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posted by chromas on Friday September 07 2018, @05:30PM   Printer-friendly
from the [Deleted] dept.

What makes a "troll game"? Valve tries for a Steam-wide definition

Some of Valve's definitions of trolling seem relatively clear-cut. Most everyone would agree that Steam should remove developers that are "trying to scam folks out of their Steam inventory items" or those "looking for a way to generate a small amount of money off Steam through a series of schemes that revolve around how we let developers use Steam keys," for instance.

There's a little more subjectivity in determining if a Steam title is what Valve calls "a game shaped object." The company defines this category as "a crudely made piece of software that technically and just barely passes our bar as a functioning video game but isn't what 99.9% of folks would say is 'good.'" There may be some edge cases where a game some people consider "broken" is one that others consider brilliantly deconstructed "art." For the most part, though, a game that only 1 in 1,000 people would consider playable sets a good rule-of-thumb threshold for what deserves removal from Steam.

Where the "troll game" determination begins to get squishy is in games and developers that Valve says are "just trying to incite and sow discord." This is similar to the justification Valve used in June to remove Active Shooter, an unreleased game that planned to let players take on the role of a school shooter or the SWAT team trying to stop him. [...] The Active Shooter case gets into the one thing that Valve says unites all of these different troll developers: their malign motives. A troll developer is one that isn't "actually interested in good faith efforts to make and sell games to you or anyone," the company writes. While good-faith developer efforts can obviously lead to "crude or lower quality games" on Steam, Valve says that "it really does seem like bad games are made by bad people." And it's those bad games from bad people that Valve doesn't want on Steam.

Pool's closed, no AIDS Simulator for you.

Also at Motherboard.

Previously: "Active Shooter" Game on Steam Sparks Uproar
Valve Still Lives in the Waking Nightmare of Web 2.0


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  • (Score: 2) by slinches on Friday September 07 2018, @10:41PM (3 children)

    by slinches (5049) on Friday September 07 2018, @10:41PM (#731958)

    Not necessarily. Jigs aren't bait. Although, you may still be a Master Baiter if you've practiced the art of baiting your jigs to the point of mastery.

    Starting Score:    1  point
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    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday September 07 2018, @10:49PM (2 children)

    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Friday September 07 2018, @10:49PM (#731962) Homepage Journal

    Do the little pink/chartreuse/etc crappie cookies you put on the hook tip when jigging count?

    --
    My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: 0, Flamebait) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday September 08 2018, @12:19AM (1 child)

      by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Saturday September 08 2018, @12:19AM (#731983) Homepage

      We need Soylent Software game studio (or at least an APK repo), which publishes anything that ain't gonna get people in jail and/or on a registry. I'd volunteer for that bitch.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 08 2018, @10:43AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 08 2018, @10:43AM (#732135)

        Which one you volunteer for: the jail or the registry?