Valve will start moderating comments on Steam

​​​​​​Starting on September 25, Valve will "review" community comments across Stream's game hubs. Reported discussion threads and individual posts will fall on the desk of the platform's content moderation team, who will remove anything that violates Steam's community guidelines. Developers that already take a DIY approach to moderation can opt-out of the new system.

Valve assures devs that it won't be actively spying on community discussions or posting in threads, instead it says "we'll only be communicating with players if it's necessary when issuing a warning or ban for reported content."

As noted in its blog post, Valve has long been reviewing flagged community content like screenshots, artwork, guides, user profiles, community groups, and user reviews -- but it's been "hesitant" to wade into individual discussions, so as not to meddle with the distinct style of each game hub. It seems feedback from developers urging its involvement convinced Valve to change its mind. You can peep Steam's guidelines for user-generated content here.

Meanwhile, most of the attention of late has been focused on Valve's new content policy that permits "everything onto the Steam Store, except for things that we decide are illegal, or straight up trolling." The platform also added its first uncensored porn game earlier this month after temporarily blocking such titles as it worked on introducing new filters for sexual and violent content.