Valve: Scottish video game developer Stormplay Games calls on game distribution service Steam to accept Scots and Gaelic as supported languages

Marco Cafolla, 26, of Stormplay Games has started a petition calling on US video game developer, Valve Corporation, to support Scots and Gaelic language games on its distribution platform.

Credit: Stormplay Games

More than 200 people have already signed Marco’s petition, which is ‘simply asking for Valve to add the option to add Scots and Gaelic as languages a seller can select as supported by their game, so speakers of said languages know what game supports their language(s) on the platform,’ according to its Change.org description.

Marco, based in North Lanarkshire, launched their petition after attempting to make their indie game, Operation: Pinkeye, available on Valve’s Steam platform.

Having been developing the First Person Shooter game since 2018, Marco said they were disappointed to not see Scots or Gaelic listed as supported languages for games made available on Steam.

“I tried to add my game to Steam and they asked me to list the languages supporting it out of a predefined list,” Marco said. “I noticed that Scots or Gaelic wasn’t on there and I think it should be.

"One of the aims of my game is to promote these languages, and almost to try and do for Scots and Gaelic what anime did for Japanese.”

They added: “It's important that people know about these languages and know what games are available in these the languages, and I feel like the fact that Steam don’t have Scots or Gaelic listed at all undermines that cause.”

When launching their petition, Marco spoke to Scots singer Iona Fyfe who spearheaded a successful and similar campaign to get music streaming service Spotify to recognise Scots as a language on its platform.

The petition kickstarted by Scottish games developer Marco Cafolla is quickly gaining steam.

“I think the Spotify campaign actually inspired me to do this,” Marco said. “I actually contacted Iona Fyfe and she gave me some tips and actually promoted [the petition] herself so that was really cool.”

They continued: “I admit that this petition might be a long shot, but at the very least I could say I tried, right?”

Valve Corporation, famous for producing landmark games including Half-Life, Counter-strike and Portal, has been approached for comment.

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