A U.S. senator has written an open letter to Valve boss Gabe Newell asking for more stringent moderation of Steam.
Mark Warner, the United States senator from Virginia, demanded Valve crack down on what he called “hateful accounts and rhetoric proliferating on Steam.” IGN has asked Valve for comment.
Warner alleged that Steam is home to tens of thousands of groups that “share and amplify antisemitic, Nazi, sexuality or gender-based hate, and white supremacist content,” and called on Valve “to bring its content moderation standards in line with industry standards and crack down on the rampant proliferation of hate-based content.”
Warner’s letter follows a report from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) that identified over one million unique user accounts and nearly 100,000 user-created groups “that glorified antisemitic, Nazi, white supremacist, gender and sexuality-based hatred, and other extremist ideologies on Valve’s Steam platform.”
The ADL found Steam hosts almost 900,000 users with extremist or antisemitic profile pictures, 40,000 groups with names that included hateful words, and “rampant” use of text-based images, particularly of swastikas, resulting in over one million unique hate-images.
“My concern is elevated by the fact that Steam is the largest single online gaming digital distribution and social networking platform in the world with over 100 million unique user accounts and a userbase similar in scale to that of the ‘traditional’ social media and social network platforms,” Warner said.
“Steam is financially successful, with a dominant position in its sector, and makes Valve billions of dollars in annual revenue. Until now, Steam has largely not received its due attention as a de facto major social network where its users engage in many of the same activities expected of a social media platform.
“We have seen on other social networking platforms that lax enforcement of the letter of user conduct agreements, when coupled with a seeming reluctance by those companies to embrace the spirit (namely providing users with a safe, welcoming place to socialize) of those same agreements, leads to toxic social environments that elevate harassment and abuse. You should want your users (and prospective users) to not have to wonder if they or their children will be harassed, intimidated, ridiculed or otherwise face abuse.”
This isn’t the first time Warner has taken on video game tech companies over their alleged failings. He also pressed Discord to take action against “hosting violent predatory groups that coerce minors into self-harm and suicide.”
Indeed, Warner said Valve was warned about this very problem two years ago when it received a Senate letter “identifying nearly identical activity on your platform, and yet two years later it appears that Valve has chosen to continue a ‘hands off’-type approach to content moderation that favors allowing some users to engage in sustained bouts of disturbing and violent rhetoric rather than ensure that all of its users can find a welcoming and safe environment across your platform.”
Warner’s letter asks Valve to answer a series of questions on Steam no later than December 13, 2024. The questions directly ask about Valve’s current practices used to enforce its terms of service, its definition of terms, and the number of allegations it received about potential conduct violations and the findings of each complaint.
It remains to be seen whether Valve responds to Warner’s letter, which is the third sent by Congress to the company in the last three years. Warner’s letter threatens Valve with “more intense scrutiny from the federal government” if it fails to take meaningful action against hate content, but as The Verge points out, First Amendment protections prevent the government from punishing companies for hosting legal — albeit hateful — speech.
Photo by Olly Curtis/Future Publishing via Getty Images,
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.