Imagine: your child, like millions of children around the globe, enjoys playing video games. He says a platform called “Steam” is where all the kids at school find games to buy and play.
You’re sure that there’s no shortage of inappropriate video games out there. So, being a diligent parent, you make sure you set up all Steam’s parental controls before you let your child download it. Having done so, you rest easy, assured he’s now safe.
But one day, you’re looking through his viewing history … and your heart stops.
You can’t believe what you’re seeing. Pornography videos. Graphic and glorified depictions of rape. Horrifically violent scenes of naked women being abused and tortured. It’s like the most explicit, violent, and stomach-churning videos you’d find on Pornhub.
Tears streaking down your face, you try to process the fact that your baby saw all of this. How could this happen? You had been so careful to set up parental controls. What did you do wrong?
Steam Fixes Glaring Loophole in Parental Controls
When the platform Steam was put on NCOSE’s Dirty Dozen List in March, the story above is exactly the kind of experience parents and children could have had. Steam had a glaring loophole in its parental controls which allowed children to watch the video previews of games their parents had specifically blocked.
Through these previews, a child could potentially watch hours of pornographic content, some of which was extremely violent and normalized rape. All while their parent thought they were protected.
Through the Dirty Dozen List campaign, NCOSE and grassroots activists like you urged Steam to fix this and many other safety issues. Unlike some other companies who were eager to engage with NCOSE after being placed on the Dirty Dozen List, Steam never replied to our concerns. However, a NCOSE researcher recently tested the platform again and found that one of our key requests was implemented! The enormous loophole in parental controls, which allowed kids to watch video previews of blocked games, has now been fixed!
Games that are blocked by parental controls will not show up in a child’s search results on the store. Parents should note that if a child has a link to a blocked game saved and they try to access it again, they’ll be able to view a thumbnail image of the game with a message stating it’s been blocked. Nonetheless, this is a massive improvement to children being able to watch countless pornographic and sexually violent videos.
We are grateful to everyone who participated in the Dirty Dozen List campaign to make this progress happen!
Fund the Fight to End Sexual Exploitation!
Steam Automatically Hides the Most Explicit Content, with Option to View Anyway
The NCOSE researcher testing Steam found one other positive change that has been made since the Dirty Dozen List. It now appears that Steam has updated its default store preferences. Upon account creation, it censors the most sensitive content by default—including “frequent nudity or sexual content,” “adult only sexual content,” and more.
When users search for it, content in these categories will be blurred out with a note saying it’s been censored based on content preferences. Users can still choose to click on the content anyway and it will take them to the game, so this default setting is NOT a substitute for parental controls. However, this is an improvement because it will reduce unintentional exposure to highly explicit content. No one, whether a child or adult, should be bombarded with sexually explicit content against their will—that is sexual harassment.
Child Safety Improvements Steam Still Must Make
While these safety improvements are important, Steam still has a long way to go. On the child protection front, the platform still lacks age verification. Currently, a child can go in and inaccurately set their birthdate in order to access all kinds of sexually explicit games. Further, for a child account, parental controls are not on by default. Parents must know that the parental controls exist and understand how to set them up. Even when a parent takes the step of adding their child to their “family” on Steam, parental controls are still not on by default.
What this means is that only the children who are privileged enough to have highly-involved, tech-savvy parents will be protected. Steam leaves all other children to fend for themselves. Considering that research shows the majority of parents do not fully utilize parental controls, this is egregious.
Steam Still Hosts Games that Glorify Sexual Violence
Steam also still hosts games that glorify and fetishize sexual violence and abuse. Some of these games are so egregious that they should not be available to anyone, whether children or adults.
For example, NCOSE researchers found a game in which the user plays a slave master who purchases slaves in order to rape them. The description of the game reads “Play a slave trainer in ancient Rome. Buy slaves, teach them the right way to F#$k a Roman!”
The previews of the game include graphic vides of female slaves being raped, beaten, and tortured by male slave masters.
Another sexually violent game painted itself as ethical because the user would not be actively participating in any sexual assaults—simply enjoying being a “spectator.”
Research has established that consuming sexually violent, explicit media like these games increases likelihood of committing real-life sexual aggression or having attitudes supporting sexual aggression. For example, a 3 wave longitudinal study found that intentional exposure to “violent X-rated material” resulted in adolescents being 6x more likely to commit sexual aggression later on in life. An experimental study that controlled for causal order found that adult male participants who were made to play video games depicting violence against women and sexual objectification of women exhibited increased acceptance of rape myths (i.e. beliefs that minimize rape or victim blame).
Sexually violent games like the ones Steam hosts are not harmless fantasies. They have real-world effects on real-life victims. As such, it is not enough to age-gate these games; they must be removed from the platform entirely.
Learn more and take action by visiting DirtyDozenList.org/Steam!
