Recently there has been a very unfortunate and unreasonable decision by the moderation team to quell any opposing thoughts and opinions. This quashing of free speech is not only unethical it is a detriment to the health of open discussion on these forums.
The moderation team has begun removing posts critical of games that use AI from their relevant threads. The given reason for the specific instance that I have born witness to is that the thread creator did not wish for an aspect of his game to receive criticism, claiming that if people continued to criticize this part then he would leave the forums. The moderation team has given in to his demands, and removed any posts attempting to discuss that aspect of his games with the stated intention to delete any further attempts at conversation. Allow me to illuminate for you why this is a terrible decision.
Let’s put ourselves in the shoes of Steam for a moment. In this scenario a publisher has just released a game on our store front. The game is generally well received but there are quite a number of reviews all complaining about the same thing. Microtransactions. The people are upset by the inclusion of these and wish to voice their frustrations and give feedback in the reviews and discussions. But the publisher doesn’t like this, not one bit! These negative reviews might make people not buy the game! And they don’t want these discussions on how they can “improve”. They just want to keep doing microtransactions without having people complain about them! Hm what to do? Aha! The publisher gets a delightfully devilish idea. They demand that Steam remove all negative reviews or discussions complaining about microtransactions. They say that if Steam doesn’t comply they they won’t upload any future games to the site. What a pickle indeed! What will dear Steam do in this scenario?
A.) They ignore the publishers demands and continue to allow for open critique and discourse. The people are allowed to freely express their experiences and opinions with one another. The reviews remain untampered with so people can get the full picture of the game. The feedback given may not only inform the publisher of how to improve, but will also provide help to potential future game devs. The publisher may keep their promise to leave the site, but perhaps they’ll return in the future with a better understanding of what they can improve upon. All is as it should be.
Or…
B.) They cave in to the publishers demands. Any reviews discussing microtransactions are ruthlessly purged. The forums are wiped clean of any conversation on the topic despite them not violating any rules. When users attempt to restart conversation or protest these decisions they are systematically silenced. The reviews are now all have only good things to say, but everyone can tell it is a shallow lie propped up by an unjust system. The forums are now an echo chamber of false positivity and ass-patting. Nothing can be gained from this desolate place. The publisher will learn nothing and continue on down their path of folly. Other devs will also gain nothing from perusing the games reviews, rather they may fall into the same mistakes now that only the partial truth remains. And worst of all, Steam will have lost the trust of the people.
It is to my great displeasure that WG seems to be following the latter path.
It is worth noting that the above does not only apply to games. Imagine if Amazon or Wal-Mart were doing the same. You shame yourselves by choosing the path of least resistance. By crushing the free discussion of games you are fostering a shallow and fake culture, where people are too afraid to truly speak their minds, and the quality of games will greatly suffer as a result.
The moderation team has also suggested that discussion of AI will still be allowed, but not on any threads where the OP requests not to. This is of course ridiculous. The feelings of the publisher should be irrelevant when it comes to discussing the quality of their product and giving feedback. Again this would be like if a game had microtransactions, but you’re not allowed to talk about them in the relevant thread because it hurts the publishers feelings. It is not “derailing the thread” if it is relevant to the game in question. And trying to force people into different areas to talk about controversial topics is how you end up dividing your userbase. Remember the downfall of SA? That’s the same path you’re heading down now.
Another improper reasoning given for the silencing of the people is that because someone else has already said it, then no one else is allowed to talk about it. This again is frankly asinine. Even discussing the same topic and in agreement on something, two people could have completely different views or reasonings. To say that because one person has already said something that there is nothing more to say and the discussion is over is ludicrous. If it was one person spamming the thread with the same thing over and over then maybe it would be justified to limit that persons posts. But these are completely different people expressing their individual opinions and they are being silenced for it. Everyone deserves to have a say.
In short nothing in the posts I have witnessed was in violation of any site rules. They were not derailing the thread nor were they overly hostile. They simply provided discourse and feedback on an aspect of the game they were unhappy with. The only thing these posts were guilty of was offending the dev, and for that they were unjustly punished. Therefore I can only conclude that there is a policy in place where if a publisher pity baits enough, then the moderators will kowtow to their whims.
I strongly implore you to stray from this course of action. It will bring rot and decay to the site in the long term as discussions will stagnate and games will cease to improve. Community input will be minimalized in favor of circlejerks where only the most devout yes-men will get a say. I would also like to see any posts deleted because of this policy restored, as that would be the just thing to do. It is imperative to the integrity of this site that this happen as soon as possible. For the sake of both developers and the general audience.