Obsidian Entertainment unexpectedly disabled the Steam Discussions page for its highly-anticipated upcoming RPG, Avowed. For about eight hours, players who attempted to click the forum link were redirected to the game’s store page instead. Additionally, SteamDB lost its API access token during the duration as well. This surprising decision, which the studio didn’t announce, has sparked speculation. Some are attributing it to the increasingly toxic discourse surrounding the fantasy game.
The Avowed Steam forums, as well as the studio’s social media, have been flooded with hate speech and inflammatory rhetoric in recent months. Threads where people discuss LGBTQ+ representation and the game’s alleged ‘wokeness’ often quickly devolved into chaos. Amid the noise, criticisms about the game’s art style shift from gritty to vibrant and colorful have been buried.
“Really not a fan of the wokeness you’ve injected,” wrote an X user.
“I was legitimately excited to play this after pillars 1 and 2. This game was so hype for me even after the art change i still believed,” wrote another one. “If youre going down that path this is over for many gg.”
Players who preordered the game also found that Avowed was hidden from their Steam Library during the same time. “I decided to search Avowed on my library and it’s gone, for some reason,” asked Reddit user GAzvd hours ago. “Any of you with the same problem?”
Once the Avowed Steam Discussions forum returned, the moderator team seemed to have purged most of the threads. Compared to the December 2024 Wayback Machine archive, which had 64 pages, current General forum threads are now at 17 pages.
However, others suggest a more procedural reason for the sudden forum shutdown, considering it was gone from the buyers’ Library as well. As the game nears its February 18 release, Obsidian might need to fix something behind the scenes.
This sudden news comes two months after Valve recently updated its Steam policies, particularly around the delivery of Season Pass content. These changes aim to hold developers accountable for delays and ensure proper communication with players. While aimed at Season Pass practices, the rules may inadvertently affect unreleased games with early access systems like Avowed.
Whether it’s a cleanup of unsavory discourse or a side effect of Steam’s stricter policies, the brief disappearance of Avowed’s forums leaves plenty of questions. Nevertheless, it won’t affect anticipating players’ excitement as Obsidian keeps its promise for the February release date.
