this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2024
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I mean yeah, no shit. The steam forums could be removed at no loss to the human race, in fact it'd remove a non-negligible percentage of all really shitty talk on the internet if they deleted everything entirely.
The steam forums are fucking cancer. I was looking for info about a bug I was having with a newly released game. I instead saw an entire thread about how the game is woke and you shouldn't buy it. The game has an implied lesbian character. Who gives a fuck? The game was pretty good btw.
I've seen whole threads in game forums dedicated to Nazism, and I myself have been called a "groomer" and the t-slur because people knew be as a boy before I transitioned. Legitimately horrible place, they absolutely need to take more action against this.
Sorry to hear about your experience. Are the forums moderated at all? All I see is people being terrible to each other. I also saw someone requesting a Brazilian Portuguese translation for a game and people calling them a fucking idiot and telling them to learn english.
It's up to each game dev to police their forums, AFAIK.
Can they disable their steam forums if they don't want to moderate them?
That's a good question. I would hope so!
Yes, some are completely read only
There's almost no moderation on Steam at all. Sometimes threads advocating violence get removed, or threads with a lot of hate get locked but it's almost always long after the damage has been done and often times the ones doing nasty shit don't end up getting banned.
I don't use steam forums. But I have questions. Do the steam forums have any moderation at all? Is there a report button? Can you report comments or forum threads?
I want to know because I feel like a lot of social media has the same problem as steam forums and these tools exist on the majority of those. They rely on the moderation of fellow users.
I also question whether or not steam actually has an automod or anything like that. Or human moderators.
Please keep in mind that I don't use the forums so I really have no idea. This is the first time I'm hearing about this, and I'm interested in knowing more.
I think it really depends on the game (genre?).
I mostly play economic strategy / tycoon games and the forums are pretty chill. The most "controversial" threads revolve around gameplay mechanics discussion or perhaps complaints about lack of updates.
I don't think I've even seen anything approaching what you are describing in economic strategy game forums.
I would most definitely oppose shutting down the steam forums.
But like, are there people that read it and get an existential crises? People need to learn to read and let go. There will always be dickheads and trolls.
While I agree with you that some people are too thin skinned to handle some conversation online... Steam forums or YouTube comment sections are really the very worst of the worst.
If all you read is trash tier content on a platform even if you understand it, it still sucks and remain quite infuriating.
Basically, steam forums are mostly trolling so at this point it's not about the sensitivity of people but rather that these platform are particularly bad.
There’s the “this is too woke” gang, and then there’s the “this doesn’t have enough representation” gang. You can’t win.
There is some important ounce of knowledge there.
Let's say a majority.