0Valve Explains How It Decides Who's a 'Straight Up Troll' Publishing Video Games On Steam (vice.com)	null/SLASHDOT/0102640946		70
i  Thursday September 06, 2018 @11:30PM (BeauHD)
i  from the behind-the-scenes dept.
i
i    An   anonymous   reader   quotes  a  report  from  Motherboard:
i    Wednesday,  Valve,  the  company  that operates the huge online
i    video  game store Steam, shared more details about how it plans
i    to  control  and  moderate  the ever-increasing number of games
i    published  on  its  platform.  In the post published Wednesday,
i    Valve  shared  more  details  about  how  it determines what it
i    considers  "outright trolling." "It is vague and we'll tell you
i    why,"  Valve  wrote.  "You're  a denizen of the internet so you
i    know  that  trolls come in all forms. On Steam, some are simply
i    trying  to rile people up with something we call 'a game shaped
i    object'  (ie: a crudely made piece of software that technically
i    and  just barely passes our bar as a functioning video game but
i    isn't  what  99.9% of folks would say is "good.") Valve goes on
i    to  explain  that  some  trolls are trying to scam folks out of
i    their  Steam  inventory items (digital items that can be traded
i    for  real  money),  while others are trying to generate a small
i    amount  of  money  through a variety of schemes that have to do
i    with  how  developers  use  keys  to  unlock Steam games, while
i    others  are  trying  to  "incite  and sow discord." "Trolls are
i    figuring  out new ways to be loathsome as we write this," Valve
i    said.  "But  the  thing these folks have in common is that they
i    aren't  actually  interested  in good faith efforts to make and
i    sell  games to you or anyone. When a developer's motives aren't
i    that,  they're  probably  a troll." One interesting observation
i    Valve   shares  in  the  blog  post  is  that  it  rarely  bans
i    individual  games  from  Steam,  and more often bans developers
i    and/or  publishers  entirely.  [...] Valve said that its review
i    process  for  determining  that something may be a "troll game"
i    is  a  "deep  assessment"  that  involves investigating who the
i    developer  is, what they've done in the past, their behavior on
i    Steam   as   a   developer,   as   a  customer,  their  banking
i    information, developers they associate with, and more.
i