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Steam needs to stop asking its customers to fix its problems

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Re: Steam needs to stop asking its customers to fix its problems

#11

Post by legitster »

elthran wrote: post #4
legitster wrote: post #2

I don't get what the ask is. Steam should be even more heavy handed? They should hire people to playtest other people's games? I don't see any alternative reality where they have already taken these actions and are less hated for them.

I think the author wants to suggest a solution where anyone can submit a game, but there is still some sort of quality check before it goes on sale. Currently, we have floods of garbage hitting Steam, with no curation at all. Pre-Greenlight, Steam was a closed shop that was hard to get into. What is needed is a healthy balance, that doesn't have zero chances for an indie game to be seen because it's buried under all…

But back in the day people used to hate on Steam because they were a closed shop that was hard to get into. So from their perspective they have to go from being unpopular one way to being unpopular another?

Re: Steam needs to stop asking its customers to fix its problems

#12

Post by falcolas »

gwbas1c wrote: post #5

Uhhhh... Steam needs a decent startup time. I only play computer games about once a month. When I click on the link on my desktop, Steam always takes 5-10 minutes to update itself. This is ridiculous. I never have this problem with games on my Nvidea Shield.

This particular problem is shared by every game distribution mechanism that exists. Xbox One, PS4, Steam, Origin, UPlay, all of them.

Even stand-alone installs (which are stupidly rare these days) auto-update themselves on first load.

Re: Steam needs to stop asking its customers to fix its problems

#13

Post by Cthulhu_ »

gwbas1c wrote: post #5

Uhhhh... Steam needs a decent startup time. I only play computer games about once a month. When I click on the link on my desktop, Steam always takes 5-10 minutes to update itself. This is ridiculous. I never have this problem with games on my Nvidea Shield.

How many updates does the Shield itself and the games on there get per month? I know Android automatically updates apps in the background, just like iOS; if you have Steam autostart in the background (which I do),the startup time becomes negligible and the updates unnoticeable.

But that's the benefits of PC gaming, you get the choice on whether or not to have things start up and keep updated in the background - and if you choose not to, you end up with a situation like that.

I think it's pretty cool that they have a development pipeline that allows for frequent releases.

Re: Steam needs to stop asking its customers to fix its problems

#14

Post by falcolas »

vocatus_gate wrote: post #6
JamesBaxter wrote: post #3

I think you could use Steam Achivements and playtime to recommend games to people. If I've played a game to completion on the highest difficulty presumably I like it. Find me other games that people with the achievement also play and have the equivalent achievement on and you've got something basic.

Max or close-to-max achievements for a game also is an indicator of skill, could be used to weight a games scores more towards "recommended by skilled players" vs. "recommended by casual players" ?

I would have a hard time equating achievement coimpletionism as skill, to me they are more of a measure of time spent in a game. Yes, some achievements in some games do require a mediocrum of skill, but most of them do not; they're used primarily as a form of feedback for the developer on how people play their game, and secondarily as a lure for completionists who want the points on their profile.

Re: Steam needs to stop asking its customers to fix its problems

#15

Post by smacktoward »

JamesBaxter wrote: post #3

I think you could use Steam Achivements and playtime to recommend games to people. If I've played a game to completion on the highest difficulty presumably I like it. Find me other games that people with the achievement also play and have the equivalent achievement on and you've got something basic.

Yeah, that's the real weirdness here -- that Steam/Valve can't come up with some way to leverage the absolutely staggering amount of data they must have on how people play the games in their Steam library to filter the wheat from the chaff.

Re: Steam needs to stop asking its customers to fix its problems

#16

Post by Shivetya »

gwbas1c wrote: post #5

Uhhhh... Steam needs a decent startup time. I only play computer games about once a month. When I click on the link on my desktop, Steam always takes 5-10 minutes to update itself. This is ridiculous. I never have this problem with games on my Nvidea Shield.

I just wish to understand why they need an application update so often to what should be a simple distribution product. Do they hard code item availability or such?

Re: Steam needs to stop asking its customers to fix its problems

#17

Post by falcolas »

legitster wrote: post #2

I don't get what the ask is. Steam should be even more heavy handed? They should hire people to playtest other people's games? I don't see any alternative reality where they have already taken these actions and are less hated for them.

The ask was pretty clear to me: "Game is submitted to the store. Human plays game, finds it doesn’t work. Human emails developer and says, “This game doesn’t work, fix and resubmit.” Done."

Doesn't even have to be a human for some of the "does it launch on a sample of devices" tests.

You can't get your game onto XBox or PS without passing these kinds of basic checks, and this has an impact on the Valve brand. I'm just not sure Valve has someone in charge of ensuring that their brand is maintained.

Re: Steam needs to stop asking its customers to fix its problems

#18

Post by falcolas »

jessaustin wrote: post #7
elthran wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the author wants to suggest a solution where anyone can submit a game, but there is still some sort of quality check before it goes on sale. Currently, we have floods of garbage hitting Steam, with no curation at all. Pre-Greenlight, Steam was a closed shop that was hard to get into. What is needed is a healthy balance, that doesn't have zero chances for an indie game to be seen because it's buried under all…

Their flat structure, where people work on what they want - who wants to look after content curation? Are you asking, who wants to play video games for pay? One expects that someone could be found...

Personal Anecdote from a former videogame QA tester and min-spec discoverer: Playing video games as a job is not playing video games. It's software testing a GUI.

Basic "does it run on X platform" is even more boring (but more automatable).

Re: Steam needs to stop asking its customers to fix its problems

#19

Post by throwaway2048 »

legitster wrote: post #11
elthran wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the author wants to suggest a solution where anyone can submit a game, but there is still some sort of quality check before it goes on sale. Currently, we have floods of garbage hitting Steam, with no curation at all. Pre-Greenlight, Steam was a closed shop that was hard to get into. What is needed is a healthy balance, that doesn't have zero chances for an indie game to be seen because it's buried under all…

But back in the day people used to hate on Steam because they were a closed shop that was hard to get into. So from their perspective they have to go from being unpopular one way to being unpopular another?

different people want different things you cannot satisfy everyone at once.

Re: Steam needs to stop asking its customers to fix its problems

#20

Post by spatulon »

Shivetya wrote: post #16
gwbas1c wrote: post #5

Uhhhh... Steam needs a decent startup time. I only play computer games about once a month. When I click on the link on my desktop, Steam always takes 5-10 minutes to update itself. This is ridiculous. I never have this problem with games on my Nvidea Shield.

I just wish to understand why they need an application update so often to what should be a simple distribution product. Do they hard code item availability or such?

There have been 12 updates in the last 12 months - do you really consider that to be "so often"?

Anyway, there's a detailed changelog[1] for all the updates, so you can have a look at the kinds of things they change.

[1] http://www.steampowered.com/platform/update_history/index.ph...

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