this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2026
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This is developers who don't like criticism whining. Yes, there is some bigotry and such in the market, but it's not as big as they're making it sound.
These people want Steam to step into a role of world gaming police, even though Steam have provided the necessary tools for users on the platform to vote incorrect information down into oblivion. Going further than that is asking for censorship and is as effective as paid reviews.
If you can't cope with your product taking criticism, valid or otherwise, don't waste your time peddling what you've made. We've seen time and time again that games find their audience, even with BS 'criticisms'. Those who are interested will look further than the basic complaints. If there's only those complaints, maybe you just didn't make a very good game.
There’s a big difference between allowing people to comment and allowing people to be openly racist, sexist, and homophobic. Steam reviews, forums, and curator pages are absolutely full of the latter because of Valve’s hands-off ‘not my problem’ attitude, and it often goes hand in hand with doxxing and harassment campaigns.
Are they full, or is there a small subsection that has them and we're giving them undue attention? I rarely come across such things myself, though that's obviously anecdotal, I feel that at least means there's plenty of space that isn't dominated by what you speak of.
Games that get declared a target by the alt-right often do become full of it. Just because you haven't seen it doesn't mean it's not a serious problem.
I see anti-woke racist/sexist chuds every single fucking time I look in any game's Steam forum since around 2007 when they stopped being specific to the Steam app itself and aren't moderated. Where the hell are you not seeing these wankers?
I literally avoid anything on Steam that isn't buying a game or launching a game because everywhere else I've strayed, I see bigoted shit.
Eeeeevery once in a while I'll peek into a game I like's discussion forum and almost without fail I find some bigoted stuff on the front page. Same deal with update/news post comments.
They are full. Are you joking or are you one of them? You can’t name a single game whose community page isn’t littered with nazis and/or incels
Maybe so, but the values of free speech apply to wrong opinions too. Hit the "unhelpful" button and move on. Their bullshit isn't worth the time.
So I should be able to go down to my local GameStop and write the same sorts of things on game boxes and put up signs saying the same things?
That’s speech too.
Just because this is digital, it does not give a pass IMO. These are private spaces still. They are not administered by the public.
Don't be ridiculous. You're describing criminal property damage. Of course that's neither okay, nor the same.
I'm sorry you feel the need to be dramatic about this issue, but Steam have provided adequate tools for the userbase to handle the problem, in my eyes.
Of course that’s criminal.
Make it Post it notes, free standing signs, whatever. I mentioned signs too, for a reason.
I believe you should be allowed to stand in front of your local game store and say dumb things. Vandalism is something else.
Of course, neither is currently allowed, so your opinion and my opinion are irrelevant.
Sir, it's 2026. We haven't done free speech for a while.
Consider me old fashioned.
Read the article before you comnent
The issue here is that I, as a gamer, want to know if developers espouse opinions that I strongly disagree with, because I don't want to give them my money. So if a developer was (for example) in the Epstein Files, I would want to know that before buying their game. Reviews are an effective way to communicate that information, and I'd be rather upset to see them go.
You can't reasonably allow reviews outlining some developer behavior and disallow others - that's straight up censorship. As much as I disagree with the 'I will downvote games by someone who celebrated Charlie Kirk's death" stance, I think it's their right to take that stance. I'm not really sure how you reconcile those two things without just banning them both.
What Steam could do is have a separate review category (from 'normal' ones and 'off-topic' ones) to categorize character profiles of the developers, and let people opt in or opt out of having those included in the aggregate score. Alternately, they could categorize reviews by the reason (e.g. "Performance / crashes", "Unfun", "Too hard", "Too Woke", "Developer is a horrible person"), and let people choose which categories they care about.
My friend, every online platform is censored. Yes, it's censorship, no I'm not saying it's good, but that's the world we find ourselves in.
At the end of the day, the question is "would you recommend this game" and it's your prerogative to answer as you wish, as long as you don't break Steam's rules. And if you do, your review is removed.
"If you can't cope with your product taking criticism, valid or otherwise, don't waste your time peddling what you've made."
So by your standards, she should have thought about being a woman?
This is the same level of intellectual dishonesty as making those awful comments. It stems fron "I'm right, thus moral" instead of engaging with the actual idea.
Nah, it's worse. At least those comments criticized the game before the ad hominem.
So they can just deal with them, fairly sure Devs can mute or block you from their posts if they care to.
Devs can moderate their forums, but not their reviews. They can only flag those for Steam to look at, but Steam is extremely hands-off with its moderation, see the examples listed in the article.