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Greenlight Submission Retracted

Item posted by Layla Marchant <onpon4> on Thu 08 Jun 2017 10:23:28 PM UTC.

I noticed in my mailbox that Project: Starfighter had been greenlit, so I went to submit the game. Unfortunately, due to ethical boundaries I refuse to break, despite being greenlit, I will not be putting Project: Starfighter on Steam.

That ethical boundary is, quite simply, a non-disclosure agreement (NDA), an agreement where one is given access to secret information in exchange for promising not to share that information with anyone else. I, frankly, have no interest in Valve's secret information, and I refuse to go into a conspiracy of secrecy to gain access to information I do not have any interest in seeing.

To be clear, I am not against keeping secrets. I am skeptical of, but not fundamentally opposed to trade secrets themselves; I think it's right for employees of certain government agencies like the FBI and NSA to be required by law to keep certain things secret; and I think it's a moral imperative for all people's personal information to be kept secret. However, any case of anyone being legally required to keep secrets must be via a specific law. It is unacceptable to join a conspiracy of secrecy for information which would otherwise not be illegal to share. To accept such a contract is a betrayal to one's friends, family, neighbors, and in fact the entire human race, because it is a promise to refuse to cooperate with them.

It's very slightly unfortunate that Starfighter and ReTux will not be going on Steam, but this is so minor that I'm not terribly bothered by it. Using the Steam website in an attempt to submit and manage games requires a sacrifice of my personal liberty (by running proprietary JavaScript code) anyway.

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