Senator Mark Warner’s letter follows an ADL report about extremist content on the platform.
US Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) has sent a letter to Valve CEO Gabe Newell asking if the company intends to take measures to curtail extremist content on Steam. The letter references a report by the Anti-Defamation League that identified a large number of user accounts and user-created groups “that glorified antisemitic, Nazi, white supremacist, gender- and sexuality-based hate, and other extremist ideologies” on the PC gaming platform.
The letter features a high-level view of the kind of hateful content the ADL found on Steam. That includes “40,000 groups with names that included hateful words, with the most prominent being ‘1488,’ ‘shekel,’ and ‘white power’.”
Fine, but this guy just teed himself up perfectly for Gabe to come back with, “What’s with all the Nazis in your senate?”
Nazis do not just spring fully formed in the Aristotelian tradition from nothing specifically into the Steam forums. All of these motherfuckers are actual people with actual odious viewpoints. A lot of them probably voted for your colleagues. Maybe a better question is, “Why are there still Nazis, and what do we do about it?”
Sure but a game of whataboutism isn’t a strong argument. If Steam has a Nazi problem they should be outlining how they’re fixing it. They can definitely compare themselves to other platforms, but you lead with what YOU’RE doing. If the majority are coming from Twitter you can point that out. But at the end of the day either prove how you’re fixing it or why it isn’t as big of a problem as stated.
They sure do have a lot of leeway on steam. It’s time we recognize that it’s a form of social media with the same real-world consequences.
Why are there still Nazis, and what do we do about it?
Social welfare programs, like in Nordic countries. Fascists have been exploiting the poor for their rise to power for eons.
The Steam forums are fucking awful. Filled with bigotry and nazis complaining about gaming be woke. There’s literally a list of “Woke games” for people to avoid, it has thousands of games on there.
When people talk about the new Dragon Age, it’s filled with people calling it woke propaganda and pushing the transgender ideology all because it has a trans character that you can’t not accept.
If you ever wonder “should I go on the steam forums to check this one thing I’m curious about?” The answer is always no.
I’m kind of curious about that list so that I can use it as a source for recommendations.
I find that I almost always enjoy movies, TV shows, games, etc. that get conservatives all riled up and in the mood for brigading.
I saw it. I thought it would be good for recommendations, but it’s enormous and contains almost every game, so not helpful.
It’s so annoying while trying to troubleshoot issues I may have with a game. I used to get upset when a dev goes nuclear and deletes a bunch of comments or moderates the forums like a hawk, but the forums are basically overrun to the point that I hope they do since I can’t find solutions to my problems without reddit, which usually isn’t helpful either. It’s not like steam is particularly the majority fault, it’s the people using it for what’s it’s not meant for. Seriously dumb brick idiot just need to go to 4chan and complain there, they are far more likely to get positive reinforcement there.
It’s like people forget that Valve has been enabling this for a long time. When people suck off Valve, remember half of them may be Nazis who appreciate that Valve gives them a place to be a pile of shit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatred_(video_game)
The fact that this got released, immediately was a top seller on Steam, is indicative of how popular the anti-woke narrative is and how long it has been going on, since Hatred was released in 2015 which means it was at least developed through 2014, if not 2013.
Why is it Valve’s job to police game content? That’s a shitty precedent for any platform.
If you don’t like it, don’t buy it. Whether it’s ultraviolent stuff like Postal or Hatred, ww2 games where you can play as literal Nazis, or the opposite side of the spectrum where you have LGBT centric content.
Bear with me, that previous sentence isn’t intended to equate those two things, but the reality is a lot of people find LGBT content objectionable. By putting the publish/not publish decision up to platform owners, you’re setting up a system that getting your game published is according to the political whims of whoever is in charge of that process. Any system you make here can easily be abused.
If you think banned books are dumb the same should apply to games. I for one appreciate knowing that freedom of expression is alive and well on Steam, and if I don’t want to engage with content I find objectionable, I simply don’t. Why is that such a foreign concept?
From the headline I assumed this was yet another Republican complaining about Wolfenstein, but no they have a point
The gaming world has shrugged away hate speech, misogyny, and abuse for way too long. It’s embarrassing. We have to stop with the “boys will be boys” 1990s attitude already.
Ahem said the senator who voted no for Bernie Sander’s stop arms sale to Israel:
https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1182/vote_118_2_00292.htm#name
I wonder for him people who criticise Israel are also included in the set of Nazis while literal Nazis are running rampant in the government.
Senator to Valve: what’s with the kid in my Black Ops lobby saying he had relations with my mom? I don’t think he did, did he?
Hopefully Steam reply, “Hey Senator, what’s with all the Nazis in congress?”
Has the Senator been on Xitter recently ? Always trying to paint games and gamers black.
The overwhelming majority of the symbols they counted as hate speech were Pepe. They are cherry picking data and running with it. Racist shit is a problem on steam but they’re blowing this way out of proportion.
They can’t attack Twitter. They’re too old and dumb to switch to anything else.
It’s the ADL. The Apartheid Defense League.
“what’s with all the Nazis on steam”
They are called gamers. And them buying pedophile anime visual novels and CSGO crates make up 80% of Valve’s turnover
ADL
stopped reading there
Shekel? Since when is that a hateful word…? It’s a currency!
