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.

[–] daggermoon 55 points 1 week ago (4 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 week ago (2 children)

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.

[–] daggermoon 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] Carighan 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It's up to each game dev to police their forums, AFAIK.

[–] Bassman1805 5 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Can they disable their steam forums if they don't want to moderate them?

[–] Carighan 4 points 1 week ago

That's a good question. I would hope so!

[–] Voyajer 3 points 1 week ago

Yes, some are completely read only

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

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.

[–] atrielienz 2 points 1 week ago

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.

[–] Agent_Karyo 3 points 1 week ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

There is some important ounce of knowledge there.
Let's say a majority.