Okay so I -did- in fact interrogate a valve employee at this meetup about the porn games removal. Thread incoming:
* They agree they need to work on communication but sounds like there's internal resistance to hiring specifically for it (this is me reading between the lines)
* They agree they need to work on communication but sounds like there's internal resistance to hiring specifically for it (this is me reading between the lines)
...got assurances this is something they want to work on but nothing concrete.
* says flagging of games is done by a team of contractors looking for criteria, not specifically targeting VNs or queer stuff. Asked about whether this criteria is public, they seemed uncertain
* says flagging of games is done by a team of contractors looking for criteria, not specifically targeting VNs or queer stuff. Asked about whether this criteria is public, they seemed uncertain
* they said removal/holding back games is coming from valve trying to comply with "vague" porn laws, as well as "certain groups" (not specified). They say that LGBT etc content is important to steam tho & they hope forthcoming content system will fix issues
* On inconsistent communication, sounds like stuff has been in flux internally and they're afraid to make a statement before deciding exactly what to do. I commented this would be better if they weren't enforcing those opaque interim decisions which they agreed w noncommittally
* "Sometimes we need people to yell at us about this stuff." Took pains to emphasize they pay attention to discourse even if they dont respond publically. I guess that's the takeaway here? Sounds like a lot of ppl are scared to be The Person who comes out and speaks for valve
Oh right: On inconsistent enforcement, said they didnt know details about that but said it shouldn't be happening. Not much more to say there I suppose.
Overall I cant claim to be happy with the amount of "we'd like to" in the answers but maybe the best I can expect out of cornering a single person xD. It was an informative discussion at least and they went to lengths to emphasize they def want queer creators on the platform.
....This is a distillation of what was an hour long convo that I didn't take notes on so I may have missed stuff, but hopefully I covered all the important points.
A note that this is contextually a little different from an interview - I basically sprung this on someone helping host a dev meetup - so an "I'm not sure" is fundamentally different here than if this were someone prepped
Wanna get that context out there in case this blows up
Wanna get that context out there in case this blows up
Oh right! Forgot about this: colin northway floated the idea of an official dev liaison Twitter, they seemed receptive but mentioned it would take "a lot of work and a lot of discussions" to see something like that, which I read as "not likely rn"
more tweets for small details I forgot: (sorry lol) sounds like extreme violence / sexual assault etc WILL be included in the content system being made, it won't just filter for sexual content etc
* the idea has been floated to whitelist tags like LGBT so that they have splash pages even when they're not in the top 100 tags, but they don't want to do this until they have tools to prevent malicious use of it first ( ie ppl tagging anti-lgbt games with it)
