Valve Will Soon Moderate Steam Forums

Steam forums will soon be moderated by Valve with user-submitted content that doesn't adhere to community guidelines being removed from the discussions.

Valve shared the announcement about the forum moderation in a Steam community post (via PC Gamer) where it explained how the process will differ now that it's taking a more hands-on approach. While developers currently have a responsibility when it comes t keeping their forums and other areas of their game pages clean, Valve will start looking at Steam users' reports regarding questionable content and will take action if needed beginning on Sept. 25.

"Starting on Tuesday, when a discussion thread or post in your community is reported by a player, it will be added to a queue for our moderation team to review," Valve's announcement said. "We'll look at these reported posts (along with all other reported content we are already reviewing) and remove anything that violates our Community Guidelines."

Valve says that it won't be "actively perusing" community discussions or threads and will only step in if it has to warn or ban people for their reported content.

Previously preferring to take a hands-off approach to the moderation of game discussions so that developers could set the tones for their pages and facilitate discussions, Valve says that it's heard from these game creators that taking on a more active route would be the preferred response from the Steam owners.

"But over time, we've been hearing from more and more game developers that would actually prefer for us to take a more active role in discussion boards, at least to the extent of handling posts that are reported by other players," Valve said while explaining why the forum moderation is happening now as opposed to another time.

Valve isn't forcing all developers to adopt the moderation system though. For those game creators who already have a team of moderators in place or look through the discussions themselves to catch inappropriate content, there's an option to opt out of the moderation update.

"If you do already have your own moderation staff, or want complete control over the reported content in your hub, you can opt out of this service by visiting the Steamworks settings for your game (Edit Steamworks Settings > Community Tab > General)," the Valve announcement concluded.

Valve's new plans for Steam moderation will go into effect next week on Sept. 25.