Maggie Hassan has sent Gabe Newell a letter expressing her concern about neo-Nazi, misogynistic, and other “hateful” content that has surfaced on Steam.

 

Hassan’s letter can be read on Vice, from which we will quote: “As the most popular and largest digital distribution platform for computer video games, including online community and communication features, Steam has tremendous domestic and global reach and is used by computer video game players of all ages. Disturbingly, Steam has a significant presence of users displaying and espousing neo-Nazi, extremist, racial supremacist, misogynistic, and other hateful sentiments.

Valve should be taking steps to prevent harmful content, especially given the relationship between online comments and violence in the offline world. Extremist content on Steam, found after cursory keyword searches using terms and images commonly associated with neo-Nazi, extremist, and racial supremacist ideologies, is pervasive,” writes the senator, who has drawn attention to the term 88 (which essentially means Nazi salute).

Hassan fears that Valve’s popularity over other platforms could spell trouble for such content. Even offline, in physical spaces, the lack of moderation could pose a danger: “A recent report by the Anti-Defamation League found that ‘nearly one in ten gamers between ages 13 and 17 had been exposed to white-supremacist ideology and themes in online multiplayer games’.

With extremist ideologies and antisemitic violence on the rise worldwide, it is incumbent upon companies to monitor the content that users introduce into their products. Opposing the spread of extremist and racist activities online should be something that all can agree is important, and ensuring that online recreational spaces are safe and welcoming for everyone should be a top priority of video game makers and distributors,” writes Hassan, who expects a response from Valve by January 15.

Valve and Discord faced similar criticism in 2018 when the latter did something about hate groups. Axios reports that seven Democratic members of the US Congress have written a similar letter, which several companies have received (Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, Epic, Innersloth, Microsoft, PUBG Corp, Riot Games, Roblox, Sony, Square, Take-Two Interactive, Tencent, Ubisoft, Valve). They want to know how extremism and harassment in games are being dealt with and call for consideration of security measures to tackle these issues.

PCGamer has collected some pictures of examples from Steam. They need no comment. They speak for themselves.

Source: PCGamer