Why cant we swear on steam profiles?

[Jean Vicquemare]

I don't understand. Steam's community isn't full of small children, and theres no reason for people to get triggered over one bad word. What gives?

[Gus the Crocodile]

"These guidelines apply to all places in the Steam Store and Community where users can post content"

I have long been in favour of profanity filtering being optional so adults can see things as they are, but the rules being applied to profiles is nonetheless consistent.

[Satoru]

And why cant you simply refrain from swearing instead

[ploppo]

Postat inițial de 『Coffee』:

I don't understand. Steam's community isn't full of small children, and theres no reason for people to get triggered over one bad word. What gives?

Swearing is fake - it's about 'trying' to be cool.

Most people who swear - let's say a maverick pop star - will not do it when meeting the Royal Family or a president or a prime minister, etc. They just don't.

Nobody meeting the queen swears at her and calls her a 'female dog'. It just doesn't happen.

Most of them won't do it when visiting another person's home. A teenager visiting their friend's house when the parents are not home, probably will - but if the parents are in the same room, then they have the ability to control it.

Steam is effectively a game store - that goes into people's homes.

Swearing is just one way that people 'attempt' to look cool.

Steam is not a private hang-out place, it is a public platform.

The key point is when using Steam, you might be alone in your own home, but you are being received into other people's homes.


Swearing to me is not the bad thing about it. What worries me is it creates a sweeping behaviour change on the Steam forums. Some people act like they are untouchable on the forums. It has led to clear abuse and harrassment on people's profile walls.

We currently have Steam users that think it is okay to threaten to physically harm other Steam users.

The point being is, the whole idea of swearing to be cool slid into swearing to intimidate/threaten/harass, etc other Steam users.

[Glass Mother]

Sometimes - if not always - it seems to me that some users fill their linguistic inability with swear words, because otherwise they cannot express themselves. The language skills are accordingaly minimal.

I also have to ask myself: do these people believe in it themselves? That swearwords represent even the slightest hint of a serious insult? An insult without gutter language is so much more brutal and hurtful than a quickly typed "son of a b*tch".

[happy]

Postat inițial de 『Coffee』:

I don't understand. Steam's community isn't full of small children, and theres no reason for people to get triggered over one bad word. What gives?

Postat inițial de 『Coffee』:

I don't understand. Steam's community isn full of small children, and theres according to Valve and Moderators reason for people to get triggered over one bad word.

Steam is full of kids who will cry when you say a bad word to them, nothing you can do.
i got temp banned for the dumbest little insults you could literally say to a pre school kid. No bad words allowed here, only friendly interactions and family friendly games such as GTA or Killing Floor!

[Glass Mother]

^
Sometimes I wonder: why can we play a game like Battlefield: Bad Compandy 2 here, where troops yell on the battlefield "We're getting ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up the ass over here!" but as soon as you write something like: "♥♥♥♥ ... I've got no ammunition left!" some admin waddles around and complains that you should not use foul language around kids. In a game about killing people."

[happy]

Postat inițial de ~Ren~:

Postat inițial de Tøtesfleisch8:

Steam is full of kids who will cry when you say a bad word to them, nothing you can do.
i got temp banned for the dumbest little insults you could literally say to a pre school kid. No bad words allowed here, only friendly interactions and family friendly games such as GTA or Killing Floor!

That has nothing to do with it, you got temp banned for an insult directed at someone specifically, huge difference between that and swearing in general.

Pretty pathetic excuse.
People get upset on the internet when someone says a bad word to them, then proceed to play games where people are raped, killed kidnapped, enslaved and so on, yet when i call someone a dumbass or idiot i get banned.
If they cant deal with that, they shouldnt play ~90% of games on steam and maybe just watch some kids shows instead.

[ReBoot]

Postat inițial de Tøtesfleisch8:

Postat inițial de ~Ren~:

That has nothing to do with it, you got temp banned for an insult directed at someone specifically, huge difference between that and swearing in general.

Pretty pathetic excuse.
People get upset on the internet when someone says a bad word to them, then proceed to play games where people are raped, killed kidnapped, enslaved and so on, yet when i call someone a dumbass or idiot i get banned.
If they cant deal with that, they shouldnt play ~90% of games on steam and maybe just watch some kids shows instead.

Let me blow your mind: Video games arent real. The people you murder arent real. The people you insult though ARE real. Youre really attacking real people. Huge difference.

[Zefar]

The word filter contain certain site names or cheat names that we want to be filtered. These are applied to comment sections on profile because this is where most of the advertisement happens for those things.

[ploppo]

The word filter kind of comes across as slightly lame though - it's like it is a diversion.

Probably 3 years ago, more than one moderator said to me that the swearing via usernames was Valve's decision/responsibility.
EDIT:
Actually it was one moderator, but possibly more than one moderator had commented. The trhread was deleted, but I still have my email to Valve.

I approached Valve direct - they didn't comment - they didn't appear to want anything to do with Steam.

At the time I was querying why users can create offensive user-names. Steam still allows this - yet a word filter appeared on the forums?

Surely the forums are high volume compared to registrations - yet, at the time, some people were looking at a word filter on the sign-up process as virtually impossible - it was almost like it was a stupid idea.

I don't buy it.

I'm glad the word filter is on the forums, but I fail to see why it is a limitation to the forums only.

[ploppo]

Plus, we had this problem with Steam curators turning Store pages into a sewer if someone did what Steam suggested and clicked to see what Curators had to say about a game.

All because Steam appeared to not even think it could go wrong.

[ploppo]

People can laugh all they like at Origin and Ubi-Store, etc but they are professionally run game stores - they don't allow users to train-wreck them.

Nobody can realistically go on Origin or Ubi-Store and think it is full of profanity, threats, hate speech, etc, etc

Steam, allowing users to deface a Store section is kind of unprofessional.

I've looked at Amazon at times (baring in mind people can write reviers) and not really noticed any train-wrecks - it seems to be under control.

It is almost like Steam at the highest level is being run by a teenager who is allowed to do what they want.

I'd like to see a change in management and somone say we are taking control of this. Our rules are not requests - you don't sign up to a set of requests - you sign up to rules or you are off the platform.

[ploppo]

Plus, I would have turned round to Valve and said you can sell your games on Steam, but you can host your community off of Steam - go stick it anywhere but on Steam - ie, I would have offloaded CS, TF2, etc.

If Valve's own forums are full of grief, I would have shut them down.

I don't know whether they are, but it seems a lot of grief on Steam is linked to CS, TF2, etc.

[Syncroniam]

Because Valve is a trash company. Plain and simple. If only they had real competition then they wouldn't be doing all this garbage to their platform.

[ploppo]

Steam is not run right.

The rules of Steam appear to me like a bunch of people at Steam sat round a table and said what rules do we want.

The result being a list.

On that list are critical rules that are buried amongst sub-rules.

Any discussion of piracy will result in a permanent ban from the Steam Community including, but not limited to:
...

Discussing piracy is declared as resutling in a permanent ban from the Steam Communtity.

That is exactly what it says - I am not an idiot.

Buried in the Content Rules is also:

Threats of violence or harassment, even as a joke

How can threats of violence/harssament not result in a permanent ban from the Steam Community?

Seriously?

The whole harassment thing should never have been buried in amongst there. Steam needs to separate critical issues and shove them in people's faces - you threaten to kill somebody, you get banned.

Yet Steam threatens someone talking about piracy like it is the worst thing you can do on Steam.

The whole harassement thing then re-appears in the Steam Online Conduct.

I'd rather Steam beat the hell out of people who threaten, harass, abuse, other users than go head-hunt someone talking about piracy.

They wrote their own rules - we are exepted to read them. Anyone looking at the rules might think that discussing piracy is the worst thing you can do - because that is basically what Steam has written.