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Valve: 35 million active Steam users, Source is "about to get even better", and more
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bloodforge
Member
I don't think we'll ever see "Source 2" they will just continue to update and improve the engine they already use.
I'd like to see DX11 and it's features added.
I'd like to see DX11 and it's features added.
I have 5 big issues will Valve and Steam.
1) Regional pricing. Valve is 50% responsible for this. Everything from the 1EUD = 1 US to letting pubs price gouge Aussies and New Zealanders. If your going to charge us in US dollars, then treat it as an import and don't let pubs rip us off. At least alow us to buy off the US Store you shysters.
2) If you get banned you lose your subscriptions. What the ef is this? If you paid for a game it's yours for life.
3) Allowing pubs to put extra DRM on games on Steam, when Steam itself is DRM.
Eg. GTA4
-GFWL
-Rockstar Social Club
-SecuROM
-Steam itself
(i realize R* Social isn't DRM per say)
4) Locking down accounts when it comes to pay disputes and permanently locking them down if you use a pre-paid credit card and you can't pay it off.
5) Shithouse support team, can randomly take anywhere from hours to months to respond to tickets and even then its generic reply telling you to take it up with a publisher. Robert Clarke alone from Greenman Gaming has singlehandingly destroyed Valves support team and he is only 1 man.
1) Regional pricing. Valve is 50% responsible for this. Everything from the 1EUD = 1 US to letting pubs price gouge Aussies and New Zealanders. If your going to charge us in US dollars, then treat it as an import and don't let pubs rip us off. At least alow us to buy off the US Store you shysters.
2) If you get banned you lose your subscriptions. What the ef is this? If you paid for a game it's yours for life.
3) Allowing pubs to put extra DRM on games on Steam, when Steam itself is DRM.
Eg. GTA4
-GFWL
-Rockstar Social Club
-SecuROM
-Steam itself
(i realize R* Social isn't DRM per say)
4) Locking down accounts when it comes to pay disputes and permanently locking them down if you use a pre-paid credit card and you can't pay it off.
5) Shithouse support team, can randomly take anywhere from hours to months to respond to tickets and even then its generic reply telling you to take it up with a publisher. Robert Clarke alone from Greenman Gaming has singlehandingly destroyed Valves support team and he is only 1 man.
Sadly I think you'd have a better chance at Paradox, though I also doubt it (bet they have stacks of books for all that historical info they have though).wilflare said:
Though honestly I think the cool part is you all can contribute. I'm pretty sure the Food Services guy or the Psychologist will also have their chance at input in development, rather than just be a service for the dev teams.
This is the right thing to do, unfortunately. A chargeback is effectively an accusation that the company has acted in bad faith. Too many chargebacks and Valve might lose their merchant license and be banned for life, plus the only way to actually reverse one is via the exact same card. It makes complete sense to lock your account until the chargeback's been reversed -- if I were Valve I'd do that too.Gez said:
Gez said:
These two are huge. I am all for Valve locking out games with outside DRM. They all don't have to use Steamworks, but two layers of DRM is ass and speaks against having the customer in mind.
Steam support is terrible. A week ago, my friends was suspends from Dead Island for no reason. He hadn't even been online when they suspended him. They claimed he didn't own a legit copy of Dead Island. What? How is that possible when Dead Island is a Steamworks games? So, he sends them a picture with the CD code, the retail disc with a personalized note. Their response? None.
Terrible. He no longer uses Steam. Can't blame him.
Valve said:
I wonder what they mean by "largest"?
How many users does IOS and the app store have? Didn't Gamecenter have something like 50 million after only 9 months, meaning that the app store itself - even the gaming section alone - must be even higher than that? And if by largest they're talking about number of titles even the 360 has more than 1800 games(Xbla/indie/gameroom/demand) and again the IOS app store is far above that.
Have they specified what an active user is?
wutwutwut said:
Valve makes it so have so you have to pay a dispute with the credit card it was purchased with originaly (if that makes sense). If you used a pre-paid visa credit card and no-longer have it or chucked it out, you are fucked and your account is gone forever.
This is my issue.
Oh wow, that's very impressive then. 35 million people logging in and playing at least one game a month...Drkirby said:
As I said, the only way to reverse a chargeback is to pay with the exact same card. Chargebacks are very serious business. I'm not happy about it, but I completely agree with Valve here.Gez said:
Gez said:
You know if they just let charge backs go they could eventually lose the ability to even accept Visa etc.? All merchants take this seriously. Charge back on an MMO for instance, lose your account. You might get it back if you fix it.
cooljeanius
Member
Not even the world portals, just the normal portal-gun portals would be fine. Then koth_Aperture_Science's portals might actually look right.Yeef said:
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
Writers, eh?
â Narayan
Member
CCP GamesLasthope106 said:
Lasthope106 said:
Those positions are more to help separate us from our money then to improve the games. Same with the Psychologist. That said, given the cross-country trading issues, I can see an Economist being useful there as well.
Paradox is run by an economist. Also, I know Paradox has contracted out some historians in the past.
While not an economist, Cliffski over at Positech has run some economic experiments with his games. He comes to some different conclusions then Valve on many things, though I suspect it's coming from being a rather small indy.
wutwutwut said:
You know, it is quite possible that Valve has acted in bad faith in those cases, or at the very least, the customer is not at fault. Given Valve's extremely slow support, waiting on Valve isn't a satisfactory solution. While I think these cases are rare, I suspect that many of the anti-Valve folks are folks who have gotten burned in the past, or at least felt like they have been. Also, let's be real here: if a big company could be banned for life, Valve wouldn't be the first one to be banned.
This right here is why I tend to buy Steam games through Gamersgate instead, or retail. It's just safer. I'll buy off the Steam store , but only games which don't use Steamworks, such as Dredmor and Mount and Blade. It's not that I hate Steam, I just distrust's Valve's policies in this area.
Stuff like this makes me feel like an ass for not enjoying basically any source engine games. The feel is always just so off to me.
Steam is basically perfect outside of the double/triple DRM situation and the INSANELY AWFUL customer service.
Get your account hijacked because your email got stolen during the PSN fiasco? Get ready for months of emails with little help!
Steam is basically perfect outside of the double/triple DRM situation and the INSANELY AWFUL customer service.
Get your account hijacked because your email got stolen during the PSN fiasco? Get ready for months of emails with little help!
HeadlessRoland
Banned
Revoke a charge on your credit card (charge back). The requirements for a charge back with your CC company will revoke charges with a simple complaints. But if you do this Valve will ban/suspend your account.
A chargeback is where you ask your bank to reverse a transaction on a particular credit card. You're saying that this transaction shouldn't have happened. There are two ways this can go:robin2 said:
- either your CC got stolen and used for another account, in which case that other account gets locked. This is fine, of course.
- you charge a transaction you made on your account back. This generally means that you're accusing Valve of some sort of fraudulent behaviour. Too many of these and Valve gets heavy penalties imposed. Gabe might even get banned and blacklisted from accepting credit cards for the rest of his life, so even if he opens up a new company he wouldn't be able to become a merchant.
That's why if you think a transaction's been made in error, it is generally much better to try to resolve the issue with the merchant than go straight to your bank.
Pureauthor
Member
My single biggest worry about Steam is that their customer support completely blows. Otherwise, it's good.
SpaceDrake
Member
Gez said:
Unfortunately, if they tried to force "no DRM outside of what Steam 'is'", most of the major current pubs would refuse to work with them. It isn't just marketing speak, a lot of higher-ups at these publishers really are that psychotic about DRM and the idea that The Poors might dare to "steal" a videogame.
Really, blame the pubs for this one, not Valve. If Valve refused, they'd have practically nobody to publish.
PjotrStroganov
Member
It's not like most of those people make a conscious choice to use Steam.
Gez said:
Just get a friend to gift it to you from the US... and it's not 50/50, it's almost entirely the pub's fault.
Gez said:
If you get banned, then you deserve to lose your subs. Valve (last time I checked) are pretty lenient when it comes to getting banned; you must be doing something PRETTY bad to get banned. Plus they ban you from certain game depending on what you do - if you get an all-out Steam ban then you probably deserve it, like I said.
Gez said:
Steam isn't DRM per se, it's a distribution platform like Stardock's Impulse. You can play your games offline. Additional DRM is at the behest of the pubs - if you're hating on Steam for "additional" DRM it's rather arbitrary given you're buying a game with said DRM regardless.
Gez said:
A simple email explaining your situation is almost always has a warm reception with Valve's marketing / sales department. If you're card is rejected and you don't tell them for months then yeah... self explanatory.
Gez said:
I stopped reading at the first sentence.
The unbridled hate and defending of Steam is getting really tiresome. It's not anywhere near as bad as some of the haters would have you believe, but the fanboys shouldn't be so quick to defend the turdy sides of the service, because there are some.
I think Valve should be more lenient/understanding about payments and locking accounts. Make it a 3 strike rule or something before an account is disabled (with clear notifications to the user about the system, how it works and their standing with it), because sometimes PayPal simply fuck up. Your bank fucks up. Even Valve fucks up. I think it's unfair that you're potentially running a gauntlet when you're planning to legitimately buy games.
And if the payment doesn't go through, just disable the game from the user's account and ask them to pay again. No need to nuke their entire account + thousands of dollars worth of games.
Also, whilst I've never had to deal with Valve support, I do hear it blows.
That said, I'm mostly happy with Steam. I've never had to deal with payment problems, and I've never had a reason to use their support. The client works well, doesn't drain my system resources, games and updates are snippy and the whole thing blends the main conveniences of consoles with the openness of PC (mods, community fixes to unsupported games, the ability to add non-Steam games to it and utilise the overlay in game, and so on). And anyone is a fool who buys all their games on Steam, simply because other services, such as GMG, provide a great service for their customers.
I think Valve should be more lenient/understanding about payments and locking accounts. Make it a 3 strike rule or something before an account is disabled (with clear notifications to the user about the system, how it works and their standing with it), because sometimes PayPal simply fuck up. Your bank fucks up. Even Valve fucks up. I think it's unfair that you're potentially running a gauntlet when you're planning to legitimately buy games.
And if the payment doesn't go through, just disable the game from the user's account and ask them to pay again. No need to nuke their entire account + thousands of dollars worth of games.
Also, whilst I've never had to deal with Valve support, I do hear it blows.
That said, I'm mostly happy with Steam. I've never had to deal with payment problems, and I've never had a reason to use their support. The client works well, doesn't drain my system resources, games and updates are snippy and the whole thing blends the main conveniences of consoles with the openness of PC (mods, community fixes to unsupported games, the ability to add non-Steam games to it and utilise the overlay in game, and so on). And anyone is a fool who buys all their games on Steam, simply because other services, such as GMG, provide a great service for their customers.
Togglesworlh
Banned
You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Steam is a form of DRM.zythyl said:
I'm not going to justify the rest of your post with a direct response, because it's mostly just blind fanboy ramblings - and I say this as someone who is known to worship the ground upon which Valve walks - but on the DRM thing you are factually incorrect.
Heavy's Sandvich
Member
No Boss?
No wonder they miss all their deadlines.
No wonder they miss all their deadlines.
hamchan said:
Exactly. This is what I'm trying to say. I've read to many horror stories.
I'm just concerned about my rights as a consumer and stuff that i paid for should be mine forever. I have never had an issue, but its always in the back of my mind when thinking about Steam.
Glass Rebel
Member
I'm glad that the only problem I ever had with a DD platform was not being able to pay with my CC on D2D. Been using Steam, Impulse, GreenManGaming and GetGames without problem.