Steam has introduced a new feature that will allow you to select words you want to filter from the platform"s chat experience. The new capability is available starting today in beta through Steam Labs.
Although Steam already has pre-made chat filtering capabilities in games like CS:GO, Destiny 2, and Dota 2, it will now be building further upon that system, making it possible to create a custom list of specific words that you want to be removed from your chat experience. Those words will then be obscured and replaced with symbols across supporting games and all Steam chat experiences. In its blog post, Valve noted:
"With chat filtering, we"ve obscured the most offensive language shared on Steam. You can alter your settings to control whether profanity and slurs are displayed, and because each player’s tolerance for difficult words is unique, we’ve included the ability to add or remove words to form your personal filter."
The platform also allows you to upload lists of words from other sources. Additionally, you can opt out from the feature. Valve said it wants to empower players to choose what type of content they want to see on the service rather than censoring certain words altogether. Also, Steam"s existing filters can"t detect all profanity and slurs, so the addition of this new feature can help improve its filtering capability.
To enable chat and text filtering, you can go to your Steam account preferences, where the Community Content Preferences and the new filtering settings are located. While the feature is still in beta, Valve plans to release it to all users in the future.