In what looks like a step towards an open unadministrated Steam marketplace, canny dataminers have spotted that Valve are working on a reporting system for the Steam client.
With all games currently sold on Steam going through an approval process there’s no great need to report games but if Valve were to start letting anyone upload games then giving players a way to point out pornography and child exploitation would be useful.
Steam Database spotted the change to the Steam Client while trawling the updates in Steam’s servers. Here’s the tweet:
Valve also added the possibility to report a product on its store page for reasons shown in the picture below. pic.twitter.com/TaZJBCuSsb
— Steam Database (@SteamDB) March 12, 2014
Interesting to note is that none of the reporting options are for broken games, only for offensive or legally dubious content. It will be interesting to see how Valve deal with reported games, too. In the past Valve have repeatedly remained silent on player concerns. They did take down The War Z but only after a huge number of complaints. A reporting system is only as good as the activity of the people receiving complaints.
It’s somewhat disappointing, too, that things like adult content and pornography are reporting options. One of the joys of opening up the marketplace for developers is that we can see games sold through a reputable store that otherwise only exist on the darker corners of the internet. I’m not saying Steam should become a sex shop but sex’s presence in a game doesn’t make it evil, nor does drug use. Plus, we all have very different opinions of what is and isn’t ok in games.
Hopefully we’ll learn more about it when Valve officially activate the new system.