Good on Steam for doing this. Quoting from the announcement [0], "Valve shouldn't be the ones deciding this. If you're a player, we shouldn't be choosing for you what content you can or can't buy."
I feel that total inclusionism is the only long-term stable policy. Excluding things based on morality is inherently an unstable position - "why do you allow this but not that? Don't you know this is literally killing babies in Africa?" where this and that could be nudity, gore, violence, rape, women's suffrage, blasphemy, political incorrectness or any number of other topics. Well, I suppose hosting no content at all would also be a stable policy... But it's not one that many storefronts are going to support.
Valve are taking a stance that every major open-access digital vendor has backed away from. Apple, Google, Facebook, Patreon, Zazzle, Amazon... they'll let you sell anything you want with no pre-moderation (except Apple) and rely on community moderation to bring things to their attention.
I don't think this will end well for them. They've declared open season for the internet's worst people to push the boundaries of acceptability, for which they'll earn a cut of a tiny number of sales, and reams of negative press.
Good decision by Valve. Considering the sway they have on the industry (if your game can't be on Steam, suddenly you have a lot less exposure), this hands-off stance is the most fair and respectful both to devs and players. We don't need any more "curated app stores" by tech companies that want to be petty tyrants.
It's a smart move for Valve, as only an explicit commitment to principles of neutrality have any hope of shielding them from the ever-growing Culture Wars where various outrage-groups weaponize platform rules to chip away at others' ability to enjoy content on their own terms.
I agree with you, but I think this is a perfect example of a failure to successfully handle branding.
For a long time, Steam was distribution platform where the distributor was also the curator. Granted, this curation mostly resolved to "is this an AAA or someone peripherally in the Big Boys club," but it was a certain level of curation that consumers came to expect.
Now that Steam is the de-facto app store of the PC platform, Valve is strongly incentivized to make sure that any game you can buy, can be bought through Steam.
Combine this with their general unwillingness to scale their employees to match the size of the business they have (which is IMO a silly thing on Valve's part, but I'll avoid this discussion for now), and the shift away from Valve-as-a-curator makes sense.
But Valve hasn't sold this as providing Steam's distribution platform as a back-end service to curators/other "stores", they've sold it as Steam and damaged their own reputation in the process.
There's a reason why large businesses have so many different brands that are hard to associate without a lot of digging, and Valve's handling of Steam is a good example of why.
Steam is going to become the worlds most profitable, largest distributor of hardcore pornography overnight. I'm really not sure how to feel about this. On one hand free speech is obvious. But allowing porn fundamentally changes the nature of your online service. Not being prude, it just tends to discourage a certain type of person, and encourage another.
> Steam is going to become the worlds most profitable, largest distributor of hardcore pornography overnight
MindGeek's (online porn conglomerate) annual revenue was $460 million in 2015.
Steam has 125 million active users. I doubt they will make an average of $3.68 per user on porn next year, considering the VR install base is small, and there is so much free online porn.
Allowing murder simulators fundamentally changes the nature of your online store. Not being squeamish, it just tends to discourage a certain type of person, and encourage another.
No, those are fine. But how about "hunt and kill thinly-disguised versions of prominent feminists"? We will see someone push that limit, and probably this year.
That is actually illegal due to privacy protections in most places - so would be taken down. If not, then the author will be sued and it will be taken down until proceeding is done most likely.
In case this isn't a joke or someone doesn't get it..
Valve got their big start with COUNTER STRIKE
A game where you can hear the phrase "Terrorists Win".
A strong majority of the population derives direct pleasure from sexual stimulation. And you can physically act on that stimulation, frequently, in all sorts of ways.
A very small minority of the population literally derives pleasure from simulating murder. And you can't act on that / do it in reality to drive the stimulation further, unless of course you want to murder someone and take on the very high risk consequences.
Or put simply, sex is radically more popular than murder.
The difference in popularity between the two is over 10000x.
A sex simulator will typically have a direct, considerable physical consequence to you in real life. Murder simulation very, very rarely will have that - at least until or unless VR gets hyper realistic.
Idk mang. Murder simulators have always been the biggest chunk of the gaming market. From Battlezone to Mario, to Counterstrike to Fortnite, the idea is kill those other fuckers before they kill you.
Reread what I actually said. I didn't say violent video games weren't popular.
I said very few people derive direct pleasure from simulating murder in eg a video game. When you stomp on a bad guy in Mario, you are not feeling the serial killer equivalent to some kind of sweet orgasmic reaction high to murdering a fellow human with a butcher knife in real life. There is no connection at all.
To put it into movie terms: a lot of people enjoy action movies (which include violence), the latest flick by The Rock etc, they're exciting. A dramatically smaller share of the population enjoys watching highly graphic, gruesome, murder movies like Hostel or Saw. And that's not the person simulating murder, that's second hand, watching the simulation of it, and the drop off in popularity is extreme.
People are not having fun in GTA because they get off on actually murdering people and their sole physical outlet for it is relegated to a video game. All of those players aren't actually lusting after wanting to slaughter their fellow humans.
You can simulate sex in VR, or watch porn, and then go have sex, jerk off all day, etc. There's a direct connection.
Very, very, very few people murder or actually want to murder; some extremely high percentage of the population wants sex, has sex, jerks off, etc.
I find this explanation amusing given the endless articles about how little sex is happening IRL for youth today.
The more movies, games etc we have to meet such needs, the less we seem to want the real thing. This actually strikes me as reducing the risk of pregnancy and STDs. On top of that, actual studies show that increased access to porn correlates to reduced incidence of sexual assault.
I think there's no question the pursuit of sexual stimulation hasn't declined one bit, despite a supposed decline in youth pursuing sex (or perhaps more plausibly they're simply being exposed to circumstances that enable stray sexual encounters a lot less often due to changes in socializing; as opposed to an actual decline in wanting sex).
An extremely small percentage of the population feels any motivation related to wanting to murder other people. Murdering people isn't very popular at all, and drives no pleasure for 95%+ of the population, despite the attention it stirs in media.
Somewhere between a very large minority and a majority of the population spends a large share of their teen and adult lives being motivated by wanting to have sex, sexual intimacy, etc. with other people.
Most people are biologically driven to want to have sex with other people. An extremely small number of people are similarly biologically driven to murder (perhaps a near zero population).
Potential sex partners are sometimes very willing and cooperative. Potential murder victims not so much. In fact, they may attempt to kill you in self defense. Afterwards, the rest of society will want you behind bars for a very long time.
If you are sexually clueless and try anyway, it's embarrassing and you go have a good cry and write about it in your diary. If you have no idea what you are going and try to kill someone, well, there's still that issue that they may fight back and then the cops get called afterwards.
I think there are a few holes in your theory. Repeating it to me over and over doesn't fill them in.
Clearly it's their mistake to make. I'd hate it if legislators stepped in and told them they can't do it simply because their store didn't sell it before.
I have a feeling they'll use tasteful judgement on segmenting that section of the store and it's not going to turn into a big smut-house overnight.
Judging by how the game feed has rapidly filled up with creepy Japanese dating simulators and stuff, assuming that they'll segment VR porn appropriately is pretty naive.
> "Judging by how the game feed has rapidly filled up with creepy Japanese dating simulators and stuff, assuming that they'll segment VR porn appropriately is pretty naive." @jschwartzi
Prior to this announcement, Valve was taking a -hands off- approach to erotic games. Now, Valve has a plan for segmentation.
I think naivete would be overlooking an emerging and highly profitable market. There are vast incentives for Valve to segregate the pornographic material from the general games feed. The incentives quite outweigh the -hands off- approach of the past.
They're not streaming porn videos, they're allowing VR porn. That's not entirely outside their wheelhouse, since they already have a lot of Japanese games with "erotic" content.
The previous generation of parents already fought against porn and violence in video games, movies, and music. And they lost. Now their kids are re-fighting the same fight. Why? Didn't we already establish that these things don't turn people into serial killers and rapists? Isn't that a solved question?
A school shooting game is no more offensive than a driving sim where you run people over or a war shooting game. The only reason people are offended is because real life school shootings are popular exciting news so they also come to the forefront of people's minds as something they're supposed to get offended by.
Much of the moral outrages of previous decades came from groups that might be labeled 'moral majority' or 'religious right'; think of the panics about D&D being 'satanic'.
In the current era, the urge to censor is increasingly coming from elements of the Left, where socially or politically "problematic" material becomes the new "blasphemous". From the quoted article:
>"Unfortunately this also means they'll likely be taking a similarly hands-off approach regarding wildly sexist, racist or homophobic content."
That's my guess as to why this isn't yet a "solved question" -- the fringes of both sides have to get their attempt at busybodying in before a stable synthesis can result.
> That's my guess as to why this isn't yet a "solved question" -- the fringes of both sides have to get their attempt at busybodying in before a stable synthesis can result.
That's optimistic. My prediction is that the pendulum will switch all the back once sexbots become affordable.
There's no comparison. The previous generations' fights were about the negative effects of video games on the players, which are measurably minimal. The current generation is arguing that certain games are equivalent to hate speech, and that those games should be filtered from the same public spaces that hate speech is filtered from.
If you can't see how games and movies changed an entire generation in the last 20-30 years, you're blind. Morally, ethically, every aspect of their lives is different because of those influences, and in most cases not in a good way.
I would never allow my kid browse that kind of shit, even if they're 17. VR schoolgirl rape? Seriously? Why are people defending this. How can this be good for you psyche? Not to mention the more depraved shit that are going to arrive.
> I would never allow my kid browse that kind of shit
This is exactly the right attitude, you should be paying attention to what your children are consuming--it's not Steam's job to parent them for you.
> Why are people defending this. How can this be good for you psyche?
Because as with things like smoking and alcohol, some people enjoy them, and in a free society we let people make their own choices even if it harms them. (And it's not even clear that porn and video games are bad for you.)
People feel that video games should be held it a different (more conservative) standard to other formats (books, video) with vaporous reasons like "you're controlling the character" (while entirely ignoring the POV in a book).
For example people in this thread are talking about the potential for rape-fetish materials being in a video game while ignoring that most major bookstores or even Walmart sells tens of books about the same subject with no age restrictions at all.
I mean Game of Thrones (several rapes, sexual fetish scenes, under-age) and 50 Shades of Grey are literally sold at the checkout line.
PS - Not arguing for books to be age restricted/banned, just pointing out the hypocrisy.
I would guess that it's less about "you're controlling the character" than it is about the impression (regardless of whether or not it is true, which i don't think it is) that a large portion of the population have of video games being nearly exclusively for children/teenagers.
However I don't know for a fact because I haven't seen a decent opinion piece or anything about this, just tweets
It's both about the extreme difference in immersiveness, the feedback loop (you're the one that's conditioned to choose to rape for more points for example) and the age of the target group.
Movies and books present a story. I haven't seen any movies or series portraying rape as desirable rape lately, but even if they do, you don't have to identify with the protagonist. In VR, you are the protagonist, always, and actions are presented as if they're actually yours, trying their best to trick your mind into thinking they are.
So yeah, many differences, nothing good about them.
Its funny that people have been actually making these types of arguments since the beginning of recorded history. The argument that entertainment overrides some rational instinct in people and separates them from reality to think entertainment is the same as real life.
It used to be illegal to make movies with a man and a woman in the same bed together because it was thought to create uncontrollable carnal desires in people. Music and television and books used to be heavily censored due to all their corrupting ideas. Dungeons and Dragons was considered satan worship and evil as well. See the Comstock Law. See prohibition of alcohol...
The problem with all of these arguments is that they have ALL BEEN PROVEN WRONG every single time. Porn, beer, cursing in music, violence in movies, playing an immersive tabletop game where you make the decisions... have never once ever throughout all of human history caused your average person to lose their minds. Normal people are capable of receiving new ideas and using them to build a richer world perspective instead of turning into slathering immoral animals at the first chance.
Another infinitely better argument is that this type of entertainment is cathartic and beneficial.
People fulfill desires through a fantasy instead of reality, thereby decreasing the behavior and actually making the world a better place. But that would requiring viewing people as responsible, self-aware, reflective, adults who are capable of thinking for themselves.
> People feel that video games should be held it a different (more conservative) standard to other formats (books, video)
I disagree. I'm worried that Steam's porn won't be properly separated from the rest of their library. I've frequently had borderline-naked prepubescent children from erotic visual novels show up on the front page of the Steam store, and would like it to stop happening before somebody calls the cops on me.
I struggle to see how this is different in kind rather than degree, from content that has long been on steam. Bioware PC games, for instance, have long had suggestive sex scenes and dialog. So have weirder things like relationship simulators and Japan-esque graphic novelelly things (Lady Killer in a Bind has turned up in several sales, at least).
The Steam marketplace has had, e.g. nudity Skyrim mods forever.
The Independent is presenting this in a surprisingly sensational and tabloid style. Has the paper changed in recent years? I remember it being a reasonably well respected news source.
Yes, unfortunately. "The Independent" isn't a newspaper anymore- the print version was shut down in 2016, and most of the staff were laid off.
The "i" has replaced it in print (highbrow tabloid)- independent.co.uk has been reduced to a website that drives traffic towards itself largely through clickbait/tabloid-style reporting.
It's still on a different level to dreck like the Daily Mail, but it's long since slipped from its old status as a respected broadsheet.
I wonder if they will still ban the more controversial ones?
Almost all games by Illusion (japanese 3d porn company) involves rape. Search Playclub VR on youtube to see examples.
Not kink shaming or anything but I can see this crossing a line for a good chunk of people. Especially when they realize you can physically roleplay a homeless guy raping an underage school girl in that game (not even talking about using mods, this is one of the default scenarios).
How is that worse than every single FPS game where you can roleplay murdering someone? Unless you're also concerned about that, or you believe that rape is worse than murder, then you're suffering from miscalibrated worry.
The Japanese defense is that all teenagers are actually 500 year old vampires. But you still need to convince your prudish American peers that this makes it legally not "obscene".
Interesting anecdote, Robert Yang made a game called "The Tearoom"[0] about blowing men in a public bathroom. In order to keep it from being banned on twitch, he replaced all the penises with firearms, reasoning that if twitch still banned it, it would be the first time the games industry had ever banned a game for depicting guns[1].
Valve have probably done market research on this. And you know, that this numbers are favorable for them. They have age profile of its userbase and they also have age filter on their catalog. This is a business decision choice rather than morality.
Completly disagree with Valve's desicion on this. While I personally don't care about porn on Steam, Communities cannot police themselves, even with the best of tools. I think Reddit and HN are iconic examples of this.
On the other hand, I completely agree with Valve's decision on this. Just like I think Amazon should sell books containing rape, advocating for a violent revolution, or otherwise $thingthatviolatesmymorality. Steam is saying they don't want to be a curator (which honestly they haven't been for quite some time) they want to be a distributor.
And it's great to see a platform moving to be more liberal for once.
But is Steam even remotely analogous to Reddit/HN? You'll be able to just ignore the kind of content you don't want to see (the article mentions they'll be building tools to that effect). This is not like Reddit, where your subreddit will be invaded by the wrong kind of people and more like Google, where you'll only find the questionable content if you look for it.
I think the parent's point was that this probably won't attract that many new users - most of the people who would buy porn games (especially VR ones) are probably already on Steam.
I do worry a bit that it might trigger some sort of moral panic when e.g. parents hear that one game program Steam is giving 8 year olds free porno or some other exaggerated claim. Jim Sterling made a pretty good case for this in a recent video about the school shooting simulator game, that by allowing that kind of content Steam is exposing itself to becoming the victim of a hysterical panic like has happened many times in the past.
I think Valve is morally in the right with their hands-off approach, but it is politically naive. They need a different brand for this.
Segregating the controversial content away behind an 'edgier' brand with a different client would deflect a lot of criticism, even if it was just a new coat of paint over the Steam client. Valve needs to make the content expectations clear to people who have never used Steam themselves.
I agree, I think they should focus on filtering quality not censoring based on content (as long as mature content is gated off). They should be policing broken games and asset flips.
Users would join the service if it had a game they wanted. Its games and Steam's games would not have much overlap, if any.
Having it seperate would also allow them to change the default UX. Among other things, the default behaviour of sending notifications to your friends like, "Bob has started playing Call of Duty," is probably not the right behaviour for porn games. If they don't firewall those sorts of games off into a seperate area, Steam at least needs to clearly communicate at every point where the user interacts with the game on Steam (store page, cart, profile, library, etc) whether that interaction is public or private, because historically just about every interaction has been visible to the user's friends.
Fair point, but quite speculative at this point. For this to backfire on Valve, you need several assumptions:
a) a significant portion of the people who consume their porn products is not a current Steam user,
b) the new users will not only buy and play games, but also interact with the community (message boards, etc.),
c) these new users will on average exhibit more anti-social behavior,
d) their behavior is linked to lost game revenue larger than the amount brought in by the porn sales.
HN has a way higher standard for comments than Reddit. Definitely attributable to the mod team and their tooling. I think the tools still aren’t there yet, though. Tying karma to money or monetization will lead to higher quality. For example, you don’t have crude people who swear at a country club.
Country clubs, and anything that requires a large up-front cost for membership excludes a wide swath of people from participation. A wide range of viewpoints will result in better content over all, even if it lets some low-quality content get in.
> Communities cannot police themselves, even with the best of tools. I think Reddit and HN are iconic examples of this.
What exactly do you mean by "communities"? e.g. isolated small towns are usually viewed as having extreme levels of social control, not inadequate ones.
Just curious, for those in favor of this, how do you feel if you have small kids who use Steam? What measures do you take to prevent them from accessing such (racist/porn/etc) content? Or, if you don't have any measures, why do you let them access such content?
Steam already has parental controls. Even AAA games have been selling titillating nudity for a while so you'd best already be using it.
And honestly any kid who's started puberty is going to try to watch VR porn videos, which are already easily accessible. So keep an eye on your Vive / Oculus.
I feel great about this. Currently it's very hard to filter out games with gun violence.
If Steam is successful with their plan to "enable you to override our recommendation algorithms and hide games containing the topics you're not interested in" then I look forward to having an easier time finding child-friendly (gun-free) games.
There seems to be a spike in negative press about Steam lately. I wonder if this is some kind of coordinated PR hit. I can imagine a few large companies who would be happy to see such a successful independent distribution platform fall on hard times...
So when is Incognito mode coming to Steam? IIRC you can’t set visibility on an app level and I don’t think people would like showcasing that they are playing Sexy Nurses VR to their friends list.
I feel that total inclusionism is the only long-term stable policy. Excluding things based on morality is inherently an unstable position - "why do you allow this but not that? Don't you know this is literally killing babies in Africa?" where this and that could be nudity, gore, violence, rape, women's suffrage, blasphemy, political incorrectness or any number of other topics. Well, I suppose hosting no content at all would also be a stable policy... But it's not one that many storefronts are going to support.
[0] https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail...