There is harassment, bigotry, and a lack of moderation on Steam forums and in user reviews.

User reviews on Steam are mixed. There are thoughtful opinions, as well as reviews written after less than an hour of gameplay. We often encounter floods of negative reviews that are clearly part of a “carpet bombing” campaign, in which players complain about a particular issue, regardless of its effect on the game’s quality. Another aspect of Steam user reviews and forums is examined by The Guardian, where developers and content creators speak out against the abuse and bigotry that Valve has allowed on the platform. Several of these statements directly violate Valve‘s content guidelines. The problem for developers and content creators is that Valve is apparently unwilling to do anything about it and offers little or no support, even when reviews violate their own content guidelines.

Game designer Nathalie Lawhead was unable to remove anti-Semitic reviews mocking her allegations of sexual harassment without enlisting her public followers. Ultimately, she was forced to opt out of the moderation process and directly ask a Valve acquaintance to remove the reviews. Valve moderators deleted the reviews after Lawhead first reported them. This prevented her from reporting them a second time because developers cannot report deleted reviews without the author editing them. Despite Valve‘s guidelines for user-generated and online content, which cite insults, harassment, discrimination, and publicly accusing others as examples of what not to do in user reviews, the reviews were deleted.

Lawhead was able to remove the anti-Semitic comment. However, the other comment, which accused Lawhead of lying about sexual abuse and was similar to the anti-Semitic comment, still passed moderation even after it was reported. At that point, Lawhead reached out to an acquaintance who worked at Valve. Previously, Valve had responded that it was not in a position to verify the accuracy of statements in user reviews and did not attempt to moderate them based on accuracy because doing so could be considered censorship.

According to content creator Bri “BlondePizza” Moore, the reviews are constantly filled with attacks, ensuring that no one on the platform is safe, including developers and consumers. For Lawhead, Valve‘s response was devastating. “The implication seems to be that I must prove my sexual assault to Steam if I want to be protected from harassment over it. I am hard-pressed to see where the misunderstanding might be. They had all the information regarding the situation. It’s an obvious stance. It’s a choice. This was too much work for just two obviously unjustifiable reviews. I think the entire moderation process is broken. If I want to continue using Steam, it seems that I will have to endure this exhausting ordeal every time I report abuse. This shouldn’t be normal,” Lawhead added.

Another developer, who did not have the same audience as Lawhead, was unsuccessful in removing user reviews that were not related to their game but rather focused on whether the developer had properly observed Charlie Kirk’s murder last year. The developer’s game, Coven, is a first-person shooter described as hyper-violent and retro. It also became the target of a Steam curator named CharlieTweetsDetected, who recommends games based solely on whether the developer has written anything negative about Kirk’s death. The developer, who only wanted to be identified as Ethan, said that Steam was not interested in the fact that several negative reviews of Coven came from the curator’s list.

“The ‘anti-woke’ curators certainly brought insincere negative attention to the game. If a game has negative reviews calling it too LGBTQ+, then these sad gays and lesbians have no future or continuation. Valve‘s refusal to moderate any of this makes Steam reviews and forums a battleground for a culture war and makes them unsafe for marginalized people and regular gamers who just want to enjoy the game they bought,” said Émi Lefèvre, a developer behind Caravan Sandwich.

Another developer who tried to report transphobic reviews was told to continue developing the game and let the community use the helpfulness feature to flag reviews they agree with or consider uninformed. Lawhead received the same response five years earlier, showing that there has been no change or improvement in the process in half a decade. “To us, it seemed that, in Steam‘s view, hateful comments about an individual are abuse, but targeting them towards a group of people is totally fine – that’s welcome speech. We had no choice in how to address the transphobia in our reviews. They’re still up there today,” said Phi, who received the above response when trying to remove transphobic reviews from their game.

Considering that Steam is the largest digital platform for PC games and many developers consider it a monopoly, Valve‘s apparent unwillingness to moderate these opinions or update its moderation process only exacerbates the problem. Beyond economic concerns, developers must choose between releasing their games on platforms where game publishers, according to Lawhead, don’t take them seriously because they’re not on Steam and putting up with countless abuses, or staying on Steam.

Source: WCCFTech, The Guardian, Bsky, Steam, Steam Online Conduct, COVEN, Caravan SandWitch, CharlieTweetsDetected