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PC Gamer
PC Gamer
Andy Chalk

Steam accused of 'normalizing hate and extremism in the gaming community' in new ADL report

Steam logo.

The Anti-Defamation League, a US organization that aims to combat antisemitism and support Israel, has published a report alleging that Steam is "rife with extremism and antisemitism," and accusing Valve of allowing the spread of hateful and extremist material through a "highly permissive approach to content policy."

The ADL said its report is based on what it described as an "unprecedented, platform-wide" analysis of public data on Steam, including more than 458 million user profiles, 152 million profile and user group avatar images, and 610 million user comments. The ADL's Center on Extremism found "found millions of examples of extremist and hateful content, including explicit hate symbols like sonnenrads and 'happy merchants,' as well as copypastas (blocks of text that are copied and pasted to form images or long-form writing) shaped into swastikas" being shared on the platform.

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