Steam Surrenders Moderation Duties to Developers

Out of the frying pan, into the fire, eh Valve? Here we are barely recovered from your little fiasco with paid mods and here you are shaking things up once more. Granted, this isn’t as gigantic as a paid mod marketplace, but the implication and the possibilities, eh… it could make a man nervous.

But enough beating around the bush: what’s exactly happening?

Valve is changing how it deals with bans. Namely, they’ve surrendered all responsibility for issuing bans (for whatever infraction it might find ban-worthy) and instead handing that responsibility over to the developers themselves. In a very brief note, Steam had this to say:

Because nobody likes playing with cheaters.

Playing games should be fun. In order to ensure the best possible online multiplayer experience, Valve allows developers to implement their own systems that detect and permanently ban any disruptive players, such as those using cheats.

Game developers inform Valve when a disruptive player has been detected in their game, and Valve applies the game ban to the account. The game developer is solely responsible for the decision to apply a game ban. Valve only enforces the game ban as instructed by the game developer.

For more information about a game ban in a specific game, please contact the developer of that game.

So while Valve still does the banning, it’s up to developers to draw their attention to who needs to be banned. Monitoring responsibility has shifted, which is both a good and a bad thing, as most things in life are. But first, the questions: what kind of bans are these? Game-wide or just for online? How are they lifted? Does a game developer also have to contact Valve to get a ban lifted? We don’t know, and I suspect we won’t learn until much later.

In the meantime, however, we can look at what something like this actually means. On one hand, it’s a good thing: with the developer keeping an eye on their game, they’re the ones who can determine what constitutes a cheat or not, and since they’re closest with their own community the y can hear more direct feedback from their players about such matters. That said, for smaller devs, who don’t have the time or money to monitor their game for cheaters, well… their games might as well be in the Wild West.

I’ll keep an eye on this in case we ever learn more.