Take the banhammer away from devs :: Suggestions / Ideas

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Scamdiver (Banned) 28 Aug @ 2:28pm

Take the banhammer away from devs

Steam is a marketplace where two parties with conflicting interests do the trading indirectly:
- players want more content for a lower price
- developers want more money for less work

Giving the "banhammer" to one side allows them to silence the concerns of the other and enforce certain opinion of the game.

Possible suggestions:
- moderation handled by Valve only
- clear, non-overridable rules that fairly consider the interests of both sides
- a prominent warning in the game's hub if a developer opts out of general rules or Valve moderation

And before you say anything: no, I'm not claiming to be an angel. But I’ve seen some highly questionable post deletions and bans. If a ban is deserved, I usually don’t have a problem with it.

Last edited by Scamdiver; 28 Aug @ 4:54pm

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Showing 1-15 of 163 comments

xBCxRangers 28 Aug @ 2:37pm

Absolutely AGREED.

Start_Running 28 Aug @ 2:46pm

Worried about the banhammer. DOn't. All you have to do is behave like a decent human being and observe the rules of common courtesy and polite discourse.

In all my years around here I've never been banned by a dev. EVen those I've had arguments with.

Steam isn't a democracy m8. The person who pays the bills makes the forum rules and decides.

Scamdiver (Banned) 28 Aug @ 2:48pm

Originally posted by Start_Running:
Worried about the banhammer. DOn't. All you have to do is behave like a decent human being and observe the rules of common courtesy and polite discourse.

In all my years around here I've never been banned by a dev. EVen those I've had arguments with.

Steam isn't a democracy m8. The person who pays the bills makes the forum rules and decides.

Players pay 100%, devs give 30% to Steam, unless there is some unofficial price list. The rest is subjective opinion.

Last edited by Scamdiver; 28 Aug @ 2:49pm

Wolf Knight 28 Aug @ 2:49pm

Originally posted by Scamdiver:
Originally posted by Start_Running:
Worried about the banhammer. DOn't. All you have to do is behave like a decent human being and observe the rules of common courtesy and polite discourse.

In all my years around here I've never been banned by a dev. EVen those I've had arguments with.

Steam isn't a democracy m8. The person who pays the bills makes the forum rules and decides.
Players pay 100%, devs give 30% to Steam. The rest is irrelevant.

your paying for a license to play a game. thats is all you are paying for. forum access is not part of the purchase.

Scamdiver (Banned) 28 Aug @ 2:50pm

Originally posted by Wolf Knight:
Originally posted by Scamdiver:
Players pay 100%, devs give 30% to Steam. The rest is irrelevant.
your paying for a license to play a game. thats is all you are paying for. forum access is not part of the purchase.

Can you send a link to the price list for the forum for devs?

Last edited by Scamdiver; 28 Aug @ 2:50pm

Wolf Knight 28 Aug @ 2:52pm

Originally posted by Scamdiver:
Originally posted by Wolf Knight:
your paying for a license to play a game. thats is all you are paying for. forum access is not part of the purchase.
Can you send a link to the price list for the forum for devs?

make a game, put it on steam, pay steams fee for the game, and you get your own forum to do with as you please. dont want anyone posting, you dont have to set up a forum for the game.

Shreddy 28 Aug @ 2:53pm

I think devs should be able to ban from their own forum but those bans absolutely should not contribute to community bans, a 3rd party dev should have no say whatsoever over the functionality of my steam profile.

Shreddy 28 Aug @ 2:55pm

Originally posted by Start_Running:
Worried about the banhammer. DOn't. All you have to do is behave like a decent human being and observe the rules of common courtesy and polite discourse.

In all my years around here I've never been banned by a dev. EVen those I've had arguments with.

Steam isn't a democracy m8. The person who pays the bills makes the forum rules and decides.

This response has been proven completely incorrect thousands of times now, and people have demonstrated beyond any doubt that devs can ban for any reason they like. Acting like decent human being and following rules will only work on the steam discussion forums where there are rules and standards but it doesn’t help at all on game forums.

Truth 28 Aug @ 2:57pm

Originally posted by Scamdiver:
Originally posted by Start_Running:
Worried about the banhammer. DOn't. All you have to do is behave like a decent human being and observe the rules of common courtesy and polite discourse.

In all my years around here I've never been banned by a dev. EVen those I've had arguments with.

Steam isn't a democracy m8. The person who pays the bills makes the forum rules and decides.
Players pay 100%, devs give 30% to Steam, unless there is some unofficial price list. The rest is subjective opinion.

Dev's provide 100% of the products that are being sold, so without the dev's there is nothing for the players to spend on.

Originally posted by Shreddy:
I think devs should be able to ban from their own forum but those bans absolutely should not contribute to community bans, a 3rd party dev should have no say whatsoever over the functionality of my steam profile.

In order to get a community ban your having to rack up multiple bans from multiple (most likely) devs in a short period of time. If that is happening consistently then it doesn't seem to be an issue with the devs.

Truth 28 Aug @ 2:58pm

Originally posted by Shreddy:
Originally posted by Start_Running:
Worried about the banhammer. DOn't. All you have to do is behave like a decent human being and observe the rules of common courtesy and polite discourse.

In all my years around here I've never been banned by a dev. EVen those I've had arguments with.

Steam isn't a democracy m8. The person who pays the bills makes the forum rules and decides.
This response has been proven completely incorrect thousands of times now, and people have demonstrated beyond any doubt that devs can ban for any reason they like. Acting like decent human being and following rules will only work on the steam discussion forums where there are rules and standards but it doesn’t help at all on game forums.

I mean me, every friend I have, etc all seem to prove its correct. Unfortunately people don't like to admit that they are the problem when they get banned, and of course they will claim the bans are unfair.

Its incredibly rare for someone to post and ADMIT the ban was their fault.

#10

Scamdiver (Banned) 28 Aug @ 3:04pm

Originally posted by Shreddy:
I think devs should be able to ban from their own forum but those bans absolutely should not contribute to community bans, a 3rd party dev should have no say whatsoever over the functionality of my steam profile.

I'm concerned that developers might use this to create more promotional content from user discussions, especially considering how irrelevant most reviews are right now.

I've seen cases where regular, polite users who criticized the game were insulted and gaslighted, while the local moderation team did nothing about it. (I'm not talking about myself here — I'm usually too direct and not very polite.)

I've also seen cases where people simply asked how the game was, and despite real issues, the local community kept advertising it.

#11

Mad Scientist 28 Aug @ 3:28pm

Originally posted by Scamdiver:
Steam is a marketplace where two parties with conflicting interests do the trading indirectly:
- players want more content for a lower price
- developers want more money for less work

Giving the "banhammer" to one side allows them to silence the concerns of the other and enforce certain opinion of the game.

Possible suggestions (one of the following):
- moderation handled by Valve only
- clear, non-overridable rules that fairly consider the interests of both sides
- a prominent warning in the game's hub if a developer opts out of general rules or Valve moderation

And before you say anything: no, I'm not claiming to be an angel. But I’ve seen some highly questionable post deletions and bans. If a ban is deserved, I usually don’t have a problem with it.

If someone is going into multiple hubs and making identical insinuations against multiple Devs, it's a safe bet that the Devs or their hub mods will be passing out warnings or bans. That can trigger an automated and temporary or permanent Community Ban if someone is removed from multiple hubs in a short period of time.

Last edited by Mad Scientist; 28 Aug @ 3:31pm

#12

William Shakesman 28 Aug @ 3:32pm

This is a difficult thing to square. Devs want to be kings of their boards, and being the king means no rules. If Valve starts making rules, that annoys the devs who may want to make their own boards or at least grumble about it, and EVENTUALLY there will be someone the dev doesn't want to have on their board that Valve says must be there. Now corporations don't have that right in America but it's typically governments that enforce that. When there is some edge case that isn't another developer throwing another tantrum, that's when attempting to make a rule structure for this is going to suck.

#13

Scamdiver (Banned) 28 Aug @ 3:33pm

Originally posted by Mad Scientist:
If someone is going into multiple hubs and making identical insinuations against multiple Devs, it's a safe bet that the Devs or their hub mods will be passing out warnings or bans. That can trigger an automated and permanent Community Ban if someone is removed from multiple hubs in a short period of time.

Notifying other users about suspicious reviews isn't against the current Steam guidelines, and there are very strong reasons to believe they are fake, but this isn't the only case when users were banned and their posts deleted, so let's not derail another thread into this pls

Last edited by Scamdiver; 28 Aug @ 3:34pm

#14

xBCxRangers 28 Aug @ 3:34pm

Originally posted by Mad Scientist:
Originally posted by Scamdiver:
Steam is a marketplace where two parties with conflicting interests do the trading indirectly:
- players want more content for a lower price
- developers want more money for less work

Giving the "banhammer" to one side allows them to silence the concerns of the other and enforce certain opinion of the game.

Possible suggestions (one of the following):
- moderation handled by Valve only
- clear, non-overridable rules that fairly consider the interests of both sides
- a prominent warning in the game's hub if a developer opts out of general rules or Valve moderation

And before you say anything: no, I'm not claiming to be an angel. But I’ve seen some highly questionable post deletions and bans. If a ban is deserved, I usually don’t have a problem with it.

If someone is going into multiple hubs and making identical insinuations against multiple Devs, it's a safe bet that the Devs or their hub mods will be passing out warnings or bans. That can trigger an automated and temporary or permanent Community Ban if someone is removed from multiple hubs in a short period of time.

I got a ban from a hub, whilst saying nothing on the Hub. I said it here. And for what i said here, had their Dev ban me for not what i said there, but here.

Developers are out of control dude.

And you know i get on Valve moderation all the time, but they even sided with me on that one.

It's just they said they couldn't do anything.

Valve needs to take matters in hand at the game hubs.

#15

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All Discussions > Steam Forums > Suggestions / Ideas > Topic Details

Date Posted: 28 Aug @ 2:28pm

Posts: 163

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