Less than a week after the release of an ADL report accusing Steam of "normalizing hate and extremism in the gaming community," US Senator Mark Warner has sent a letter to Valve boss Gabe Newell asking what the company is doing to combat the rise of extremist content on the platform, and warning of further "scrutiny" from the government if Valve doesn't play ball.
"It has been brought to your attention before that extremist ideologies seem to find a home on Steam," Warner wrote in his letter (via The Verge). "In 2022, Valve 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."
The 2022 Senate letter referenced by Warner, written by US Senator Maggie Hassan, said Steam has "a significant presence of users displaying and espousing neo-Nazi, extremist, racial supremacist, misogynistic, and other hateful sentiments," and requested a detailed report on what Valve is doing about it. Warner's letter is quite similar in that regard, acknowledging that Steam does have an online conduct policy and subscriber agreement, but questioning how committed Valve is to actually enforcing it.
"As Black Friday and the holiday buying season approaches, the American public should know that not only is Steam an unsafe place for teens and young adults to purchase and play online games, but also that, absent a change in Valve's approach to user moderation and the type of behavior that it welcomes on its platform, Steam is playing a clear role in allowing harmful ideologies to spread and take root among the next generation," Warner wrote.
Warner also warned, somewhat ominously, that if Valve does not adopt industry-standard moderation practices—whatever that means—it will "face more intense scrutiny from the federal government for its complicity in allowing hate groups to congregate and engage in activities that undoubtedly puts Americans at risk."
There's an aspect of irony to the complaint: Elon Musk turned Twitter into a haven for racism and far-right rhetoric, after all, and he's being rewarded with a high seat in the incoming US government. It's also not clear what the US government could do to force Valve's hand: "Hate speech" in the US is broadly protected under the First Amendment, and as a privately held company Valve is not subject to pressure from external shareholders who might not be comfortable with its permissive attitude.
At the same time, questions about Valve's content moderation policies have persisted over the years, and it does sometimes seem inclined to let the monkeys run the circus. We said in a 2018 report on Valve's "hate group problem" that Steam's problem isn't so much the absence of rules as the failure to enforce them; Valve updated Steam's community rules in 2023 with a more detailed breakdown of what is and isn't allowed, but enforcement (or lack thereof) remains an issue.
Warner's letter concludes with a series of 10 questions, several of them multi-part, covering broad topics like enforcement practices to more granular stuff including internal definitions of terms, the number of content moderators working at Steam, and what commitments it will make "to ensure that it has meaningfully curbed white supremacist, antisemitic, terroristic, Nazi, homophobic, transphobic, misogynist, and hateful content by November 15, 2025."
The Senator has asked for a response by December 13. I've reached out to Valve for comment and will update if I receive a reply.
