Wtv posted:

You endorse something by selling it, if I buy beans at Walmart and when I open the tin it’s actually human fingers I get a refund from Walmart and they stop stocking those beans.

I'm sorry, but I disagree. You'll get a refund because you wanted to buy beans, not human fingers. The Walmart won't stock those beans anymore because there isn't a demand for human fingers (and it's criminal). If human fingers become popular and decriminalized, you can be sure Walmart will stock it.
You don't see supermarket stop selling cigarettes because it can kill you, or alcohol. A lot of owners probably hate cigarettes and alcohol, but they'll still stock it. When we used to rent movies, it wasn't rare to ask the proprietary about their opinion about a movie you were curious, and some of them would even say "it's garbage".
You not always endorse what you sell. Sometimes it's just business.

Now, it would be nice if steam would filter their content more, but what is or not allowed would be decided by biased people in ways steam can't control. They have a lot of games in their store, and if someone report Kindred Spirits saying it's a pedophiliac game, maybe the people reviewing it will agree with the report (and to begin with, the girls are underage in the original). Or, more likely, no one will take 60 hours of their time to play a game they have no interest just to confirm that report. So if a lot of people report for the same reason, they'll just assume it's true, and that's how this mess was born.
I'm not sure if a game where the objective is kill minorities would pass, but most of the time, those games don't even exist, because it's bad business. They're usually sold with another premisse and that content is just a subtext inside. Even Hatred was just another game of killing people if you didn't research the devs history. When the game is exactly that, I'm not sure if it wouldn't be considered trolling.

I think you're confusing their point about false advertising with the ethics of selling actual human body parts. If Wal-Mart were selling cans full of human fingers disguised as a can of beans and knowingly did nothing about it, they would essentially be endorsing false advertising, and that's the issue they're talking about. By allowing something to be sold in their store, Wal-Mart makes a statement about the kinds of things it wants in its store front. It's basic quality control like this that Steam is attempting to relieve itself of, despite the fact that much bigger companies do this on a daily basis. That's not to say these values can't or don't change overtime, nor does it mean that it's always consistent. But for the time being, I trust that the beans I get from Wal-Mart will be beans when I open them up and not anything other than what it explicitly says on the tin.

I think you're also conflating the concept of business endorsement with personal endorsements. As I said in my previous posts, the suits at Wal-Mart's corporate meetings probably don't always agree with each other. There are probably things that Wal-Mart sells that they'd rather not sell. They don't endorse these things "personally." But the only important thing in a business endorsement is where the money goes. Anything that is sold on Wal-Mart's shelves serves as a reflection of their business. Money is exchanged to allow these goods to be sold at their facility. That is a form of endorsement. It's the reason why, in the United States, CVS pharmacies recently decided they were no longer going to stock cigarettes. Because the fact that a >pharmacy< where people go to buy medicine and other items for their health is financially endorsing tobacco smoking by keeping it in stock is... well, obviously a flawed business tactic at the very least.

The same is true for Steam and of all digital store fronts. In the midst of the Meme Run controversy, Nintendo took the game down because they decided they don't want to endorse copyright infringement (rather it's because it's unethical or because it's bad for business, it doesn't matter, they just don't want it on their store). GOG is a distribution platform that is infamously difficult to get onto to the point where even extremely well-established indie devs have faced rejection from them, and while I don't agree with their methodology, it is still a sign that they care about what they're selling. There is no reason a store front like Steam can not have these same governing principles that literally every store in existence usually establishes >before they even stock their shelves (virtual or otherwise) in the first place.<

Valve is basically throwing out excuses for why they can't do things that are demonstrably not impossible feats, and it's both costing real developers money as well as giving Steam a pretty poor image, even if they don't "personally" endorse them.

When I said they don't endorse it, I did meant it ideologically, not as a product. Like, take AIDS Simulator as an example. The very presentation of the game says it's a shitty racist game, so if you bought it, it means you want a shitty racist game, and that's what you get. But I agree that saying "any game will be accepted" means that devs can outright lie what their games are about and you end up with something you didn't want. Although that's why steam has their refund policy (that I don't agree with, but that's another point).
I never saw steam as synonymous of quality, to tell the truth. Steam is just a place where games are cheap because of monetary conversation, since paying in dollar isn't usually a good idea for me. Their front store is completely useless to me, so it's only a place I go to buy a game I saw elsewhere. As you said GoG can reject even devs who actually put a lot of work in their games, so if steam start to do the same, those devs won't have any place to go, since selling by themselves they'll usually lose a lot of market. International market, for example. So while steam quality control is garbage, I think it does some good. And they still have the biggest public, so clearly there's demand for that. And seriously, most of the time trash games are very easy to identify, so if someone buys it, they only have themselves to blame.
Anyway, I don't even like Steam. I don't remember the last time I used them (I think it was to buy Fatal Twelve, and I still didn't play it. It wouldn't be possible to me to get it anywhere else). I just think they're convenient, and quality control was never their strong point.

Also, do pharmacies really used to sell cigarettes in USA? That's weird.

When it comes to the legal status of cartoon child pornography in the US, it differs by state and by district. For example, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals held up a conviction for possession of lolicon material, and several state courts have done the same.

However, it seems that they rely not on child pornography statutes but on obscenity statutes, which generally vary much more from state to state and are more vague and difficult to define, but are also used far more rarely. This also means that even within each region, some material depicting minors having sex will be legal and some won't be, depending on whether it's determined to have "literary, artistic, political, or scientific value."

So it is possible that even in the US with its relatively strong protections for speech, some of the games on Steam might be illegal in certain regions, and Steam could be held legally liable for selling/transferring obscene material.

Also, do pharmacies really used to sell cigarettes in USA? That's weird.

Pharmacies still sell cigarettes in the US. Pharmacies here often act as general stores with various household supplies, foods, cosmetics, and alcohol in addition to medications. Of course, there are some pharmacies that only sell medications, but the big national pharmacy chains sell much more than that.

last edited at Jun 7, 2018 5:28PM

GendoIkari posted:

Filtering bad games is too much of a chore for a self described big company that selling games is their sole source of income.

Valve's flat structure is their biggest issue at this point. It was fine when the company was smaller but now that the company is so big it works against them. They need to give up on keeping it entirely flat already and accept that they need a more traditional management system for at least menial tasks like support and not letting asset flips and such on the store. (Or games that don't even have an executable... Dunno how that even gets past what little quality control they already do.)

Wtv posted:

When I said they don't endorse it, I did meant it ideologically, not as a product. Like, take AIDS Simulator as an example. The very presentation of the game says it's a shitty racist game, so if you bought it, it means you want a shitty racist game, and that's what you get. But I agree that saying "any game will be accepted" means that devs can outright lie what their games are about and you end up with something you didn't want. Although that's why steam has their refund policy (that I don't agree with, but that's another point).
I never saw steam as synonymous of quality, to tell the truth. Steam is just a place where games are cheap because of monetary conversation, since paying in dollar isn't usually a good idea for me. Their front store is completely useless to me, so it's only a place I go to buy a game I saw elsewhere. As you said GoG can reject even devs who actually put a lot of work in their games, so if steam start to do the same, those devs won't have any place to go, since selling by themselves they'll usually lose a lot of market. International market, for example. So while steam quality control is garbage, I think it does some good. And they still have the biggest public, so clearly there's demand for that. And seriously, most of the time trash games are very easy to identify, so if someone buys it, they only have themselves to blame.
Anyway, I don't even like Steam. I don't remember the last time I used them (I think it was to buy Fatal Twelve, and I still didn't play it. It wouldn't be possible to me to get it anywhere else). I just think they're convenient, and quality control was never their strong point.

Also, do pharmacies really used to sell cigarettes in USA? That's weird.

It's not so much a problem that these bad games are hard to identify, it's the problem that there are literally so many of them that they drown out the games that, regardless of quality, were made with actual care. This is such a problem that reportedly about 40% of Steam's ENTIRE library (yes, ENTIRE library) was released in 2016.

https://www.polygon.com/2016/12/1/13807904/steam-releases-2016-growth

This includes games from big-name publishers that you see everywhere and breakthrough indie titles, but the overwhelming majority are Steam Direct games that have little to no effort put into them. Some of which don't even have an executable file to run, some of which are just sample games you can download elsewhere for free guised as a different product. And because Steam is open to literally EVERYONE, including these kinds of games and scams disguised as games, we can't even give the credit of "Steam is doing good by giving indie games exposure." Because they're getting little to no exposure underneath the massive pile of less-than-legitimate games. And that being said, "exposure" is not always "good exposure." Being lumped in with every asset flip and scam is not exactly the best kind of publicity.

It's a similar situation to itch.io. Sure, there are a few hidden gems on that store front if you have a few hours to kill searching for them. But that doesn't negate the fact that 99% of the games on that store are awful. Granted, I don't blame itch.io for that because it's a smaller company that is by design intended to be a DeviantArt style platform except for games. So it's to be expected with the territory. Steam, on the other hand, is one of the biggest digital storefronts in the world, run by one of the most reputable game publishers that doesn't make games anymore in the world. I personally expect just a little more from them. At the very least, I expect that if they want to operate like a public entity, they should also have to take on the legal and social responsibilities of being a public entity.

It's a similar situation to itch.io. Sure, there are a few hidden gems on that store front if you have a few hours to kill searching for them. But that doesn't negate the fact that 99% of the games on that store are awful. Granted, I don't blame itch.io for that because it's a smaller company that is by design intended to be a DeviantArt style platform except for games. So it's to be expected with the territory. Steam, on the other hand, is one of the biggest digital storefronts in the world, run by one of the most reputable game publishers that doesn't make games anymore in the world. I personally expect just a little more from them. At the very least, I expect that if they want to operate like a public entity, they should also have to take on the legal and social responsibilities of being a public entity.

I honestly don't see what responsibility Valve has to curate the Steam marketplace (except in that they must remove content that is illegal). If you buy some shitty game on Steam, then that's not their fault. They don't make any guarantee of quality. It's like blaming a shopping mall for the fact that one of the restaurants in the food court sells super shitty overpriced food. Maybe that's a problem for the health inspectors, but if they don't get involved, the mall has no responsibility to cancel the lease. Maybe there's a case to be made that they should remove games that literally don't even work, or at least post warnings if they get complaints, but even that is really optional.

What's on Valve's store reflects on them regardless of what they say. To some people it will equate to them supporting everything they have regardless of them saying we don't support everything here, but they do support the stuff having shelf space.

Plus, pretty much every store in the real world curates what they sell. A generalization, but you find lower quality products in a dollar store, and you will find higher quality products in a larger chain.

last edited at Jun 7, 2018 11:51PM

Even the dollar store won't let you just come in off the street and start selling shit you found laying around, especially not if they want to keep what products they actually care about not buried in it to the point of being undiscoverable.

There's a spectrum of responsibility between a credit card company and a local butcher. Using your credit card, you can buy all sorts of shit. You could buy products that are dangerous, that don't work, etc. You can get scammed into buying something that is never provided to you. None of these things are important to the credit company. They just facilitate transactions. On the other hand, a butcher is responsible for the meat you buy. It doesn't matter where they source the meat, they can't just say, "Oh, you should've known that the meat from E Coli Ranch was bad. That's on you, and none of my responsibility."

Steam is far closer to the credit card company than to the butcher. They're far closer to a credit card company than they are to a dollar store—the dollar store chooses what products to buy and then sells those products. They make a profit off the difference in what they pay and what they charge. A dollar store is a curated collection of goods. Steam doesn't buy games and then sell them, they simply provide you with an interface that allows you to buy games. They make a profit from a fee charged on transactions, because their business model is not selling games, it's facilitating transactions.

I'd be much happier in a world where it's your own damn fault if you buy a broken janky game on Steam than in a world where Valve feels the responsibility to cull the games that they think aren't worth buying.

Edit: I realize my logic is kind of circular here. Steam could be a curated collection of games if they wanted to be. But they aren't inherently responsible for the games sold on their platform any more than Amazon is. Basically, I do not like trusting corporations to make decisions for me when those decisions are inherently subjective, like what qualifies as an acceptable game. Sometimes a market must be regulated for the good of society, and sometimes it's better to just let people do what they want. It's very easy for people to do research beforehand and see if the game they're thinking of buying is something they'd hate, or broken. If they do end up buying a game that's bad or that doesn't work, there's no real harm done. There's just really no reason for such a market to be subjected to inherently arbitrary restrictions from some people who have no business making decisions for other people.

last edited at Jun 8, 2018 1:39AM

Wtv posted:

I never saw steam as synonymous of quality, to tell the truth.

Then you must use it for very short time, because getting your game on Steam used to mean your game is really good. Steam used to have quality control and only allowed games that crossed certain line in quality. But with time steam got greedy (and probably lazy) and instead introduced steam greenlight where after paying a certain amount and getting 100 or 500 people to greenlight the game (don't remember exact number) will automatically get your game on steam. That was the moment steam store become shitty, because everyone started to abuse it in order to push any shitty game on steam. Getting people to greenlight it was easy, because they just offered them free game keys. Basically that was suppose to work as quality control, because you won't find developers willing to pay and that many players greenlighting game if it is a shitty one or it is a scam, right? Well we see where it led steam into. The store page was flood with garbage that steam stuff was not controlling in any way, shape or form and they let it happen for years. So now steam store has billion games but only like 10% of those are worth anything. And that is the problem, before getting your game on steam guaranteed you profits, because people would see it in new games and check it out. Now with the flood of shitty games and scams, the second your game passes, it is forever lost and nobody will ever see it. Unless you were already famous and/or had some kind of hug marketing campaign, getting on steam now means nothing. In fact, steam was so hypocritical about it, that they started encouraging curators to check and promote good games for them. Basically they told users of their platform to do a quality check for them and weed good games from shitty ones.

So all this talk about how it isn't steam responsibility for controlling what is on their platform is one big bullshit. They used to do it and it was working fine, in fact it was working better for small developers. But now that they decided "Why bother? We can let anyone it and get money from everyone!" steam become the mess it is and trying to be first published there is no longer a valid option for small indie developers. Steam no longer gives any fuck w/e your game will be successful or not, because they got money already anyway and new games are published there everyday.

schuyguy You are forgetting that Steam is actually paid by game developers so they can sell their games on their platform. Steam directly gets profit from every published and sold game on steam. So saying they do not have any responsibility for the games they willingly allowed on their store page to be not scams or biggest garbage is just tone-deaf. They are profiting from scamming people and you are telling me, it isn't their fault?

If they do end up buying a game that's bad or that doesn't work, there's no real harm done.

Except you wasted money on game that doesn't work. And your trust into shop is worse now, because you will be afraid next game you will buy won't work as well. You can sell any shitty you want in your store, but then don't be surprised if you will become famous for selling shitty.

I disagree with your approach completely, because what steam is doing is not healthy for customers as well. Nobody has time to check all of those 50+ games per day, you won't be always able to research if they are good or not, so in the end most people will just ignore them and go for safe choices. It will make scams and shitty games die, but also will make the small indie developers who actually put effort into their games die, because nobody will ever hear about their games and so they will go bankrupt and will never make something new. I bet a lot gems like that already died thanks to steam decision to fuck everything, we want more easy money.

First 12 minutes of the video explains the whole issue.

(too much edits, at this point I can as well repost it.)

last edited at Jun 8, 2018 8:26AM

I actually used steam even before monetary conversation (dollar wasn't much of a problem that time) and greenlight, but I never used it as a place to find games, because in the end, it's just a store. I'm sure some people did, but looking at the front page, all I see is a bunch is mainstream games I didn't care. Later people complained about only big games getting exposure, so they started promoting indie games. Then people started to complain about how every shitty game would show on front page, so steam started to show the best selling games, what made the original problem shows back. They can't win, not matter what they do. Point is, there's definitely people who uses the store to find game, but I consider that a bad habit. Do you ever go to a book store not knowing what you want to buy? If you do, you're making an injustice already, as book stores are paid to put some books in evidence. That's how it works on most physical and digital stores, the ones with more money get more exposure. If you want something that appeal to you, and your tastes are more niche oriented, you'll find that product by yourself.
From the dev's point of view, I'll just say that marketing should be considered while raising the budget for your game. You should never just make your product, throw it in the store and hope people will find it. Most digital store won't promote your product for you, that goes from Amazon Publisher to Play Store. Those are just that, stores, and the main marketing should always be made by the seller. The products that are promoted are usually a service that costs money.
While this is partly Steam's fault, and maybe lazyness (and also Amazon, play store, app store, etc), I also say it's the customer's laziness. As a customer, we should know what we want and be sure of it. Some stores won't let me have my money back if I bought something wrong because I wasn't paying attention. That's why I'm against Steam's refund policy. Refund without any reason is hurtful for devs and actually makes the customer more lazy. I can just click buy, if the game is shitty, I'll just refund it. There's not excuses. We have videos with gameplay, reviews, we can see what the games are before even buying it. If the videos in the store are different from the product, then sure, we have a reason and refund should be given. Otherwise it's our own fault. PSN will ban you if you chargeback, and Steam could do the same.
I think Steam's biggest mistake might have been actually making those quality control when they were smaller and it was easier instead of just focusing on being a store.

I won't say it's wrong to have a rigid control on what is allowed in your store, as PSN and eShop do, but I don't believe that's necessary.

I do agree that's kinda bad for then that they probably get more money for some games submission than the actual sales. But the only way they could reverse it is making submission cheaper, like it happens with play store, what just would make things worse.

Anyway, I posted about a lot of things and I'm in my cellphone now, but I guess I just meant a store doesn't have any responsibilities in giving free exposure to third parties products, that devs should and do promote their games outside of steam and that customers should held responsibilities by their choices, too.

Kind of off topic here, so I apologize for butting in.

At this point, Steam reminds me of Newgrounds and Portal. At the beginning (I'm a dinosaur), Newgrounds was kind of a nice place to browse with some goofy quality flash stuff, then Portal came along and accepted user submissions. However, when you let anyone and anything start joining the fun, chances are there's going to be a lot of trash to wade through. I haven't looked at Portal in over a decade, but it was a hideous monster at that point. I'd be afraid to see what it's turned into today.

That said, trash is subjective. Steam has a lot of cool indie titles, though, and admittedly it's awesome for people using crowd funding to get a project started. I'll be honest, I don't really use Steam to browse through games. Word of mouth (friends, family, reviews) is really key these days in determining what's worth playing and what's not. It cracks me up when someone leaves a negative review on something that was totally not going to be their thing to begin with. Do a little research before you pony up the cash. Steam does have a 14 day return policy, too, if you've put less than 2 hours on the title.

You know, I'm not entirely sure what my point was. Game carefully?

schuyguy posted:

It's a similar situation to itch.io. Sure, there are a few hidden gems on that store front if you have a few hours to kill searching for them. But that doesn't negate the fact that 99% of the games on that store are awful. Granted, I don't blame itch.io for that because it's a smaller company that is by design intended to be a DeviantArt style platform except for games. So it's to be expected with the territory. Steam, on the other hand, is one of the biggest digital storefronts in the world, run by one of the most reputable game publishers that doesn't make games anymore in the world. I personally expect just a little more from them. At the very least, I expect that if they want to operate like a public entity, they should also have to take on the legal and social responsibilities of being a public entity.

I honestly don't see what responsibility Valve has to curate the Steam marketplace (except in that they must remove content that is illegal). If you buy some shitty game on Steam, then that's not their fault. They don't make any guarantee of quality. It's like blaming a shopping mall for the fact that one of the restaurants in the food court sells super shitty overpriced food. Maybe that's a problem for the health inspectors, but if they don't get involved, the mall has no responsibility to cancel the lease. Maybe there's a case to be made that they should remove games that literally don't even work, or at least post warnings if they get complaints, but even that is really optional.

You're assuming I'm talking solely about quality as in "I personally don't like this game." If I buy a game, and I don't like it, I agree, that's on me. If I buy a game, knowing FULLY well it's going to be offensive, that's again, on me. Doesn't make the game any less of an abomination, but of course, it's my wallet, and I bought of my own volition and thus should be responsible for that. But if I get a product that makes promises it can't keep, or literally can't even be launched, it is Valve's responsibility to take action. If a user buys something from Amazon or eBay that is anything other than what it promises to be, if they go through the right avenues, that seller usually gets banned. Which doesn't stop them from just creating a new account and doing it all over again, but I digress Similar to the fact that a waiver of liability contract doesn't give you a free ticket to do whatever you want no matter how dangerous, relieving yourself of the responsibility of your store's content only comes into play when you demonstrate an active effort into not making your store a terrible place.

But here's my problem with this. Valve gets a not-insignificant portion of the revenue earned from all games sold on Steam, in addition to the money they get for renting the space out. They aren't just facilitating a transaction, they are directly profiting off of all the money that trades hands on Steam. If they are going to make money off of it, that inherently MAKES it their responsibility to know what the hell is going on in their store. Just like a hypothetical mall would be responsible for knowing what's being sold in their food court. It's not that they have to bend to the will of people's tastes (although they kind of do if they want to, you know, make money, but that's a different matter), but if the majority of the restaurants in their food court is inedible or not fit for human consumption, then that is their responsibility to examine it and make sure nothing weird is going on. Like, you don't get to make money off of something and then feign innocence. Just like I can't knowingly accept money from my friends' money laundering scheme to pay for college and then just wave my hands and say "well, I just ACCEPTED the stolen money, I didn't steal it myself" when the FBI comes knocking on my door.

And even if we remove legality from this, we can still criticize a store for having stupid, anti-consumer practices. Like, even if hypothetically speaking, they weren't legally responsible for it, it's still >basic business sense< to have even a small amount of control over what you sell. And just because Amazon does it, too, doesn't make it okay. Store curation is something that literally every store does. Even itch.io, being a mess of a store front that it is, will crack down on games that it does not want being promoted on its platform.

Part of the reason I prefer to shop at Target over Wal-Mart is because their standards of quality, in my opinion, are marginally better. Their clothes are slightly higher quality, the Target exclusive dolls are better than their Wal-Mart equivalents. That's because Target does have more strict quality control. That's not to say that Target doesn't have its own share of problems, such as having worse customer service from my experience. It's not their "responsibility" to have those things, but that doesn't mean I can't criticize them for not having it.

And I'm not saying I >agree< with all curation policies. Wal-Mart's infamous changing of Nirvana's "Rape Me" to "Waif Me" is particularly dumb. But even if I don't agree with it, the fact that they're showing some kind of concern for what their customers might buy in their store is still better than nothing. It's basic decency as a company to give a shit about this kind of thing. I'm not daft; I get that if consumers were willing to unquestioningly buy whatever cheap, broken shit at double the price without complaining at all, any store would immediately jump on that ship. But last I checked, we praised companies for having good will towards their customers and criticized them for not having that. That's just how these things... you know... work.

It also doesn't help that this "hands off" approach is exactly the problem that led to this statement needing to be made to begin with. I get that they don't want to stifle creativity and want to be a free, open market. And those are admirable goals, don't get me wrong. But there is a limit to how far that can go. You need to have some kind of stance when it comes to content that is bigoted and hateful. You need to take a stance against games that do not have an executable file or are just sample games sold under a different name. It doesn't matter how many times you say "The items on our store front do not reflect the views and opinions of our company." Whatever you let into your store makes a statement about your company, and the current statement that I'm getting is "we don't care."

Fully agree with this and all your other points. This is merely symptomatic of the larger issue of a lack of quality control. A steady streams of asset flips and shoddy games have plagued the storefront for years. And they're not willing to do anything about it.

They are a huge company that can more than afford to have staff simply check games over before they reach the storefront. And they are fully responsible for these games, and I would even say them giving these games a place in the store qualifies as an endorsement.

While I am relieved that these games are going back up (or being "re-evaluated"), it doesn't really lessen my negative feelings towards Steam.

last edited at Jun 8, 2018 10:53PM

Consumers demanding that Valve show editorial judgement and curate their store is what led to all these games being blocked in the first place. And somehow the solution is to... demand that Valve show editorial judgement and curate their collection? That just doesn't make any sense.

Didn't really pay attention to the whole brouhaha after the first day or so but wasn't that more along the lines of automated response to mass reporting or something? If so it indeed would rather suggest a need for some real organised human oversight on the whole thing.

Also doesn't change the fact they really should clarify their relevant guidelines and exercise at least a bare minimum of quality control. I check the new games daily for the sake of idle entertainement and holy shit if most of them aren't obvious garbage right in the face of it...

last edited at Jun 9, 2018 12:05AM

schuyguy posted:

Consumers demanding that Valve show editorial judgement and curate their store is what led to all these games being blocked in the first place. And somehow the solution is to... demand that Valve show editorial judgement and curate their collection? That just doesn't make any sense.

I mean if you want to be intellectually dishonest about what people are actually saying, that's one way to interpret it. But there's two problems with that statement-

1) That's not what happened.

2) Even if it were, you're arguing under the assumption that editorial judgment can only be done way or can't be amended to work under different principles.

The reason these games were blocked was because Valve received mass reports and, instead of investigating like a proper company run by actual human beings, decided to take the reports at face value and threaten to take the games down without so much as stating a reason. That's not what I would call "editorial judgment" anymore than I would call YouTube's copyright algorithms editorial judgment. By contrast, when Valve did start to suspect that something was amiss, they showed actual editorial judgment by redacting their takedown threats when proper investigation revealed that the reports were fraudulent. It wasn't editorial judgment or curation that put those games in the hot seat, it was a lack thereof.

And let's play with your hypothesis that it was a case of bad human judgment, I don't quite understand your logic that because they messed up one way, that we must accept that it can only be done that way? Why not hire people with better judgment? Adjust your employee handbooks and code of conduct to suit the needs of the store? Amend your business strategy to account for incidents like this? Again, these are things that happen all the time in the business world, regardless of the actual size of the business. There is literally no reason Valve can't adapt. It's essentially like saying that because I don't like one forum's moderators that the only solution is to have no moderators, as opposed to, you know, just having better moderators or a changing moderation policy altogether.