Valve has announced that Steam Chat Filtering is now in beta, giving gamers on Steam a way to block bad language in Steam chat if they choose to do so.
Many text communication services offer a way to block bad language and Valve is finally adding such a feature to the social elements of Steam. Although Valve is a bit late to the game with this one, it may have developed the most robust mature language filter to date thanks to a special addition.
“With chat filtering, we’ve obscured the most offensive language shared on Steam,” read the announcement from Steam Labs, an internal development group that creates and tests new features for Steam. You can alter your settings to control whether profanity and slurs are displayed[.]”
That’s not all Steam Chat Filtering will do, though — users will also have the option to block any words they would like. This will be enhanced by the ability to upload a list of words or phrases, empowering people to crowdsource a stronger chat filter if they choose to do so.
Mind, Steam Chat Filtering isn’t available to everyone just yet. If you’d like to try it out for yourself, you’ll have to go into your Steam account preferences and turn on Steam Labs Experiment 011: Text Filtering.