Senator Mark Warner’s letter follows an ADL report about extremist content on the platform.
US Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) has sent a letter to Valve CEO Gabe Newell asking if the company intends to take measures to curtail extremist content on Steam. The letter references a report by the Anti-Defamation League that identified a large number of user accounts and user-created groups “that glorified antisemitic, Nazi, white supremacist, gender- and sexuality-based hate, and other extremist ideologies” on the PC gaming platform.
The letter features a high-level view of the kind of hateful content the ADL found on Steam. That includes “40,000 groups with names that included hateful words, with the most prominent being ‘1488,’ ‘shekel,’ and ‘white power’.”
Should Valve be required to publish each and every game submitted? Even if they are absolute bare minimum shovelware garbage?
Valve decided a while ago that it was easier to just take the $100 and have some basic verification that a game runs rather than do any curation themselves.
If it’s not malicious software like a bitcoin miner or whatever, yes. If people want to buy shovelware, that’s between them and whoever made it.