Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Please moderate the Steam forums

I'm navigator4223 on the Steam forums and the place is incredibly toxic, unlike here.

Please, for the sake of the community, but also for the sake of game PR and marketing, send one or two moderators over there to clean up and keep the nonsense in check.

Many threads and postings there are insulting to community members from the LGBTIQ+ spectrum, for example, also there is a lot of trolling.

I ask here because I can see on this forum here that Larian has great people for this job, but the Steam forums may be the very first contact many people have with this game so I think it would be reasonable to moderate over there, too.

The forum is run by a volunteer mod, I wouldent make any volunteers try to moderate the filth that can be seen on steam.

Is this even possible?

report and move on. Steam forums will always be like this, unless you shut down the entire forum, nonsense will get through. Think about it, the only real moderation we have here even is a single unpaid volunteer, what do you think Larian is going to do with the Steam forums exactly?

But here it works perfectly fine. No trolling, no insults, no discrimination here.

Instead exchange of ideas (sometimes wild, but thats something I like, too), feedback, criticism, etc...

What is the reason for Steam forums being that awful?

how many people do you imagine visit this forum on a regular basis? Now how many people do you suppose use the Steam forums?

I'd be happy to do it on a volunteer basis - but I don't think Larian has that kind of authority to send a moderator to the Steam forums nor necessarily want me doing it - because I wouldn't suffer fools. (Not that I would abuse them, I would just ban them)

I am not a fan of them either - and just avoid them currently. I would invite you to just not engage. Exposing yourself to all that bigotry, abusiveness and bad info isn't good for you.

Reminds me of my favorite quote:

"If you want to keep your teeth, make your own sandwiches."
- Jeanette Winterson - Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Steam forums have a wider user base and as a result will probably attract more trolls and just people in general who like to cause trouble. Here I would hope most of the people are interested in the game and talking about it. And they'll play it.

Anyway I don't think a third party can go to Steam forums and moderate anything.

I've never checked out the Steam forums so I don't know what it's like, but I do feel like one person's "too much" is often another person's "discussion."

If you're not used to it, it's shocking. BG3 right now is really bad. Imagine every third thread here having something about "woke", "sjw", and "bear sex" and you'll start to get the picture.

I don’t actually know how BG3 Steam moderation works, though I believe that Larian do have some level of control there (don’t quote me!) and there are moderators who receive and act on post reports. I suspect it’s as people say, though, and the sheer volume of posts there makes moderation challenging. Perhaps they also have different policies that are informed by Steam and so are more constrained … I don’t know.

I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do directly (and certainly don’t have capacity to take on Steam moderation as well even if that were possible) but I can flag up this complaint to the Larian community management team given the topic has come up more than once lately.

In the meantime, I can only suggest giving Steam a swerve and hanging around here (if you can bear the regular slow-downs) or Larian’s Discord.

(Oh, and Firesong, if you have specific examples of recent toxic or trolling threads on Steam, please pop links in a Private Message to me and I can perhaps use them to back up the complaint when I pass it on.)

Remember that guy Gormak? He was from the steam forums. Mild criticism sent him into an abusive rage last week - for which he was banned.

That's called "low emotional intelligence" - being unable to identify and control your emotions.

That sort of thing is common there.

I think I've blocked 30-40 posters over there. Most of them post once and aren't seen again. I've checked and something half a dozen are regular posters I see I'm ignoring.

Seriously though, blocking has improved my experience of Steam forums.

At least until you make a sarcastic Bear Sects post. Then the big guns come out to lock you out for a day :p

Another form is irrelevant. No reason to care about the Steam forums when we're on the Larian forums.

Oh, I hate the Steam forums, they are so toxic.

The best thing about toxic people on the internet is that they can't maintain that level of toxicity IRL. Whenever I see some completely unhinged takes on any platform I imagine encountering a guy or a gal saying same stuff IRL to a group of random people while screaming and drooling, label this interaction almost impossible to occur and then move on with my life, full of hope for humanity.

I assume you're familiar with John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory?

I was not, but thats exactly what I meant

Yep, the reality is, in most cases, if you were to meet someone that you argued with over the internet in person, you'd probably not just start arguing. Heck, you might even be friends.

You came to game developer’s forum to QQ about trolls bashing lgbt on a Steam forum? Wow, that’s… productive.

Btw people are allowed to have their opinions. And I didn’t see any toxicity there, typical internet stuff.

The Steam topics you’re referring to, are usually responded with “calm down dude”. This response fits your own topic here.

Steam is a better run forum [by that i mean it has the tools]
yes the people there are toxic [they see others get away with it so thats ok right]

from time to time they will open spam or hate threads here and in Gog and it sometimes takes a day to find them but the people here don't want that junk so it doesn't take hold

I just love talking about BG3.

I care way more what folks here think about Gale's Netherese Orb than I do what they think about politics and whatnot.

Welcome to the internet …unfortunately it gives many people the ability to say anything without any real consequences.

I've been to hundreds of gaming forums and have never seen one as toxic as the Baldurs Gate forum on steam.
I think they group there because they've been banned everywhere-eles.

This problem would be solved if you would have to use your real name, location and picture on every internet forum. It's easy to be the ultimate keyboard warrior if no one knows your real identity.

They do.

I got a 24 hour ban for saying it's bitter petty behavior to be mad that the game is coming out 672 hours for everyone instead of 72 hours for only those who preordered the game.

Curious priorities.


Oh my God I remember that. Such a trip that discourse became.

Downside being that you'd then also be a heck of a target if you ever said anything even remotely indicating support for consenting adults having bedroom freedom or the dissolution of obsessive obedience to bronze age ritualism or a whole bunch of other things.

Yeah, there are plenty of cowardly bullies out there that would STFU if they had to reveal themselves, but the tradeoff is what you get in other countries where speech is crushed because a government uses it as a tool of oppression and revealing yourself gets you jailed or worse.

I own my shit, but I understand why others don't.

The solution to anything is NEVER less anonymity. Removing it is a slippery slope that leads to surveillance states alike the one in some totalitarian regims. Being able to have an opinion not linked to your person is a freedom we often tend to overlook.

It's genuinely funny how people are reacting to:


As if it's a serious idea, rather than a call back to something that was suggested by Blizzard over a decade ago.

Yes, it was intensely mocked and belittled as it deserved.

I'd rather want people to not emotionally invest into braindead discussions on the internet than have their anonymity removed. My point about 'IRL vs Internet' was more about us understanding the difference between two dimensions. If you project online communication into reality and vice versa, it can upset and disappoint. If you always remind yourself about the differences in communication, then you'll be able to spare your nerves.

We could really use a Larian community manager over on Steam. One of the users there doxxed me to keep the "gays out of baldurs gate" and managed to get my email. Now I keep getting vulgar crap in my inbox framed as business emails because I had the audacity to mention wanting to romance Gale.

That’s awful!!! Hopefully they deal with the issue on Steam!

I sent in a support ticket and quickly got back an automated response telling me how to report people and then nothing, but I think thats because their support I'd closed on weekends.

Though given the content of the Steam forums I have no faith they'll do anything.

Yay for Steam. A bastion of free speech.
On many popular forums speaking against perverts and queers gets one banned.

This is one of them. Using that sort of rhetoric will see you quickly uninvited so I suggest you don't.

I agree with the sentiment, but I've been to the steam forums often enough to know better. They are generally pretty awful.

That's disappointing. It's also not true, because while it may take longer, that sort of speech will get you banned on Steam and if you push it not only that but you can lose access to your games.

Don't believe me? Maybe you should read that EULA you signed when you joined.

I guess you would consider Twitter a bastion of speech, but that platform is dying. They have lost 50% of their Ad revenue and it's currently valued at about 15 Billion down from the 44 billion EM paid for it.

They are also being sued in Europe for all kinds of content moderation issues. Lack of moderation is a death knell to civilized discourse and it will cost you.

The Paradox of Intolerance states that “in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance.”

And if you are thinking that "Gosh, I'd love to live in an intolerant society that lets me spew hateful diatribe against anyone I want!' - I would say your lack of Wisdom won't prepare you for when that intolerant society turns its intolerance on you or someone you care about.

mod already dealt with it, don't let yourself get baited.

> Many threads and postings there are insulting to community members from the LGBTIQ+ spectrum, for example, also there is a lot of trolling.

1. Compared to this place, Steam forums actually work. This place sometimes is plain broken with connection timeouts.

2. That's what real people look like if you dare step out of the bubble

3. Apparently it's not enough for the woke to have this here safe place, they want to impose their rule on Steam too. Why? Just talk here among yourselves. Everyone's happy. Perfect separation of cultures.

The rule here is no unnecessary political discussion, and keeping what political discussion there is respectful, including avoiding pejorative use of the word “woke”. And indeed perjorative use of any words used to describe people of any other political leanings.

And this bubble is for friendly discussion about Larian’s games, or gaming in general, and anyone is welcome as long as they’re willing to talk civilly to and about others. It’s true that there are plenty of other places on the internet for other kinds of discourse, so if folk want that instead they have no shortage of options.

The things going on on Steam aren't an issue of political differences. It's an issue of people wanting to discuss the game but every single thread on the front page is the same 4 or 5 users posting threads about deplatforming the game, review bombing it, and implying they want to kill gay people for existing.

It's hate speech and it's trolling, and if it were just words that'd be at least something you could ignore but I haven't even posted to the Steam forums in like 2 days a dude from there emailed me pictures of a dead cat this morning.

It feels like we're just rehashing the same thing over and over again in this post. Maybe it's time to close it up?

+1

First off, there is a [Quote] button next to the reply you want to quote from, make sure you hit that so it doesn't look like you just made up whatever your responding to.

1. Yeah, they need to upgrade, they are kind of busy right now, don't know if you noticed. When's the last time Valve released a video game? Still waiting for the next Half Life? Don't hold your breath.

2. It's actually the opposite. The majority see it as a positive, which would mean the bubble is around you. Go look it up.

3. Because the Steam forum is meant to be a discussion about video games, not politics. There are websites, and forums for politics. One great one you'd probably like is named after a recently deceased supe from "The Boys". Go, make new friends... :P

Hate how the “I don’t want politics in my vidya games” bring their politics to the video game forum. I came here to comedically shitpost and talk about video games, not politics, whatever you want to define it as.

Nothing can be done about the Steam Forums.

Bad faith actors have identified themselves. Can we lock the thread now?

I’m going to leave this thread open because it is valid here to raise concerns about Larian’s community management policy when it comes to other platforms, and indeed to say here if we are actually okay with how those other platforms function. And in general, I am loth to lock any thread started in good faith.

But the usual rules about civility, no unnecessary political debates, and not repeating the same points apply. And anyone failing to adhere to these rules might find themselves taking a break.

We’re all, if we have a view, fine to say once what we like or don’t like about the Steam forums (without taking sideswipes at others as we do it) but let’s not get bogged down in discussions that are unlikely to be productive.

I just took a peak over at Steam and yeah, it is bad. There are some fruitful discussions about multiclassing and what character everyone will go with, but the most is really hateful and hurtful stuff. I guess the problem is, that the Steam forums are so big, while I was browsing, the thread I was reading, was already on page 2 and it was the newest thread a few minutes before. They would need a lot of moderators to keep up with that.

I really hope they do massive cleanup before launch day because when people start playing and going to the main selling platform, they're going to be in for a rude awakening.

The steam forums were always kind of a mess, but in a sort of lawless and fun way. Right now they are downright unpleasant.

I can assure you it's a small group of bad actors who post prolifically. Which gives the false sense that they have larger numbers than they do. Statistically it's less than 1% but they can make up an outsize share of posts.

What is really dangerous about this is that it can make other people think that these attitudes are normal and so they may normalize that sort of speech. Later in life they end up getting fired a lot but never figure out why - and so they head to the forums to continue the cycle with all that spare time.

You ban them and it fixes the problem.

Oh I'm aware of that, there was one guy making at least four 'woke' threads, while I was browsing. They should really ban those people.

Thats actually true for any platform and any content - news, politics, games, films etc. The sad part is normal people joining those braindead discussions because of those trolls, then finding each other on different sides of the opinion spectrum and starting a real argument over something thats not worth arguing about. While being completely oblivious.

I mean Steam has a moderator, but I'd be willing to bet they're siding with the trolls politics because they never get banned but anyone who disagrees with them sure do. It's turned that place into a nightmare of politics and screaming.

Never engage with the trolls, especially on the Steam forums. Report them, using the language that Steam moderators use like, "hate speech including 'x', 'y', 'z'. Non-productive arguing, attacking posters, off-topic, unrelated to the game, etc." Arguing with the trolls/bigots will never work out for you on the internet. They live for the arguments.

edit: and here I am engaging in this circle thread..I should take my own advice.

Interesting idea..connect their game code when they want to post on steam, forums, discord. So a ban on one platform would ban on all.

If they want to make another account they need to buy the game again!! Lol

Works for scammers too

Bigots and Trolls are poison for the bottom line - something most companies* have figured out.

Advertisers don't like it especially.

Most people don't know this but Tucker Carlson was fired because his show - despite being in a primetime slot - was the lowest performing show in terms of advertising dollars of any of the primetime shows, despite having the largest audience. His demographic was bigots, and advertisers just didn't like it.

Also because the whole Dominion thing - he got sued for defamation a lot and previously judges ruled that "no reasonable person would believe that his show was factual or news." After Dominion that defense was not going to work.

I hope Steam figures out its moderation issues. Bigots and Trolls are social cancer.

*Obviously not Twitter.

Hopefully the troll will gone after a week and the hype "died down" a bit. This is the risk of marketing the game to mainstream audience... you also catch the attention of bigots and trolls.

Sadly true. There is also a subset of gamers that I am not fond of with low emotional intelligence - They verbally 'explode' over minor things and are 'inconsolable' even when you patiently try to explain its a misunderstanding or that they simply missed something that led to their erroneous conclusion. Like zero diplomacy skills, 8 charisma.

This game is a game for Nerds, and I love that about it. However, some people may not have the patience or curiosity for that.

"I'm not instantly good at this, well screw that!" (?�?�??? ???

Is low emotional intelligence CHA or WIS though? I mean it also has INT in the name.

Definitely WIS, it's essentially a perception check

Emotional perception would be insight then I suppose.

Steam forums are a lost cause unfortunately. Now since you can get stuff with the steam point system its just hordes of neverending troll/bait posts to farm the steam "jester" award.

Ok I'll admit, I'm one of those trolls that has so far collected 2 x 1 day bans on the BG3 steam forum.

What did I do to deserve it? I am gay and on steam forums openly horny, and asked for options for romancing slugs and frogs and such.

My comments were too sexual for steam rules, even though the BG3 community is marked 18+ mature / nsfw.

Why would I do or say such a thing? It started when a steam mod decided to punish me and delete all my naughty screenshots for Coming Out On Top, even though its literally a gay porn game.

Any time an anti sexual Christian troll makes a thread, I feel an uncontrollable dark urge to post all about graphic gay sex in their threads.

Steam is a playground for lulz, I stopped taking it seriously because Steam mods themselves are openly homophobic and no one cares.

Yes but when you let someone pull you down to their level you end up both covered in mud. You are also feeding them the attention that they desperately want.

There is only one solution, and that is to Ban them - because they lead to this sort of multiplication and then we have to Ban you as well because you are now at their level.

Also, If you want to really piss off a troll call what they are saying boring and unoriginal and then ignore them. They hold a conception in their mind of exceptionality - they are superior to all those "snowflakes" that get upset about x/y/z.

Although again, ideally they should be removed but if the Mods are failing at their jobs then calling them "basic" and ignoring them will counter them.

WHile I don't think, trolling around is the right way to express yourself, I agree, that what mods there are, are heavily biased. There were some rightwing dudes literally giving out deaththreats to everyone confessing to being LGBTQ+, when I called them out (normally, like I would do here) , I got a warning and my post was removed, while those death trheats are still there for everyone to see, despite people saying, they had reported them for hate speech. As far as I know, none of the 'woke' threads were closed, no one talking against LGBTQ+, women or PoC negatively did get any form of telloff in any form. So yeah, those forums are just garbage for the people, who will get banned instantly in any forum with standards (like this one )

This is not the first time I have heard this. Thats deeply disturbing that the mods on the steam forums are promoting hate speech. GIGO

Yeah, I was shocked too. And I mean, you know, how I write here, so the only reason to give me a warning is, ebcause someone didn't liked, that I called a hater out (in that case it was hating on women and LGBTQ+ - in game and IRL). And there were some really bad hate speeches, I won't repeat them here, because they were disturbing as hell.
I look into the Steam forums now from time to time, but mostly engage with the few normal topics.

This is wrong.

You actually expect larian to be responsible for the actions of others on a website that they don't own and don't control. You are not on the side of the angels here. You expect a business to go around policing thought, that is not good.

People are going to say, rude, offensive and inappropriate things. It shows the measure of a person's maturity to IGNORE them. If you let others dictate your mood by their speech you will be in a state of perpetual misery because people are always going to be disrespectful, rude, disagree, take the opposite position as yourself, cross your moral lines.

Let me give you an example I find the last panel from hell has something that I found offensive, bestiality. I didn't find the joke funny and I wish I never watched it. I found it in bad taste. You know what i didn't do? Tell people to regulate Larian studios so they couldn't add this, I didn't state on social media how offended I was either. I let the incident pass by. For numerous reasons...

1) I wasn't going to let a joke ruin my mood.

2) I don't believe in telling strangers what morals they should have

3) I don't believe in virtue signaling my morals. It has been my experience in life that virtue is self evident, virtuous people don't need to tell others of their virtue because it is self evident. The only people who actually need to signal their virtue are people who are not virtuous and hold dark secrets they don't want others to know so tend to announce their "virtue" to deflect and distract from their own failings.

4) It was a joke and even distasteful jokes should not be viewed in the same light. Jokes are not actually dog whistles as much as authoritarians claim they are.

5) I am in control of myself. My actions are not dictated by others, so i wont react to every slight, insult or offensive thing in my life. My time, mental health and joy are not worth self righteous indignation towards others. I will simply not engage as many of these posts you were offended by, will be by people who don't actually agree with the statements posted but will write said statements to anger people and ruin their day. Why? I don't know, trolls seem to get pleasure from the misery of others and the best way to punish a troll is ignore the post.

6) I take a stoic look on life, there will ALWAYS be hardships, disappointment, pain and there will ALWAYS be things beyond your control when it comes to these negative aspects of life. So if you can not control them, why allow them to ruin your life? The more you are exposed to negative aspects of life and don't let these things ruin your peace the less power negative things have over you. Cognitive behavior therapy is incredibly effect in managing our ability to deal with the negative. So this has actual psychological practice that is beyond the philosophical and into the practical.

7) I believe that individuals should have the freedom to be offensive. No one should be able to ban larian from expressing art or opinions that are offensive. Because if offensive is the metric then all of us are guilty because all of use have opinions that are offensive to others.

8) By not making the video a big deal and not becoming "offended" by it. It doesn't occupy my mind, it doesn't live rent free in my head bothering me. This is the most i have thought about it since the video and now it occupies a positive point of my mind because i can use it to illustrate an example. After this post it will fade away back into obscurity in my mind, not able to make my life worse.

9) Never let people tell you others that disagree with you are lesser. That they should be punished for thought. That their opinions makes them evil. This is the process of othering and every time this has been done in history unchecked, as far back as we can go, this ends in blood. This is not the path to a better society it is the path to ruin.


Words are not actual violence. If you don't believe me then think on this. If you have a choice to have five people say mean things for you for 1 minute or 5 people would punch and kick you as hard as they could for 1 minute, which would you take? Because i know for a fact that every person who picked the 5 people saying mean things about you would survive and would not need to go to the hospital. I also know that some people would die if 5 people beat them up as hard as they could for 1 minute. You can kill people very quickly with actual violence you can't with words. Do not lets words control you.

Nope. Creating an online community where healthy discussion can be held without being subject to trolls deliberately trying to derail every conversation by saying the most mean spirited garbage that pops into their heads requires moderation. Just ignore the trolls is not a solution. Without moderation, online communities turn into 4chan. You can�t ignore the trolls on 4chan. It�s all trolls.

In your opinion.

To be clear, I don't think Larian should get involved in moderating Steam forums. The waste of employee time isn't worth the benefit. Valve, however, should be doing a much better job of it.

When it comes to GOVERNMENT regulation of speech, I'm a free speech absolutist. But if I were running a private forum such as Steam, why would I want people in my community spewing hate and advocating violence? It's a potential legal liability, it's unpleasant, and fostering an environment in which groups of people feel threatened is bad for business.

I'm here purely because the BG3 Steam forum is so full of trash political posts that it's almost useless as a resource for exchanging information about the game. That's just stupid.

Theres nothing you can you can do about it when the Steam mods side with the alt right opinion. Its like the entire moderation is run by China / Russia. Even when I was only posting in the communities for 18+ LGBT games I still got reported and banned. Appealing does nothing, messaging Steam support does nothing, so I proceeded to troll like the rest of them.

And technically this is an 18+ game marked with sexual content and nsfw tags, so sexual discussion should be ok but ofc steam ban it regardless, so might as well just make it as extreme as possible.

Steam is happy with their forums. Laruan is happy with theirs. That's life.

Whining about another forum is just a waste of time.

Actually it's not.

Various parts of the Steam Community are moderated by a combination of official Valve staff, community moderators, and representatives of the game developers and publishers. - from the Steamworks partners page.

The rest of your argument is self-aggrandizing nonsense and also invalid. So I won't respond to it except to say that if you think a game developer doesn't have an interest in protecting the brand they are selling on another platform then you should probably not involve yourself in business - your personal diatribe notwithstanding.

Some known trolls already banned, hopefully permanent. Since steam forum is an open ground and Steam never done a good job banning literal Nazis (Yes, I've seen a lot of literal hitlerjunge aspirant profiles with swastika and nazism jargons). I'm gonna start telling people that genuinely seeking help with their game to Lar forum.

Finally making an account here but yes the steam forums are just bloody awful. They're usually always pretty bad and filled with the usual 'gamer' types or incredibly dumb people who can't follow installation instructions to save their life - but man the fact that BG3 features so many bisexual romance options feels like it just ticked off the 'gamer' crowd and has set the place on fire for the past week. I've taken a fair share of laughs though because you can pretty easily tell the people with zero familiarity of D&D culture, Baldur's Gate, or RPG's. My favorite one was a special user ranting about how the game was incredibly woke and deviated from BG 1 and 2 by being turn based and how this wasn't accurate to the source material.

Ultimately I would always stay away from steam discussions unless you just woke up and chose violence this morning and go looking for an idiot to argue with.

I appreciate that some folk are finding these forums more to their taste, but I'm going to suggest that if we start using insulting language in our posts here then we're going to make them a less pleasant place to be. Calling folk "incredibly dumb", for example, just seems to be asking for argument, and in any case here we try to avoid insults whether or not the people we're insulting are active forum members!

Measured critiques of the Steam moderation policies or explanations of why we personally find the Steam forums uncomfortable are of course fine.

Its amazing to me the number of people that FREAK on a BLOATED online global playground such as Steam. Steam heads are not in business to remove anyone. They know that <10% ever use their chat system, and they dont care about someone being dissatisfied with ONE game... actually, they're HAPPY about that because they know that ANGRY PEOPLE either keep playing that game OR move to the next game, and Steam profiting again. Angry = money in Steam's World. Value = HOW MANY GAMES you play (purchased).

Larian on the other hand, WANTS YOU to be happy in BG3, and all other LARIAN GAMES.

In a nutshell, Steam forums should not be thought of as a negative for PR for any game, its literally the same BS in any game thats marked 18+ with sex scenes, these games are easy targets for the alt right to spam their nonsense, and as previously pointed out, Steam policies and moderation align heavily with pleasing Russia and China so they let this continue.

The best you can hope for is you actually play any 18+ NSFW game and decide to upload nude screenshots or discuss anything sexual in the communities for those games, you don't get reported, and initially people aren't going to be aware that discussing sex on the forum for even porn novel games would get you in trouble, but if reported it does.

I have trouble understanding. In fairness, I accept that I'm pretty dumb, and I've only briefly looked at the steam forums, skimming through a couple of the posts just prior to full release.

But what's there to argue about? Some people don't like the bisexual content? Shrug. If they don't like something in the game, that seems like reasonable feedback.

Meanwhile, if someone else does like bisexual content, they can say they do like it, equally giving feedback. This doesn't seem like it has to escalate into an argument. No one's going to convince someone else to like something they don't like, anymore than someone else is going to convince them to suddenly not appreciate the content in question.

It doesn't make any sense to me, and I mean that sincerely. It's just this never-ending culture war stuff. I can't be the only person who thinks it's grown tiresome.

For what I've seen, people get banned a freaking lot on the BG3 subforum on Steam. I had days attempting to browse looking from some interesting discussion (not a common occurrence, I'll concede) and there are posters -even recurring ones- with their names in red every other day.

I think the sheer volume of spam is simply too high to keep pace; at least without going into a frenzy where you start banning anyone saying anything even marginally disagreeable.

It is one thing for someone to say, they don't like some stuff, it is another thing to rant against womens rights, LGBTQ+, PoC etc and even resolve to death threats. That is the problem, not 'I don't personally like Gale hitting on me'. You can critisize without getting personal and attacking other player that see things differently.

I am glad you brought up culture war stuff because at the core of culture war issues is "people being upset about things that don't materially affect them at all."

If someone doesn't like LGBTQ content then they don't have to interact with it in game. It's ok to say "I have no interest in this" - but that's not what people are saying. They are denouncing LGBTQ+ and saying purely hateful stuff...and getting away with it. There are racist comments being made as well along the same lines.

Larian has a remedy here according to the terms of its Steamworks agreement. They could demand to send their own moderators to the forums to handle this stuff - obviously they would have to recruit or hire some, or press some interns into the job.

The question is are they concerned that it would put a dent in their sales. Some bigots might buy the game to "see what all the fuss is about" and hey, now we have your money.

Or all the bigotry could be fueling sales for people in marginalized communities - who want to experience this "woke" game for themselves - or just get really happy when something upsets racists and homophobes.

Personally I would send in the mods and clean house, but it's not my decision.

Bigots buying the game to see what the fuss is about means Larian gets more in sales to make even more inclusive games. 10D Chess.

Fair enough; I also get upset when folks express their opinions in rude and combative ways. So I understand that, certainly.

*

I guess my big worry is that I don't want any of the culture war stuff coming here. Sometimes I feel like it's already infiltrated every other aspect of life. I enjoy this community and the people here, and I've already stopped bothering with so many other platforms, like social media places, and heck, I even try to avoid the news these days.

I prefer BG3 to WW3.

Oh come on now, we love disagreeable people TUCO. :P Disagreeable is fine by me, it's hate speech I draw the line at.

If it's the same people though why are they not perma-banned? Also who is getting banned and for what? If someone starts dropping bigoted comments what is the process and do they keep records of how that is handled?

Going back it seems like this is not the first time people have said the Steam Mods seem to be banning people who disagree with the bigotry while doing nothing about those original hateful posts. It's a common complaint.

Maybe they should rename the forums over there SteamFront.org.

I have to admit; I'm slightly salty at Valve (not Larian) moderating on steam forums:
Someone has made a thread bashing the LGBTQ+ community (again) and I got incredibly frustrated and fired back. I should not have, but these threads seem to crop up once an hour.

Result?
I was insta-banned for 24 hours for a first offense. No prior warnings. No prior bans.
The person who made the thread, who I had reported 15+ posts from him alone insulting, belittling, and attacking the LGBTQ+ community? Untouched more than 12 hours later.

Other people defending the LGBTQ+ community in said thread were ALSO banned, while at least 5 people attacking transgender and gay people are, still, untouched.
It really feels like Valve mods pick & choose what reports they action, and unfairly protect those slamming the LGBTQ+ community.

I understand Larian can do nothing, the mods here can't do anything, and any Larian mods for the steam forums are pretty much fighting an uphill battle. But I had to say something because I am incredibly angry at Valve and venting here is on-topic.

As I mentioned, steam / valves's values are aligned more with pleasing the Russian and Chinese markets, they don't really care much for anything LGBT and ban people for such comments even in the communities of LBGT games.

Yeah. Every time I look into Steam forums for ANY games, it's LGBTQ+ bashing and anyone firing back is banned.

I think I might stop buying games on Steam.

Good lord, the dramatic exaggeration lol. If you think Steam is THAT bad, then you've already shown you don't really use it that much anyways. You're just used to safe spots on the internet where any nastiness is immediately shut down. Steam is not that. That doesn't mean there's some anti-LGBTQ+ conspiracy going on. If you actually did look, you'd see trolls and bigots regularly getting banned. Steam is just slow, but I've reported dozens of bigoted comments and gotten moderation comments that said "thanks for your report, action has been taken" and sure enough, comments are removed, people are banned, etc.

Okay folks, it's fair enough to post here to give our user impressions of the Steam forums, but this isn't the right place for a detailed critique of Steam's moderation policies.

Remember, whenever we complain about Steam here, we're also inviting debate and prompting people to respond by defending Steam again. There's a risk we'll just end up going round in circles, and probably not having much fun as we do.

I hate it when you're right.

So this is all I wrote in one of the anti LGBT threads and I got a warning, surprisingly not another ban:

You're trying to fight the trolls by playing their game. You need to play by Steams rules if you want to see these threads/comments go down.

Report the post. Say things like "Constant anti-lgbt sentiment from this poster, creating an environment that is not positive." "This thread is just non-productive arguments, with people attacking each other" (they love that shit). Engaging with the trolls/bigots on steam will NEVER work. it's not reddit, it's not a forum with constant moderation. It's a discussion marketplace with hundreds of thousands of people talking all at once. It's impossible for Valve to moderate that strictly constantly. Yes, Larian could hire someone to actively moderate the forum full time, and it might be a good idea, but they haven't shown any interest in doing so, and frankly, with how many players there are, it would still be an impossible situation.

Once the game is out for another month or so, things will die down dramatically.

I'm thankful for this thread for teaching me never to go to the Steam forums.

Haven't looked, definitely will not.

Any game that offers LGBT options get this, technically yes we can blame the devs for not putting in an OPTION at the start of the game to simply disable all romance choices or to even just set your preference between straight / bi / gay.

If the game had such an option then there wouldn't be hundreds of posts daily on steam complaining about the game containing LGBT content.

And the great smart move that Larian made to put the bear sex scene in the game? Bravo, now the right wing are saying 'see, LGBT = Beastiality as well'.

So maybe I shouldn't be mad at the 'trolls', but rather at Larian for just implementing LGBT and Beastiality into the game without any options for players to turn them off, because this now leads to me and other LGBT taking the brunt of the blame for 'Larian going woke' and furthering anti LGBT sentimentality.

I've been thinking about this for a minute now because I really feel you but I have no idea how much I can say here.

So I guess I can just say, it sucks. A lot. But we both already know that.

Let's keep the heat down on these forums here at least. And that means not starting yet another digression about bear sex, and whether or how Larian should have included that or LGBT content in the game is very much not on topic here.

If anyone really wants to discuss this subject, and I'll be honest, I really don't think these forums are the right place for it, then they can give it a try with the usual caveat that the thread should be started calmly, constructively and any debate should remain civil and respectful and avoid as far as possible any unnecessary politics. But also bear in mind that by posting on these global, diverse forums you are basically inviting challenge and debate. They don't work as a place to vent. If you wish to complain to Larian without being argued with, you can contact their support team.

Well then surely it would be on topic to say in that case I agree with the thread title?

Larian should take responsibility for the Steam forum for BG3 and at the least make a statement denouncing the platform being used for any kind of hate speech.