Steam Relaxing Rules on Which Games Appear in Their Online Store
ValveGaming service Steam has updated their stance, in a new blog post, on what games get to appear in their store following controversy over a school shooting simulator.
The shooter simulation was met with mixed reactions, but also found its way into news headlines and evoked a conversation about what content video games should allow.
The massive gaming service platform has seen many titles come and go since its 2003 release, few have had such impact that the company would have to look at its policy regarding censorship.
They have decided it would be best to a take a more relaxed stance on regulating what comes into the store.
In a statement released on their official blog they had this to say:
So we ended up going back to one of the principles in the forefront of our minds when we started Steam, and more recently as we worked on Steam Direct to open up the Store to many more developers: Valve shouldn’t be the ones deciding this. If you’re a player, we shouldn’t be choosing for you what content you can or can’t buy. If you’re a developer, we shouldn’t be choosing what content you’re allowed to create. Those choices should be yours to make. Our role should be to provide systems and tools to support your efforts to make these choices for yourself, and to help you do it in a way that makes you feel comfortable.
In short, they plan on allowing games into the store provided that they are not illegal or trolling.
The post goes on to say that they do not support everything that makes its way onto the platform, but they feel that everyone should receive an equal opportunity to express themselves.
If you are interested in reading more about the update, you can view the full post here.
They also noted that there would be no significant short-term changes, but their primary focus on new regulation is about legality rather than morality.