Valve overhauls Steam's community rules and content guidelines

pcgamer.com:

Valve has made some big changes to the online conduct rules and rules and guidelines for Steam, which now break down in much greater detail what people are and are not allowed to do while using the service.

«Beginning today, you’ll see we’ve made some updates to Steam's Rules and Guidelines and Steam's Online Conduct Rules,» Valve said in the announcement(opens in new tab) of the rule changes. «These updates are intended to add context and specificity to how we already apply these in practice to all behaviors and content across Steam.»

Unfortunately, Valve did not say anything in the announcement about what had changed, so for that we need to rely on the eternally useful Internet Archive(opens in new tab). The rules and guidelines page as it existed in March 2023 was very general, perhaps reflecting a more innocent time, with short lists of general rules and content rules, and a warning against «backseat moderating.» Users are asked to report rule-breaking posts to moderators, and repeat offenders are warned that they'll be banned from the community. 

This is the full list of Steam's general rules at that time:

Do not do any of the following:

Now, however, the Rules and Guidelines page(opens in new tab) provides specific expectations of users—be respectful of yourself and other players, be constructive and avoid off-topic content, commercial content is not permitted, don't discuss or engage in unlawful or prohibited activity—and individual examples under each category. Some of those examples are duplicated from the old rules, but overall it's much more granular: Instead of «don't flame people,» for instance, the new rules state that «interactions with other players should not be abusive, disparaging, or inflammatory,