The Steam subreddit has suddenly become all about actual steam and steam trains
The Steam subreddit has long been one of my go-to checks of a morning, for the simple reason that the crowd there really, really care about what's going on with Valve's omnipresent PC gaming platform. As one should, of course! It's a community that pores over small changes and is constantly coming up with potential improvements, complaints, and Gabe Newell memes, and honestly I kinda admire anyone who thinks this much about a gaming client.
Check out the Steam subreddit today, however, and you will find no detailed arguments about how achievements are displayed or chart discussions. Instead you will find a whole bunch of enthusiasm for and posts about steam. You know, a substance containing water in the gas phase that has a million different applications, the harnessing of which is one of the most important technological revolutions in history.
The community is leaning into the whole Valve/Steam versus valve/steam misunderstanding because of Reddit's ongoing battle with large parts of its own userbase and third-party developers: who for many years have been able to use the site's API for free in creating third-party applications (which a lot of people use, because reddit's official app didn't exist for ages and when it arrived was rubbish). The large-scale protest saw over 7,000 subreddits going dark, though the Steam subreddit is one of many joining in the protest in its own way.
«As ya'll likely know, we've been dark to support the blackout against reddit's antagonistic behavior towards its own userbase,» said a post from the moderators. «The admins sent us a message saying we must open or get removed, so here we are». It ends by pointing users towards the Steam discord which remains active but, honestly, please don't
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