Valve Defines "Troll Games", and Going to Improve Game Filtering

Valve isn’t exactly anyone’s favorite company right now, but all the same, their online game marketplace Steam is still the number one destination for getting games, so people have to just sort of deal with it for now. That said, while Steam is flooded with all the crappy asset-swapped games you could possibly ever want, and all the hyper-gory bloodbaths you need to sleep well at night, one area that it’s distinctly lacking in is sexy games. Sure, there are a few here and there, but Valve has been very inconsistent with what kind of sexy games it’ll allow, and while some porn games get the ban-stick, others are more-or-less tolerated even though they’re clearly designed to be played one-handed.

That ban was scrapped earlier, in theory, but in practice, no one knew exactly what was allowed under the new rules, as Valve still said it would monitor content. But now we’re getting our first good look at the non-ways that Valve will be deciding which games can stay and which can go: namely, they’re going to require developers both describe and submit screenshots of the kind of violent and/or sexual content their game will display, in order to help players better understand what exactly they’re getting into.

Another big change? They’re finally describing what constitutes a “troll game”, which was a major source of confusion earlier in this process.

"On Steam, some are simply trying to rile people up with something we call 'a game shaped object' (ie: a crudely made piece of software that technically and just barely passes our bar as a functioning video game but isn't what 99.9% of folks would say is "good"). Some trolls are trying to scam folks out of their Steam inventory items, others are looking for a way to generate a small amount of money off Steam through a series of schemes that revolve around how we let developers use Steam keys. Others are just trying to incite and sow discord."

Motive isn’t exactly a good way to go about defining these things, as it’s very easy to fake sincerity, but I suppose it’s better than nothing.

Finally, they’re making it easier to search with tags and find user tags that interest you. Which, frankly, they should have done ages ago. And now you can block up to 10 tags, and search explicitly for sexual stuff and not violent stuff.

Good changes. But still only a good start.