Steam allowing curators to promote homophobia.
Steam allowing curators to promote homophobia.
I reported them for harassment with the following statement:
The purpose of this group is to review bomb any game that has gay representation. Their discussion threads talk about using other platforms to discriminate against LGBTQ+ communities and individuals to circumvent Steam's TOS policies. This type of behavior promotes discrimination, review brigading, and toxicity. It is surprising Steam is tolerating such open homophobia on this platform.
With that absolutely pathetic follower count I'm not too surprised it's still going under the radar.
Compared to curators that people actually care about, that's a fraction of a fraction.
And yet, none of that makes it any less disgusting or any more acceptable.
Their point is Steam likely doesn't condone this behavior; they just weren't aware of it. Reporting it to bring it to their attention will likely get it removed.
No part of my comment suggests otherwise.
It is invisible under recommended, for me. I had to switch to "most popular" to even display it after an explicit search.
I mean... as much as it's dumb, everyone has a right to make a list and review games how they wish, right? Some gamers don't like loot boxes, others don't like [checks notes] DEI or PoC in games. Better those people don't buy a game and end up toxic elements in the gamespace, right?
I mean… as much as it’s dumb, everyone has a right to make a list and review games how they wish, right? Some gamers don’t like loot boxes, others don’t like [checks notes] DEI or PoC in games. Better those people don’t buy a game and end up toxic elements in the gamespace, right?
Making crystal clear to people like this like they are not even remotely welcome in your community after they let it slide that they have hateful vile opinions is the only solution. Everything else offloads the pain and suffering onto the victims in favor of not doing shit to actually kick those toxic people out of any respectable place that they can make their tiny pathetic voices of anti-trans, racist and sexist tirades of insecurity rise above a cacophony of shame and insults thrown back at them.
Throw eggs, shame these people, and though we can’t make them go away, after all we define ourselves on our desire not to wish harm or erase groups of people, there is no conflict here, these people have always been here and will always be here, the question is how afraid they are to let their disgusting hate hang out in daylight at any particular time. Bigots are cowards and they will fall in line as they always do when they realize the crosshairs are beginning to turn back around onto them, our job is clear.
Basically the correct play here is to force bigots to be closeted bigots, make them deal with what LGBTQ+ people have endured, see how their fragile snowflake personalities shatter on the tiniest bit of friction and pushback from someone who isn’t afraid of them.
Aka, let’s just have a nice time without them ok :)
Lootboxes influence how the game plays. Inclusive characters is [an issue of] perception, not gameplay.
Opposing inclusion [of other kinds of people] is different from opposing mechanics.
It’s funny how they can never define “woke” when asked but have no problem labeling any sort of inclusion as woke when they make a list of woke things. To them, woke is just the safe word to say instead of the slurs they want to say.
Anything that isn't a straight white male = woke.
Even that's woke, according to their definition.
"Straight"—sexuality = woke "White"—race = woke "Male"—gender = woke
I guess games just can't have any characters in them at all anymore, in case one of them has a race or a gender that gets referenced.
Here’s the groups definition - it’s linked in one of the forums. Your instance might filter some words:
Wow. I thought to myself surely they would be using some blatant dog whistle for the removed, but nope, steam is fully letting them rate games negatively by using every slur in the book.
This definitely looks much worse for steam than any of these sad, lifeless homunculi. I reported them and made note about how letting this group continue looks awful for steam and not taking action reads as endorsement.
Christ almighty. I was trying to give them the benefit of the doubt (and struggling tbh), but this is just inexcusably bad
This looks like it's for a different steam curator than the one in op's screenshot. Still probably a tos violation ofc
"Immigration is woke but also native people are woke," and the rest of the list is similarly frothing and delusional. They struggle to finish a sentence without adding a hard R.
Looks like it's time to report bomb.
Its even funnier that they coopted "woke" as a negative term in the first place. Just blatantly telling on themselves.
Yeah it is. I was around when woke first started making its rounds and it was used to describe people who were aware of social injustice against them, mostly black people at the time. I’m not surprised that the word made it into common use, just surprised at the audacity of people using it as a strong negative against equality and inclusion.
About 100 years ago the word was intellectuals.
Don’t worry guys, I’ll sift through all this gay hentai so you guys don’t have to I’m a hero!
Thanks lad, can’t wait for you to find all the airport toilets that should be avoided so I don’t accidentally wander my way into a BJ.
I keep telling all these gay men to stop sucking my cock but they just won’t! I’m really annoyed about it!
NOT RECOMMENDED
[...] Non-binary character option.
HoW dArE tHeY GiVe Me OpTiOnS?!
P R O N O U N S ? ! ? !
My brain is barely able to handle amateur nouns!
Some of their reviews are so petty that I want to believe it's satire (though I know it's not). Game has a girl that wants to be an astrophysicist? Woke. PCs fighting equally well regardless of gender? Woke. Literally any POC in the game at all? Woke.
These people are so fucking pathetic and hateful, it's mind boggling. I struggle to imagine how they get through a single day without passing out from the shock of seeing all the "woke" things around them.
I WENT OUTSIDE THE OTHER DAY MATE AND DO YOU KNOW WHAT I SAW???
A FUCKING RAINBOW MATE, RIGHT THERE IN THE SKY!!!
WHERE KIDDIES COULD SEE IT!!!
FUCKING WOKEYS!!! THEY MADE THE FUCKING SKY GAY!!!
😠 😠 😠
"Portrays an 'alternate history' version of the internet in 1999 which is more 'inclusive' than it actually was."
LMAO!
Conservatives didn't even know how to use a computer in the 90's. Stormfront was created in 95, but it's userbase was tiny compared to those private facebook groups today.
You have been permanently banned from c/Conservative.
Can you imagine getting naked and doing the thing with one of these people!!
It would be like having a conversation with a cardboard box.
You and I converse very differently XD
Anyone else using this to find new """woke""" games to play? (After reporting for bigotry, of course)
Sadly I expect this kinda shit to be normal
- I used to get various death threats because of a trans flag in my profile, it's been replaced by spam scammers
- When they didn't take down the Rittenhouse game that stung a bit...
I don't see this as an issue, I see it as a recommendation list.
Have you actually read the post?
Sure. For me the score is one of the last things I consider, so review bombing and what ever the opposite is called aren’t all that important.
These weirdos even think there's an LGBTQ character and boom, instantly triggered. Bonus points for a minority existing as anything else but a target.
Lol wonder how they feel if main character is tentacles.
LGBT is a tag on steam so it's really redundant, bigots can just filter the tag on their account page.
They don't want to filter it for themselves, they want to filter it for everybody or better yet, stop it being produced in the first place. They make their tantrums as public as they can for a reason.
what, you think a company that makes more than ten billion dollars a year should be able to afford basic moderation?
Just know this is against the Steam TOS but they would have to be reported to have any action taken and it probably won't happen quickly.
It's not against ToS. Curation lists discriminate no one.
Steam curators are such a stupid feature, why would I care about reviews from some specific person instead of just general users? Also clearly a lot of the curators haven't played the game because lots of them already have reviews on unreleased games
Curators are just the steam equivalent of movie reviewers.
If you get familiar with a reviewer's take on things it can help to know if something will be enjoyable based on their preferences to yours. For me, I loved Ebert's reviews because it wasn't the score he gave, but how he worded the review. Some reviews were listing the things he disliked, but since I knew he disliked certain things I loved, it let me know that kind of movie getting a low review from him meant it would be dumb fun and not pretentious. Butbif he mentioned something that we both disliked, I knew to skip that movie.
Ebert famously reviewed a few things without giving a score; I believe one of them was Human Centipede about which he said, to paraphrase, "You'll like this if this is the sort of thing you like."
There's a big aspect of genre siloing in gaming. Games tend to be developed very hard into specific genres and tropes, not all of which are things I like. However, game developers don't necessarily like to be categorized that way, so the way things are marketed can get very muddled. I like games that are the sort of thing that I like, and when creators are actively working against me finding out what kind of game they made, I don't always know what games are a good match for my tastes.
Then add to that: Often games will get very high ratings because the niche of players they cater to thinks the game is sitting near the apex of that niche--and nobody outside the niche is playing that game. But if that niche is, say, visual novels (which bore me to death), I'm not going to like a game. The high rating is, to me, a false signal.
But this is where curators can help! The fact that it's a specific person with that specific person's tastes is good if I happen to share those tastes. It helps me to avoid high-rated games that don't contain the elements I enjoy in a game; and to find the games that cater to my tastes but aren't marketed in a way that I recognize.
I need to know if I can pet the dog.
I just use the Denuvo one.
That information was actually added to Steam a while ago. There's a gold box to the right of the store page under the compatibility section that says what third party DRM a game uses as well as if it requires agreeing to a EULA.
I'd also recommend the SteamDB browser extension if you want more information while browsing the store. It adds a ton of features such as displaying when a game was last updated, historical pricing, automatically skipping the age gate page, and a bunch more.
The curator system was Steams answer to all the asset flips and scam games,
I found them pretty useful. Total Biscuit led me to some great games back in the day.
I don't understand the thought process of following something like this. You're just going to be seeing content that annoys you and getting mad...
Curators you follow have their reviews pop up in the store page when you're looking to buy/download something, so if you want to avoid something, like easy anti-cheat, you follow https://store.steampowered.com/curator/32754914-No-To-Easy-Anti-Cheat/ and you'll get this notice whenever you click on a game that uses it: https://imgur.com/Fvugcm1
That is the point, yeah. It's just ragebait, but for the chronically online chuds who fill their days with 2016 era youtube videos that have red arrows on the thumbnail, yellow circles, black outlined white impact font, and then they also have the one picture of that chick yelling when trump got inaugurated.
People get addicted to this kind of stuff because it specifically triggers negative emotions, which they associate to certain phrases, concepts, things, and people, and then they get pushed further and further inward to rationalize it more and more.
You start from a false premise. The reason for curators on Steam is that recommendations pro/against a game appear on the game's store page.
It allows you to avoid stuff that someone already played and knows you won't like.
Oh no, bro! Hypnospace Outlaw portrays a version of the Internet in 1999 that is more diverse and inclusive than it actually was?? Oh no!
I remember the Internet of 1999. It was full of awesome weirdos. Everyone thought it was great that awesome weirdos had a place to say what they want to say.
If anything, in some senses, the Internet of 1999 was far more diverse and inclusive than the Internet of today.
They think old internet was iDubbz types screaming the n-word, racist and homophobic jokes in flash games, and 4chan. One of these chuds were even angry at me when I told them forums had usernames and 4chan was kind of looked down by others for its algorithm rewarding rage baits and similar stuff.
I'd be angry if you told me 4chan had an "algorithm" too... It had a raw ass bump order and that's it (does that reward rage bait? Kinda yeah but so does any activity metric). Algorithms design to guess what posts you want to see are the worst part of modern social media which refuses to just show you all of a user or group's posts in order.
The funny thing about that is that what makes Hypnospace Outlaw so good is that the era of the internet it portrays was exactly that diverse and inclusive! Yes, there were both women and PoC creating stuff on it long before there were chuds going around calling everything woke. And, you still spend a good portion of that game moderating flame wars between two teenage boys over their made-up girlfriends. So I don’t know where he’s getting an idea that the game is anything but a realistic depiction of that era. Maybe if his awareness of Internet culture only began in the 2010s.
Ironically the LGBT community could probably use this list really well to find games they want to play involving lgbt things
Until the curator gets shut down, their list is a great reference of games to buy
There's a lot more than that: https://store.steampowered.com/curators/topcurators/?filter=all&keywords=woke&x=0&y=0#
Some of these cute curators don't understand subtext. Labelling the game Unpacking as not woke.
Do you expect them to see anything below surface level in any form of art?
Maybe they should realize that video games are art, and since art is "gay" then they should just stay away from it entirely.
Interesting. TIL:
- There is a slew of anti-woke curators.
- Many of them just list games "Sweet Baby Inc." was involved in, which is a "DEI consulting firm" apparently.
- There are a few pro-woke curators as well.
- There is an Alex Jones themed video game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2487350/Alex_Jones_NWO_Wars
- One curator considers it woke, apparently: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2487350/Alex_Jones_NWO_Wars/?curator_clanid=44914881
Not recommending Baldur's Gate 3 for ""wokeness"" is hilarious. That game is a masterpiece.
Would be neat to inverse subscribe to a curator, which would have the system recommend you the opposite of what they do.
I reported this curator only because it feels like a larger hate group movement in its infancy; Ironically, I got pointed to some gay games that I didn't know were out there. Some devs are going to get some sales out of me. The woke won't go broke, DEI to the moon and back!
The list would be pretty good if the games were recommended with the exact same text!
Can anyone make a curator account? Just literally copy and paste every comment, but recommend them all instead. From the couple of posts that people have made, you could probably ratio the original pretty quick.
548 followers, they're insignificant. Yeah, they suck, but there's literally a button to make them go away and you never see them again.
"Hm, there's a couple guys spray painting slurs on my neighbor's house ... better close the blinds so I don't have to look at it."
Fallacy of false equivalence. Your example is of actual criminal activity (vandalism) resulting in tangible damages (the vandalized home now needs to be repaired, also surrounding properties lose value due to criminal activity).
Please feel free to try to make your point again, this time without using a logical fallacy or bad faith argument.
I get not being interested in games that have strong lgbtq+ themes or story. I'm not, but I'm also glad they exist and people can find games that represent them. I'm also not opposed to playing as an lgbtq+ character in the same way I don't mind playing as a female character.
Being so close minded you can't stand for sandbox games to allow you to make a pride flag, or an RPG allow you to make a non binary character is just hateful.
Maybe its time that America re-evaluates if they want to give tax exemptions to homophobic cult organizations.
What a pathetic and sad way to spend time in your life. Spreading hate...
You reported the page, did Steam respond?
No and I don’t expect anything to come of it.
Share this link with steam. It links to what their definition of “woke” is, and it’s egregious enough it should goad Steam to take action.
I don't think that they promote homophobia. The texts clearly are in favor of the games, they probably missed the Recommend button several times in a row
Sounds like a good list of games to buy and review highly.
Here's a link if you want to investigate it.
Hold on, Animal Jam is on Steam now? I remember when that was a Flash game.
It probably still is, just in a container or something. It's only the flash player for the web that was deprecated, standalone flash is still supported.
time to report this to valve
WHY IS DEI BAD
Diversity Equity Inclusion. Some businesses have some people to try to make sure their hiring practices aren't discriminatory, and that's referred to as DEI.
But racists are against all of those things so to them DEI is a bad thing. And as these things go, DEI has become a codeword they use to express anger at anyone non-white having a job or represented in any kind of media. Like most dog whistles they pretend that they're cleverly avoiding being overtly racist but it doesn't fool anyone.
It's state sponsored racism/sexism.
We should strive to give everyone the same shot, through universal free education, healthcare, etc.
Equality begins at birth, not when you're just out of high school.
Instead we do a shit job at being a functional society and decide after the fact that none of it matters and you gotta get them quotas going.
As long as DEI, Affirmative Action, Positive Racism w/e you want to call it exists, you will always have people questioning the reason behind a minority person/woman's employment, and their performance will always be scrutinized harder. Are they actually talented, or are they here to fill a quota? That is a valid question no matter what anyone will say.
While I see where you are coming from is it not possible that such reviews might ironically benefit the LGBTQ+ as it helps to identify content that might resonate with the individual? Admittedly "Woke Watch" has fascist connotations.
We can just have curators bring focus on those games in a positive manner then. We really don't need to give fuck wads like these any ground to stand on, they'll just use it as a staging ground to push from. Besides if even hypothetically we entertain the idea of us getting something positive out of this it's not worth it. We're not painting a mountain range, there's no happy accidents with bigotry involved.
I get sometimes it can get excessive, but c'mon! This is like the equivalent of the 5 yr old with their mother pointing out random shit in public.
They could have gotten away with it if they had have just called it "Gaydar"... But "Woke" content detector... That's just some rightwing neofascist shit.
Of course Steam tolerates it. Gabe Newell, Steam’s owner, is a hardcore libertarian. I bet he believes that hate speech is free speech.
They will only do anything about it if it will lose them money.
I mean it's very possible that they simply don't know about it.
It's a very small curator.
hate speech is free speech…
…as long as it’s profitable and/or aligns with his own views. I bet if it affected the bottom line he’d quash that speech instantly. Libertarians these days are just misers, they don’t really have principles other than keeping their money away from anything they find disagreeable - which is pretty much everything.
Thanks for the warning label, Steam. You're doing God's work.
you're--this is a joke, right?
Funny thing is, statistically speaking, they're probably closeted gay themselves.
Seriously though who cares? It's not really spreading hate - a lot of closeted or close minded people aren't comfortable with their sexuality and are going to do this.
People don't have to like everything, relax.
I dunno. I think every list like this ends up helping to normalize hate and bigotry. That said, if I made one of these with a list of Christian games to avoid, it doesn’t mean I hate Christians, it just means that I am looking to avoid games with Christianity in them.
The difference here is that “woke” is a loaded and weaponized term. It’s like having a list of “groomer” games and then filling that list with games featuring LGBT+ characters. It’s based in bigotry.
If you made a list of these that were offensive to Christians would it be bigotry? What about if it was offensive to Muslims? The left? The right?
I'm sorry but we aren't standing on some mountain top where we can dictate that shit. As long as no one is getting hurt and everyone is an adult who are we to judge? I don't agree, I find it distasteful sure, but it's narcissistic if I was to think I can judge.
Let people like and dislike stuff. You'll only entrench their opinions by restricting them in any case.
Why is this an issue? Should all people enjoy LGBTQ+ content and not have any way to avoid it if they so wish? Also, the curator is not using offensive language, just pointing out which content has pro-LGBTQ+ content.
A total non issue my dudes. Perhaps there are more important fights out there?
edit Even the screenshot includes the "Ignore this curator" button. Does it not work for you? Shit like this is why nobody except your own bubble is taking you seriously.
Steam has a hard limit on like 200 curators to ignore, after which point it will print a vague error about it not working. I know, I hit that limit. That's not a solution.
Then make a stink about that and they'll fix it. Most likely nobody tested if the system breaks when you have so many curators blocked (because honestly, who would have this many) and it's a simple fix to do.
I find their selective use of quotation marks quite offensive.
I agree, that is a bannable offense.
The curator wants to use offensive language but avoids doing so to prevent getting banned. So they use “polite” ways to discriminate and encourage their following to do so as well.
If you looked any further into this group and exited your own bubble, you would realize this. Instead you commented without reading further and assumed I reported this group because they don’t enjoy the same types of games I do.
By this logic, i could accuse you of wanting to say the N word but only not saying it to avoid getting banned. So FACTUALLY nothing like that happened but you realize how shit would the justice system be if it worked like this? I could just insert thoughts and wants into anyone's head, and crucify them. If something didn't happen then it didnt. Call it out once it does. Dont' assume.