Valve: We shouldn’t decide what you can buy on Steam

Unpopular opinion, Steam edition: It is borderline unethical for Valve to curate the Steam store. I know that many people cannot stand the glut of releases on PC gaming’s largest digital distribution service and long for a day when only “good” games of a certain “quality” came to the platform. But Steam’s market share is so significant, and development tools are so accessible, that Valve would have an outsized and unfair influence over the potential viability of new and unexpected games. You may not agree with that assessment, but it doesn’t matter, because Valve reiterated that it believes it should not curate the store.

In a blog post on the Steam website today, longtime Valve engineer Erik Johnson explained that Valve wanted to clarify its position when it comes to “who gets to be on the Steam store?” This comes after the company began and then aborted a crackdown on adult-themed anime-style games that featured nude characters in sexual situations. At that time, I wrote that Valve was abandoning its February 2017 Steam Direct promise to not pick what kinds of games could have access to its store. That move met a backlash from fans who felt that Valve had a double-standard when it came to sex in games from Japan and sex in games from Western countries, which it did not threaten with removal.