Valve to ‘allow everything’ on Steam, as long as it’s not illegal

MANILA, Philippines – Valve Corporation announced Wednesday, June 6, it was altering its policy regarding what the type of curation Steam, its digital game distribution service, will have for games moving forward.

Instead of it being the curator of content, it will simply open up Steam to all those who wish to sell their games. It will also augment its filtering features to make it easier for people to find games they might be interested in buying.

According to a blog post on the service, Steam said its version of “the right approach is to allow everything onto the Steam Store, except for things that we decide are illegal, or straight up trolling.”

Valve added, “We are going to enable you to override our recommendation algorithms and hide games containing the topics you’re not interested in. So if you don’t want to see anime games on your Store, you’ll be able to make that choice. If you want more options to control exactly what kinds of games your kids see when they browse the Store, you’ll be able to do that.” 

Developers will also be getting their own tools to “deal with harassment because their game exists.”

Steam will, however, be checking games for illegal content or games that are otherwise trolling the company or the systems it has in place. This was what happened with the recent takedown of Active Shooter,  a school shooting simulation made by someone with “a history of customer abuse, publishing copyrighted material, and user review manipulation.”

The bottomline as a result of the change? “It means that the Steam Store is going to contain something that you hate, and don’t think should exist,” and Valve added the games on Steam will not reflect Valve’s values as a result.

At the same time, it gives game makers and players the opportunity to chart the course they wish when it comes to purchasing the games they really want to play.  – Rappler.com