Following his trial for defamation of the families of the children and school staff killed in the Sandy Hook massacre, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones is using Valve Corp.’s Steam, the world’s largest digital distribution platform for PC games, to sell an Infowars-themed video game. Jones claims to have earned hundreds of thousands in revenue from the video game, yet he has refused to pay the Sandy Hook families. Alex Jones: NWO Wars also mirrors and cartoonishly repackages the conspiracy theorist’s regularly violent, hateful rhetoric despite the platform’s policies against hate speech.
To the best of my knowledge Valve allows basically everything that’s not outright illegal. They aren’t nearly as much of a “good” corporation as they’re often framed as. They’ll happily provide a platform for and take their 30% from anyone, including racists, misogynists, homophobes, etc.
Or maybe they don’t see it’s their place to gatekeep the store based on their own morals. If you start - where do you draw the line? Some examples like such games may be obvious, but there will be a lot more that are less so.
If people disagree with the message - nobody forces them to buy it after all and you can block any game from even showing up for you in the store, in my opinion it’s plenty enough from the valve’s part. I’d rather be the judge myself as to what I want and what I don’t want to see and play, rather than any corporation.
They used to disallow adult games, they don’t allow NFT or crypto.
They have drawn plenty of lines, and moved them when it benefits them. They are just like any other corporation, they just hide it really well and the fans forgive or hide the rest for them.
Didn’t they also rule against AI artwork? Seems that where their pocket book and legal worries are concerned, Valve treads lightly. Moral concerns and societal obligations? Not so much.
They also told a dev to stop developing a game since if they gave the go ahead Nintendo could potentially go after them.
They care about money more than anything else, just like any other corporation.
I don’t think you need to care about money more than anything else to realize that avoiding a potential lawsuit from a notoriously litigious and powerful company is a wise decision
They could have given a different answer, or worked with them to find a solution, but they went with the cheapest and easiest.
As I said earlier, fans excuse and hide the rest.
Are you talking about the dolphin emulator per chance?
Pretty sure they’re talking about Portal 64
Portal 64, they used the non open source code/tools, so Nintendo does have a bit of a case, hence why they are hesitant to give permission after the dev asked them.
One of those if they never asked, probably wouldn’t be an issue since valve never “knew of it”.
No, someone was developing a fan demake of a valve game for the Nintendo 64, and since the tools to develop a game for the Nintendo 64 aren’t legally available and it’s being used for valve’s IP then nintendo would be able to go after valve.
Thats a really silly take IMO. How could Nintendo goes after valve (a third party).
It sounds like Portal 64 would simply have legal claims for both Valve and Nintendo against the developer.
The issue is the dev asked Valve for permission, so if they give the go ahead Nintendo has a case that valve condoned and allowed it.
If the dev used the open source tools it wouldn’t matter, they used the proprietary Nintendo tools that aren’t publicly available.
NFT and crypto would shoehorn in on their gun skin casino they market to children
I find the “where do you stop” argument to be riddled with holes. Laws are essentially written to explicitly outline boundries and moderation policies are basically just internal laws. Like Canadian law has very specific laws regarding what constitutes hate speech, here is what that looks like.
First you outline protected grounds. In Canada this is race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, family status, genetic characteristics, disability and conviction for an offence for which a pardon has been granted. (note: pardons are only available via democratic votes or through appeals in Canada)
There’s a stage where you determine what context stuff is in. Like whether it is being performed publicly or privately but marketing a video game is definitely publicly so in tgis context we can skip to it’s last part where you explicitly define hate speech. Hate speech is rhetoric that :
Describes group members as animals, subhuman or genetically inferior
Suggests group members are behind a conspiracy to gain control by plotting to destroy western civilization
Denying, minimizing or celebrating past persecution or tragedies that happened to group members
Labelling group members as child abusers, pedophiles or criminals who prey on children Blaming group members for problems like crime and disease
Calling group members liars, cheats, criminals or any other term meant to provoke a strong reaction including usage of known slurs in the context of intended harm to group members.
These rules likely wouldn’t touch some hateful rhetoric that sneaks through under the wire disguised in very abstracted metaphor but it creates a pretty distinct pass fail bar that would catch explicit hate speech on their platform.
The problem with that is that providing a platform and a revenue stream is providing support. Whatever the intent is, that is the result. The issue isn’t what I see on the Steam store, it’s providing a platform at all.
And yes, obviously there’s the question of where to draw the line. But not drawing one at all means providing support for the Alex Joneses of the world. There’s no way around that. And I don’t think that that’s a worthwhile trade.
While true, and I agree it’s the right thing to do, some things like this and the Rittenhouse game are in a weird murky gray area where one could argue that it’s inciting violence etc. And if that someone is a lawyer, they could convince a judge/jury that it is illegal.
I agree that they should allow anything that isn’t illegal, but people say this like it’s black and white, and legality very much is not black and white.
Unless it pisses off the Chinese government, like the game Devotion that was released from a Taiwanese developer. But I don’t think Steam has a high ground so much as it has good PR while not being extremely greedy. In contrast, GOG also removed it, which sort of discredited any high ground they had.
This is too bad, but yes. They are like any other large corporation, I suppose – motivated primarily by greed.