Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Steam Users to Valve: #GamerGate Group's Gotta Go

A few months ago, Steam introduced what was called the "Discovery Update" to the service. One of its biggest additions was introducing something called "Steam Curators". Curators can be any individual or organization who has opinions about games and wants to share them, and Steam offers a home page where the group list its recommendations.

Unfortunately, Steam helpfully will recommend groups to you whether you want to or not, which is how users have reported being shown the Gamergate Recommends curator recommendations:


And when a group is recognized as a Curator, there's more than just a homepage with game recommendations. These recommendations also appear in the official Steam stores, right near the "add to cart" button. User [FoH]Fansy screencapped what appeared on the official Steam store for Shantae: Risky's Revenge The Director's Cut:



I wrote about the harassment , the misogynistic, and hate-group roots of the the gamegate movement, and it's sadly chugged along, making increasingly desperate stabs at relevancy. While Steam added the ability to hide recommendations it's both poorly documented and a band-aid solution. You can read the discussion [FoH]Fansy started in the official Steam Suggestions forum here.

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