Developer Shares Valve's Official Advice For Dealing With Abuse On Steam Forums

The creator of Coquette Dragoon has shared Valve's official advice for developers dealing with toxic players on Steam Forums and, with lines like "it's a battle you won't win", it's pretty bleak.

While I'm a true believer in the healing power of video games and their ability to bring players together for incredible experiences, it's a simple fact of life that the hobby can be very toxic at times. Nowadays, all it takes is one look at whatever major triple-A game is releasing next and the exaggerated controversy it has attached to it to see what I mean.

Schedule 1 is chill. Really chill, dude.

Gaming is sadly toxic all over right now, but undoubtedly one of the worst places for it is the Steam Forums, where anyone with an account can say basically whatever they want without much fear of retribution or being moderated. While Valve does have things in place for toxic players, its official advice for developers facing abuse is a little telling of how bad things can get.

Over on Bluesky, Coquette Dragoon creator Ivy May shared a screenshot of the "official documentation" from Valve regarding developers facing abuse on Steam Forums. Ivy May pointed out that Valve's advice is basically just, "No you can't stop it, try and look away from the vortex", and it's easy to agree after seeing what's shared.

While it's true that Valve does offer to add more moderators and requests creators go directly to it, some of the other advice is rather telling for how toxic things get. One of the gems reads, "Don't try to censor players or get into public arguments - it's a battle you won't win", while another simply tells developers to "take a break" instead of trying to figure out why they're being targeted.

Valve even points out to developers that the abuse will eventually "return to normal" and that it has seen many cases where a "surge" of negative sentiment will (hopefully) burn out after time. That might be true, but it's not exactly comforting, and makes it plain as day just how horrible things must be for developers if even Steam itself recommends just riding it out.

Get ready to experience the island paradise of your dreams and/or nightmares.

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So what you're saying is Valve's advice is basically, "take 2 teaspoons of cement and harden the fuck up?" sounds like good advice to me!

They are absolutely correct here, the more you try to moderate the trolls not only are they going to dig in even harder, but they are going to amp up the vitriol.

barring threats of violence or ACTUAL bigotry, then no there is no obligation to try and moderate, ie silence, people.

Honestly I feel like mostly thankfully gaming has been less and less toxic and less weird behavior in recent years and things have matured. Have you seen the old press events and how some people acted? When Valve dared make a sequel to Left 4 Dead with Left 4 Dead 2 only a year after a crowd of outraged people walked down to their headquarters and Gabe Newell had to come out and talk to them about their ideas and buy pizzas for everyone. Gamers were a different breed back then 😂

Game developers abuse players more then the other way around and 99% of abuse game Devs face is because they tried to screw players over

Developers need to develop a thicker skin. Anyone who regularly goes on the internet has to. Tolerance for bad games and bad game design is at an all time low. And devs do themselves no service when they choose to attack people online.

Don't start something you don't have the stomach to finish.

Oh gosh! Not the poor poor devs! Especially not the ones that have been throwing shade at gamers for a decade.

Only because valve does absolutely nothing about it. They could support developers in correcting the horrible and sometimes criminal behavior of their customers, seriously.

Who are you, the Review Police?

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