As of today, Steam users who are sick of dealing with slurs and profanity can opt into an experimental new chat filter feature to begin blocking it out in the Steam client, on the Steam website, in the Steam mobile app and in supporting games.
Called “Steam Text and Chat Filtering,” this filter is now in beta and accessible through Steam Labs. It lets you enable pre-built chat filters to block out commonly used hate speech and profanity, as well as make lists of specific words you’d like to filter out or remove words from being filtered.
Unfortunately, hate speech on gaming platforms is a common trend. On top of hurting and annoying users, such speech can make it difficult to find information you actually need or to have productive strategy or community discussions. Profanity, while not as harmful, can also make spaces unwelcome for children, which leads parents to restrict them from using platforms like Steam or playing certain games.
That’s why Steam is experimenting with a new, opt-in user-controlled text filtering system that replaces certain words with symbols on the client side.
“With chat filtering, we’ve obscured the most offensive language shared on Steam. You can alter your settings to control whether profanity and slurs are displayed, and because each player’s tolerance for difficult words is unique, we’ve included the ability to add or remove words from your personal filter,” Valve marketing director Doug Lombardi said in a statement accompanying today's announcement.
“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.”
You can apply this filter across Steam chat -- whether in the client, on the web, or through the mobile app -- and in “supporting games,” though Valve didn't specify which games this includes.
