While Steam remains as the most prominent PC platform since 2003 with widely available games to purchase and download, there has been a serious downtrend within the community of Steam. What do we mean by this?

Steam's own forums and groups created by the community have been marred by improper moderation, with Valve's moderators being nothing more than bots, rather than human beings. More often than not, there have been users on Steam that have been wrongfully banned despite clearly following Terms of Service and Guidelines while reporting offending users numerous times with no success. Meanwhile, violators who deliberately break Terms of Service and Guidelines remain unaccounted for, meaning that despite that they clearly violated these Guidelines, they continue to remain active with no proper punishments whatsoever.

Although most users on Steam advise others to "report, block and move on", this is not always the case as these are rarely addressed and inadequately handled by Valve's moderators which are run by bots that often make questionable decisions, with the worst offenders on Steam rarely dealt with. Worse, Steam Support offers little to no help; while they can handle basic actions such as refunds or recovering compromised user accounts, they are rarely shown to take any form of actual action against any and all users who have violated Terms of Service and Guidelines numerous times, even with screenshots provided as evidence.

And when months, if not years, have passed by and offending users continue to remain active and cause trouble on a daily basis, it's a clear indication that Valve moderators did not perform their duties well, and these types of users who have violated ToS numerous times receive no actual comeuppance at all.

Moreover, normal users who never violate any and all rules ToS-wise end up receiving lengthy bans for the actions they themselves did not commit. When Valve refused to address any and all issues regarding users deliberately breaking ToS and Guidelines with no adequate punishment, it created a rift between Valve and its community, which in turn affects Steam as a whole.

Valve and Gabe Newell, you need to give Steam a complete overhaul by providing better moderation on the forums that can differentiate between both offending users and genuine users. Using bots to serve as moderators is a bad idea and a poor business decision as they can’t determine between both offenders and non-offenders which often leads to the wrong users getting unfairly banned due to having never violated Terms of Service and Community Guidelines. Repeatedly ignoring these issues can and will slowly destroy the once-beloved PC platform due to both improper moderation and poor customer support. 

If these are left unchecked too often, The Steam community will start to migrate to another gaming platform such as GOG Galaxy in order to avoid such toxicity plaguing within Steam and its forums, which also includes Steam groups as larger groups tend to be rarely moderated, which gives these types of users to create as many spam accounts and cause as much trouble as possible without consequences; as a result, this can jeopardize Valve's reputation due to their consistent inaction from frequently ignoring reports from both the forums as a whole and groups alike. This also includes not looking into each and every crucial piece of evidence in the form of screenshots by many other users through Steam Support.

Just like how Valve fixed Team Fortress 2 when bots caused mass disruptions in the game, they also seriously need to fix their own platform they themselves created, namely with both the forums and groups on Steam in actually handling users who deliberately troll and spam, regardless of numerous reports handed against them. Not addressing these ongoing issues due to Valve's ongoing negligence is what’s wrong with the Steam forums and groups today where it's more hostile than friendly whenever a user who deliberately causes trouble results in constant, heated arguments. And when moderators choose to side with bad apples and defend their awful actions, both the forums and groups become less friendly altogether.

To many Steam users that are reading this, if you have experienced this level of negligence as a result of Valve’s inadequate handling of reports along with handing out wrongful bans coupled with Steam Support proven to be unhelpful, be sure to provide each and every image and video regarding those negative actions as they can bring light to Valve's obvious inadequacies, including offending users that have committed derogatory and defamatory acts with no deserved comeuppance, but be sure to censor their names as a safety precaution as Valve has a clear no naming and shaming policy. This also includes Valve’s overall poor handling of countless reports sent against offending users that never receive proper, disciplinary actions. And even if they were actually dealt with, they can always make new accounts to resume causing trouble, especially in easily paying $5 (or the equivalent) in order to circumvent a ban, rather than issuing hardware bans to ensure they can no longer access Steam altogether.

There are ways to notify Valve and Gabe Newell through Twitter/X. Notifying Steam via Support does not guarantee a positive outcome due to bots and their cookie cutter responses that go nowhere, no matter how honest. There is a chance that Gabe Newell will respond and read posts, if possible, whereas with Valve, it's uncertain.

Here are their Twitter/X accounts to notify them regarding these ongoing issues along with a petition that is happening right now:

Valve: https://x.com/valvesoftware

Gabe Newell: https://x.com/officialnewell

If Team Fortress 2 can be saved, then so can Steam itself, namely from its forums that have been plagued with constant toxicity and improper moderation. What also matters is that Gabe along with Valve's employees need to completely overhaul Steam and its forums for the better. Bring actual moderators that can do better jobs at both swiftly handling reports and be able to tackle issues on both the forums and support alike instead of bots that cannot differentiate between right and wrong. 

However, they also need to be fully entrusted to never abuse their powers as Valve moderators along with properly communicating with the community on the forums in ensuring that the popular platform does not fall into disarray. Let's make this happen, everyone. It's not too late to make Steam an even better, and safer, platform, especially for the community that uses the Steam forums to share interests and help out one another instead of creating a problem and forming a toxic community. While this may cost money in hiring real moderators, it can go a long way between making Steam a safer and better platform for use and worsening Steam altogether due to poor and inadequate moderation on the forums and on Steam groups.

(Please do not donate this petition. Only share it with your friends. Thank you.)

(Any and all kinds of threats against Valve and Gabe Newell will NOT be tolerated in any way.)