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Steam lets you choose words to filter from chat

The words you choose are replaced with symbols.

Jon Fingas / Engadget

Steam now lets you make a custom list of words you want filtered from your chat experience, Steam owner Valve has announced. The Steam Text & Chat Filtering feature already removes commonly used strong profanity and slurs, but now you can add specific words that you want to be replaced with symbols across Steam chat and supporting games. The feature is available through the Steam Labs beta program, but may be universal in the near future.

You can customize your filters by visiting your Steam account preferences, where you will find Community Content Preferences and the new Text & Chat Filtering settings. From there, you can enter words to always or never filter, either individually or through uploading a list of words. You can also opt out of filtering altogether.

Why not just ban certain words outright? Steam developers wrote that instead of censoring users, they’d rather empower them to “choose what they see from others.” This level of control is important, developers said, “given that language is constantly evolving and is used differently among various communities around the world.”

Steam is encouraging users to try the new system and give feedback, something that could be useful in bringing the feature out of beta in the future.