Steam Management supports harassment by penalizing victim of troll-aggression

On January 14, 2024, Steam made it a point to penalize a victim of mass-troll harassment, where this had been continuing since October of 2023 & well over 50 users had gotten on board with targeting this one individual.  Numerous reports had been filed to Steam in an attempt to mitigate the issue, however very little was done on Steam's part to quell the toxicity on their platform.  This issue is no longer solely a Steam issue, but it was allowed to escalate to the point that this individual is not being attacked daily on Steam itself, but also over YouTube, Twitch, Discord, Blogger/Blogspot, their own personal site, forwarding through domain privacy on their site & likely other domains they currently aren't even aware of (yet).

This action by Steam management (to penalize the victim of this aggression rather than those that were allowing it to escalation beyond harassment, now including internet stalking, doxing & slander) made it clear that Steam could no longer be trusted to purchase from (or through the Steam API on other sites) & ultimately resulted in a full cutoff of the site, in addition to removal of account associations or removal of public links to their Steam profile.

The attacks are still continuing daily & has been determined the only why there even going to be any slowing of these attacks would be to get law enforcement involved (as had to be done in the past when this same type of thing was affecting them over the PlayStation Network & Twitch); while this criminal complaint hasn't been filed yet, it is expected to be filed in the third week of January.

These attacks ended up being a fairly regular topic for this individual, being talked about to friends, friends of friends, family, neighbors, doctors, therapists & even family friends with attorney experience (believed to be retired lawyers that still had connections with lawyers still in practice).  These discussions got so graphic that some of those individual that had been given the details of this harassment were concerned that they may end up committing suicide...  During a doctor appointment on January 18, 2024 (this harassment again being discussed during this appointment, typically once per month), the doctor declared they would like to assign them with a case manager to aid them in filing a police report against the mass-harassment against them. (there will likely be an update to this article on where this goes later)

Much of the harassment that was coming from the aggressors on Steam were using terms that would easily been seen as discrimination against those with disabilities (or at least should have been, Steam management clearly not catching the severity of it, as they did very little about it when reports were filed), statements that are either ignorantly used as insulted (like kids calling somebody a "retard", not understanding what the term actually means; adults should know better) or intentionally targeting perceived disabilities for the specific purpose of putting a spin on it that works in their favor of attacking them verbally (whether a disability is actually a factor or not, whether it be mental or physical & whether the terms they were using were correct or not, it was always a way to insult them or present a false perception).

This issue escalated to where YouTube creators started creating misinformation videos against them, twisting the facts & clearly taking what Steam trolls were saying at face value, without doing any (or at least enough) of their own fact-checking to see if what was being said was correct.  CutCafe was one such creator on YouTube that aided Steam trolls in their spread of misinformation, skewed viewpoints & intentional slander to further add to the aggression of attacks this individual had to deal with daily; of course the video was reported, but unsurprisingly, YouTube did nothing in response to it, leading to the decision that this video would have to be a part of the criminal complaint once filed.

In 2023, new laws were passed in regards to protecting children against abusive algorithms that intentionally fed harmful content to vulnerable people susceptible to influence from it, which had led to a large escalation of suicides during the pandemic & still continues to do so even after pandemic restrictions were lifted.  Various lawsuits had been filed against those social platforms, which lead to change, but some platforms (like Steam) still elude any accountability for the actions of their users & the failure of their staff to protect their users against abuse like what is being listed here.  Granted, the abuse outlined in this article is now outside of the jurisdiction of Steam alone because it is now affecting so many other sites that those users followed to continuing the harassment against this victim, but it ultimately started on Steam & Steam management had the ability to do something about it when it started, they clearly chose not to & this issue has now escalated to a number of criminal claims against those users because nothing was done to temper it before it got to this point.

Because Steam has yet to get much publication of being a part of this problem & DANGER to users that are affected by this harassment started on their platform, this article serves the purpose of making this problem known & with any luck, perhaps start becoming a known part of the issue so it can start being resolved through the legal/governmental system, even if that means that Steam needs to be issued fines for allowing it to happen & not taking necessary steps to stifle it's growth to what it has lead to as stated in this article.  I personally have lost multiple extended family members to suicide caused by online harassment, as well as having to talk an old gaming buddy out of it multiple times (which ultimately resulted in him receiving disability after a mental health evaluation), as well as being a victim of the same harassment that ended the lives of others close to me (also personally considering the prospect of suicide, especially when you consider I've been dealing with it off & on for over 2 decades) & it is a VERY REAL PROBLEM!

This lack of commitment to protect their users from Steam management sets a VERY DANGEROUS standard to anybody who would be a customer of theirs (especially when it comes to children and/or those with disabilities, mental or physical) & should be considered by parents before allowing their children to play games on the Steam gaming/social platform.  It might be possible to avoid a lot of it by avoiding the social functions on Steam, but they could still run into these individuals in online multiplayer games.  Even if a user were to avoid the social functions on Steam AND avoid playing games on Steam online, there's still the probability that Steam troll harassment would find them to their profiles (without any luring them to it, they just find it out of chance) & they become a victim of something that Steam management just won't bother to deal with.  Additionally, Steam had events that reward users for their contributing to community functions, so even if somebody vows to stay away from it (or if a child is forbidden to take part in social functions on Steam), they will probably still be coaxed into doing something to gain those rewards that will put a target on their back by Steam troll-aggression.

The actions of Steam management has made our decision clear, this is not a safe platform to be purchasing from, especially if you intend on being a part of the community that is more or less ruled by trolls that have learned how to manipulate Steam management into doing their bidding.  If there is any silver lining to this, it's that the trolls do eventually get caught & penalized for their actions, but by then it's usually too little too late, as many victims of their aggression have already received penalties prompted by the manipulation of Steam trolls.  This article is being published to warn potential customers of the dangers of being a customer of Steam, it is up to the reader to determine if they want to chance getting the same treatment as has been stated in discloser of the facts.

Police contacted to file criminal complaint

On January 22nd, I ended up contacting the police regarding this matter (this was a rushed decision due to a statement of organized attacks against this site in the thread where this started, no longer willing to wait for aid from the case manager my doctor said they were going to get me in contact with).  This very much ended up being a wasted effort, but I was given a case number, which was supplied to my doctor & to Steam Management through their support system (opening a support ticket with Steam regarding the thread where this mass-abuse is being organized before contacting the police).  Of course even after the reply from Steam Management to that thread, I couldn't see that they were doing anything in regards to the clear organized harassment & discrimination being stated in that thread.

(details regarding what was said in this support ticket will be published at a later date, for now I need to wait to see if anything does get done in the next few days after that report was filed & the police report case number was appended to the ticket, which could be appended with an Internet Crimes report case number at a later date)

While the officer was very much skeptical about what was being stated & was clear they weren't going to do anything on a criminal level (according to the officer, not considered criminal under Utah law & the new laws regarding social platforms not playing a part on the criminal level, but he did state it could be applied on a civil level, meaning lawsuits), they did say I could report the matter to the Internet Crimes division of the FBI (a site I am already fully aware of, but have had very little success in getting anything done through in the past; I'd probably have better luck reviewing the Steam website on the Better Business Bureau).  I expect I will be filing the complaint with Internet Crimes, including the case number provided by the officer to further things along, but it's not expected to have any results (it does seem to be more effective when the police has been contacted before filing a report with them however).

Regardless, this is going to be a continued discussion with my medical & mental treatment specialists, likely with the case manager being added to regular appointments (which were bumped up to once a week rather than once a month) & will likely continue to be looked at for additional steps as necessary (getting legal aid to deal with the issue on a civil level might be possible, this has been discussed as a possibility in similar past online harassment situations).  Steam has already been made aware that information about this has been circulating online, within my personal circle of contacts, between other professional contacts I deal with & through new online publications like this one (not that I expect it will make much difference, but we'll see where it goes).

Ultimately the lack of action that this situation still stands on holds my stance of the dangers of being a customer of Steam, especially when it can start on Steam & extended well beyond their ability to even put a dent in the escalation of the actions of their most toxic users (especially if they don't act on it quickly when a report is filed).

5/15/2024 update

After yet another management-supported attack on Steam, I determined it was time to get the support ticket logs from the original attack public, those will be published beyond this point (of course there will still be censored content in these messages):

Note that the names mentioned in this post to Steam support have likely changes, but can still be mostly tracked through the Steam Troll blacklist.

One in accuracy in the last paragraph here states that the laws were passed in 2023.  After some recent research after the May 14th attack, I was able to determine that these are laws that have been passed in nearly all states (except Alaska & Wisconsin), starting in 2009 & ending (at least for the time being) in 2021 at 48 US states having laws against this type of online activity (further details here).

Note that this is the only screenshot given in this string of responses that has any censoring in it

Note that rights to download, print & copy the screenshot mentioned were disabled when I determined it was time to make these posts public

In the case of both accounts that were given to the support representative regarding impersonation, they were both eventually taken care of, but reporting them through their profiles yielded no results, which is why this had to be forwarded through a support ticket & likely still wouldn't have seen any results if a police report hadn't filed & that case number referenced in the support ticket.  The ticket was ultimately closed after the last post displayed due to a lack of new updates on the matter (nothing new to report because the attacks seemed to have stopped or at least went silent on Steam itself, I couldn't really expect Steam to do anything about the management-supported attacks that were happening on YouTube).