Valve Says No to Censorship on Steam

Nice one, Valve!

Some people are not going to like this!

Like many other major web-based businesses, Valve, operators of the Steam PC gaming portal, have faced some rather indignant demands to censor some of the content (in their case, games) that they allow to be distributed via their apps and website.

Valve dallied with the idea of excluding various examples of supposedly offensive content from their games library.

Aside from content which is actually illegal, or what they refer to as “straight up trolling,” (which, presumably, refers to games which are submitted purely to be annoying) Valve are now refusing to censor games that people claim to be offended by.

In effect, their message to the censorists was, “Suck my dick!”

And I say; “Hooray! Good for you, Valve!”

It’s about time that a major web business took a stand against the censorists. It’s not just that it’s almost impossible to have web content that doesn’t offend anyone. There are important principles at stake, too.

Of course some people are offended by some violent and/or sexually-themed computer games! Of course some people want such games banned!

But so what? They don’t have to play them.

It seems to me that they’re mainly just pathetic, attention-seeking conformists, desperate to claim victim-status through their earnest participation in the sad game of ‘Look at me! Look at me! See how outraged I am!’ They’re basically out to buy shares in the industry of outrage, in the hope of reaping those all-important dividends of someone paying attention to them for a few precious seconds.

The key principle here, however, should be clear: People can express as much outrage as they like, but their Stalinist demands to be able to dictate what content other people can enjoy, largely on the flimsy grounds that they deem the content to be offensive or ‘inappropriate’ in some way, are a totally unjustifiable attempt to restrict other people’s freedoms.

And whenever we allow people’s individual freedom to be restricted merely according to the rules of social-acceptability, our society becomes poorer and we betray our finest principles.

I’m really pleased by Valve’s anti-censorship stance. I just hope they stick to their guns and that other businesses develop the guts to follow their example.

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