I think most people would agree that regardless of one's feelings on the matter, patch notes for a game are not the appropriate venue for this sort of thing. Seems like Valve did the right thing here.
Patch notes are an encouraged place for political statements, as long as they're against the right people. It's easy to find lots of major and minor studios that made statements that were pro-abortion and pro-BLM when those were in the news.
> Patch notes are an encouraged place for political statements...
Wouldn't a blog post or a social media post be a more appropriate place for something like that, given the larger focus on interaction and outreach on those, versus something that is generally (in my experience) just used to list a bunch of changes between two versions of software?
That said, I agree with Valve that there really shouldn't be a place for harassment or really toxic behavior on the platform, at least when it's possible to limit it. Interpretations of what counts and what doesn't might vary, but this seems like a decent example of moderation action.
Jlawson is responding to the argument being made about whether or not patch notes are an appropriate place for political, philosophical, or moral perspectives NOT whether or not the ToS was violated.