Hotcakes: Valve’s Stance On Racism Summarized

Very simply.

As large populations in the United States and other parts of the world are joining together in protest following the death of George Floyd the eyes of many have turned to corporations to speak out against police abuse, systemic racism, and institutional racism.

A large number of developers have come out to speak against racism and some have even buckled down and committed to sharpening their blades against racially motivated misconduct in their games and on their platforms. Valve meanwhile has been iconically quiet, and people want to know what their stance is on racism on the Steam platform. Valve has been shamed several times in the past for their lack of action against groups celebrating nazis, white supremacists, and mass shooters. Will now be different?

Well since Valve is keeping their mouth shut, let me answer the question for anyone curious by pointing to a game trailer that Valve has approved for their Steam platform. This is on the Steam page for the game Code Brown and appears uncensored. Valve is fine with it. I have asked them about it in the past and the response was basically to cite the generic rule against illegal or trolling games. I have no clue what the 22/8 might mean.

Will Valve make a statement? Only Valve can say. But given their silence and the manner in which the Steam store and community are maintained we can only assume that Valve doesn’t care.

Also keep in mind that Valve has taken no action against the large number of bots filling up Team Fortress 2 servers with bigoted spam to the detriment of the community.

Why would @valvesoftware have any problem with their games getting overtaken by racist bots? They are fine with developers dropping slurs in their official Steam trailers. pic.twitter.com/PFn09NxYtV

— Connor (@mmofallout) June 5, 2020