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

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.

That's a one-way ticket to getting review bombed by a bunch of lifeless trolls.