Valve is testing a new chat filtering system that will filter out "the most offensive words shared on Steam. Filtering can also be turned off completely.

"We believe this level of control is especially important given that language is constantly evolving and is used differently in different communities around the world," Valve said in a blog post.

"That's why with Steam chat filtering, we've given our customers the option to filter languages as much as they want or not filter at all.

Steam chat filtering is currently a Steam Labs experiment and requires opt-in in your Steam account settings to use, but will soon be rolled out to all Steam users "in response to user and partner requests."

By default, there are two word filtering lists: one for general profanity and one for slander. Valve states, "More than 56 percent of the instances of profanity and slander found in the (in-game chat) sample were variants of f***. "Another 10 percent were variants of s***. Another 10 percent were schoolyard swear words that we chose not to filter out as strong profanity or slander. The remaining 24 percent were strong profanities or slurs that we determined were in common use and added to our list.

If you're wondering, we asked Valve for examples of "potty-mouthed schoolyard words" that Valve chose not to filter, and they told us: words like "peepee, poopoo, butt, etc.

Valve says that it does not simply forbid the use of slurs in chat, for example, reappropriated slurs, because it does not want to stop users from talking to their friends the way they want to.

"We know that marginalized groups can reclaim the language for themselves, and we don't want to prevent groups of Steam users from doing so when they chat with each other on Steam. Therefore, players can see profanity and slander from their Steam friends if they wish."

This approach only applies to filtering in private chat: Valve already censors profanity and slurs used in Steam user reviews and Steam forums. Additionally, Valve already uses image recognition and user reporting to blur "potentially inappropriate images" posted on Steam community pages.

Chat filtering currently works with Steam chat and certain games; according to Valve, other game developers will be able to "tap into" this system through the Steamworks API, presumably to reflect user preferences in in-game chat Valve also said that this filtering option could be applied to "more forms of user-generated content" on Steam.

For now, you can participate in the Steam chat filtering experiment by clicking on your display name in the upper right corner of Steam, selecting Account Details, and opening the Preferences tab." Under "Community Content Settings" you will find the options.