Karl wrote:But no-one is censoring games. What they were saying, previously, was "we're a shop and we don't want to endorse certain kinds of content by having it appear in our shop".
The creators of Kill All Black People Simulator (name chosen to be deliberately ridiculous, but it wouldn't surprise me if it's out there somewhere...) could still make the game and upload it to the Internet and link it on The_Donald for a trillion upvotes. They can even sell it, privately, to those people. But Valve obviously shouldn't endorse it by putting it on Steam. And having it appear in your shop is an endorsement. They can say "It's not an endorsement, it's an open platform", but what they really mean is "From now on we'll endorse almost literally anything".
And yeah Rightey you're right, Kill All Black People Simulator isn't going to by itself convince someone to join the KKK. But maybe it makes someone falling into an alt-right way of thinking a bit more comfortable with their choices and feelings. Maybe it makes black people who see the store page and see Valve not doing anything about it feel a little worse that day. If we consistently accept things that make that incremental difference, all those little things add up and turn into social movements and oppression.
First let me just say, I do agree that given the state of the market, you're right it's not true censorship as Steam is a store, rather than the be all end all. However I do believe some stores can act as pretty effective gatekeepers to customers, being a sort of de facto censor. For example Wal-Mart refused to carry any game with an AO rating, and that essentially meant up until digital distribution no one ever put in a boob into a game produced by a major studio.
Secondly, I think we're really comparing apples and oranges here. People in here mentioned that it would be better for Steam to crack down on asset flipping, and other low quality games. I can agree with that, but I don't think it has anything to do with censorship. It's not some dial that goes from 0 everything is allowed (including all these crappy games), to a 10 where all of our games will be brilliant, and perfectly wholesome. Steam, like the app stores, doesn't crack down on these asset flipping games because:
1) They're lazy and it would cost them money to police it
2) I think like most online stores, they think people care about numbers, how much you have is massively important, rather than the quality. Personally I disagree with this, but I do think there is some deep instinctual bias we have as people to think that more is better.
So I really don't think the option for them to control the content on their store was really there to begin with. They were either going to maintain the status quo of not allowing sexual stuff, while still allowing all these low quality games, or just say strawberry float it you can have your tiddies.
Now onto the third point as I said, if they are saying we will allow anything as long as it's not illegal, this still means you can't publish a game that incites violence, as that is illegal in pretty much every jurisdiction.