In an accidental homage to the 74th anniversary of the D-Day landings and their service of human freedom, Valve on Wednesday announced that it won’t restrict gaming content on its online Steam platform unless the content is “illegal, or straight up trolling.”
Valve’s decision follows controversy over Steam’s recent availability of a game centered on a school shooting. Steam previously removed that game from its servers but the new policy means that game and others involving pornographic content, for example, will now be available on Steam.
I am only a casual gamer (I enjoy Pro Evolution soccer, Grand Theft Auto 5, Ghost Recon and Farcry), but I view Valve’s action as valuable to the idea of free speech. Put simply, I believe that absent illegal content, we should defer to free expressions (games) and viewpoints (game users). We need not endorse all games or even be forced to see their advertised sale (Steam intends to create better self-moderation tools so that users don’t see things they don’t like), but we shouldn’t make those decisions for others.
Others disagree. GamesRadar editor Rachel Weber told the BBC that “Professionally, I dread to think about the games that will appear on the new releases list … personally I’m disappointed that such a massive company isn’t willing to engage with important and complex issues.”
Gizmodo laments that the decision “screams of having less to do with diversity of ideas than Valve’s disinterest in handling controversy from the toxic segments of the gaming community.”
Critic Dominic Tarason declares that “Unfortunately this also means [Steam will] likely be taking a similarly hands-off approach regarding wildly sexist, racist or homophobic content … I’d say we’re going to see a significant upswing in the number of games that should ideally be sold from a locked vault at the bottom of a long flight of stairs …”
Nathan Grayson tweets that “The language in here is mind-boggling. ‘It’s about whether the store contains games within an entire range of controversial topics–politics, sexuality, racism, gender, violence, identity, and so on.’ those are all really different things! but ok let’s equate sexuality and racism.”
Yes, let’s. Let’s do so because in a free society we must defer to the individual right to decide what is and what is not acceptable to each of us. I trust individuals to make free choices much more than I trust in the better angels of bureaucratic overlords to make those choices for us. It matters because while Gizmodo complains about “toxic” segments, it ignores the fact that someone must ultimately decide the definition of toxicity.
For the social conservative gamer, toxicity might be pornographic content. For some gamers, school shooting games might be highly offensive. But how many gamers would also complain about Far Cry 5’s negative conception of Christian fundamentalism? Wouldn’t they have a point, if we’re going to start censoring games at their source?
I prefer Valve’s approach of empowering individual choice. Katie Frates, editor-in-chief of the Daily Walkthrough, told me that she also thinks Valve has struck the right chord here. “It makes sense and it’s right that Valve decided to reaffirm Steam’s primary purpose as a video game marketplace and not some arbiter of cultural disputes. The perfectly reasonable stance is that it’s the user who should be in control of what they see, not Valve.”
Indeed. As Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts eloquently ruled in the case of Synder vs. Phelps “Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and — as it did here — inflict great pain. On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker. As a Nation we have chosen a different course — to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate.”
Nor should we stifle the right to chose lawful means of entertainment.
