Valve claims "We're Not the Taste Police"

Steam has a lot of problems, and I trust at this point no one has a problem with me saying that. In the name of getting lots and lots of money while putting in absolutely as little work as possible, Valve has created a digital marketplace where anything goes, and you could spend hundreds, if not millions, on crappy, poorly-designed, unfinished, and over-priced pieces of crap. And it’s starting to really feel the sting of its lack of regulation, even if people’s angry emails and rants aren’t actually enough to make them move onto a more curated website, like, say, GoG galaxy.

But in a talk during the Business Conference for Games Industry event in Russia this week, Valve's Jan-Peter Ewert decided to tackle the issue of curation, standards, and censorship head on. Specifically, in Oleg Chumakov’s Twitter account, he talks about it in a video and showcases a large PowerPoint prepared by the aforementioned gentleman.

The Powerpoint is the most telling bit of information, because it showcases some interesting stats: namely, that the Steam Direct program the platform created in order to ‘curb’ the excess of green-lit games has actually made the problem worse. Steam Greenlight had 70 games per week submitted to the platform for sale, which was crazy. But Direct more than doubles that, with having 180 games put onto the marketplace every week.

As for why they allow that?

Lots of first-time buyers (13.5 million between January and May of this year) and the claim that, “We don’t sell ad space or pick winners and losers – we are not the taste police”.

You know what, Valve, you’re not wrong. You clearly aren’t the taste police because if you were you’d know that would be a bad one. Every other online marketplace has accountability for a reason: you should try it.

But hey. What’s just one more voice in a choir, eh?