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.