Screw Steam (The Jimquisition)

[ShiningBash]

From a youtube comment, in handy format, the difference between Steam and Epic:

The Epic store has:

no cloud saves
no user profiles
no user reviews (unless opted in by devs)
no forums
no friend activity
no mod distribution
no groups
no item trading
no anti cheat support
no library sharing
no library sorting
no streaming to other devices
no broadcasting
no screenshot sharing/capture
no controller support
no user created guides
no wishlists
no automatic refunds
no achievements
no 3rd party keys

Steam has:
A lot of trash games, and some problematic ones that get removed.

It should be painfully obvious to anyone with common sense that Jim is being anti-consumer here. Praising Epic is woefully misguided.

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And this post is why those Steam flaws you listed at the end will never change. Steam has been around for over a decade, yet they haven't figured out how to lower the amount of trash or to prevent "problematic" games from appearing on the platform.

Despite this failure, any time someone brings up valid criticisms of Steam, there's a strong defensive response. None of those items on the Epic store list of shortcomings is insurmountable, and so theoretically they could address them in the future. With Steam, it's impossible to envision them changing their approach unless there's a financial incentive, and it's not anti-consumer to sigh in relief at the appearance of some external pressure.

 

[ThereAreFourNaan]

You and Valve favor the former. That's fine. But you and Valve have to own the criticism of that choice. Every "bad" game that Steam lets through is a choice on their part. They want people to just let them off the hook for those. I will not, just as I'm prepared to defend my position and choice for tighter curation. That's my point.

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In 2018, an average of 24 games were released per day, so hiring maybe 6 to 8 staff to deal with day to day curation would guarantee that Rape Day 2 wouldn't make it through, unless it was some kind of elaborately hidden thing that only shows up after 5 hours of gameplay in an otherwise normal game. It's not the case that you need to substantially raise the curation bar in order to correctly enforce policy decisions. You do need to invest in more humans reviewing things, but not by a dramatic margin.

And this post is why those Steam flaws you listed at the end will never change. Steam has been around for over a decade, yet they haven't figured out how to lower the amount of trash or to prevent "problematic" games from appearing on the platform.

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They weren't trying to "reduce the trash", that's a relatively recent problem. Greenlight is a ~2013 thing. By 2017 they'd realised it was a problem and moved towards their latest system (which didn't actually help really). Initially people were elated at the idea of letting in unknown developers and anyone with creative talent. Steam was well aware that trash would start getting in, the calculation was that they prefer the diamonds in the rough to have a chance, not really caring if a bunch of low quality games nobody will ever buy also made it through. Hence they've been investing heavily in features that help algorithmically hide the stuff nobody likes and boost the stuff people does like, adding curator lists, adding discovery queues, showing you what your friends are playing on the store page more visibly, etc. The actual number of pure gutter trash games that show up on an average person's steam page is extremely minimal compared to the staggering amount of them actually released on the store. Unless you sort by most recently released games, you don't see 99% of it, because it's already been hidden.

"Steam will never change" is a completely inexplicable thing to say, this whole situation has been around maybe 4-5 years of the 17 years Steam has been on the market, and Steam has radically changed over that 17 years, multiple times. To this day they're adding new features and revising existing ones. 2 years ago they removed Greenlight and added the new curation system. Next year they might change it again, or remove it, or do anything else. They're constantly changing!

 

[Deleted member 48897]

You mean Artifact's card trading and not the Steam Trading Card shit right? The market launched with the game.

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I actually do mean the Steam Trading Card shit. Artifact, from how it was described to me, seems to have been built around trying to create a distinct game using the same sort of monetization strategy. It is certainly different from how most free-to-play games do it, but not in a good way.

 

[Deleted member 10601]

I don't agree with this statement.

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Did you read my post? I said "Even if you filter out all the trash...." . It was hypothetical.

 

[SatelliteOfLove]

Spoiler

its funny, those who specifically said they haven't watched the video bring the most salient posts. Instead of, well, those gleeful over another "opportunity" for the above.

 

[Deleted member 1759]

This is why "WTF Is" was such a helpful series because it not only informed a purchase but promoted lesser known games, some of which sold better just due to the outreach of TB's channel. Its a damn shame Jim wouldnt try to at least carry on some sort of format like that if he believes theres good games under all the shit ones.

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Man, I miss WTF Is. I didn't always agree with TB but that was a great series. It really is a shame that no one picked up the format.

 

[Era of not Yakuza]

Jim is angry about bad games been available but you can always refund if the game is shit

 

[Echo]

Yup, that's exactly what I said. yougotme.gif

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Right. So maybe instead of dodging the question you could clarify? What exactly is good about Epic's brand of competition? Why should I as a consumer care about Epic? """""""""competition"""""""""

Etc...

Do you honestly even play on PC? Can't say I see you much, if at all, in the majority of big PC threads... Curious why you'd even pretend to give a shit.

 

[collige]

They should offer an option to play as it downloads! (or allow some games to have this option)

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I think they briefly tried enabling it with some Mortal Kombat game but it ended up being completely broken iirc. I do agree that it would be a great feature to have, though if different stores have different standards for how to make the feature work it could end up being a nightmare for devs.

 

[Ge0force]

It's better than allowing a game called "Rape Day" and a game about shooting school children. Yes, I hope they succeed too.

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Oh come on. First, Rape Day wasn't allowed, the game was never available on Steam. Second, how is this school shooting game any worse than shooting innocent civilians in a mainstream CoD game? Or ripping people apart in Mortal Kombats fatalities? Both games seem to pass curation just fine...

 

[Deleted member 29682]

Jim is angry about bad games been available but you can always refund if the game is shit

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You don't even have to give a reason. As long as you're not clearly abusing the system you can refund valid purchases pretty frequently for any (or no) reason.

 

[eonden]

And this post is why those Steam flaws you listed at the end will never change. Steam has been around for over a decade, yet they haven't figured out how to lower the amount of trash or to prevent "problematic" games from appearing on the platform.

Despite this failure, any time someone brings up valid criticisms of Steam, there's a strong defensive response. None of those items on the Epic store list of shortcomings is insurmountable, and so theoretically they could address them in the future. With Steam, it's impossible to envision them changing their approach unless there's a financial incentive, and it's not anti-consumer to sigh in relief at the appearance of some external pressure.

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Steam has done a lot of changes in discoverability and preventing exploits from devs to improve the chances of legit indies to rise to the top. You not seeing those things does not mean that Steam hasnt actively worked on those issues.

Again, even if all the "trash" were to be taken out, you would end up with 100+ new good games a month (and more than 5k good to high quality games in the backlog)! That is too large of a number for each individual game to easily have its own time in the sun.

 

[Deleted member 32374]

In 2018, an average of 24 games were released per day, so hiring maybe 6 to 8 staff to deal with day to day curation would guarantee that Rape Day 2 wouldn't make it through, unless it was some kind of elaborately hidden thing that only shows up after 5 hours of gameplay in an otherwise normal game. It's not the case that you need to substantially raise the curation bar in order to correctly enforce policy decisions. You do need to invest in more humans reviewing things, but not by a dramatic margin.

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That actually sounds pretty reasonable. Then again they'd need to actually play through / inspect it a little. But it's doable.

Valve is so frustrating about this. You can be the free expression capital of gaming without taking some heat. Their press release on removing rape day was lame.

Valve has shown they eventually listen to feedback but it always takes an uproar for them to do so.

 

[tmarg]

They should offer an option to play as it downloads! (or allow some games to have this option)

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I don't know of any large scale platforms that do that. It's all games with their own launchers, or platforms like battle.net with only a few games. I'm guessing it isn't viable for a platform like Steam. But I'm no expert, and if someone does manage it, Valve is a pretty good bet for who that would be.

 

[Deleted member 25117]

Truly a galaxy brain take from Jim especially after his recent videos. It's like he is incapable of being consistent.

 

[Antrax]

In 2018, an average of 24 games were released per day, so hiring maybe 6 to 8 staff to deal with day to day curation would guarantee that Rape Day 2 wouldn't make it through, unless it was some kind of elaborately hidden thing that only shows up after 5 hours of gameplay in an otherwise normal game. It's not the case that you need to substantially raise the curation bar in order to correctly enforce policy decisions. You do need to invest in more humans reviewing things, but not by a dramatic margin.

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Again, this is "we'll just let all the right games in." No one is perfect, and so your company must decide; when (not if) your company gets it wrong, how do you get it wrong? Let in a bad game or block a good one?

 

[eonden]

I don't know of any large scale platforms that do that. It's all games with their own launchers, or platforms like battle.net with only a few games. I'm guessing it isn't viable for a platform like Steam. But I'm no expert, and if someone does manage it, Valve is a pretty good bet for who that would be.

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I think they briefly tried enabling it with some Mortal Kombat game but it ended up being completely broken iirc. I do agree that it would be a great feature to have, though if different stores have different standards for how to make the feature work it could end up being a nightmare for devs.

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I know, it sucked, they should try to bring it up again (not for me I have good internet connection but for others).

 

[BernardoOne]

I actually do mean the Steam Trading Card shit. Artifact, from how it was described to me, seems to have been built around trying to create a distinct game using the same sort of monetization strategy. It is certainly different from how most free-to-play games do it, but not in a good way.

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Do you mean a "much better way"? Because you can get all the cards for like 1/100th of what it would cost you in a F2P game. It's a very affordable card game. The only one with free phantom draft, too.

 

[Deleted member 29682]

I don't know of any large scale platforms that do that. It's all games with their own launchers, or platforms like battle.net with only a few games. I'm guessing it isn't viable for a platform like Steam. But I'm no expert, and if someone does manage it, Valve is a pretty good bet for who that would be.

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As I understand it, it works because a large proportion of a download size is different textures for different graphics options. It'll download the basic stuff first but you won't be able to tweak certain graphics options until it's fully downloaded. I could be wrong though.

 

[BernardoOne]

It's better than allowing a game called "Rape Day" and a game about shooting school children. Yes, I hope they succeed too.

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Rape Day was never allowed and wouldn't ever go through review.
There wasn't any game about shooting school children. The game you're remembering was shovelware trash that used default adult models from free asset stores.

 

[collige]

I actually do mean the Steam Trading Card shit. Artifact, from how it was described to me, seems to have been built around trying to create a distinct game using the same sort of monetization strategy. It is certainly different from how most free-to-play games do it, but not in a good way.

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I'm not super clued in to what exactly people do with those cards, but for Artifact the main difference between it's monetization strategy and Hearthstone's is that the latter sets a fixed price for "selling" cards (exactly 25% of their cost) while in Artifact you can sell your cards directly to other users while Valve takes a cut off the top. I don't really think that's the main problem with the game, but that's way off topic. My idea in bringing it up in this thread is to point out that a hypothetical Valve curation employee, in their process of deciding whether or not to let in a game, would almost certainly consider a game's appeal to the average player, which require a reading of the video game market that Valve clearly lacked.

 

[ghostcrew]

I don't know of any large scale platforms that do that. It's all games with their own launchers, or platforms like battle.net with only a few games. I'm guessing it isn't viable for a platform like Steam. But I'm no expert, and if someone does manage it, Valve is a pretty good bet for who that would be.

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Uplay does it. I started playing Far Cry 5 while it was still downloading when I bought it on uPlay recently.

 

[Kurdel]

This is definitely a chapter in the plarform wars I did not see coming

 

[Deleted member 48897]

There wasn't any game about shooting school children. The game you're remembering was shovelware trash that used default adult models from free asset stores.

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After reading like 4 threads on this site about how aging up characters to get over socially unacceptable territory on this forum that have been active in the last week or two, the most this gets from me in the context of the game in question is a dismissive shrug

 

[Mistouze]

Steam is so fucking bad at some basic stuff, like, not leaving their forums open to nazis or curating the games they sell like human beings with reasoning capacité that despite owning 100+ games on the platform, I still want to see Epic fuck them up a bit.

 

[Mbolibombo]

I find it very funny (or sad really) that the some people boycotting THQ Nordiq, are all defensive about Steam. A service hosting nazi, rape and aids games.

I've had my issues with Jim before.. mostly because he's quite too much at times. But he's really spot on here.

 

[Ge0force]

Jim is angry about bad games been available but you can always refund if the game is shit

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Exactly.

To be clear: Valve should check every game on illegal content. But they shouldn't decide what's a good game and what not. Steam offers plenty of features against shitty games, including refunds and user reviews. They've also changed how trading cards work to prevent abuse. I'm not sure what else they can do without compromising the open nature of pc gaming.

 

[Griffith]

Did you read my post? I said "Even if you filter out all the trash...." . It was hypothetical.

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Like I said before, it's a bit of a tall order to try to solve Steam's curation problem with little to no data for free on a forum post but there are a few things that would help:

• have stricter standards of quality (something beyond the game doesn't crash and you can reach the menu screen)
• remove games that falsely advertise features or have very misleading descriptions or screenshots
• pay Steam curators and improve the features/tools available to them
• allow Curators to point out games they feel do not hold up to minimum standards and act on it rather than waiting for it to blow up on Youtube
• use the user metadata for more transparent and intelligent suggestions (Example: Users that played Pillars of Eternity for over 40 hours also played an average of 36 hours of Tyranny)

 

[bricewgilbert]

Is there a way to fix this? Is there a way to allow games from Robert Yang (which they didn't before the "free for all" change) and still manage to avoid these troll submissions? Do you allow them to have a page, but not show in search results or on the front page? How do you decide what is a troll then?

I mean this is a pretty silly response for me to give, but I feel like I would know what to allow and not allow, but Steam isn't me. Steam isn't us. It's a company that can very easily be a black box with no good justification for banning and no recourse from the developer, so I kind of feel like allowing everything that is legal in your country is maybe the best option, and yet they remove this game from public pressure, but what does that say for games that legitimate in my eyes? What if some right wing group starts complaining about an LGBT game? Or a pro Palestine game? Would Valve respond to that pressure? Facebook and other places have.

The obvious answer is that a closed platform that is run by a private company as a storefront by it's very nature will never get this right. They have to pick a lane, and like I said before I think I lean toward the fully open one. That being said there are always ways to make what is actually surfaced to the front page and other areas better. That involves paying people though so I imagine they don't want to do that.

 

[eonden]

Like I said before, it's a bit of a tall order to try to solve Steam's curation problem with little to no data for free on a forum post but there are a few things that would help:

• remove games that falsely advertise features or have very misleading descriptions
• allow Curators to point out games they feel do not hold up to minimum standards and act on it rather than waiting for it to blow up on Youtube
• use the user metadata for more transparent and intelligent suggestions (Example: Users that played Pillars of Eternity for over 40 hours also played an average of 36 hours of Tyranny)

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They do all of these...

They have also steadily improved the features and tools for Steam curators! (I have also asked for them to introduce a small 3%referal cut for them if they influence the purchase for years).

 

[Reinhard]

Right. So maybe instead of dodging the question you could clarify? What exactly is good about Epic's brand of competition? Why should I as a consumer care about Epic? """""""""competition"""""""""

Etc...

Do you honestly even play on PC? Can't say I see you much, if at all, in the majority of big PC threads... Curious why you'd even pretend to give a shit.

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I have to wonder about people stanning for EGS when Steam offers so much more for consumers with actually useful features like universal game controller API, cloud saves, home streaming/family share, mod support, etc, and the biggest of all is allowing 3rd party sites to sell keys without Steam taking anything allowing for 12-25% discounts at game launch. It is probably mostly console players who don't like the fact that PC players can get game discounts at launch and all sorts of pro-consumer benefits that aren't found on consoles or require paying $20-60 a year for features like cloud saves and multiplayer...

 

[Ge0force]

My idea in bringing it up in this thread is to point out that a hypothetical Valve curation employee, in their process of deciding whether or not to let in a game, would almost certainly consider a game's appeal to the average player, which require a reading of the video game market that Valve clearly lacked.

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Steam is full of "niche" games with a smaller but very loyal fanbase. Denying games because they don't appeal to the "average" player is a terrible idea, that would disappoint millions of people.

 

[Madjoki]

Jim should turn his "let's dump on bad games on Steam" into a series that could be called, say, "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" where he looks at one new small game on Steam that he likes, a small game on Steam that's an utterly pointless asset flip, and a small game on steam that's noxious and hateful.

Plus, the most important thing is that with a title like that he could use a Western film motif, which means wearing leather pants and a cowboy hat!

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He said he does not play games on PC (apart from asset flips). So seems doubtful he's interested doing that (and clearly explains why steam recommends those games to him). And probably isn't what his audience watches either.

And this post is why those Steam flaws you listed at the end will never change. Steam has been around for over a decade, yet they haven't figured out how to lower the amount of trash or to prevent "problematic" games from appearing on the platform.

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Trash has been really a problem for a few years and Valve has tried to curb their profitability (without success though).

I don't know of any large scale platforms that do that. It's all games with their own launchers, or platforms like battle.net with only a few games. I'm guessing it isn't viable for a platform like Steam. But I'm no expert, and if someone does manage it, Valve is a pretty good bet for who that would be.

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Steam does kind of support this. But no games implement it currently. It's far from perfect though and maybe with better support someone would support it.
Afaik, only game that tried to use it was Mortal Kombat X, but they messed with release and it didn't work.

Of course feature has stupid design decisions like needing to start game before additional parts can be downloaded.

(In addition to this, Steam supported internet streaming for source engine games which worked like this, but wasn't applicable to all games)

I'm not super clued in to what exactly people do with those cards,

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Well, sell for extra money. Nothing beats free games.

 

[Professor Beef]

How do you feel about his thoughts on the Fighting Game genre?

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Jim Sterling participates in combat sports, friend. Who am I to question his knowledge of street fighting games?

 

[Jawmuncher]

This is what I want to see from both Steam and Epic

Epic

• Features to convince me that their launcher is worth moving over to
• A explanation on how their curation will work when they allow more games (I'm gonna be rather annoyed if their idea is to effectively ignore certain devs like GoG did)

My big worry with Epic is going to be slow on the uptake for new features and telling me the kind of games I want to play. The whole "Indie Devs get more of a cut" doesn't mean shit to me if it's not the indie devs on the smaller scale who actually need it. I love super giant games, but them getting more of a cut on their titles tht sell 200K+ doesn't mean as much as say one of my favorite horror indie devs who has a small fandom getting the same cut, but being denied that because Epic doesn't think they're a good fit for their platform.

Steam

• A Team to look-over anything being put on the store that's going under the "21+ rating"
• There should do more to promote devs on the platform. Have stuff like the weekly more pronounced. Similar to how PSN does Flash Sales.

The complaints on curation for steam i'm rather whatever on. Yes, they allow a lot on the platform. But that allows a lot of indie devs to be able to start somewhere with more possibility of success than sticking to just say itch.io. In general, the curation tools Steam currently uses do a good job of offering you what you want. The only time i'm running into asset flip games is when I go digging for them. So you're never really in a "the only games i'm seeing a trash" situation unless you force yourself into that. However, they could definitely do more in terms of getting rid of really bad stuff (like they did with rape day) without it needing to be a gaming headline to do so. That's by far their biggest issue with curation.


Overall, I prefer being able to find what will appeal to me with numerous tools (Current what steam does) over being TOLD what I like (This is currently what GoG does and potentially what Epic might do). The idea that the devs that actually need that bigger cut might be walled off from Epic absolutely bothers me more than anything else atm and I wish they'd just say what the case is there.

 

[ShiningBash]

In 2018, an average of 24 games were released per day, so hiring maybe 6 to 8 staff to deal with day to day curation would guarantee that Rape Day 2 wouldn't make it through, unless it was some kind of elaborately hidden thing that only shows up after 5 hours of gameplay in an otherwise normal game. It's not the case that you need to substantially raise the curation bar in order to correctly enforce policy decisions. You do need to invest in more humans reviewing things, but not by a dramatic margin.



They weren't trying to "reduce the trash", that's a relatively recent problem. Greenlight is a ~2013 thing. By 2017 they'd realised it was a problem and moved towards their latest system (which didn't actually help really). Initially people were elated at the idea of letting in unknown developers and anyone with creative talent. Steam was well aware that trash would start getting in, the calculation was that they prefer the diamonds in the rough to have a chance, not really caring if a bunch of low quality games nobody will ever buy also made it through. Hence they've been investing heavily in features that help algorithmically hide the stuff nobody likes and boost the stuff people does like, adding curator lists, adding discovery queues, showing you what your friends are playing on the store page more visibly, etc. The actual number of pure gutter trash games that show up on an average person's steam page is extremely minimal compared to the staggering amount of them actually released on the store. Unless you sort by most recently released games, you don't see 99% of it, because it's already been hidden.

"Steam will never change" is a completely inexplicable thing to say, this whole situation has been around maybe 4-5 years of the 17 years Steam has been on the market, and Steam has radically changed over that 17 years, multiple times. To this day they're adding new features and revising existing ones. 2 years ago they removed Greenlight and added the new curation system. Next year they might change it again, or remove it, or do anything else. They're constantly changing!

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When I accuse them of resisting change, I'm referring to games like Rape Day. If Rape Day makes it past the submission stage, something is wrong, and that's nowhere close to the only game that's on the same level of despicableness. Their statement afterwards made it very clear that they blocked the sale and removed it from platform after determining that the game posed unknown risks, i.e. unacceptable costs to Steam.

As you've catalogued, Steam has undergone significant evolution over the years, but their "everything is fine" approach to content is insane. The only way I see them changing this approach is if the ppl in charge decide that devs jumping ship to avoid association with truly awful games warrants a shift in policy.

 

[stan423321]

How often do you buy a game that's a decade old on Steam?


Sure, some games do keep selling year after year, but the vast majority don't. And Steam is such a mess at the moment that maybe a solution is to sunset the ability to purchase titles if proper curation will never be a thing on the platform.

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I don't know how old the games I buy are. I preferred buying old ones so that they need worse hardware to sing, but I didn't take out Excel to check it as I wasn't afraid of something like this before.

I don't see how delisting games en masse would help anyone with anything. All you're doing with that is replacing potential impulse buys mostly during late sales with (probably less, probably higher priced) potential impulse buys next to expiration date. If this is really a discovery thing, why are you going that far instead of just taking older games out of recommendations? And if it's not, then, with all due respect, what in the hell is it about?

Note. Devs could just release a "remaster" each period, so what this boils down to at the moment is making Steam Direct per-game fee recurring. The really poor devs would probably give up (see Llamasoft abandoning Apple App Store because keeping stuff up required Minter to keep paying Apple a per-developer fee AND buy another Mac).

 

[Griffith]

They do all of these...

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Hardly well enough. Friend Activity recommendations data is only featured on that page, AFAIK and it's also mostly unfiltered data based on hours played and "recommended". Nothing else. So much for a short and sweet indie game showing up on that list.

Maybe I'm wrong but how can I see recommendations for RPGs my friends played? Other that stumbling into the game's page and seeing "2 of your friends own this game".

They have also steadily improved the features and tools for Steam curators! (I have also asked for them to introduce a small 3%referal cut for them if they influence the purchase for years).

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I admit I haven't heard much from the Curator program since Totalbiscuit passed away because he was the only Curator I knew about that commented on it but last time he spoke of it he mentioned that there were basic features which had been requested since the start of the service that still weren't there. Now, I don't know if that has changed dramatically in the last year but if it has, I want to see some evidence of what you said.

 

[ShiningBash]

Steam has done a lot of changes in discoverability and preventing exploits from devs to improve the chances of legit indies to rise to the top. You not seeing those things does not mean that Steam hasnt actively worked on those issues.

Again, even if all the "trash" were to be taken out, you would end up with 100+ new good games a month (and more than 5k good to high quality games in the backlog)! That is too large of a number for each individual game to easily have its own time in the sun.

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To clarify, I actually think the "trash" problem isn't my biggest issue with Steam. There's so many good games that exist, that I don't feel like Steam is robbing me of great experiences (even though I acknowledge that many devs are angry that there are potential games I'd like that I don't see). There's also a lot of Steam features that make it easy to tailor your searches to content you'd like.

My real problem is the truly offensive content that Steam is ok letting slip through the cracks, the strong userbase of hateful groups that thrive in forums/groupsb cheering on this offensive content, and the subsequent implication that Steam supports the first two things. I don't think Rape Day achieving media attention bothers Valve all that much, and so I expect to see more games like it in the future.

 

[collige]

Steam is full of "niche" games with a smaller but very loyal fanbase. Denying games because they don't appeal to the "average" player is a terrible idea, that would disappoint millions of people.

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I agree, but it's also a logical line of questioning for a hypothetical game curator. Like, what do people expect their job to consist of? Just checking a box that says "not an asset flip"?

 

[EtaMari]

At this moment of time I'm very happy with Steam. I think it is better than what Sony+Nintendo+Microsoft+Blizzard+Origins+Epic+Gog+Uplay+BethesdaLauncher+Discord all together are offering.
It is the most consumer friendly store where you can grow really amazing game library. It is also great platform that helped many great indie developers to grow big and find their place in game industry.
That is why competitors are dreaming Steam to fail so they can expand their anti-consumer practises like console monopolists successfully doing. If this disgusting "Trojan Horse" is what they got, they should try better...

 

[DGS]

He's not wrong.. not at all. But Steam has other problems too. There is so much gambling involved on so many different levels in this store and the games. It's almost scary. And just too much of everything, if you understand what I mean. That's why I didn't log into my account for the whole last year. Guys, I just can't find the fun in this store anymore, it's kinnda buried under all this shit. And, the first thing Valve has to do, to get me back: investment in new games. Take this 30 percent and create new exciting games, come on Valve.

 

[eonden]

Hardly well enough. Friend Activity recommendations data is only featured on that page, AFAIK and it's also mostly unfiltered data based on hours played and "recommended". Nothing else. So much for a short and sweet indie game showing up on that list.

Maybe I'm wrong but how can I see recommendations for RPGs my friends played? Other that stumbling into the game's page and seeing "2 of your friends own this game".

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Recommendations and likes from friends are both hidden away (influencing what you see from the game) and on the store front:

And heck if you continue going down, Steam will show you both recommended game tags you might enjoy and friends recommendations:

There is also the whole Friend activity page that should be more natural.

All in all, the tools exist in Steam, the main issue is that Steam UI is currently a Frankenstein that needs to be better integrated

I admit I haven't heard much from the Curator program since Totalbiscuit passed away because he was the only Curator I knew about that commented on it but last time he spoke of it he mentioned that there were basic features which had been requested since the start of the service that still weren't there. Now, I don't know if that has changed dramatically in the last year but if it has, I want to see some evidence of what you said..

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They have given more stats and they have allowed publisher only pages, as well as allowing streaming in the pages and making curated games more in the front page. They have also made it easier to link to reviews outside of Steam with it! (and should actually add a freaking HTML compliant code so you could directly have a youtube link UGGG).

Again, they need to be better integrated on the store (and as I said from LOOONG BEFORE EGS) promote not only game recommendations from curators but articles and give them a small cut from the store side.

 

[Ge0force]

I agree, but it's also a logical line of questioning for a hypothetical game curator. Like, what do people expect their job to consist of? Just checking a box that says "not an asset flip"?

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I assume people only want to see the games THEY like. And in my opinion, Steam is doing a better job than this than any other storefront out there.

But of course, you have to make an effort as well. Complaining that Steam needs curation, while not bothering to use the curators feature doesn't make sense to me.

The moment that Steam is suggesting a game like Aids Simulator on my personal store page, that's when I'll start raging against Valve as well.

 

[Jamrock User]

I will always be appreciative of Epic's regional pricing. No other store offers regional pricing for the Caribbean and that has solely won me over. I'm still very much a steam customer but if a game is on both I know where I'll be buying.

 

[eonden]

To clarify, I actually think the "trash" problem isn't my biggest issue with Steam. There's so many good games that exist, that I don't feel like Steam is robbing me of great experiences (even though I acknowledge that many devs are angry that there are potential games I'd like that I don't see). There's also a lot of Steam features that make it easy to tailor your searches to content you'd like.

My real problem is the truly offensive content that Steam is ok letting slip through the cracks, the strong userbase of hateful groups that thrive in forums/groupsb cheering on this offensive content, and the subsequent implication that Steam supports the first two things. I don't think Rape Day achieving media attention bothers Valve all that much, and so I expect to see more games like it in the future.

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They have greatly expanded on their Community moderation since last year. Last year they started having more overall community moderators and breaking the "barrier" that existed between communities (where being banned on one had little to no effect on you). Same with reviews.

Also, pretty sure they are not happy with the media attention they got taking into account they made an announcement (something they basically never do until forced to, like the whole "we want R18 games in Steam" caused). We will probably see more forced limits on store pages in their backend to stop this (cause otherwise they have shown this will end up happening again) as their "moderation" process worked... just too freaking late and allowing some really attrotious content to be shown. (Also why the hell did they allow for search engine crawlers to look through the R18 section, SUCH A STUPID MISTAKE)

 

[Griffith]

Recommendations and likes from friends are both hidden away (influencing what you see from the game) and on the store front:

And heck if you continue going down, Steam will show you both recommended game tags you might enjoy and friends recommendations:

There is also the whole Friend activity page that should be more natural.

All in all, the tools exist in Steam, the main issue is that Steam UI is currently a Frankenstein that needs to be better integrated



They have given more stats and they have allowed publisher only pages, as well as allowing streaming in the pages and making curated games more in the front page. They have also made it easier to link to reviews outside of Steam with it! (and should actually add a freaking HTML compliant code so you could directly have a youtube link UGGG).

Again, they need to be better integrated on the store (and as I said from LOOONG BEFORE EGS) promote not only game recommendations from curators but articles and give them a small cut from the store side.

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That's not what I suggested.

I agree with you that Steam has a lot of useful info but it's almost never the ideal place to find relevant correlations. Small communities on Discord, Reddit or even here do a better job of highlighting games and sales I might be interested in than Steam itself and that's because someone goes through the catalog and points them out.

Regarding Curators, those improvements are most towards exposing Curation rather than the management of Curators themselves, but the review links seems like a welcome option.

 

[Jawmuncher]

That's not what I suggested.

I agree with you that Steam has a lot of useful info but it's almost never the ideal place to find relevant correlations. Small communities on Discord, Reddit or even here do a better job of highlighting games and sales I might be interested in than Steam itself and that's because someone goes through the catalog and points them out.

Regarding Curators, those improvements are most towards exposing Curation rather than the management of Curators themselves, but the review links seems like a welcome option.

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To me, that sounds like literally every storefront in gaming atm that doesn't have less than 100 games on it.
We have threads for eshop, Mobile, Xbox, and PSN that do just that on this forum alone.

 

[eonden]

That's not what I suggested.

I agree with you that Steam has a lot of useful info but it's almost never the ideal place to find relevant correlations. Small communities on Discord, Reddit or even here do a better job of highlighting games and sales I might be interested in than Steam itself and that's because someone goes through the catalog and points them out.

Regarding Curators, those improvements are most towards exposing Curation rather than the management of Curators themselves, but the review links seems like a welcome option.

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I mean, the features for what you want is there (friend activity is probably closer to what you are looking for as they actually allow you to see it:
https://store.steampowered.com/recommended/friendactivity/
Also, small communities can do curator pages! Which is what a lot of groups do like for instace:
https://store.steampowered.com/curator/6871651/

They need to make them more integral to the web experience but the basics of what you want is there.

Edit: For curators, steam also lets you create a special list when there is a sale to create games you would recommend on that sale!
(also forgot to say that curators can be offered keys directly from developers to try the game before launch through the curation system and they can easily cancel the key after a period of time)

 

[WordsintheWater]

Jim is angry about bad games been available but you can always refund if the game is shit

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Nah, that's not the only reason, and to say that is reductive as hell. Shit like "Rape Day", "AIDS", and "School shooting sims" should not be allowed to see the light of day on platforms like these.