This ‘article’ is a shitty summary of a linked paywalled Bloomberg article.
Somebody needed to hit a quota, and that somebody’s name is Dustin Bailey.
Also I got hit with two near full screen pop ups demanding I susbscribe in about 10 seconds.
In conclusion, fuck this garbage website.
In fairness to the lawyer there are loads of sus games on steam. They really do need better moderation.
A CEO being mean to a lawyer? That’s like a bar joke waiting to happen sort of.
I’m gonna go in hard with a controversial opinion here: saying things like “what the fuck do I pay you for” to your employees is toxic and unprofessional, and the moment my boss would raise their voice to me like that is the moment I’d start looking for a new job.
Gabe is a lying asshole.
That’s one thing when its minimum wage employee, its another when its an expensive attorney that probably isn’t even your employee.
lawyers are paid to represent their clients. if a lawyer has lost objectivity and can no longer represent their clients needs or achieve the goals set by the client, that lawyer is effectively unemployable by the client.
so the question of “What the fuck do I pay you for if that’s your opinion?” is merited for a lawyer.
however, it is unacceptable for your janitor, your CPA, or your doctor.
Pretty sure the man was hired to drive the point home specifically for less moderation, not more, so him presenting that opinion goes in direct opposition to the wishes of the client he represents.
Doesn’t make it less toxic or unprofessional mind you, but I’d probably have told my counsel to go fuck themselves too if they presented a point that went against my exact wishes
So do you think the lawyer was right in that steam should be more heavily moderated?
Mind. Taking a big, big leap in actually accepting a third or fourth order account of what actually was said and in what context here.
If the lawyer actually wanted a more heavy handed moderation, I would say that this is a mild reaction.
So do you think the lawyer was right in that steam should be more heavily moderated?
Where did I say anything about steam or its content moderation stuff?
It’s completely relevant to the reaction from Gabe that you take offense of.
Ok, well I don’t have much of an opinion on the moderation thing. I do think that saying “what the fuck do I pay you for” is deeply unprofessional.
Correct response to the claim he made.
That’s some real temporarily embarrassed millionaire shit. Stop licking the boot.
Sure but we aren’t talking about an employee with a shabby salary. The higher the salary the higher the expectations normally are. In other cases with a more vulnerable employees. Hell yea I fully agree.
With Gabe’s absurd amount of middleman tax money obtained by running the defacto PC games store monopoly, the solution is oddly simple: Just start a bank and become a payment processor.
A “de-facto” monopoly is not a monopoly. Competitors basically refused to innovate their stores beyond the MVP despite users pointing out the missing features. Epic pissed away a lot of money to buy traffic and then never did anything to keep it.
For all the things I enjoy about GOG, I really wish they added an “ignore” button to games. Steam has had it for 10+ years now.
Another thing I really wish they added is negative filters to the store search/list, “hide games with the tags”. It’s shopping UX 101
A “de facto” monopoly (whatever that is) has all the drawbacks of a “real” monopoly (whatever that is): reduced incentive for innovation, possibility for price fixing, means for anticompetitive practices, and so on. The distinction is entirely meaningless when you look at the actual impact an <adjective> monopoly has on society.
Generally it would be true but Valve seems like an exception. Steam is still like 10 years ahead of every other shop front or console.
Epic, GOG, Fanatical, Itch, Humble all exist and compete with with Steam with varying levels of success. And those are just the ones I can name off the top of my head. Does Gumroad do games?
There is no lack of competition. They are just bad in obvious ways. I’m not saying it’s easy to take on a giant like Steam, but Epic for example is exactly the kind of company and amount of money that could. They didn’t, and it’s not because of the library effect. They simply went with the seemingly easiest way: pissing money on the problem (securing timed exclusives and free games). There is so much they could do to make the client and their service better, but they don’t. So no, it’s not a monopoly.
I would be alright with this. Gabe could make a fiscal platform that lets everyone escape MasterVisa’s grip, only charging 1% or thereabouts on every transaction, with barely any moderation. That would let Valve to benefit from other storefronts like GOG, JAST, and DLSite, while also freeing Steam from content restrictions, plus giving freedom to buyers to just get what they want. It is win-win for everyone who isn’t MasterVisa or Collective Shout.
Plus, Gabe could establish stronger ties with Europe and Asia, which is good if the US balkanizes in the coming decades. It protects from de-dollarization, since Steam would be able to easily allow Americans to use foreign currencies that become more competitive.
Payment processing is only one part of their troubles. The other is lawsuits.
All Steam has to do is let you buy credits that you can then spend on games. It’s slightly shadier but breaks the direct payment link.
DLsite dose the same thing to get around the censorship. You essentially buy a gift card code from a different site to get points that just to happen to equal 1 yen.
Steam wallet can be used by this. You can top your steam wallet by 5-10-20 and so on. Wonder how this would be tracked by payment processors if it even can.
Somehow, I don’t think that would fly with the purity police who are behind this stuff.
Steam gift cards.
But it would be better if they do it where I can specify the exact amount of money to the cent and do it directly from their store. That way it is just normal purchases with extra steps.
The article calling their moderation hands-off stuck out to me because you can’t really call Steam’s approach hands off by any means, they’ve banned some Japanese VNs before and most VN discovery guides will encourage you to use other marketplaces to avoid possible censorship, because it happens.
What kind of stuff, specifically, do they censor?
Examples given in the article are:
Historically, Valve’s policy has only banned games that are “illegal or straight-up trolling,” but that has opened the people running Steam to an endless series of subjective value judgements. For years, sporadic reports emerged of developers making anime-style smut getting ghosted by Valve – presumably for the genre’s association with high school settings and underage characters. Similarly, Steam took direct action to pull a cheap, trashy visual novel called Rape Day from the platform in 2019.
Fuck that article BTW, pretending Steam is in the wrong and the quack would have “saved them some headaches”.
Yeah, that’s kind of what I figured they meant by “censorship”.
If Valve doesn’t want to sell you loli visual novels, then that’s their prerogative. Can’t say that I blame them.
There’s significant overblocking, similar to how Australia banned women with small breasts from porn. But I guess that’s what people want nowdays, some are even vocal about censoring women who “dress like underage girls”, whatever that means. I’ve even seen people wanting to censor certain hairstyles, like pigtails “because that’s a little girls hairstyle”.
similar to how Australia banned women with small breasts from porn
Did they really do this though? I remember hearing about a rule like this years and years ago, and not once have I heard of it being applied
There was a guy on here a few months back trying to convince people that tall guys dating short girls were pedos.
People are stupid.
Free speech for the maker of loli porn but not for the platform that has regular porn or lgbtq.
Valve choosing not to sell it is literally them exercising their free speech. That’s how it works.
Biggots are trying to shoot that down by making payment processor companies like Visa and MasterCard threaten to cut off Steam if they don’t take down evil, satanist, socialist games that recognize that minorities and LGBTQ+ even exist. Can’t shove that down the throat of good Christian kids.
Lesbian porn and trans porn are the two biggest categories in porn.
Both of those categories are lgbtq.
Therefore, lgbtq is the most “regular” porn.
Just LGBTQ+, I wasn’t talking about LGBTQ+ porn as separate from “regular porn”. I’m saying biggots will censor non-porn LGBTQ+ too. I am separating loli porn from “regular” porn.
Hey, I don’t know if you’ve heard about this or not, but… there’s pornography on Steam.
I haven’t actually. But now I understand why Steam asks for my birthday over and over. It’s surprising that people don’t complain about that more. All the new age verification laws have drawn vociferous ire, but Steam has been doing it for years and remains beloved.
Steam hasn’t faced backlash because it doesn’t make you upload your ID like the laws are
Why yes, I am turning 127 next January. Gaming is what keeps me fresh and about my wits
So you’re saying it’s a one dimensional age check which doesn’t invade your privacy because you can just lie to it completely?
That’s a valid point. I just want to clarify that’s what you meant.
Yes.
Because Steam has held a monopoly for years and generations of G*mers have been brainwashed into accepting it.
It’s not a monopoly, they simply have the best digital storefront so everyone uses it.
Whatever you say sheep.
If it wasn’t a monopoly they wouldn’t be able to prevent games being sold on other services for cheaper
Valve literally doesn’t do that though. If you check the actual source of the price parity guidelines, you’ll see it only applies to Steam key sales. That makes sense because all key sales still use their infrastructure. Nothing stops you putting a game up elsewhere for cheaper with some other way to distribute.
If they were a monopoly there wouldn’t be so many competing retailers.
Also, they really don’t. I frequently buy games from other vendors for less than steam has them for, and I receive steam keys.
Saying there’s multiple retailers, while also admitting they just give you a Steam code is some wild delusional G*mer behaviour.
https://www.eurogamer.net/valve-antitrust-lawsuits-ubisoft-warner-bros-report
Stop moving the goalposts.
I imagine gaben hiring a lawyer to be creative and clever to outsmart the puritan censorship control of valve and steam. Then the lawyer taking time to think about it, giving up, and coming at gaben with that as legal advice, resulting in gaben being furious that the lawyer failed and passed that failure as default to what the opposition is trying to strongarm you to do as official advice.
Mastercard+visa: suck my cock and lick my over-ripe anus
Gaben: hey fuck you
Gaben: hires lawyer to try to not have to do that
Gaben: lawyer, I’m not doing that. What are my options?
Lawyer: huh, i am a potato and therefore have no real thought. i hereby legally suggest you suck their cock and lick their over-ripe anus. That’ll be $3,000,000. Thanks.
Gaben: what the fuck do i pay you for if that’s your opinion?
The lawyer is question is Karl Quackenbush, who has worked with Valve for decades now. He’s the one who helped them settle their lawsuit with Sierra over Counterstrike in internet cafes
Most corporate lawyers are there to steer you way around any danger. I used to think they would help me understand exactly where the legal boundaries are, but I’ve been disappointed time and again that they won’t play it even close to the line. To be fair to them, laws are written in language and always have room for interpretation so if you work in an industry where you’re doing novel things, they can’t always say exactly what will get you in trouble.
A lawyer that will lean in and go in hot on issues where it’s well known that you’re operating over the line… yeah that’s a very “wartime consigliere” kind of thing which I imagine few corporate lawyers are able to pivot to at the drop of a hat. Sorry, Tom.
John Oliver had a take on lawyers recently that was pretty good. He said that most lawyers are, as you say, essentially, to keep you from being sued. But he wanted lawyers to make sure that when he is sued, that he will win.
This is suspiciously like what working with AI is like
I’ve sat in on support calls where the human on the other side paused before answering and then sent responses that were clearly pasted from AI.
Maybe Quackenbush’s approach could’ve saved Valve some headaches along the way.
Oh so their suggestion is that Valve should have bowed to conservative censorship even earlier? What a waste of an article
Gabe Newell cursing at a lawyer is exactly what I needed to read to start the day. What a wonderful human! 🥰
Karl Quackenbush
Is Valve’s lawyer a cartoon duck? That sounds like the name of a cartoon duck.
Or a duck-themed pornstar.
Just big duck beak pussy lips surrounded by untamed bush. Quackenbush, just like it says on the label (labial?).
“I don’t want a lawyer to tell me what I cannot do. I hire him to tell me how to do what I want to do.” — J.P. Morgan
That’s pretty funny. Also, some prime capitalist ass shit…
But you know, funny.
Tag as adult and move on.
Wasn’t there an issue with credit card processors threatening them?
Payment processors/banks should not be the arbiters of ethics. If a thing is legal, they should be REQUIRED to handle it, or lose their ability to conduct business nationwide.
They should but Americans (where processors are based) will use them as a tool when needed. Also their government could make phony allegations and they would have to enforce them. We need more processors world wide! I hope that EU does it right this time.
Valve could probably just start their own bank at this point.
Steam Bank? Steam Vault? Oh Steam Treasury! Steam Financial Alliance, i would immediately dump the parasites i have now.
Steam Tank is right there
PayValve, if Gabe wanted to be on the nose and take the piss out of Paypal.
Just call it Condensation.
Valve Liquidity
Aperture Finance
Internet money is like a series of tubes.
I always figured they could just charge the card for a “gift card” for that amount… Which then immediately gets used for the “adult themed” game. Or at least allow the games to be sold on the store only with gift cards.
That does sound like a payment processor!
Financial censorship is a useful tool for people who want stuff censored.
It’s their most effective tool at this point.
I’d say it’s their most effective direct tool.
But if you count indirect tools, I think the propaganda out there is more effective. There are school districts where somebody on the school board encountered a bit of propaganda, and then before you know it, the school district is choosing on its own to censor their own libraries of things like LGBTQ+ materials.
No can do. Governments will ask them for age verification. Valve will instead swiftly remove anything with kinky dialogue and move on. True story by the way. Happened in Germany and no, it had nothing to do with protecting customers on Steam’s side because the age verification process authorities asked for protects your identity. Valve simply didn’t want to deal with it. To be fair it was a bullshit demand anyway but Sony didn’t seem to have any problems implementing it so this is a Valve thing.
