What are these hearts?!?! :: Steam Community

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Ironlixivium Feb 23, 2015 @ 11:23am

What are these hearts?!?!

Are they automatic? I keep reading stuff and seeing hearts where it looks like someone was cussing. Sometimes its a number that doesn't even make sense to me, like 15 or something. Please don't say that it's just cussing, that's obvious, I want to know if its automatic, or if people are putting them there themselves, and if there's a way to stop steam from censoring stuff. Google and the steam discussion search have nothing on this, I've been looking for a while, and if I see another game with hearts in the name, I feel like I'm gonna throw up. So can anyone help me?

P.S. I think this is the right section, as I'm not new to steam, and the only place I see this is in steam community.

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Showing 1-9 of 9 comments

Spawn of Totoro Feb 23, 2015 @ 11:29am

Hearts are used to censor bad/inappropriate words and some times bad links. The filters will display automaticaly display them as hearts.

There is no opt out option from the filter.

If this is about a specific game, you may want to post in the game's game hub. I am not aware of game's displaying hearts in them and if they are, it is by the developer's decisoin, not Steam (unless it is a Valve game).

Last edited by Spawn of Totoro; Feb 23, 2015 @ 11:31am

Ironlixivium Feb 23, 2015 @ 11:36am

Thanks, I wish I could opt out of it, though, it's pretty annoying, because it might be vulgar, but occasionally it's a keyword in a sentence, and the hearts kinda rob the sentence of it's meaning. It's not really a specific game, I just see it all over steam community, really wish there were a way to turn it off, though.

Midnight Sky ✨🌙✨ Feb 23, 2015 @ 11:17pm

Originally posted by Ironlixivium:
Thanks, I wish I could opt out of it, though, it's pretty annoying, because it might be vulgar, but occasionally it's a keyword in a sentence, and the hearts kinda rob the sentence of it's meaning. It's not really a specific game, I just see it all over steam community, really wish there were a way to turn it off, though.

Well, if you want to read the uncensored post, qoute it. You'll see every dirty syllable in the box where you type your message.

It only works with replies and not OP's though.

Teksura Feb 23, 2015 @ 11:31pm

There are ways around the filter, but doind so is usually a great way to get in trouble with the mods. The filter exists for a reason, and intentionally going out of your way to bypass the filter is inappropriate more often than not.

The only time I've seen it acceptable to bypass the filter is in the Borderlands 2 and Borderlands: Pre-Sequal forum, specifically in their SHIFT Codes threads. Occasionally legit codes will have a segment caught by the filter because of something strange, and in order to share the code for the in-game rewards, we have to bypass the filter. But other than that, I do not advise attempting to bypass the filters.

Ironlixivium Feb 24, 2015 @ 5:34am

Originally posted by Teksura:
There are ways around the filter, but doind so is usually a great way to get in trouble with the mods. The filter exists for a reason, and intentionally going out of your way to bypass the filter is inappropriate more often than not.

The only time I've seen it acceptable to bypass the filter is in the Borderlands 2 and Borderlands: Pre-Sequal forum, specifically in their SHIFT Codes threads. Occasionally legit codes will have a segment caught by the filter because of something strange, and in order to share the code for the in-game rewards, we have to bypass the filter. But other than that, I do not advise attempting to bypass the filters.

Usually I don't care about this, as it doesn't matter what cuss word was said (example: "What the **** is going on?"), but occasionally I find sentences like this: "I walked over ************." or something like that. It wasn't exactly like anything I've seen, but you get the idea; I have absolutely no idea what they're trying to say, which is kinda frustrating. Are you saying that some of this censored stuff i sensitive game info, like spoilers and passwords or something?

Teksura Feb 24, 2015 @ 5:41am

Originally posted by Ironlixivium:
Are you saying that some of this censored stuff i sensitive game info, like spoilers and passwords or something?

Not at all. The censor list is rather large and contains numberous words and even acronyms I've never even heard of. The SHIFT codes I spoke of are codes released by Gearbox via social media sites which give you rewards in-game for following them on social media. These codes are made of randomly generated characters and numbers. Sometimes, they randomly string together 3 letters which just coincidentally happen to be a little known slur for something, and is therefore covered by the steam filters. I'm often surprised at some of the things that get filtered.

The filters also contain several grey-market sites, known for selling stolen keys, so the names of those sites gets filtered as well.

Quint the Alligator Snapper Feb 24, 2015 @ 5:44am

^ Also several scam sites. Some known scam site URLs are also filtered.

Also if I recall correctly there's actually a rule against bypassing the filter.