Aielman15

Alabaster Dawn! I'm eagerly waiting for it.

Fox + Bunny = Funny

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

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