Steam's anything-goes policy toward what it will host hasn't helped: the game platform suffered a 17% drop in active users so far this year, according to data posted by SteamDB.
The fading of fad hit PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds appears to be responsible for about half of the decline. Whether its its rise and "fall" hides continued steady growth elsewhere should become quickly apparent, as that game's player base reached equilibrium over the summer.
Well, the decline is bigger than PUBG, but yes, it might've contributed pic.twitter.com/rF2km91OXO
— Steam Spy (@Steam_Spy) July 31, 2018
The anything-goes policy was seen as a capitulation to (or even an investment in) a rising tide of low-quality and often racist, sexist and plagiarized software, or at least an attempt to avoid the angry culture wars surrounding such material. The emergence of malware posing as games is the sort of obvious result of hands-off moderation they were nonetheless unable to see coming.
