To be fair, when has that ever been useful? 
Those threads typically boils down to like 70% of the posts being from the same 5-15 individuals disagreeing with each other in ever slightly different ways in a never-ending cycle.
True. I can’t argue that — there are so many PRO-denuvo trolls it’s nauseating. No side ever wins, because the companies never do shit about it.
Actually, yes. I would not waste my time in those threads if I had zero success in clarifying things. There are people who genuinely believe Denuvo is always-on, scared away from purchasing a product they would like to play because the difference between 2 week reactivation and always-on is profound (and completely wrong).
I even would not buy a game if it were always-on, and this is coming from a huge Denuvo ■■■■■ who “puts DRM in his mods” 
.
On the topic of Steam moderation being complete garbage, one time I got banned by Steam moderators on the Daemon x Machina Steam fourms for a week simply for mentioning that anticheat gets in the way of singleplayer modding (or stuff like unofficial 21:9 fixes), and that most anticheat that isn’t intrusive could easily be bypassed using a virtual machine.
Honestly, the Steam Discussion Boards are beyond redemption, and somehow is just as toxic as ResetEra, /v/, and GameFAQs.
Certain people pestering me for help with my fixes on their pirated copies also doesn’t help in the slightest.
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Some developers seemingly have a very unique way of seeing modifications especially third party utilities though without knowing which moderator decided on the ban it could have been the publisher or the Steam volunteer ones and it gets a bit murky because anti-cheat and DRM overall gets very sensitive.
Other times the devs and volunteer mods seem to be nowhere at all and you get all kinds of weird and strange discussion topics and the screenshot gallery contains weird artwork or even explicit adult content from just about anywhere. 
(Guessing a different App ID is used to upload unrelated media like that, guessing also that there’s some potential actions applied to users who normally abuse that ha ha.)
EDIT: Modding for Monster Hunter World although this was also used to unlock events and non-available rewards but Capcom has continued to try and reign it in with varying success.
(Trainers and Cheat-Engine continues to function so it can’t be too effective other than limiting normal modding to textures only but even that had some workarounds last I read up on it no matter how many conditions they put in the exe / code.)
I’m probably a close second behind Kaldaien for bans on hubs
Got one site wide ban appealed last year so I am walking on eggshells… I can’t help but respond to everything so I really gotta train myself to just stop engaging with people 
I usually reserve my disdain for non-valve moderators cause they are the ones issuing the bans but of course add on the Valve moderators who will never understand the entire contest of each accounts history. End of the day the Discussion forums are just dumdum with my dumdum on the moderating across the board.
Did you ever hear how or why the ban was lifted? I’m glad in a way tbh, without it you would have never moved on to these forums, which are far far superior to keep track of everything and follow along.
No, I have absolutely no idea why the ban disappeared. I am refraining from any kind of activity on Steam aside from reviewing games / editing my guides. Hopefully I can just point people here and stay out of the forums.
Consumers can only use Steam forums without issue only if the user behavior is doubleplusgood 
I’ve been banned over and over again. Last 2 major community bans were for a year each. One time I was banned for saying a game sucked, another time I was banned for what they said was necroing but it was on the first forum page I didn’t even check the date.
I have no idea why I have been banned so harshly for opinions. I’ve done nothing else I don’t even swear on that forum. Steams trash, and I hate valve their games are overated as hell too. Stupid boring checkpoint shooter made their company.
People can post trash like this, but say a game sucks and some salty developer will ban you for a year.
More toxic threads full of double standards.
Here we have a debate on whats worse, nazism or communism (piss or poop). This is ok tho, but say a game sucks and you get a year?
I hate that place, but the sells and distribution are good I cant go to GOG I don’t even like any of the games on GOG. They’ve basically secured people for abuse cause of their fav franchises these people are toxic as… Sorry not tryin to swear on a new website or forum but I can’t find anywhere to talk trash about these scumbags like that prick tito. Tryin to look cool all the time while ignoring nazi’s but encouraging normal gamers to be purged for simple opinions. The mod killainstinct is also a toxic pos, so are several others. They all post filth as well I saw killainstinct post a nazi swastica on another mods profile I swear to god. I reported it too why it was taken down.
This place is suspect as hell and I have no idea what these mod/admins stand for but they are corrupt to the core and go after people for nonsense while encouraging filth.
Steam’s situation is basically a casualty of its own success and Valve’s decisions over the years.
Initially all the way prior to 2012 Steam only hosted a separate offsite forum (good ol’ SPUF… I still miss it to this day) that required a separate account to be created and wasn’t as widely used worldwide as the current community is.
In those days you had the global volunteer moderators that patrolled the place as well as occasionally Valve’s staff. While individual game forums existed, few of them saw much daily traffic and I don’t even think game developers/publishers got the ability to moderate those (though I could be wrong).
Then in 2012 Valve made a huge change by introducing the new Steam Discussions board and game hubs that were fully integrated and accessible through the Steam client, opening them up for easy user engagement for all users.
Along with that change they also moved over all volunteer moderators from good ol’ SPUF to the new discussion boards as well, retaining their moderation responsibilities.
One of the intentions of the new discussion boards were also to allow developers and publishers to self-moderate their individual game forums and such and as a result Steam’s support staff did not have a huge presence in those places although you could still spot the volunteer moderator or Valve employee come by occasionally.
Then the community continued to grow in popularity over the years while Valve had their attentions elsewhere (their lacking support at the time in particular), and Valve just kept opening the flood gates more and more to allow an ever increasing number of games unto the platform.
On top of this the old user forums SPUF was still alive and kicking, and still needed moderation up until they finally shut the place down permanently on June 5, 2017.
While doing this they never bothered to expand their assortment of volunteer moderators, and it have basically remained the same number (and almost certainly individuals) throughout the years while the number of items that needed moderation multiplied each year.
Finally in 2018 they decided to actually start leveraging their existing content moderators (which moderated screenshots and artwork etc) to moderate third-party game discussion boards as well.
Nowadays it’s basically a stagnated assortment of staff that does not give a care and interconnected components that brings with them both intended and unintended consequences.
You basically have these levels of moderation nowadays in any given game-specific forum:
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Game developers/publishers (if they so desire to moderate their hub, which many don’t).
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Steam’s global content moderators (random outsourced support personnel located all over the world which basically only facilitates a service to Valve).
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Valve’s volunteer moderators of old – some such as Matt and KillahInstinct and more have held that position for over a decade.
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Valve’s own employees and support team (these are really rare to spot in the wild).
Along with these you have over a thousand different interpretations of the Steam Community Rules and Guidelines in play, along with the fact that random game developers can perma-ban a user from their forum without giving a thought to the rules and guidelines. On top of it, now imagine the tens of thousands or more different reports that might be created by users for any random personal reason of that individual as well.
Going back to the interconnected components, you now also have a system where actions taken by a random individual in power in one game-specific forum can have an additional reaction based on an action taken in another game-specific forum by another random individual in power. Under which lies an equally random assortment or reports for any specific reason.
What this means in reality is that you create a place where situations can occur such as what happened to Kaldaien, where enough fraudulent user reports given in one forum (an Assassin’s Creed board) resulted in a perma-ban there (because Special K was supposedly “malware”), and that ban itself served as a permanent mark on record that automatically upgraded all other temp bans given elsewhere (for whatever reason) into a harsher punishment.
This whole system might have worked if there were actually a proper underlying safety net was available. This is supposed to exist in the form of the proper Steam Support, but as reality has shown us they are rarely helpful and often reinforce given bans after a cursory inspection – something that hits high-profile users more than most.
Further on, to make matters worse a community ban also prevents any and all forms of interaction on the community site – even in forums and Steam Groups that the user might be connected in an official capacity to, such as for Kaldaien and the Special K Steam Group as well as the official Steam Discussion boards for the app. Hell, it even prevents sharing screenshots and syncing save files to Steam Cloud for some unknown reason!
And this is all without going into other external matters that might play role, such as whether whatever outsourcing company Valve makes use of for their content moderation has some form of commision-based salary for their workers – basically pays a random underpaid support member more for the number of “resolved tickets” or “resolved reports” the dude generates per month. Such an approach combined with the nature of the Steam Community creates a “nobody gives a ■■■■” situation where doing the least work necessary is prioritized and the “easy” reports/tickets are handled the fastest with little thoughts given to the context or consequences of their actions.
TL;DR: Basically, it’s just a ■■■■■■■ downward spiraling train wreck that has glaring holes throughout and are missing proper checks and balances as well as supporting tools that might be more appropriate to use in some cases (e.g. merely ban participation in the discussion boards for some individuals, and not all participation in the community).
■■■■■■■ hell, I went off on an untargeted rant combined with a history lesson… Good thing this is in a thread appropriate for the subject at least…
Pfft, I can never find this part of the server config when looking for it… why it’s under logs I have no idea.
https://discourse.differentk.fyi/admin/logs/watched_words/action/censor
Gotta fix a few settings to deal with the colorful language in that last post I don’t particularly care to enforce any language rules on the site, but believe a lot of people would prefer not to read some of those.
As a joke, gerbil is a word that requires moderator authorization before a post shows up I want to see how many years it takes for that word to be written in the forums.
I’m currently on a year, my last one was 6 months…
Got clocked by the biased-Sony moderators but of well… gg no re
Steam as a service for games is good but has literally the most abusive moderation system and its down to luck on who you come across in terms of moderation. I prefer developers who are the mods cause sometimes they have common sense.
6 months? Where did that come from?
My experience with that nonsense is that it followed a 1,3 pattern…
1 day, 3 days, 1 week, 3 weeks, 1 month, 3 months, 1 year.
I assume the next is 3 years, then 10?
Actually no you are right sorry my mistake, you jogged my memory it was 3 months. This happened first half of last year thereabouts.
I’ll respond back in 1.5 years to tell you if its 3 years HAHAHA fml
I was banned for a year twice for opinions.
Matt and killainstinct have been there for a decade? Wow that pisses me off those guys are blatant trolls.
What I’d like explained is why they ignore nazi and commie dictator threads, but say a game sucks and you’re enemy number 1. Why do they even ask for reviews? The place is their own personal playground to abuse who they want and ignore who they like and who kisses their behind.
I’m fairly certain the people banning you for expressing your opinions are the game’s staff. There are way too many parties with their hands in this pot, and each party who can issue a ban seems to count the same toward system-wide punishments.
The whole system-wide thing should be eliminated, it’s not possible to make that work when 4 different groups of people are interpreting guidelines and issuing bans.
Its been the bane of my existence on steam, I don’t hack, or cheat, or stalk players and look to harass people. I said that slipstream 5000 whatever the F that cheap boring racer I got for free was, sucked. I said it sucked and fzero was better on snes. That got me a year long ban, I also got a year long ban recently and they didn’t even tell me why I was banned. I told a user him using a stalin profile was sad, and they banned me. He said he thought communism was funny and they did nothing about his stalin profile which I reported. A game sucks gets you a year, praising the most evil man in history gets you nothing.
I’m wondering what these peoples ideals are and what they defend. I swear to god I saw killainstinct post a text swastica once.
They are more than just poor moderators, they seem to back the most evil minded filth imaginable.
The fact that I got banned for a 50cent-dollar game I got for free shows how petty these moron devs and admins are.
I was banned close to a year before this ban. And about 8 months into the ban, after many support tickets, they suddenly dropped the ban with no response as to why or an apology. Just like one of the other users who posted on this thread. Very suspect, if they drop a ban they should give you an explanation as to why they dropped it and apologize they are a very unprofessional company.
I feel bad you got banned for the things you did, but all I did was say a game sucked. I’m not a dev, or modding, or anything. All I did was post an opinion and buy their games. I hate this company but where else is Final fantasy on pc and lots of other console games I love?
yep the only Valve mods I come across are via Manual tickets or an appeal I made for a full perm ban after my 3 month one. It actually never reached a year.
So for me it went 3 month > perm [which I luckily got appealed] and then as of yesterday > 1 year
It really is a ■■■■■■ system, exacerbated by the auto community bans after non-valve mods do their hub bans for ‘x’ reasons [justified and unjustified… I guess that depends on bias and mood]
Nobody should post on steam, but the trolls who are allowed to promote fascism and other filth like sexism and racism are allowed on steam.
And the card system, profile system, the new steam points for buying games. Its all pointless if you are constantly attacked by moderation for nothing. More people need to speak out about this, way to many are excusing this and its messed up beyond belief. This is not just an angry few admins abusing their power its far worse.
Just look at the moderator pages, is it any surprise most of them have bad boy smart @$$ cartoon characters like bart and bender? They enforce rules, and tell us what to do, but at the same time they love obnoxious insults and sarcasm. I saw matt once make fun of a users mom. Really…
There’s not much anyone can do about it, except talk about it, spread the word and make it known. Killainstinct is a horribly toxic individual and imo the most toxic one. And they allow him to ban people? One guy even said he was banned till 2060 or something for a dissconect from dota.
The only thing anyone can do is make it well known and talk about it in different places. Steam moderators/admins need to be replaced by unbiased professionals.
Why is this mindless toxic garbage ok, talking about weak women and how you like tomb raider cause its a female murder sim? But ban us for a year for garbage?
None of these people make any sense and more people need to be pissed off.