Gabe Newell once remarked that his goal with Steam was to make legal purchasing of games just as convenient as illegal downloading of them had always been, and that most pirates would convert to law-abiding gamers if a proper digital delivery service appeared to them. After taking a risk introducing his service to piracy-prone Russia, he very soundly proved his theory to be correct.

This all makes today’s news that Valve is censoring references to torrent sites within their chat client all the more interesting. Although Gabe certainly doesn’t have to fear losing his fortune to piracy, thanks to the runaway success of Steam, it would seem that it’s still an issue to the distributor.

Reports have come in from users that including links to torrent sites within a message often results in said message being completely removed. That is to say, the message doesn’t even get sent to the person it’s intended for.

This covert censorship, though well within Valve’s rights, has alarmed some within the community. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with protecting your intellectual property, these sites could have been replaced with asterisks within the chat window, as many other places currently do. Replacing that standard system with a complete removal of an entire message is something that many think goes against the laid-back public persona Valve seems to want to cultivate.

Testing the theory out with a friend of mine, I was able to link to several torrents myself, which makes me wonder if Valve foresaw these actions causing a stir and reversed the censorship in preparation for it.

Regardless, linking to these sites still brings up a warning that states they may be malicious.