Yesterday, in response to a couple of recent controversies, Valve
announced that it would abandon its (few, vestigial) efforts to curate the content of games on its ubiquitous PC gaming platform, Steam. "We've decided that the right approach is to allow everything onto the Steam Store," Valve's Erik Johnson said in a
blog post, "except for things that we decide are illegal, or straight up trolling."
The company's argument was constructed to appear principled: there is no such thing as consensus on what is offensive, Johnson argued, even within Valve itself; it is not Valve's place to be a moral arbiter or to decide what is permissible; players and game creators should enjoy the right to freedom of speech. But the post also betrayed a confusion born of profound arrogance about where a society's rules end and the responsibilities of members of that society - especially influential members such as Valve - begin. And worse, it showed a cowardly unwillingness to tackle the tough questions that any company in Valve's enormously powerful and lucrative position must face.