‘This shouldn’t be regular’: builders converse out about bigotry on Steam, the world’s largest PC gaming storefront | Steam

For years, the gaming storefront Steam has let abuse and bigotry go by way of its moderation, in response to gamers and builders who use it. The platform is now host to reams of content material that violate its personal tips.

According to builders who spoke with the Guardian, abuse – notably directed in the direction of transgender creators – is a truth of life on the platform. “Everyone is at one another’s throats all the time in reviews, discussions, forums, anywhere you can possibly find it on Steam,” says content material creator and Steam curator Bri “BlondePizza” Moore. “It ensures no one is safe on the platform; developers and consumers alike.”

Aside from the content material of Steam’s boards, sources pointed to 2 foremost causes for concern: bigoted evaluations posted on video games’ Steam pages, which might vastly have an effect on gross sales for his or her builders; and Steam curators (self-appointed taste-makers on the platform) directing campaigns towards video games they understand to lean left or pursue inclusion.

“I’m not new to online harassment,” says designer Nathalie Lawhead, who spent two years making an attempt to get evaluations faraway from their video games’ pages. Both reference allegations of sexual assault that Lawhead made in 2019. “I assumed reporting Steam abuse might have its own issues. But when people suggested that I open a ticket, I did have hope that this would be the way to get it resolved.”

One of the evaluations, printed in 2023, learn, “cringe game, made by a liar”. The different, a overview of Lawhead’s sport Blue Suburbia posted in 2024, stated: “A women [sic] who seeks to destroy other’s [sic] career made this. It’s very poorly put together. She also probably has dual Israeli citizenship with how pointy her nose is.”

Despite Steam’s code of online conduct and community guidelines prohibiting “abusive language or insults”, public accusations or “discrimination”, moderators initially cleared each evaluations after Lawhead reported them.

Steam doesn’t enable cleared content material to be reported once more by the identical consumer except it has been edited. So Lawhead requested others on social media to report the evaluations, which prompted Steam to take away the antisemitic instance. The different, nonetheless, was handed once more. “We aren’t in a position to verify the accuracy of statements made in user reviews,” reads a response from Steam sent on 9 January 2026, “and we don’t try to moderate reviews based on accuracy.” Removing evaluations, the response claimed, could possibly be seen as “censorship”.

“Crushing,” is how Lawhead describes Steam’s missive. “The implication seems to be that I must prove my sexual assault [to Steam] if I want to be protected from harassment over it,” they are saying. “I am hard-pressed to see where the misunderstanding might be. They had all the information regarding the situation. It’s an obvious stance. It’s a choice.”

The remaining overview was lastly eliminated, however solely after Lawhead personally approached an worker of Steam’s developer, Valve, outdoors the moderation ecosystem. “This was too much work just for two obviously unjustifiable reviews,” they are saying, describing having to resolve the difficulty outdoors the standard channels as awkward for each events. “I think this entire process of moderation is broken.”

While Lawhead was in a position to name on public help to assist get evaluations eliminated, that’s not an choice for each developer: not everybody has sufficient of a following. Others who’ve gone public with Steam moderation points have obtained additional harassment, and have requested to talk anonymously or be recognized by their first names solely.

Some video games have been focused by Steam curators. Ethan, the developer of Coven, a first-person action-horror set within the 1600s, says he has been focused by “CharlieTweetsDetected”, a curator dedicated to recommending video games based mostly solely on whether or not their builders are perceived to have accurately mourned the assassination of rightwing activist Charlie Kirk.

CharlieTweetsDetected’s overview of Coven, a first-person action-horror sport set within the 1600s, learn merely “Celebrated Sept 10th on blue sky [sic]”. This inspired others to submit additional evaluations and feedback associated to Kirk (and never the sport). “I even mentioned it to Steam support,” Ethan says, “how it stemmed from that curator list, but they weren’t interested.” Instead, Steam help claimed that “off-topic” constituted “a recipe for cookies, or something completely unrelated to video games that is clearly trolling.” Reviews referencing Kirk, together with one studying merely “RIP Charlie Kirk” alongside a unfavourable ranking, didn’t match that standards in response to Steam; all remain in place today.

Elsewhere, campaigns chase video games that embrace trans or LGBTQ+ characters. A trans developer included on a curation list titled “NO WOKE” cites frequent dialogue threads, together with one which referred to them as a “transvestite” and requested whether or not their sport included “woke faggotry.” Plane Toast’s Émi Lefèvre factors to reviews and discussions of Caravan SandWitch, a sci-fi action-adventure and driving sport, which often method its queer characters negatively. “Too LBGTQ [sic] … There is no future or continuation for these sad gays and lesbians,” reads one amongst many who stay seen on the sport’s retailer web page.

“For sure, the ‘anti-woke’ curators brought insincere negative attention to the game,” Lefèvre says. “Valve’s refusal to moderate any of this is making Steam reviews and forums the battleground for some kind of culture war, and is making them unsafe for marginalised people and regular gamers trying to simply enjoy the game they bought.”

Thanks to this inflow of dangerous actors, and the lengths that builders have to go to within the hopes of getting hateful content material faraway from their pages, typically with out success, many report feeling held hostage by the platform. Steam has turn into essential for developers. It brings in tens of millions of day by day customers – final month it had almost 42 million concurrent players – and billions of {dollars}. “No other storefront has the clout that Steam does,” Lawhead says. “Publishers don’t take you seriously if you’re not on it.”

That stage of success ends in hundreds of thousands of support tickets each week. Details about how Valve, an organization that has been reported to employ fewer than 400 people, handles its moderation load are elusive. Online consensus, together with amongst those formerly involved in Steam’s volunteer moderation programme (retired in 2022), is that the method have to be outsourced. The Guardian reached out to Valve on a number of events, by way of a number of channels, for extra data and for touch upon why moderators clear so many obvious violations of Steam’s tips. Valve didn’t reply to these requests, nor has it made any public remark that the Guardian might discover on Steam’s moderation points.

Developer Phi endured an equivalent course of to Ethan and Lawhead upon releasing Heart of Enya in 2021. After escalating a help ticket over transphobic reviews, Phi obtained the next response from a Steam agent: “It’s much better to continue working on the product, while letting the community use the helpfulness feature to surface reviews that they agree with or find to be uninformed.” (This actual wording was in Steam help’s response to Lawhead 5 years later.) “Most of our moderating decisions come down to a yes/no criteria … that’s a frustrating line to walk, and I think it inevitably leaves content that would be considered offensive.”

The agent urged the difficulty can be mentioned with their workforce, however after 5 years little seems to have modified.

“To us, it seemed that in Steam’s [view], hateful comments about an individual is abuse – but targeting it towards a group of people is totally fine, that’s welcome speech,” Phi says. “We had no other choice for what to do about transphobia in our reviews. They’re still up there today.”

Recourse for builders is restricted. Some are wanting into their very own safety, shoring up protections for builders on their workforce towards being doxxed or hacked by trolls. Or, within the case of the builders of Caves of Qud, paying their very own moderators to deal with boards and the hate that spills out of Steam. Others push bigoted feedback into public view in an try to persuade Valve, similar to No More Robots head Mike Rose, who pushed back against racist reviews of its game Little Rocket Lab final 12 months. “Woke game. Also has muslims,” reads one unfavourable overview; “please never, ever play any of our games ever again,” reads Rose’s response.

Others are simply making an attempt to roll with it. “Brown space lesbians trying and failing to contain a simple fungal outbreak” is, regardless of its unique derogatory intent, “the hardest line in all of our marketing copy”, in response to Ambrosia Sky developer Christina Pollock.

It is more and more simple, nonetheless, for the common client to go browsing to Steam and encounter abuse, bigotry and hate, a lot of which has been cleared by moderators. And as a result of evaluations have an effect on a sport’s visibility on Steam, a single unfavourable ranking can imply the distinction between success and failure. Lax moderation doesn’t simply create particular person hurt however has profound skilled and financial implications for builders throughout the platform.

Many of them say they really feel pressured merely to endure it – unable to stroll away from Steam’s near-monopoly on PC gaming. “If I am to continue existing on Steam, I am under the impression that I will have to go through this exhausting ordeal every time I want to report abuse,” Lawhead concludes. “This shouldn’t be normal.”