Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Steam needs to stop asking its customers to fix its problems

rockpapershotgun.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 61 posts

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

#41

Post by oblio »

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?

Ah, the good ole, "I could write that in a weekend" :)

Steam has a:

- bundled web browser

- a messaging client with a decent set of features

- the whole "simple distribution product"

- probably tons of other things I'm forgetting right now

- and everything included is obviously network facing, ergo vulnerabilities, ergo security patches

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

#42

Post by kelvin0 »

I've been using Steam for many years and I play 5-10 hours a week. I simply find it great, to purchase games and play them (unlike EA origin and all it's clones out there, last time I checked)

The way I decide to purchase a game is simple: 1) I see/read a review about a game 2) If it piques my interest I go check out some videos and read a few more reviews 3) Add it to my wishlist 4) Purchase it when it's on 'special'

Finally, I almost never buy games unless they are at least 1 year old (save a few exceptions). This article seems mostly to have a contention about new releases and the 'suggestions' made by Steam (which I almost never look at anyways).

Hope this can help others with their Steam purchases.

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

#43

Post by elcapitan »

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.

Wouldn't that just motivate developers to hand out lots of achievements early and often (lets say with 4 levels, 75% in the first level, 15% in the second, 5% in the last two each), so that the people who play the game even just a few hours "recommend" the game by the high number of achievements?

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

#44

Post by elcapitan »

chrisdbaldwin wrote: post #36
striking wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trading cards are part of the Steam economy. It's a money-making ploy. I don't know if it works or not, but it probably does. If they dropped everything that isn't about selling games to players (Steam Matchmaking, social features, the Steam economy especially wrt CS:GO and Dota) I don't think Valve would be able to sell and host games as cheaply as it does, and I think more people would pirate games rather than…

Ding ding ding! Each one of those trading cards facilitates trade. When there is more trade, there are more transactions for valve to skim. It's simple broker economics, and it works great for everyone involved.

Except for the people who get annoyed by a message in Steam for every new achievement for jumping from platform a to b (like me).

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

#45

Post by slantyyz »

I understand that the reviews and discoverability are legit problems for smaller developers trying to sell their games, but I have to wonder what percentage of people using Steam are simply "in and out" customers who are looking for the known titles anyways. Those people (like me) don't care so much about user reviews or discoverability.

I'm an "in and out" customer - I love games but I basically only buy big name titles (old behaviour from my console days). I know I'm missing out on some other great titles, but I only have a limited number of hours to put into games.

The only time I might get a lesser known game is when it got a lot of buzz outside of Steam, but the most likely scenario is via a heavily discounted bundle that contains a big name title that interested me.

Of the ~100 games in my Steam library, only about 20% are games I specifically wanted the buy. The rest were basically freebies that came along for the ride.

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

#46

Post by Retric »

ramy_d wrote: post #37
mjolk wrote: post #23

Core complaints of article (please add any that I missed): 1. Steam receives dozens of releases a day and it's difficult for developers/publishers to make their title stand-out without performing marketing. 2. Author perceives that Steam's display algorithm results in display of outliers (very good/bad). 3. Very low quality titles are released/being sold by Steam. 4. Reviews are a very poor metric as reviewers can be…

Asking review sites to sift through the dredges in the spirit of "more business is better!" is naive. Jimquisition comments regularly on this and it has turned into a longstanding and ever constant critique of Valve and its "Whatever goes" attitude to getting on their Steam platform. At 20 or 30 new games _a day_ consumers don't have time to go on review websites and see what's on the "do not touch list". What a monu…

Paying someone 10$ an hour to do a quick look at a game for 2 hours * 30 new games a day ~= 220k/year, double that to pay for games and your looking at ~450k/year which is not free, but that expensive either.

Really this could stand on it's own as a product either as a review site or an industry group that supports several review sites.

PS: An yes that seems like a high estimate the average is less than 20$/game and most of this junk does not need 2 hours.

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

#47

Post by Retric »

researcher11 wrote: post #38
mrskeltal wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you recommend some readings for developers who aren't familiar with search science?

It's basically the union of Information Retreival, Big Data, and Machine Learning. There is a lot of good and bad info out there. It's best to tailor your learning around a problem so you can get feedback on what works. Building bespoke search engines is expensive and often not worth it until the problem is big enough. Machine Learned optimization is even more expensive. So in the likely instance that your problem is…

Page rank was very useful when they started, 19 years ago. It was killed by their own success as normal people stopped posting link sites, and bad actors added their own.

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

#48

Post by michaelt »

Retric wrote: post #46
ramy_d wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asking review sites to sift through the dredges in the spirit of "more business is better!" is naive. Jimquisition comments regularly on this and it has turned into a longstanding and ever constant critique of Valve and its "Whatever goes" attitude to getting on their Steam platform. At 20 or 30 new games _a day_ consumers don't have time to go on review websites and see what's on the "do not touch list". What a monu…

Paying someone 10$ an hour to do a quick look at a game for 2 hours * 30 new games a day ~= 220k/year, double that to pay for games and your looking at ~450k/year which is not free, but that expensive either. Really this could stand on it's own as a product either as a review site or an industry group that supports several review sites. PS: An yes that seems like a high estimate the average is less than 20$/game and…

Well, the article says the guy found three broken games in 30 minutes. Assuming Valve's reviewers took three times that, 30 minutes of testing per game, it'd still only cost them $55k - less than one developer's salary. Hell, they could charge $10 to list a game, and make a healthy profit out of it!

Valve wouldn't have to pay for the games - vendors let retailers inspect their product for free /all the time/.

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

#49

Post by superduper36 »

researcher11 wrote: post #38
mrskeltal wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you recommend some readings for developers who aren't familiar with search science?

It's basically the union of Information Retreival, Big Data, and Machine Learning. There is a lot of good and bad info out there. It's best to tailor your learning around a problem so you can get feedback on what works. Building bespoke search engines is expensive and often not worth it until the problem is big enough. Machine Learned optimization is even more expensive. So in the likely instance that your problem is…

What do you think about using Watson's Discovery service (contextual search)?

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

#50

Post by SixSigma »

kelvin0 wrote: post #42

I've been using Steam for many years and I play 5-10 hours a week. I simply find it great, to purchase games and play them (unlike EA origin and all it's clones out there, last time I checked) The way I decide to purchase a game is simple: 1) I see/read a review about a game 2) If it piques my interest I go check out some videos and read a few more reviews 3) Add it to my wishlist 4) Purchase it when it's on 'special…

try Gog.com
Post reply on HN