United Stats Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) has published an open letter to Valve, the company behind Steam which is the industry’s most prolific online retailer of PC games.
According to Warner and a report published by the ADL (Anti-Defamation League), Steam is home to over 1 million users and approximately 100,000 groups whose profiles “glorified antisemitic, Nazi, white supremacist, gender- and sexuality-based hatred, and other extremist ideologies”.
Warner goes on to compare Steam to more conventional social media sites such as Facebook or X, saying:
“We have seen on other social networking platforms that lax enforcement of the letter of user conduct agreements, when coupled with a seeming reluctance by those companies to embrace the spirit (namely providing users with a safe, welcoming place to socialize) of those same agreements, leads to toxic social environments that elevate harassment and abuse. You should want your users (and prospective users) to not have to wonder if they or their children will be harassed, intimidated, ridiculed or otherwise face abuse,”
Traditionally, Valve has been relatively hands off in terms of moderation. This is due in part to its sheer scope as a platform and retailer with over 132 million active users world wide.
However some individuals are skeptical of Warner’s motivations, some critics of Warner’s letter have pointed out that Disney contributed to his campaign, and that Disney recently invested $1.5 billion in Epic Games earlier this year.
Warner ends his letter by calling on Valve to answer his questions by December 13 or face “intense scrutiny from the federal government”.
- Please describe Valve’s current practices used to enforce its terms of service.
- Please provide the definition that Valve uses internally to define each of the following terms and/or behaviors from the Conduct Policy in order to evaluate potential violations of said policy:
- “Encouraging real-world violence”;
- “Inappropriate content”;
- “Real or disturbing depictions of violence”;
- “Violate others’ personal rights”; and
- “Harass other users or Steam personnel”, including:
i. trolling;
ii. baiting;
iii. threatening;
iv. intimidating; and
v. abusive language or insults.
- How many allegations did Valve receive from users about potential violations of the Conduct Policy? Include in your response each date when the Conduct Policy was changed, updated, or otherwise modified. Please provide data sufficient to answer this question for each of the following:
- Each month of each of the years of 2014 to 2024;
- Each category of violation (however Valve tracks types or categories of violations of the policy;
- Each category of violation for each month of each of the years of 2014 to 2024;
- The disposition and/or any findings of each complaint received (this may be presented in aggregate) by Valve, whether through Steam’s internal reporting mechanisms or any other means, and subsequent action taken by Valve in response to each complaint (this may be presented in aggregate).
- The number of unique user accounts that were subject to adverse, punitive, or corrective actions by Valve:
i. In response to a user-generated complaint; and
ii. In response to violations identified by Valve moderators of their own accord.
- For item e, above, please provide data on unique payment methods (e.g. credit card accounts, PayPal or similar payment method accounts, JCB, Klarna, Paysafecard, and any other payment methods accepted on Steam that are uniquely identifiable) associated with each account subject to adverse, punitive, or corrective actions by Valve that was subsequently used for any other account (this may be presented on aggregate).
- Approximately how many human content moderators work for Steam?
- How many of those moderators are in-house Valve employees?
- How many of those moderators are contracted by Valve?
- Does Steam supplement this work with AI-content moderation systems? If so, describe the ways in which any AI system is deployed for that purpose, including any evaluation process that Valve carried out to test any such system and the results that demonstrate the efficacy of any such system in identifying and/or removing content that violates the Conduct Policy and Subscriber Agreement.
- What steps does Valve take to prevent, monitor, and mitigate extremist, white supremacist, and terrorism-related content?
- What commitments will Steam make to ensure that it has meaningfully curbed white supremacist, antisemitic, terroristic, Nazi, homophonic, transphobic, misogynist, and hateful content by November 15, 2025?
- What transparency measures does Valve plan to implement to inform users and the public about content moderation actions related to extremists and behavior that could be reasonably interpreted as endorsing extremist thoughts, beliefs, and/or actions on the platform?
- The research shows a period from late 2019 to mid-2020 where it appears Valve may have stepped up its moderation of certain types of hateful content on Steam. Can you provide more detail on your content moderation practices during this time?
- How frequently does Valve evaluate its content moderation practices related to extremism?
- How frequently do those evaluations result in changes, updates, or other modifications to Valve’s content moderation practices related to extremism?
- Has Steam, or Valve, made policy, enforcement, or practical decisions that have had the effect of limiting or its content moderation? If so, provide the date(s) of each decision and enough information to understand the context and analysis that led to each decision.
In recent years, Valve has come under scrutiny by consumers for censoring publishers and developers despite a previous commitment to only ban games that are “illegal” or “trolling”.
