Valve Censoring Torrent References In Steam Chat

dotarray writes It seems Valve is restricting just what you can talk about when using the Steam chat service. Specifically, any reference to a particular torrent site is being stripped from conversation, while mentions of other pages trigger a warning that the site is "potentially malicious." In the wake of website KickassTorrents being taken offline earlier this week, people quickly noticed that references to the torrent site were being stripped from chat - with no warning, notificiation, or acknowledgement that anything is missing. We've seen censorship before, with chat providers blocking certain words, replacing key letters with asterisks or simply substituting inoffensive words for those considered 'problematic.' That's not what Valve is doing here though - the entire message is disappearing, not just the troublesome domain.

Comments

Good for them

[Bovius]

It's interesting to see how Valve his handling being the titan in the game distributors market for several years running. I know that not everything they do is best for the long term health of the industry or their consumers, but this deterring piracy on communication channels they sponsor seems pretty reasonable, and overall they've handled things quite well.

Maybe they can come up with a better way of dealing with it instead of just silently removing messages, though. Maybe wag a finger disapprovingly at the person sending the message and don't even make it look like the message got sent from their end.

Re:Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

"but this deterring piracy on communication channels they sponsor seems pretty reasonable, and overall they've handled things quite well."

Indeed. Let's watch and see what else they start to censor in the future. Slippery slopes are a bitch that way.

If they were going to do this, I'd just as soon they inform people that they ate their message and for what reason. At least then you know what's going on and not having to piece together why your friend isn't responding to what you said.

Re:I don't see the problem

[thegarbz]

Do you expect to walk into a Walmart and shout out instructions for shoplifting but have people mysteriously unable to hear you?

The problem is not the censorship, it's the covert censorship. With any kind of chat system we expect acknowledgement of a message. I don't care if the message doesn't get through as long as I know about it and as long as I know why.

They haven't learned the lesson.

[Anonymous Coward]

How many times do we have to teach idiots the lesson?

1. Create a service.
2. It gets popular.
3. Apply heavy handed censorship.
4. The Streisand Effect causes the censored items to propagate further (see: TFA)
5. Lose the damn service by hemorrhaging users due to bad press.

This day and age the profit step is Zeroth, gotta have money already to build popular platforms now.

Torrent sites have a good reputation

[penguinoid]

The ratio of legal content vs illegal is 1 to 99%. This would be enough to have torrenting banned.

On the other hand, I've yet to see a torrent site that tries to install crap on your system (download manager, Mc-fee Virus, toolbars...). Even formerly reputable companies like Java and Adobe are doing that crap now. If people keep this up, the crowds will be turning to torrent sites for all their legit content. It's a reputation thing.