Steam Removes Banned Content in Russia, State Regulator Says

Russia’s state media regulator Roskomnadzor said the popular video game platform Steam agreed to remove all banned content from its Russian store, state media reported Tuesday.
Steam, a game distribution platform owned by the American company Valve, offers a catalog of more than 100,000 games, with 132 million users worldwide. There are an estimated 9.5 million active users in Russia.
Russia’s media regulator Roskomnadzor said the platform removed 11 web pages and over 260 banned “materials” after it sent a request to the company. Earlier, Roskomnadzor placed links to 11 web pages on its Unified Registry of Prohibited Information.
“Some news outlets mistakenly interpreted the inclusion of individual web pages in the registry as the blocking of such pages or even the entire service,” the regulator’s press service was quoted as saying by the state-run Interfax news agency.
Authorities said content included in the registry meant the host — in this case, Steam — would be sent an official request to remove it.
Last week, Russia banned the popular instant messaging service Discord — widely used by gamers, students and cryptocurrency traders — for failing to curtail “terrorist and extremist activities” on the platform.
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