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Valve introduced optional chat filtering on October 6. This new global chat filter for Steam is similar to the filtering used in Valve titles such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Dota 2. It is also used in Steamworks supported title such as Destiny 2. These filters will make it possible to have a more consistent chat experience whether you are inside a game or not.
Valve says that by default there are strong profanity and slurs from people you do not know are now censored by default in Steam chat and supporting games. Valve continues on to say that users can set their preferences to turn this feature off, or to control whether you want the default filters to also apply to chat messages from your Steam friends. You can even add or remove chat filters from a personal filter option.
Here is just a brief bit from a longer FAQ that Valve offers as to the why and how of chat filtering.
Why filter chat on Steam?
Steam’s community of players engage with one another in games and online in all sorts of meaningful ways, whether in multiplayer matches, chat with Friends, group chats, or broadcasts. Most of the time, players' interactions are positive, friendships are formed, and everyone benefits from sharing our love of gaming with one another.
But some of the time, people have negative experiences on Steam due to their encounters with others whose tolerance for various forms of language differ from their own and in the worst case, bad actors. A playful match can quickly turn to a heated competition full of emotion and expression, some of which crosses a line. But where is that line? We've found the answer is different for everyone, and it even depends on who the difficult language is coming from.
How can we help players protect themselves from encountering online behavior which makes them feel uncomfortable, or worse? Steam’s parental controls can help players remain safe with adult supervision. But those of us who go online without these features in place join a world that is just like the real one, full of exposure that can result in experiences both positive and negative.
For those of you who engage with Steam online, we have invested in systems for store and community content moderation, which are enabled by default. Content available on our store is reviewed for accuracy in reporting titles of various ratings. Profane and hateful language are obscured in forums, user reviews, and user comments. Potentially inappropriate imagery posted to the Steam Community is blurred preemptively by default, when detected by image recognition or reported by users. Reports of abusive users are moderated and resolved, as appropriate.
While we continue to develop longer-term solutions in this space, Steam users are in search of ways to specify their own tolerance in the face of online communication which crosses their personal line. So we have built a simple system to filter strong profanity and slurs in chat.
What's on your filtered lists, and how did you decide?
We have two lists. The first consists of commonly used strong profanity, which players requested we separate in early development of these features. The second consists of commonly used slurs against various racial, religious, ethnic, and other identifying groups.
We built our English lists from a variety of sources, then searched for instances of them across a large sample of in-game chat. Based on this sample, we've found that by filtering variants of the top 5 most commonly used strongly profane or hateful words, we can eliminate about 75% of profanity and slurs used in chat. Over 56% of the instances of profanity or slurs found in our sample were a variant of f***. Another 10% of them were variants of s***. Another 10% were instances of potty-mouth schoolyard language we've chosen not to filter as strong profanity or slurs. The remaining 24% of the instances were strong profanity and slurs we found to be used commonly enough that we've also added them to our lists.
We will continue to refine these lists based on the words you choose to allow or block on Steam.
Steam’s community of players engage with one another in games and online in all sorts of meaningful ways, whether in multiplayer matches, chat with Friends, group chats, or broadcasts. Most of the time, players' interactions are positive, friendships are formed, and everyone benefits from sharing our love of gaming with one another.
But some of the time, people have negative experiences on Steam due to their encounters with others whose tolerance for various forms of language differ from their own and in the worst case, bad actors. A playful match can quickly turn to a heated competition full of emotion and expression, some of which crosses a line. But where is that line? We've found the answer is different for everyone, and it even depends on who the difficult language is coming from.
How can we help players protect themselves from encountering online behavior which makes them feel uncomfortable, or worse? Steam’s parental controls can help players remain safe with adult supervision. But those of us who go online without these features in place join a world that is just like the real one, full of exposure that can result in experiences both positive and negative.
For those of you who engage with Steam online, we have invested in systems for store and community content moderation, which are enabled by default. Content available on our store is reviewed for accuracy in reporting titles of various ratings. Profane and hateful language are obscured in forums, user reviews, and user comments. Potentially inappropriate imagery posted to the Steam Community is blurred preemptively by default, when detected by image recognition or reported by users. Reports of abusive users are moderated and resolved, as appropriate.
While we continue to develop longer-term solutions in this space, Steam users are in search of ways to specify their own tolerance in the face of online communication which crosses their personal line. So we have built a simple system to filter strong profanity and slurs in chat.
What's on your filtered lists, and how did you decide?
We have two lists. The first consists of commonly used strong profanity, which players requested we separate in early development of these features. The second consists of commonly used slurs against various racial, religious, ethnic, and other identifying groups.
We built our English lists from a variety of sources, then searched for instances of them across a large sample of in-game chat. Based on this sample, we've found that by filtering variants of the top 5 most commonly used strongly profane or hateful words, we can eliminate about 75% of profanity and slurs used in chat. Over 56% of the instances of profanity or slurs found in our sample were a variant of f***. Another 10% of them were variants of s***. Another 10% were instances of potty-mouth schoolyard language we've chosen not to filter as strong profanity or slurs. The remaining 24% of the instances were strong profanity and slurs we found to be used commonly enough that we've also added them to our lists.
We will continue to refine these lists based on the words you choose to allow or block on Steam.
