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this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2026
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Steam Hardware
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I'm honestly tired of debating that point again and again. However, to summarize my stance on this: If parents are unable or unwilling to monitor what their child is playing or spending money on, that is not the problem of steam - or any platform for that matter. It's also not EAs fault if a child is spending thousands of bucks in ultimate team. If my child stole my credit card and did that, I would refund the money immediately and get his account locked. It's honestly tiring of hearing people demanding companies to "protect the children" when many parents do fuck all to protect or educate THEIR children.
Saying that a 30% cut is justified for everything steam offers isn't "defending" steam, it's just stating my opinion, but yeah whatever, you do you.
That's exactly why they need to do more... Children shouldn't suffer because corporations exploit them and their shitty parents.
Disagree. Not because I don't want corporations to do something, but because the ways they'd need to implement are a net-negative overall.
There's a huge discussion going on right now about age verification on OS level. That's exactly the kind of shitty results we get when we have other entities being responsible for child safety than the parents. And that's not a world I want to live in. I don't want to have to upload my government ID to any service I want to use and live in a borderline surveillance state because parents aren't able to pay attention to their children.
Or, hear me out on this one...
Real-money-and-equivalent gambling could be removed from Steam completely. No age verification needed.
As for child safety, Steam already has parental control features. I don't know how extensive/useful are they, though.
Ager verification is absolutely not a necessity to curtail gambling, obviously.
They were also the ones to bring out the 30% cut mocking the people talking about it in general and when I called them out they doubled down saying that sharing an opinion is not defending a corporation. Lmao
I see so many bad takes from them in this thread and it's wild to see people upvote them. I thought the users here would know better about tech instead of getting parasocial with a corporation and thinking it can't do bad...
It is. There is no other way to "protect the children" if you don't want parents to do their job.
It's not just about the children buddy. Adults are vulnerable too. There's no need to throw them off the cliff just because they passed that special age mark. Your solution about requiring id check to prevent children from gambling wouldn't do anything about adults because the issue is far more fundamental and about how the system is structured not how you enter it. Also it's not about corporations doing parent's job but about wanting something as simple as corporations not exploiting people including in big part children. You're paiting this thread like valve is good and we are asking valve to do more good by doing job of the parents while in reality we want valve to stop doing evil that valve does. And yet you will insist that you are not defending a corporation. The delusion is crazy.
It isn't. There are lots of other ways. Gambling is a heavily regulated industry. Valve just sidesteps this by not being designated as such.
I do want parents to do their job. The problem is they don't, and there's nothing we can do about that. And who suffers when they don't? Not me, not you, and not the parents. Its the children.
Yup. People forget that the internet is adult by default. A child cannot buy an internet connection.
The "protect the children" crowd, while they think they mean well, are fucking clowns. Let's start with actually protecting them, you know what the biggest killer of children is? Cars. Let's ban them first, shall we?
We should never have to show ID to use the internet, it's crazy dystopian, giving governments and corporations more and more control of our lives.
And I was talking about literal casinos running on steam and not the exploitative games in there. There's absolutely no reason for steam virtual market (don't remember the name) to exist (besides it making valve money) and they could crack down on casinos easily but again, that makes them money. Also steam popularised lootboxes and they have this dumb case + key psychological trick in cs to drive more purchases. As for the 30% cut, the indie devs already have it rough. Developing a game takes a lot of effort and time. Taking 30% cut while publishers take another cut on top makes it hard for indies to sustain themselves and so they often close down. Not to mention the insanity of steam actually lowering the cut for really big studios (the more you earn the lower the cut) to keep them on the platform when corporations will do just fine and the indies need the money the most.