Domina developer Dolphin Barn seems to have reached the limit of Valve’s generally hands-off approach to Steam, as the dev has been temporarily banned from his own game’s Steam forums.
The game started getting folks upset when the developer posted anti-mask policy messages in the game’s Steam update notes, followed by the dev’s right-leaning personal beliefs being posted to the game’s official Twitter account (prior to it getting suspended), as well as on its Steam forums.
The latter part of the above outrage is part of what has culminated in the developer revealing he’s been temporarily banned from the Domina Steam forums.
The crux of the issue here is Dolphin Barn’s responses to players when flagging what he says are fraudulent Steam reviews.
“This is the second time that one of your posts violates our Discussion Rules and Guidelines, specifically insulting or flaming another user,” a Valve moderator said in the message. “We’re also noticing a trend with abusive messages sent when banning players from your hub.”
There’s more to the issue though, as Valve moderator decisions to unflag reviews Dolphin Barn previously flagged as fraud are not to be second-guessed, apparently.
“We also want to make it clear that you should not reverse Steam moderator decisions or enable rule violations in your hub. Future disregard for our rules and guidelines could jeopardize our business relationship,” the Valve moderator said.
While the Domina dev is still seemingly banned from his game’s forums, he can still post Domina patch notes, the latest of which accuses Valve and Steam of being “cowards.”
Most of the reviews being flagged are naturally pointing to its dev’s personal beliefs coming out in the game’s official accounts or patch notes, but some users claim content available in the game’s beta were made into paid DLC for its live release. Regardless, Valve’s decision seems to be focused on the developer’s behavior.
It remains unclear if the developer’s own responses to players while banning them from its Steam page are what got Valve to intervene, or the dev’s second-guessing the moderators’ decisions, but it sounds like they don’t expect to have the game on Steam much longer.
“Some dickless coward at Steam thinks he has a ‘business relationship’ with me. Can they even identify themselves by name? What a pathetic person, whoever it was. What a pathetic corporation. Spineless. Ethically devoid. Corrupt. Faggotry,” the dev said on their personal Twitter.
Domina is available now for Windows PC (via Steam).