It is pretty clear that Valve, the company in charge of the dominating PC video game retail and distribution system that is Steam, is aiming to keep as far as possible from being responsible about it and plans to allow almost any developer to deliver almost any title on it.
The new policy, announced in a rather long and somewhat confused blog post just before the start of the week of E3 2018, explains that a recent controversy over mature material has convinced the company that is should allow developers to offer video games without any restrictions (other than legal ones linked to the territory where they are made and sold) while relying on the users to vote with their money and to make sure that those who do not deliver any value will be left behind.
The new Valve policy is a boon from a freedom of expression perspective and will allow more niche audiences to get cool content from Steam, a good thing, while also increasing the number of titles available, which is both great and a problem for gamers, given the limited tools for curation that are available.
The decision to tweak what is allowed to arrive on the digital distribution service will also make it easier for the company to defend its decisions, because it can rely on freedom as the core concept, giving it space to dispense largely with moderation and curation. Gamers will have to pick up this responsibility and itțs unclear whether Valve has any new aids for them.
Steam is dominant at the moment but it will be interesting to see whether rivals, from GOG to publisher driven services to itch to others, will make curation one of their own selling points and can use it to eat into the market share of the Valve product.
Until them I am happy that more potentially cool games will be launched but I think that Valve should carry more of the curation and moderation burden, which is possible even while remaining faithful to the idea of free expression in the video game medium.