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Valve Will Stop Removing Controversial Games on Steam Unless They Are 'Illegal or Straight up Trolling' (geekwire.com)
Valve will no longer remove games from its Steam game marketplace unless they are "illegal, or straight up trolling," according to a statement from the Bellevue, Wash.-based gaming company posted today. From a report: The announcement comes a week after Valve removed a controversial game that simulated school shootings, following a nationwide outcry to ban the title. Last month it also issued warnings to developers about adult content in games. In its blog post, Valve executive Erik Johnson writes that "Valve shouldn't be the ones deciding this." "If you're a player, we shouldn't be choosing for you what content you can or can't buy," it reads. "If you're a developer, we shouldn't be choosing what content you're allowed to create. Those choices should be yours to make. Our role should be to provide systems and tools to support your efforts to make these choices for yourself, and to help you do it in a way that makes you feel comfortable."
That's a welcome sudden breakout of common sense. Let's see how long it lasts!
Ezekiel 23:20
As a liberal and libertarian, I'm fine with *ADULTS* having access to any kind of content they want. If they want to take the no censorship, high road they sure as hell need to clean up their age verification system. I play counter strike and BF4(non-steam) with my 15yo. niece and I've seen his game library, and I know damn well many of his games are supposed to be over 18.
First hit of google on how to work around steams age restriction:
https://steamcommunity.com/dis...
> You can buy games on Steam no matter what age you are as long as you set your age to over 18 when a store-page asks for you DoB
So it pains me to say this, but until they fix this gigantic loophole, they are in the wrong here.
Maybe parents can check their kids ages on their accounts? I tend to be unsympathetic to the "you should be watching your kids 24/7" argument, but to verify their ages on their accounts?
Also, what have you done about your niece's game collection.
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That game has been out forever, it's called Nuclear War and just like in Civilization, Gandhi is a fuckin' dick.
I see my shadow changing, stretching up and over me...
I need to make a video game about two anthropomorphize male-identify assault rifles that fall in love.
Spoiler 1: the climax is they shoot up an abortion clinic, and save many God fearing babies.
Spoiler 2: In the sequel the duo solve global warming, and reduce our dependence on oil through an innovative carbon tax system.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I play counter strike and BF4(non-steam) with my 15yo. niece and I've seen his game library, and I know damn well many of his games are supposed to be over 18.
If your niece already has gender issues, this probably isn't going to help.
A libertarian would say parenting is the responsibility of parents, not the market. If Steam wants to offer parental controls, that's certainly their choice, but they should be under no such obligation. And perhaps your nieces parents, who I'd imagine know the girl much better than you, have determined that she is mature enough to play some or all 18+ titles? As a left social libertarian myself, I wouldn't want Steam to try to second guess parental discretion like that.
No, no, no. The left also wants to ban sexuality for the large part because itâ(TM)s objectifying the wahmens. Humiliation of male sexuality, cheap puns and physical assault on male genitalia is fine, though.
There are two rules for success:
1. Never tell everything you know.
Steam should not be a place to express a viewpoint. It's a platform to hook game devs and game players up. Nothing more.
No one is forcing you to buy a game you find objectionable.
How far does parental discretion go? Too much parental discretion leads to deaths by Christian parenting and/or medicine denial, and "lesser" problems like obesity, malnutrition, alcoholism and drug addiction.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
There is no outright ban in question here. Valve can absolutely choose whether or not to do business with other companies, and do so with impunity. They are not forced to eschew all sense of morality, they are choosing to. My company buys products from other companies and sells them to consumers. Any notion that Valve MUST allow access to all game devs, regardless of content, is like telling me I need to buy from every supplier out there that wants to sell through my consumer conduit, which is ludicrous. I don't believe that corporations should have the same rights as people, but they should certainly have the right to decide with whom to partner, and they do.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
People like you are the reason we can't have nice things.
You expect the world to raise your kids for you because you are too lazy to check what they are doing or don't care enough to guide them.
The government nor any company should be telling us how to live our lives and what we cannot look at. So, fuck you.
The issue I have with random internet users is that they can build something marvellous or something horrible. I have seen how an indie game has been hidden from the front page on launch week three weeks ago because some users started adding tags like "Nudity". The thing is, having a game on Steam meant something years ago. It made sense to browse which games were introduced into Steam. Not anymore.
Humble Bundle also had a bundle full of anime titties not so long ago. I assume there are many people interested in erotic Visual Novels since the 90s.
So a student is more likely to be killed by a deer than from a school shooting. Where are all the walk-outs and protests advocating deer population control?
For some perspective on the scope of the school shooting problem, look at the stats the CDC puts out. For 2015, the leading causes of death among the 15-19 year old demographic were:
3,919 deaths - Accidents (mostly automobile accidents and drug overdoses). 282x more than school shootings.
2.061 deaths - Suicide. 148x more.
1,587 deaths - Homicide (mostly outside school, and gang related). 114x more.
583 deaths - Malignant neoplasms (cancer). 42x more.
306 deaths - Heart disease. 22x more.
195 deaths - Birth defects. 14x more.
72 deaths - Influenza (the flu). 5.2x more.
63 deaths - Chronic lower respiratory diseases. 4.5x more.
61 deaths - Cerebrovascular diseases. 4.4x more.
52 deaths - Diabetes. 3.7x more.
41 deaths - Complications from pregnancy and childbirth. 3x more.
A protest over excessive rates of teen pregnancy could potentially save 3x more lives than a protest over school shootings. Likewise, teaching kids not to each too many sweets, to exercise, not to smoke, get the flu shot, use sunscreen, not to join gangs, to buckle their seat belt, not to use drugs, and offering them counseling for depression, would all be much more productive uses of our time and effort than worrying about or debating school shootings. For that matter, controlling deer populations to reduce the number of fatalities from striking deer could potentially save 1.35x as many students' lives as lost to school shootings.
If you want to tackle a life-threatening issue that students face, probably the best choice is suicide. It results in more than a hundred times as many student deaths as school shootings. But when's the last time you saw the media run a story about teen suicide? The only reason school shootings are even on the radar is because of the media using them to play the "think of the children!" card against guns.
They're really going to reap what they sow with this policy.
I only read the wikipedia article, about him and ww2 so I'm not exactly an expert. But, it is what you suggested. In WW2 he campaigned for India's freedom from Britain. He said that they should not support a war meant to secure the freedom of others, when their own freedoms were being denied. He also wanted to see a peaceful resolution to the war, instead of bloodshed. He sounds like a real monster.
You have a very mistaken belief of how the bill of rights works. The 2nd amendment is simply protecting a natural right from infringement by the government. In the absence of the 2nd amendment, all people still have the exact same rights.
Even if this did happen, and the feds thought it could be enforced, we'd have a civil war trying to enforce it.
2. Raise the age to purchase a gun or use a gun without supervision to 21.
I'm all for this provided we raise the age of adulthood to 21. That also means you can't vote until 21. If you aren't mature enough to have a gun you aren't mature enough to choose the leaders of the country. The pro gun control crowd wouldn't go for that though because young people tend to be very liberal.
3. Raise the requirements for assault rifles and other weapons with the potential for mass carnage. Require a more thorough background check. If you can't get the equivalent of a security clearance, then you probably shouldn't be owning a weapon of war.
"Potential for mass carnage" and "weapon of war" are undefined. These are scary sounding terms that mean nothing. Full auto has been essentially banned since 1986. This is why gun owners roll their eyes at "assault weapon" bans.
4. Raise the requirements on handguns to 25, and require regular certification if you are going to carry a concealed handgun. Can you hit what you shoot at and can you reasonably identify appropriate targets from bystanders? This wouldn't be to produce a marksman, but to at least make sure of a minimal level of knowledge, including keeping a gun secure.
Most states already require some amount of qualification for a concealed carry permit and to renew one if I'm not mistaken.
5. Limit the amount of ammunition you can buy at once for assault style weapons. A licensed gun range maybe able to get unlimited, but only for use at that range. If someone brings in the spent casings they can buy more.
Again, "assault style weapons" is a ridiculous term. It's literally defined by things like what angle the grip is and whether the stock is adjustable. The whole concept of an "assault weapon" is a complete fraud. The campaign against "assault weapons" was created in part with the intent of deceiving people into thinking they were still talking about fully automatic rifles and getting them on board with something they didn't understand. Hence the similarity to the term "assault rifle", which is the term for the select-fire rifles that had already been banned.
Also, you don't need very much ammo for a mass shooting. Ammo is heavy. From what I've read most mass shootings involve up to around 300 rounds fired. You can shoot that much in a day at the range.
6. Teach critical thinking in schools. Too many people don't learn how to think logically. Include funding for after school programs. Keep people busy doing something, not messing around in some gang or something.
I'm actually on board with this. I would expand it to teach things like logical fallacies and manipulation tactics so people are harder to manipulate with propaganda.
7. School uniforms, because they equalize things somewhat for students, and give people a bit more even chance.
On the fence about this. Part of me wants to let people dress like crazies so they're easier to identify.
8. Harden school's with fences and limit access points where guns can come in to something with a metal detector. Yah, I'd like to live in a world that is not required. We aren't in that world.
Security should probably be dealt with on a local level. It's a big country and I'm not sure there is a one size fits all solution. There should definitely be security guidelines for newly built schools though. And maybe some experts sent around to do security assessments.
9. Offer to pay for training for school teachers who wish training in firearms. They must pass with a high degree of competence to be allowed to carry a likely concealed weapon. Don't pay them more to do it. Don't pressure them to do it. Just make it something they can get if they want it. Spread teachers that are armed out so that they are somewhat d
a student's odds of being killed in a school shooting in any given year are (51 million) / (13.9 per year) = 1 in 3.67 million. About 120 Americans are killed every year by deer [vox.com]. (325.7 million Americans) / (120 per year) = 1 in 2.71 million.
You must be a poor scientist, because you shouldn't compare the number of school children killed by one type of fatality with the number of ALL Americans killed by another type of fatality.
If 120 Americans are killed every year by dear, how many of those Americans are school children?
This! I keep telling people the government doesn't give you any rights; you have them already. The government can only take your rights away.
Meaningful gun legislation is prosecuting people who use guns in the commission of a crime. Meaningful gun legislation is a requirement that every U.S. citizen be required to take a gun familiarization course so they can overcome their irrational fear of firearms.
The merits of gun control is ensuring that you hit what you aim at.
The purpose of the 2a was to keep military weapons in the hands of the people, and to avoid the need for a standing military as it was known to be injurious to freedom (holy shit, I had to write that twice because Google keyboard auto-"corrected" that phrase to "indoors to a few people".) It's obvious that this means ammo too, and furthermore, it means military ammunition like AP or HE rounds. If the supremes say otherwise, that's judicial activism; the authors and historical proponents of the amendment made this amply clear in their writings at the time, so there is literally no room for confusion as to its purpose.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yes, when someone has an idea, but they don't know anything about the topic, and someone else does know about the topic, an effective conversation goes something like this;
Person A: I have an idea that might work, or might spark a different idea that works, but I don't really know much about this topic. What do you think of ...?
Person B: That's an interesting idea. In my home town, we had a bus system. The way that worked ...
We have conversations like that at work. A few days ago I posted a "I don't know much about the topic, but ..." post here.
Unfortunately, since the late 1980s US political dialog is more like:
Person A: You bastard murderer, you want everyone to take their assault weapons to schools and shoot up kids! Why do you want that to still be legal!? We have to ban handguns now, and all semiautomatic machine guns! You murderous piece of shit!
Me: Wow you're an idiot. Take a Vicodin and go get a clue, please.
Some of the change is probably related to the TV news networks going full partisan in the late 1980s. We went from Walter Cronkite trying to at least appear some neutral to one network demonizing Republicans and another demonizing Democrats. Viewers moved to whichever network was aligned with their political views, and the news they see is all demonizing "the other side".
Also the change is how primaries work, in the 1950s, made a difference. Until then, the debate would be mostly *within* each party. People were arguing a particular point, but arguing with people they mostly agreed with on other things. After that, the parties became more homogeneous on issues, with Republicans taking one side and Democrats taking the other side. So now instead of debate amongst friends, people are trying to defeat the enemy.
we let hunters cull herds and put fences up to keep them away from busy roads. We also take steps to address automobile accidents, drug overdose, suicide, Homicide, cancer and well, all the examples you cite.
But when it comes to ending gun violence we do next to nothing. We ban convicted felons from owning guns but we leave glaring loopholes in the system that let them obtain them with ease. We allow ownership of weapons intentionally designed to kill people (the AR-15's caliber and bullet velocity are designed to maximize the size of the wound) while regulating how fast a car can go to be "street legal".
You're entire argument rests on a false premise that we should do nothing to prevent gun violence because we haven't completely eliminated all other forms of death. I'm too lazy to look up the name logical fallacy you're employing but it's pretty obvious it's a fallacy.
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A lot of that falls under "easy for the law to abuse". For instance, if you require regular certification to show you can hit things with your gun, the government can decide to make all the gun ranges illegal so there's no way to become certified (which has actually happened).
And randomly visiting homes is called the "surveillance state".
Huh? Why would that start happening?
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Nintendo self-censored the SNES version and lost millions, while Sega raked in the cash.
On the other hand, Sega is no longer in the game console market, whereas Nintendo's brand as a kid-friendly platform has helped them maintain their position as one of the main players in that market.
I far and away prefer the uncensored version of the game, but I can definitely see why a company would decide to exercise a degree of control over what they allow on their plaform.
And if you're going to raise the age, then they can't join the military until 21.
How it makes sense to TRAIN people to shoot other people at 18, but make it illegal for them to own a gun or even buy a BEER is ridiculous.
And they can't get married until their 21. If you're not responsible enough to own a machine that uses a small amount of volatile material to accelerate a smaller amount of metal, you have no business locking yourself into a life altering contract. In fact, make it 21 to enter into ANY contract, including one for a student loan.
Really, my point is to pick a friggen' age for when we decide that someone is an adult and stick to it.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba