Comment by spicyusername
13 hours ago
Hot take, but parents should, y'know, parent
I can tell you're not a parent, because if you were, you would know that basically none of the digital solutions provided by tech companies to facilitate gating adult material from children actually work or are in any way thoughtfully designed.
Every one of these "just shunt the responsibility from the giant corporation with infinite resources to the parents who are already stretched thin" is another link in a long, long chain that is the woes of modern parenting and really in the woes of modern life, in general.
Historically we have typically gated adult content from children via opt-in systems, not opt-out systems, like you're describing - e.g. Adults opt-in to sensitive content, not children opt-out. There is a reason adult stores are separate from Walmarts and that 21+ bars are separate from family-restaurants.
Also these games are absolute garbage, so I'm not sure why everyone is jumping on this issue like we're losing something of significant cultural value... Why is low-quality XXX-slop the line in the sand we're deciding to rally around... This is not a slippery slope to fascism, or whatever make-believe story we're peddling about this situation, its somebody somewhere doing the right thing, for once, and slowing our seemingly inevitable decline into Biff's Casino Future the teensiest bit.
Steam has pretty good built in parental controls imo. You can allow-list or block-list games, and block viewing various content on the store, or even entirely disable the store. There are tiers to filtering such as “frequent violence” “any nudity” “frequent nudity” and “adult only”. You can also separately disable the viewing of user-generated content, which I think disables the steam workshop. And even set playtime limits.
Steam’s parental controls are pretty good if used properly.
As a parent, I don't want my child reading your comment. Also, your comment is absolute trash, so deleting it wouldn't be a loss of anything of cultural significance.
No, I will not talk to my son about it. Hacker News has unlimited resources, so they should do it for me. I'm already stretched too thin - I have to get to Walmart to buy more wine and ammunition before it closes.