Millions of Steam users can no longer see messages with mentions of torrent site Kickass.to in its instant messaging service as the game distribution software is sending away any mentions of the domain into an inaccessible trash.
Chats mentioning Kickass.to is being censored while other torrent sites like Kickass.so and Torrentz.eu are flagged for potential malicious threats. When mentioned again, users are being warned. Kickass.so and Torrentz.eu appear in private chats though.
A huge number of tech geeks use Steam for digital distribution, digital rights management, video game and a tool for social networking, which is ran by Valve Corporation.
Apparently, with the censorship Steam has been doing recently means they do not want users talking about certain topics related to Torrent.
One Steam user first noticed the censorship earlier this week in his conversation with other users when Kickass.to went offline.
"There is no warning or blocked message notification. The messages simply disappeared," the user told TorrentFreak.
According to TorrentFreak, after running a test they found out that messages mentioning Kickass.to vanishes, not just the domain itself.
PCGamesN conducted its own test as well with Steam chat and they found out that the software "indeed refused to send any message containing a link to Kickass.to."
In its report, Torrent Freak reached out to Valve regarding the issue since it is unclear for them but Valve has not responded yet as of press time.
However, its initial conclusion could be the copyright infringing links. On one end though, Pirate Bay and other torrent sites have not experienced the same censorship.
Another report explained how it is going with Valve with a million of users around the world turning to Kickass.to.
"It is understandable that Valve wants to protect its income streams by discouraging users from turning to torrents sites for their game needs," it said.
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