Add Pronouns to Steam API

[Krenicus]

Many games provide the player with an opportunity to specify their pronoun(s). Although I believe that it is important to allow people to be represented in-game as they wish, I also believe that asking someone their pronoun(s) may cause some individuals undue stress because it may cause some players to feel as if they aren't viewed by others they way they identify unless they explicitly inform others. I think Steam could solve this by allowing the player to select their pronoun(s) on their Steam profile and allow games to access this information from the Steam API, in this way, the player would only need to identify their pronoun(s) once instead of for every game that uses it.

[Crashed]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Glyphid Lasagna:

No, I don't think Steam can or should provide access to people's preferred pronouns, much less disclose that information on request to any software. Beyond it being unreasonable given the infinite nature of pronouns (in every language!?) it is a violation of privacy and a breach of GDPR among others. Steam only shares with games a unique ID and a name and avatar. These are not enough to identify an individual or endanger them in any way that doesn't happen already by opening Steam itself. Not to mention that this is a very petty concern in the face of what people who use non-standardized non-asigned pronouns face every day.

If it was voluntary with a toggle to keep it private or friends only, it would be in compliance?

[Somersloop Pentapod]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Crashed:

Diposting pertama kali oleh Glyphid Lasagna:

No, I don't think Steam can or should provide access to people's preferred pronouns, much less disclose that information on request to any software. Beyond it being unreasonable given the infinite nature of pronouns (in every language!?) it is a violation of privacy and a breach of GDPR among others. Steam only shares with games a unique ID and a name and avatar. These are not enough to identify an individual or endanger them in any way that doesn't happen already by opening Steam itself. Not to mention that this is a very petty concern in the face of what people who use non-standardized non-asigned pronouns face every day.

If it was voluntary with a toggle to keep it private or friends only, it would be in compliance?

No, because videogames are third party software to Steam, so -every developer- that uses the feature would have to sign paperwork for it and make the players sign, even if the feature is never enabled by the player. It is very much not feasible to "sometimes" share personal information. The websites that sell your data to ad partners are not selling your personal data directly in a demonstrable way. They sell it as anonymized packages that can be linked to you by a tracking ID. This is, legally, leagues far from directly sharing a data point. Bottom line: Steam would be -very liable- for breaches of this kind of data, aka misuse of the API. Not something Steam can even afford.

[Somersloop Pentapod]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Dimlhugion:

Diposting pertama kali oleh Glyphid Lasagna:

No, because videogames are third party software to Steam, so -every developer- that uses the feature would have to sign paperwork for it and make the players sign, even if the feature is never enabled by the player. It is very much not feasible to "sometimes" share personal information. The websites that sell your data to ad partners are not selling your personal data directly in a demonstrable way. They sell it as anonymized packages that can be linked to you by a tracking ID. This is, legally, leagues far from directly sharing a data point. Bottom line: Steam would be -very liable- for breaches of this kind of data, aka misuse of the API. Not something Steam can even afford.

I think I understand your point, as far as it goes. Like, the fact that "anyone" can break into a typical civilian's car if they REALLY wanted to (most of them have a nontrivial amount of glass surfaces) doesn't mean we should just leave our car doors unlocked with the keys in the ignition. Barrier of entry is important as a deterrent. Alarms "work" to diminish the amount of break-ins, even if they don't prevent them entirely.

So in the same vein, the fact that my "RL deets" are in Steam somewhere, used to buy games and whatnot, doesn't mean I should necessarily volunteer extra information above and beyond what is legally required. Fair point.

At the same time though... I choose to identify as cis-male. It's "easier" for me because there's FAR less stigma against me, but it's still a choice that I acknowledge tacitly and "everyone" assumes it until otherwise corrected. Sooo, if it's de facto out there anyway, why isn't Steam ALREADY liable for people "figuring out" I'm a straight guy born male who likes straight women? (I'd be open to trans women but I honestly don't feel like I could be physically intimate unless they underwent bottom surgery, and that's not a fair ultimatum to place on someone)

The difference is wether Steam is literally sending a datapoint over the network that identifies you to a third party beyond what usually identifies you when you log in to Steam, which is your steamID, your pofile name, and your avatar picture. Anything else, including your location, your activity and other account details are data points that can't be sent to third parties without breaking GDPR.
Third parties are free to track you or infer these in other ways if they choose, on their own evaluation of the GDPR limits. For example, when you see your country flag on some games, this is derived from your IP geolocation, not from the country you set on Steam (If this happened for european countries it'd be a violation of GDPR, so you could sue).
If you want to give your data to a third party game, you are free to do so, but Steam can't just do so on your behalf even if you agreed to it, because you could claim you didn't. It's not worth their time for the risks involved, and on top it wouldn't make them a dime to add this.
And that's besides the other technical limitations already mentioned.

[cinedine]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Glyphid Lasagna:

but Steam can't just do so on your behalf even if you agreed to it, because you could claim you didn't.

Uhm, yes they can, especially if you agreed to it. What do you think all those cookie banners are for?

And why the ♥♥♥♥ do people keep bringing up the GDPR like it's some magic ward for your privacy.
Pronouns are not PII.

[MrSteel300]

that's offensive to my religion so i vote no

[MrSteel300]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Dimlhugion:

Diposting pertama kali oleh MrSteel300:

that's offensive to my religion so i vote no

You're welcome to your opinion, but I'm idly curious which religion you're following that is anti-pronoun. I can't think of a single one that doesn't have genders somewhere.

most religions condemn anti human behaviors but to answer you question it's Islam.

[Boblin the Goblin]

Diposting pertama kali oleh MrSteel300:

Diposting pertama kali oleh Dimlhugion:

You're welcome to your opinion, but I'm idly curious which religion you're following that is anti-pronoun. I can't think of a single one that doesn't have genders somewhere.

most religions condemn anti human behaviors but to answer you question it's Islam.

Pronouns aren't 'anti-human'.

[mldb88]

Diposting pertama kali oleh cinedine:

Diposting pertama kali oleh Glyphid Lasagna:

but Steam can't just do so on your behalf even if you agreed to it, because you could claim you didn't.

Uhm, yes they can, especially if you agreed to it. What do you think all those cookie banners are for?

And why the ♥♥♥♥ do people keep bringing up the GDPR like it's some magic ward for your privacy.
Pronouns are not PII.

The way cookies work is vastly different though, where it collects information on your search history, clicks, text inputs and the like. Many sites that use cookies happen to be online shopping sites, which have inputs for your personal information for shipping reasons, hence the cookies agreements. I’m not going to pretend to know anything about the GDPR and such but if I had to speculate, the way the information may be collected and sent might be relevant?

Either way, it’s already been answered as to why this idea is just not going to work. The time and resources it would take to implement and keep such a system up to date as well as unify between multiple third party games (what happens if lists of recognized pronouns are different between games and one you have listed on your API is absent from a game that uses this information, or if Steam updates their list but some games do not?)…. It’s just a logistics nightmare to include information that is just unnecessary.

If you want people to know your pronouns, that’s what your profile is for.

[MrSteel300]

Diposting pertama kali oleh SlowMango:

Diposting pertama kali oleh MrSteel300:

most religions condemn anti human behaviors but to answer you question it's Islam.

Pronouns aren't 'anti-human'.

only to you and the likeminded, not my problem but those are the facts

[Ben Lubar]

Diposting pertama kali oleh MrSteel300:

Diposting pertama kali oleh SlowMango:

Pronouns aren't 'anti-human'.

only to you

The third word in your post is a pronoun, just so we're all on the same page.

[MrSteel300]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Ben Lubar:

Diposting pertama kali oleh MrSteel300:

only to you

The third word in your post is a pronoun, just so we're all on the same page.

OP is talking about something else entirely but i'll leave at that

[Ben Lubar]

Diposting pertama kali oleh MrSteel300:

Diposting pertama kali oleh Ben Lubar:

The third word in your post is a pronoun, just so we're all on the same page.

OP is talking about something else entirely but i'll leave at that

No, third person pronouns aren't different enough from other pronouns for English to draw a distinction between their parts of speech. They're all just pronouns - short words that stand in for a noun that either isn't known or is just too long and unweildy to repeat every time a person, place, or thing is referenced in a sentence.

[MrSteel300]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Ben Lubar:

Diposting pertama kali oleh MrSteel300:

OP is talking about something else entirely but i'll leave at that

No, third person pronouns aren't different enough from other pronouns for English to draw a distinction between their parts of speech. They're all just pronouns - short words that stand in for a noun that either isn't known or is just too long and unweildy to repeat every time a person, place, or thing is referenced in a sentence.

sure bub

[Somersloop Pentapod]

Diposting pertama kali oleh cinedine:

Diposting pertama kali oleh Glyphid Lasagna:

but Steam can't just do so on your behalf even if you agreed to it, because you could claim you didn't.

Uhm, yes they can, especially if you agreed to it. What do you think all those cookie banners are for?

And why the ♥♥♥♥ do people keep bringing up the GDPR like it's some magic ward for your privacy.
Pronouns are not PII.

If you want pronouns to work like the cookies those banners tell you about, you're just making every game that uses the hypothetical pronoun API have to ask you your preferred pronouns anyway, thus solving nothing.

About GDPR, it's not a magic wand, it's european law. If it was a magic wand it would be far more effective and Google and Apple would have ceased to exist the moment it got implemented.
Possibly Steam too. I am not convinced they don't breach it somehow, even if unintentionally, already. The GDPR just makes companies liable for personal data selling, it doesn't magically prevent them to do it.

[cinedine]

Diposting pertama kali oleh mldb88:

The way cookies work is vastly different though, where it collects information on your search history, clicks, text inputs and the like.

Cookies don't collect data, they store them and they are sent with every request to the correpsonding domain. I most cases those are some kind of IDs to connect your actions to the data gathered and stored by the service. By consenting to the use of third-party cookies, you consent to the collection, transferring and processing of data by third parties as per the privacy policy.
Why is this relevant? Because the poster I replied to argued that exactly this is against GDPR even if you consent. (Actually they don't even need your consent if it's business relevant.)

Regarding the unifaction of the implementation ... that's what an API does. There is absolutely no problem. Not more than implementing it for other cases.

---

It's always funny that people make up problems that are none.
Especially considering that they don't even have to concern themselves with it or are in the slightest impacted by it.

It's like another user likes to say: people just like to roleplay as Valve employees and shoot down every suggestion.

The usefulness of it sure is debatable. But technically the only reason against it would be language and internationalisation.