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RPS: Steam needs to stop asking its customers to fix its problems
- Thread starter Renekton
- Start date
Chairmanchuck
Member
I mean pages like the Activity page, profile, Greenlight, badges etc.
They are still using the old, dark blue design, while the shop page and the Account page are using the newer, light blue design with the text in a light blue "box" and stuff like that.
While the account page has unique headers, I don't really agree that there's a notable degree of incongruity in general. I'd lump in the badge page with the About page, though -- too much grey.
I wonder if there'll be another facelift when/if the rumoured client releases.
This. I don't go to amazon to figure out what I want to buy. I go there to buy what I know I want to buy. They're just a marketplace. Why do people have such a hard time applying this concept to steam?
xeroborn55
Member
Philosophically, I guess I understand Valve's stance on their platform. If they were to hire curators then they would be subject to the community's wrath when the curators do something they don't agree with. By crowdsourcing Steam curation, they can basically say, "Well, this is what YOU ALL voted for. You deal with it."
I think my biggest pet peeve with Steam at the moment is the inane 'personalized' game picks. Maybe its just me, but I don't go to Steam to browse. The Steam marketplace being a wild-west of garbage games means I'm not going to buy something I've never heard of.
I still think Steam is awesome and by far the best digital delivery platform, but its hard not to wonder, with how much money Valve must be pulling in, exactly what the hell they are doing up there in WA.
I think my biggest pet peeve with Steam at the moment is the inane 'personalized' game picks. Maybe its just me, but I don't go to Steam to browse. The Steam marketplace being a wild-west of garbage games means I'm not going to buy something I've never heard of.
I still think Steam is awesome and by far the best digital delivery platform, but its hard not to wonder, with how much money Valve must be pulling in, exactly what the hell they are doing up there in WA.
Even before origin came to be a thing I didn't quite like steam I guess since the slow interface and community for the games were all what gets banned instantly here on gaf.
JoshuaJSlone
Member
If enough people were adding corgi tags to games, it would do that. But to list every single one someone has added would be chaos.
If you intentionally look for garbage, Steam is going to be good at showing you garbage.
If you like good video games, you'll see the good ones.
It is not the slightest bit difficult to find good games on Steam. Valve likes to show you games that they think you'll like, because you're more likely to spend money on them.
So unless you're specifically looking to wallow through all of the trash, Steam surfaces games that have good reviews, games that are popular, games that are recommended by your friends and curators, and games that are similar to ones you've already played.
It doesn't even matter if most of the games on the service are bad, just like it doesn't matter if most of the songs on iTunes or most of the books on Kindle are bad.
Nobody says "I'm gonna go through all of the products that were recently released on Amazon" and then complains that they're not seeing what they want.
If you like good video games, you'll see the good ones.
It is not the slightest bit difficult to find good games on Steam. Valve likes to show you games that they think you'll like, because you're more likely to spend money on them.
So unless you're specifically looking to wallow through all of the trash, Steam surfaces games that have good reviews, games that are popular, games that are recommended by your friends and curators, and games that are similar to ones you've already played.
It doesn't even matter if most of the games on the service are bad, just like it doesn't matter if most of the songs on iTunes or most of the books on Kindle are bad.
Nobody says "I'm gonna go through all of the products that were recently released on Amazon" and then complains that they're not seeing what they want.
John Walker's next article, right there.
Refunds did kill the good sales.
That wasn't the reasoning for changing the way sales worked
Well I was going to post my thoughts on this, but you've summed my view up well already. Steam isn't perfect, but content discovery has been pretty good for me. I rarely buy anything on the front page or queues anymore, but that's mostly due to already having an enormous backlog of quality titles to finish.
I understand that there is no perfect solution, but at the very least we need a solution preventing developers who steal assets, re-release the same game under different names multiple times and games that celebrate bigotry and hate-speech.
Finding a way to prevent such titles doesn't seem too tasking for a corporation like Valve. However, all the systems they deployed so far haven't prevented any of that and what they proposed doesn't seem like a proper solution.
The fundamental issue here is that some people are dicks. Releasing a physical product mostly weeds these people out, because the initial outlay is so much, unless you're rich or very dedicated. However, digital product is varying degrees of "free" to produce. So the barrier to entry for racist/sexist/homophobic people is wayyyyy lower.
This is an internet-wide issue, to some degree or another - I'm sure neo-Nazis have self-published ebooks, for instance, and Twitter is fantastic at propagating awful ideas - but because people expect stores to have some degree of control, people expect Valve to control what releases on their store.
To be sure, they do to an extent, but their policing isn't enough. Just like Amazon's policing of Hillary Clinton books I mentioned previously isn't enough.
With luck, Steam Direct will do a lot to counter the lower barrier of entry to wankers and dicks. But it's a slow process.
Late edit:
Was in two-minds about posting this, but it's an interesting thread. The whole thing is worth a read, starting with the somewhat amusing:
https://twitter.com/retroremakes/status/831862346058436608
And Rob's article on Abundance, which is linked to in the Twitter-thread.
Taliban Stan
Member
I always took a cynical approach when they made an announcement that boiled down to you know that thing we used to have to spend money and time doing? Now you'll do it for free! with a "power to the people" slant.
Having said that, it's worked out decent enough and stuff like Wikipedia is proof that it's not like a universally flawed concept across the board.
Having said that, it's worked out decent enough and stuff like Wikipedia is proof that it's not like a universally flawed concept across the board.
Spiral Insanity
Banned
The only thing I still like about Steam is the amazing, magical Steam In-home Streaming. It works flawlessly.
CecilRousso
Member
Rob is great, the perfect counterpoint to John Walker who seems to be negative towards most thing as a default reaction.
ArtHands
Thinks buying more servers can fix a bad patch
you can still get a refund if you have legitimate performance problems in this case.
Superkewl
Member
Same here. Steam has become a total shitshow.
LinkSlayer64
Member
Good read. Really gets to the meat of the issue. I agree with him whole heartedly.
You guys might want to actually use the thing instead of leaving it for years and claiming it's a shitshow despite not having it used since significant improvements have been made.
To be fair, the client isn't great. It's certainly not a shitshow, but I do everything except for actual buying of games through browser. And I don't even use Enhanced Steam, which greatly improves the browser experience (I like keeping my plugins to a minimum).
Edit: I feel the client needs an overhaul, but I can't think of how to do it whilst keeping all the functionality intact.
Huge Succeeded
Banned
Do you use Steam
old manatee
Banned
I was an insane Valve fan for like a decade, but I'm really bummed out about the direction they took. Everything they do feels exploitive now.
Like charging you to play online?
Not having a functional refund system?
Not developing actual free to play games where the only thing you pay for are cosmetics?
Seriously, if people think Valve is exploitative, I hope they're not using consoles at the same time...
Nabs
Member
Yeah man, me too.
Family Sharing
Proper Refunds
Steam Controller + Controller API that supports 3rd party controllers
In-Home Streaming + Steam Link + Broadcasting
SteamVR/Vive + OpenVR
Opening the doors for more games and experiences
Discovery Update
I could go on. Terrible.
Rob's article is the right one, I feel. You can have garbage exist; it's up to choice if its event discovered. Discovery is the whole problem.
As a note, I think Steam's crusty old interface is what's holding a lot of this back. They haven't done much to rethink their UX to deal with the absolute deluge of games.
As a note, I think Steam's crusty old interface is what's holding a lot of this back. They haven't done much to rethink their UX to deal with the absolute deluge of games.
Yeah, Amazon has way more products than Steam ever will, but it never feels like I'm overwhelmed or can't find what I want. I think I would be very happy if Valve just copied Amazon's user-experience in its entirety, to be honest.
good lord what a nightmare. Someone please save me.
Bam there it is. They should provide the support level of a multibillion dollar company
Good. A couple of games have been pulled, after the fact. But it would have been amazing if steam had refused to post the recent Batman game. Or any game which eats save files. Which for some reason, has plagued the industry a few years running.
Have you considered that the people who are into Steam are into it because it provides lots of features they want, and they agree with Valve's stance on what a PC marketplace should be?
I mean, you say you'd rather use Origin, I say that Origin offered none of my top 10 favourite PC games in 2016, and even if it did it wouldn't have Steam features I use daily (like in-home streaming or controller remapping).
Conversely, I used to be extremely annoyed at most Steam fans and the arbitrary store selection (you can even check back on GAF about that), but lately Valve has been making all the right moves from my perspective.
You're asking Valve to do, say, Ubisoft's job for them. You get that, right? You get that, for example, AssCreed save files being deleted is something that Ubisoft's QA should've picked-up on, right? And you get that even if Valve had denied the offending AssCreed games a release until the bug was fixed, the games would still be available on UPlay, various other stores selling UPlay activatable keys, and physically, in stores such as Game.
You do understand that, right?
I mean, certainly in the case of save-file eating, it's not like the dev/pub is wanting to release it in such a state, so they're already going to be trying to fix it.
Fimbulvetr
Member
On the subject of patches, GOG implemented a patch rollback scheme about a year and a half ago. That seems like a pretty ideal way of handling the issue of patches breaking games, and it doesn't seem to have any downsides for the user.
Often times this is extended on a case by case basis if the Developer/Publisher is doing something egregious.
The described situation is highly unlikely in a game that you have significant hours in that also clearly has a high enough level of quality that you declined a refund during the initial window.
Publishers/Developers are motivated to keep existing titles at a high level of quality as the market will continue to purchase games over an extended period of time.
Valve allows developers to do this very conveniently and i na controlled manner using public branches (and many developers use that), but I agree that it would still be nice to have a generic fallback available to users.
family_guy
Member
This is why I'm against an all digital future. Some of the crap you see on Steam wouldn't fly with local retailers. They wouldn't bother stocking it. Imagine if you went to Gamestop and there were thousands of games on the shelves and what you want is buried under boxes of crap games. Physical distribution helps cut down on some of the BS. Even if you decide to buy the digital version that's fine, but at least someone willing to go through the expense of physically shipping their game is somewhat invested in its quality. Anything goes digitally.
zombieshavebrains
I have not used cocaine
People will complain no matter what you do. If the point of curation is to find that ONE game that will be your GOAT then I guess you're missing out. User reviews/scores have saved me tons of money. It really isn't that hard to find things you might like. Or as some put it "wade through the shit".
Just as a personal example there is no way Banished would exist in a brick-and-mortar world.
And then we get people complaining that there's no B-tier anymore and that there's too much shovelware.
If one cares even a little bit about smaller games there's no way for most of them to exist without digital.
I've seen the sentiment that Valve is some nefarious corporation that exploits their customers with their market dominance and abusive micro-transactions expressed quite a few times on this forum. And I can't help but laugh at the absurdity of it all.
Of all the leaders, platform-holders, and large publishers of this industry, Valve is one of the few that pushes for an open-platform. They insist on fair competition, which is why they refuse to make exclusive deals, timed or otherwise. They allow free use of their APIs and software, without forcing developer to even publish on Steam. Developers and other storefronts can sell their products, taking advantage of all of Steam's features, but without having to pay Valve any royalties. They did a significant portion of the research and development for VR, and instead of profiting off of what could have been a tightly controlled market, they gave it all away for free to benefit the industry. They realized some users wanted to have the option of playing at a couch, and developed Big Picture mode, SteamOS, Steam Link, in-home streaming, and the Steam controller to add more value. They developed the Steam controller and its software, and although it competes against their own product, they now support just about every controller. I could go on...
They compete by making people want to use Steam due to its features.
What kind of reality to these sentiments come from where console platform-holders and most of the large publishers exist?
I was going to say "Yeah, they should", since in... 2014, I think, I wasn't able to buy anything from Steam thanks to a client error screwing my checkout. Months and months and months went by when all their customer service told me was "check with your credit card company".
But looks like the article is focusing on another matter entirely.
But looks like the article is focusing on another matter entirely.
I don't see how? Tons of amazing games get surfaced and talked about on Steam. Good games will fail in all markets but Steam is still a great place to find success. Moreso than consoles imo.
EatinOlives
Member
I really don't think basic certification requirements such as "does your game launch?" and "do the controls work?" constitute needless overreach from Valve. When people say "I don't want my Steam to be a walled garden!" I feel like people are really not arguing this in an honest manner. I'm all for employing a small team of people at Valve to oversee if the games in question actually boot, or work, or can function for 20 minutes. That's not to say they'll start culling games for not being good. There's a certification process already in place for the PlayStation 4 and there's still putrid garbage being released on that platform as well, but at least it launches. You can still have your shit games clogging up recommended lists if that suits your definition of "unwalled garden".
There's a secondary question as to whether the amount of un-launchable games is a legitimate issue within steam, though. I feel this issue and the "indie devs have a really hard time being seen" issue are not quite as related as John Walker thinks. Even if you cut out the un-launchable games from the store we're still gonna have new releases that see only an hour in the front page.
There's a secondary question as to whether the amount of un-launchable games is a legitimate issue within steam, though. I feel this issue and the "indie devs have a really hard time being seen" issue are not quite as related as John Walker thinks. Even if you cut out the un-launchable games from the store we're still gonna have new releases that see only an hour in the front page.
Yeah, but he probably meant "REAL" games
most naysayers just want a AAA store with some of them liking indie millionsellers to also be featured. But nobody can tell us how those very good indie games could have been discovered if no curated store would "stock" them.
Not even counting all those exemplary indie games that only sell some ten thousand units.
You know, people usually prefer physical because of the whole "being able to still play and don't worry it will be pulled in the future".
You seem to like it for the exact opposite? You're against a service where you can get everything you want without relying on third parties deciding what they must have on stock and display directly to you? You hate choice that much? I don't understand.
hardcastlemccormick
Banned
I would use GOG more often if it contained more of the games I wanted to play. As it stands, their curation system knocks out a ton of indies that I value deeply. There's no way I could use it exclusively, or hell, even primarily even if I do value their ethical stances on regional pricing and DRM.
Humble DRM free games or itch.io are pretty good on the selection front, but I like having a client that manages my games.
Steam won my loyalty by having the unparalleled library. There's no other platform with the features and the wide variety of games. Nobody else is even close. I wish they were.
Humble DRM free games or itch.io are pretty good on the selection front, but I like having a client that manages my games.
Steam won my loyalty by having the unparalleled library. There's no other platform with the features and the wide variety of games. Nobody else is even close. I wish they were.
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