October 7, 2020 Steam Chat Filtering has now graduated from Steam Labs and debuted on the live platform.
Steam’s latest feature has arrived, and it’s all about giving users the power to choose what they see via the platform’s chat. It’s aptly titled ‘Chat Filtering’, and developer Valve says it’s borrowed the equivalent feature seen in some of the best PC games on Steam to create a customisable filter “that is consistent across supporting games and the Steam client, web, and mobile chat experiences”.
The new Steam Chat Filtering feature, which has just left Steam Labs after a couple months’ experimentation there, “takes the chat filtering we built for games like CS:GO, Destiny 2, and Dota 2, and moves it to Steam for a customised experience,” Valve explained earlier this year in a press release. While the studio said it’s obscured the “most offensive” language that can be shared via the platform, the fact that the filter’s customisable means each user – who might have their own specific feelings and tolerances relating to certain language – can tinker with it to suit their own preferences.
Included in this is the option to upload your own lists of words and phrases to the feature. “We believe this level of control is especially important given that language is constantly evolving and is used differently among various communities around the world,” Valve said.
The Chat Filtering feature applies to Steam Chat, as well as “supporting games” right now, but the company said it might apply the same settings seen in these “across more forms of user-generated content” at some point in the future.
You can read about the new Steam Chat Filtering feature on the platform’s news blog here if you’d like to find out more.