

343 was mismanaged for years and he never did anything to fix that, either. Of course that bit him in the ass when he bet everything on Halo Infinite, the only first party game to launch alongside the Series X, which was eventually delayed a year later. An entire year without first party games for their console. (Yes, Covid was bad for everyone in the industry, but their competition was able to release games in that timeframe). He then hoped for Starfield to save the day, which obviously didn't happen, and by then everyone's patience was over. 80 billion dollars down the drain for what? If I was anyone in a position of power at Microsoft, I would be pissed too.

He spent a decade pushing for GamePass and Xcloud, but never marketed it outside of niche audiences. I live in Italy and I've never, ever seen an Xbox ad in the past ten years. I can assure you none of my "normie" friends and family know what the current Xbox is called, let alone what the fuck GamePass is. The shit is so bad, my brother thought Cyberpunk 2077, a game that premiered on an Xbox E3 and that Microsoft had exclusive marketing rights for, was a PS exclusive. Could you believe that? Heck, everyone I talk to is surprised to hear that the Xbox One and Series offer retrocompatibility for OG Xbox and X360 games because, guess what, they never ran ads for that, either.

So many things went wrong with Xbox under his leadership, you could probably convince me he was working undercover for the competition to tank the brand. I honestly fail to think of one thing he did that worked. Like, I could go on for days. Heck, I'll do one more: he spent the last few years attempting to merge the Xbox, PC and mobile audiences, yet using the Xbox store on PC is still a miserable experience that makes you wish you were using any other storefront. Ten years! He couldn't find the time to fix that? Did he forget? Did he even care in the first place?

Spencer did jack shit for Xbox. The guy made promises every year, every year delivered nothing but lies, corporate bullshit and "how do you do, fellow gamers?" moments.

I was going to say "good riddance", but considering that his replacement is a former AI exec... Lol.

To be fair, I don't envy anyone who is put in charge of the mess that is Xbox right now.

LumenTale just released a new trailer today.

Angry otter yells at clouds

Definitive Edition (For Real This Time)™

Not liking something doesn't mean it should be removed.

And I never said that.

Any negative review of a game then becomes fair game.

No, it doesn't. If you truly, truly believe that the review is authentic, I have a bridge to sell you.

Yes. Never in a million years I would consider "cringe game, made by a liar" an honest review, and I don't know why anyone would consider it as such. It's clearly part of a harassment campaign.

should be forcefully removed just because the dev doesn’t like it?

It should be removed because it's not a review and has nothing to do with the game at hand, not because the dev doesn't like it.

“I’m not new to online harassment,” says designer Nathalie Lawhead, who spent two years trying to get reviews removed from their games’ pages. Both reference allegations of sexual assault that Lawhead made in 2019. “I assumed reporting Steam abuse might have its own issues. But when people suggested that I open a ticket, I did have hope that this would be the way to get it resolved.”

One of the reviews, published in 2023, read, “cringe game, made by a liar”. The other, a review of Lawhead’s game Blue Suburbia posted in 2024, said: “A women [sic] who seeks to destroy other’s [sic] career made this. It’s very poorly put together. She also probably has dual Israeli citizenship with how pointy her nose is.”

Despite Steam’s code of online conduct and community guidelines prohibiting “abusive language or insults”, public accusations or “discrimination”, moderators initially cleared both reviews after Lawhead reported them.

What's with Lemmy users and lying and bending backwards to shield poor indie dev company Valve from harassment? Does Gabe's dick taste that good?

Ngl, it's not my kind of game but this sounds very cute and exactly how a healthy relationship should work.

I'll preface this by saying that this is my personal opinion and it's in no way representative of how Ace gamers (or even gamers in general) should evaluate their games.

TL;DR: the game actually develops the characters and their relationship, which in turn makes me care about them, which in turn makes me tolerate their sex scenes. Meanwhile, many other games that treat sex as a prize take the easy route: they give you a checklist, and if you complete it, you are "rewarded" with a poorly animated sex scene with a character who doesn't care about you in the slightest and is only there to arouse the player.

LONG COMMENT: For me specifically, it's a matter of context, mood and consent. While I'm still not exactly comfortable with sex scenes, even in a game like Haven, I didn't hate them because they felt natural and coherent. They were not a "reward" for me, but a choice made by the characters.

I'll use Mass Effect 2 as an example of a game whose romance options I didn't like. I never felt like the crewmembers were actual people, because they never did anything on their own. They stayed in their room doing... nothing, like they were part of the ship's furniture. There was a stoic soldier, and an assassin with a conscience, and a hardcore vigilante, and even a badass warrior-nun! It didn't ultimately matter, they never did anything. But as soon as I stepped into their room, they'd start unloading their sad backstory on me, like I was their therapist or something. They never showed any interest in me whatsoever; they barely knew anything about my character beyond my name, but I was expected to care about them, for some reason?

After a few such interactions, they'd ask me to do a job for them (tied to their sad backstory), and after that, they'd suddenly go "hey, we got a lot of chemistry, want to bang?" like it was some kind of reward. Congratulations, Player! You visited this character enough times, picked the correct dialogue options to keep them talking about themselves, and even completed a risky mission on their behalf: you totally deserve the steamy hot sex scene!And if you do, they do... nothing, ever again. They become part of the furniture of the ship - but this time it's permanent, because there are no more interactions with them.

The game doesn't care to take your relationship in any meaningful direction, or better yet, it isn't building any kind of relationship between them and your character in the first place. It was all in service of the hot steamy sex scene.Sex is the prize, and it painfully shows in the way the dialogue is written. It feels... icky. Dishonest. I was turning everyone down at every opportunity, as if I was Matrix-dodging their heart-shaped bullets, because the game made it very clear that everyone was down bad for my character. But it also felt like the game was constantly second-guessing me, asking me if I truthfully cared about those characters, or if I was doing what I was doing because I wanted to reach the "prize".It reached a point where I stopped interacting with a character altogether because she made me deeply uncomfortable (it was the second-in-command/crew therapist: in our very first interaction, she told me she wanted to bang me; in our second interaction, she informed me that the insectoid guy I had just recruited was hot stuff and needed to get laid).The game also has a Codex, and the very first entry is "This is an all-female alien race. [Infodump on their sexual life]" which would almost be hilarious if it wasn't for the sexist connotation. Like, I could go on for days about the many ways ME2 made me feel uncomfortable during my playthrough, but I'll stop here.

In Haven, sex is never treated as a prize: the player is not tasked with doing stuff to unlock the sex scenes, and the sex scenes are not used to titillate the player. There are dozens of unique interactions between Yu and Kai - some of them playing games or being goofy, some of them doing mundane stuff like cooking or taking a shower, and some of them having sex - because sex can be a (meaningful) part of a romance, but it's not the only component of a relationship.The way they talk and interact shows that they like and care about each other. I was willing to "accept" the sex scenes because it was what they wanted, not what I wanted; It was a natural development of their relationship and not a "prize" that I achieved by pressing buttons on a dialogue wheel. Many other games lack substance and depth, and have shallow relationships built on a fake score system which tasks the player with increasing the meter by doing arbitrary stuff, which then culminates in a sex scene that only exists to arouse horny teenagers and leads to no meaningful development in the relationship; Haven, on the other hand, builds the relationship first and foremost, and keeps developing it for the entirety of the game. Sex is one of many possible interactions between the characters, and it's never something that you need to achieve, but something that happens naturally and organically because the two characters really love each other; I think it's meaningful that the game doesn't end with a sex scene, because sex is not the end game, but a small part of a much more complex relationship.