I generally use Steam forums/news for relatively niche indie/AA games in the economic strategy/city-builder genres. Rarely do you encounter overly heated discussion with some exceptions around Denuvo use or a particularly intense debate about gameplay approaches.

But I have seen some sections of Steam that honestly look surreal due to the level of toxicity and the overall bad faith tone.

Valve should honestly police this stuff, they have more than enough resources to do so, but they won’t since it goes against the “scalability and automation” mantra of modern technology companies.

P.S. I don’t consider free speech issues to be relevant in this case. One can always start their own site/forum and spam it with whatever they like. If product owners finds this valuable, they can join the shitbox.

For what it’s worth, sales upon early access release (or even 1.0 release) is somewhat common in the indie scene.

I believe the goal is to try and convert as many wishlists into sales.