Jimquisition: Steam Needs Quality Control
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It took a long time but finally Valve finally slips up (Has done for quite a while) and the typical responses pour in in defence.
Valve most certainly does have to get their shit together and having to rely on "community" votes or decisions is bullshit, I don't want some shitty community to decide what games get to go on a service that's meant for everyone, not some small sector of a community, I prefer actual quality control, actual looking into the games way before they'd even touch the market, if you're game doesn't pass as playable then tough shit, go back to the drawing board.
I'd also suggest they hurry up and kill greenlight asap and at least create a totally separate area (that doesn't even appear on the market area to clog up everything) for new indie releases, have a meta vote system in place and some reviews (community reviews atm are a massive slog and go on forever, all are different and not to the point) in place, obviously make it so content creators cannot ban anyone or close anything and for fucks sake implement an actual proper refund system, not me going to steam services to bloody ask for one there where it's not in plain sight for all.
And while looking into quality control (non consumer) I'd go looking into games that have been up there for a long time yet don't either work and/or need mods in order to actually function.
Apart from that rant good video Jim, I look forward to more harsh criticism in the future, it's been needed for a long time.
Valve most certainly does have to get their shit together and having to rely on "community" votes or decisions is bullshit, I don't want some shitty community to decide what games get to go on a service that's meant for everyone, not some small sector of a community, I prefer actual quality control, actual looking into the games way before they'd even touch the market, if you're game doesn't pass as playable then tough shit, go back to the drawing board.
I'd also suggest they hurry up and kill greenlight asap and at least create a totally separate area (that doesn't even appear on the market area to clog up everything) for new indie releases, have a meta vote system in place and some reviews (community reviews atm are a massive slog and go on forever, all are different and not to the point) in place, obviously make it so content creators cannot ban anyone or close anything and for fucks sake implement an actual proper refund system, not me going to steam services to bloody ask for one there where it's not in plain sight for all.
And while looking into quality control (non consumer) I'd go looking into games that have been up there for a long time yet don't either work and/or need mods in order to actually function.
Apart from that rant good video Jim, I look forward to more harsh criticism in the future, it's been needed for a long time.
I think Valve can improve this with a few changes to their store.
1) Remove developers from being allowed to change their front page.
2) Allow refunds based on a reasonable amount of time spent in-game (maybe a hour) or a week if you haven't played the full hour.
3) Add filters to hide features that people don't want to see.
I know after Greenlight and a lot of what feels like Shovelware, I don't use Steam except to buy games I know about and honestly its a little depressing that EA has a better refund policy then Valve.
1) Remove developers from being allowed to change their front page.
2) Allow refunds based on a reasonable amount of time spent in-game (maybe a hour) or a week if you haven't played the full hour.
3) Add filters to hide features that people don't want to see.
I know after Greenlight and a lot of what feels like Shovelware, I don't use Steam except to buy games I know about and honestly its a little depressing that EA has a better refund policy then Valve.
Yeah one of the best games on steam "Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines" doesn't work at all without mods and never has[footnote]It barely worked for anyone on release thanks to Activision pushing it out before the developer could finish, and being built on a super-early version of the Source engine.[/footnote] and there's not so much as a disclaimer on the store page. It's also a total joke that a decade old game is still priced at $20, but that's another topic entirely.Shadow-Phoenix said:
As much as I'm amazed at the kind of crap winding up on Steam nowadays (Analogue, Depression Quest, Revelations 2012, Gone Home, The War Z/Whatever it's called now), I also accept that it's my responsibility as a consumer to actually know what I'm getting into when I make a purchase. It's not Steam's job to save us from buying shitty games.
See that's exactly what I'm talking about and it's even worse when the games that old already, even with a disclaimer the game shouldn't be fit to be sold in a state that needs to have a mod to make it playable.Ratty said:
I've had my fair share in the past and didn't manage to get a refund for them at the time, though these days I'd love for there to be a solid concrete, not having to ask or go somewhere to ask refund policy and have it made simple and up front.
I'd also love to be able to remove said games from my Steam list since I have games I never want to play again because they're either not going to work with my current hardware or just don't want to play ever again.
I have a store and it most definitely up to me what the fuck i sell in there, and if the product i sell does not meet customer expectations, then i certainly am obliged to take the responsibility of that, because, although i didn't make the product, i was the person who sold it to the customer.lord.jeff said:
No, it is not my job to say a customer shouldn't by a particular product, by in my store, i'm certainly going to make a judgement call on a product someone wants to supply me. I'm not going to sell anything anyone throws through my front door no matter how bad it is. I'm going to check the products, and if i deem them acceptable and worthwhile, i will stock them and sell them to other people, confident that the product will do what it is supposed to do.
If for some reason the product fails, sure, i can then take it up with the supplier later, but as far as the customer goes, they should not have to give a merry fuck who supplied the product to me, and if they aren't happy, i am the one who should compensate them.
This is from a small store i co-own and operate. I believe this tenfold when it becomes a big and powerful store or chain.
If you, as a store owner, sell a shit product to a customer, and stock predominantly shit products, then you must make failures up to your customers.
Steam is turning into one of those nasty little $2 shops, where you expect everything you buy to be shit, and if something holds up you are actually pleasantly surprised.
If i were stocking games, Quality would be deemed as such:The_Kodu said:
Does the Game function for at least 95% of the time as intended for 95% of people without 3rd party modding? Yes/No.
Does the Game contain all features that it says it contains and do they function as described? Yes/No
That's pretty much all that is needed for me. Boring content, uninteresting gameplay, and cliched story are very subjective. Fundamentally broken generally is pretty objective. Obviously there are exceptions to the rules.
Just quoting this for truth. This, ladies and gentlemen, is why it's in Steam's best interests to quality control what they release for sale. I do believe the '83 crash analogy is a bit of an overstatement, but I can very much see the resemblance. Oversaturating the market with shit dilutes the good titles and makes people disinterested in browsing your store. You may be gaining royalties on the people unfortunate enough to have purchased the shit but you're losing impulse buys from curious browsers.Eamar said:
Well someone had to buy it to give you the opinions in the forums you're reading. Don't the adventurous consumers deserve some degree of protection?ZippyDSMlee said:
Well. Compared to the anti-Xbone/anti-console threads, the tone of responses on the Escapist when Valve gets criticised is very different, eh? While I'm personally on the fence on whether Jim is right about this, I'd like to point out (to about 20 different people) that "other companies sell crap too" is an uninspiring defense, and wilfully ignoring the difference between BAD and BROKEN just makes it obvious you have a horse in the race.
Hi there, Jim! I enjoy the video series. This time you left me with a bunch of things to say, so I'll say them here. Hopefully nobody takes the time to read it.
I have thought about Early Access and Greenlight before and what it could mean to Valve and what the benefit for them is for Steam. There's the obvious things, but I think the issues are to do with what might perhaps be less obvious aspects of them. Your video attacks them for things that are very true, but I think that there are reasons which led up to them being the way that they are, and I think that they continue on the dark roads that they both seem to be on, with Valve seeming to be largely ambivalent, because those reasons weren't entirely really above board to begin with.
I think that it's not insignificant, the influence that EA and Origin, and services like it in Uplay, can have on Steam anymore. No longer is Steam the place that publishers want their games. Well, that's not true, for most of them it still is, but less so, and more and more this will be how it is. I think that the motivations behind Early Access and Greenlight, are in part to deal with this increasing influence from El Publishero's way. These days, EA can simply withhold its newest and best releases from Steam, and sell through a burgeoning Origin service that, increasingly, people are warming to. Valve recognizes how bad that is, and I believe that something which I believe to be intrinsically bad in Early Access, as well as something that is currently not going so well in Greenlight, have their genesis in this worry over publisher-owned distribution channels.
First I'll mention Greenlight, because I thought it was easier. Two things mainly. Greenlight I think was supposed to be a shot across the bow of the big publishers. And it was also supposed to encourage enthusiasm and participation among the Steam community and with the community and game developers, and would do this in a way that something like Origin might not want to. It was supposed to be Valve basically saying "Hey! Fine! You don't want to let me have Battlefield 4 or Mass Effect 3? Then I'll just make my own massive-selling games, out of the indie community! I'll help these guys get exposure and sales and build their franchises, we'll all make tons of money and you'll be left out in the cold!" "And you know what else? I'll make it all really fun and everyone will come to my house to do it and you won't be the fun hip indie-game curator I will be!" But it hasn't gone so well. I think Gabe publicly denouncing Greenlight is because Greenlight has largely failed in these two points. Greenlight, I don't think, is the hub of energy and activity and participation that Valve wanted. I think that's debatable, because there are some games where the community is very active with the developers, but by and large it's mostly just a glut of games that show up to get greenlit, then fizzle out, and for the ones that do get greenlit, then just go dark. Rather than lively discussions, and community analysis and appraisal of projects, we get a few seconds and a "yes" or a "no". Greenlight, and the recent backlash against it bears evidence, has now succeeded in damaging its reputation with its problems. And since, it is not the threat to publishers that Valve wanted it to be. Rather than leverage Steam to leverage the indies, and act as a showcase for all that creativity and the satisfaction to be derived from community involvement in the development and curation of the content on Steam, it instead largely just acted as a showcase of all the flaws of indie development. Rather than patch up holes in Steam's new release schedule, and distract from those holes, it has only added more. Though I guess you could say it succeeds in the distraction. Think of it. Without the shitstorm caused by this Greenlight fiasco or that Greenlight travesty, people would look at the much slower-moving new release list and notice the lack of some big names a little more often than they do now.
I actually think Valve could possibly fix it by making every vote to Greenlight an effective pre-order. Though that just might turn it into a desert of indie games.
Next is Early Access. Early Access goes hand in hand with Greenlight, but it damn well shouldn't. Again, most of the reasons for Early Access are all fairly obvious. But, I think Early Access is actually, in part, an attempt by Valve to woo publishers with, again, something they might not want to do themselves. Imagine EA starting up something like Early Access on Origin. All the crap Early Access receives now would be doubled if it came from EA. Steam is a platform that publishers can get away with releasing unfinished games on, a platform that they can essentially skip all Q&A in lieu of. It's basically Valve saying "Release this early here! You can do it here! And it's ok because it's "beta! And we and our users will handle all the dirty work and tedious bug reporting! And you'll know how it'll go over too!". This, is Valve saying to publishers that they can release their games incomplete and Valve and its massive community will take care of the rest. That they will help with the kinks in their software, and also the market research, to make sure that any risks they take aren't the bottom-line harming kind, and that the game runs well on the backs of bug reporting players. This is why, I think, that if it has a publisher, it's in. This is because it's not about the game, I mean, why the hell would it be about the game? The game's not finished. It's not a game yet. It's about Valve courting publishers, in a way that others can't get away with, while hopefully building some nice relationships of the Bethesda kind. Valve needs that in a world where Origin increases its numbers with its titles. And sure, you could say that this borders on a conspiracy theory, or is one, even worse than my consideration on Greenlight. There are good Early Access games that prove the model. Like, oh I don't know I don't think I have any of them, games like Gnomoria and Starbound. But there's the other kind of them too. And there's more of them. The question "how did this get approved?" gets asked too often if you ask me. Surely smart guys like Valve would know they might be harming their reputation with some of the shit they're putting out before its cooked. So why are they doing it? There must be other reasons. You could say they're just being super-swell guys. But if they were so wonderful, they'd have refunds and the ability to trade games by now,and some of those other much asked for things and so on.
I think, ultimately, it all comes back to Valve maybe starting to worry about publisher influence on its turf. You look at the old games for example. Why's Valve doing that? Is it worried about gog? Is it just, "cursory" competition or something, just keeping on top of it? Is it using old games games to sell new ones as part of packs? That's actually a great idea and, in this case, I'd fully believe that was the only reason and call it a day. But if it's not that, then I think it might be due to publisher influence, and Valve needing to bend to it, and release those old games, to the large Steam audience, even if it had no intention of going to all the trouble to patch them to work properly. Now I'm not saying releasing old games is a bad thing. If you haven't played em, then you could argue a dollar or less is a fantastic deal. But without the necessary patching it's just basically a DLC pack masquerading as something else. In its unpatched form about as useful. Again, the publisher influence.
So that's what I think about it anyway. I think there's a fair chance it goes deeper and is more concealed than just, "Valve wants a big library at whatever cost". You could say that Valve thought up these things and wanted to release them for the obvious merits. A cool indie platform. A way to get games out early and help the community polish them and fix a problem as age old as pc gaming while they're at it. But they'd be little more than topics for friendly chats among Valve employees to put a smile them. That wouldn't actually get anything done. To get done it would need a tangible reason. Something propelling it. And I think that it could be to do with Valve worrying about competition from EA and those like it. And that competition creating a world in which Valve has to deal with more influence than the huge amount it already had to.
I personally don't think it. I think that Origin is a ticking time bomb ready to go off in the gaming community's face, with the counter the userbase it gets.
Thanks for the show! Keep it up!
I have thought about Early Access and Greenlight before and what it could mean to Valve and what the benefit for them is for Steam. There's the obvious things, but I think the issues are to do with what might perhaps be less obvious aspects of them. Your video attacks them for things that are very true, but I think that there are reasons which led up to them being the way that they are, and I think that they continue on the dark roads that they both seem to be on, with Valve seeming to be largely ambivalent, because those reasons weren't entirely really above board to begin with.
I think that it's not insignificant, the influence that EA and Origin, and services like it in Uplay, can have on Steam anymore. No longer is Steam the place that publishers want their games. Well, that's not true, for most of them it still is, but less so, and more and more this will be how it is. I think that the motivations behind Early Access and Greenlight, are in part to deal with this increasing influence from El Publishero's way. These days, EA can simply withhold its newest and best releases from Steam, and sell through a burgeoning Origin service that, increasingly, people are warming to. Valve recognizes how bad that is, and I believe that something which I believe to be intrinsically bad in Early Access, as well as something that is currently not going so well in Greenlight, have their genesis in this worry over publisher-owned distribution channels.
First I'll mention Greenlight, because I thought it was easier. Two things mainly. Greenlight I think was supposed to be a shot across the bow of the big publishers. And it was also supposed to encourage enthusiasm and participation among the Steam community and with the community and game developers, and would do this in a way that something like Origin might not want to. It was supposed to be Valve basically saying "Hey! Fine! You don't want to let me have Battlefield 4 or Mass Effect 3? Then I'll just make my own massive-selling games, out of the indie community! I'll help these guys get exposure and sales and build their franchises, we'll all make tons of money and you'll be left out in the cold!" "And you know what else? I'll make it all really fun and everyone will come to my house to do it and you won't be the fun hip indie-game curator I will be!" But it hasn't gone so well. I think Gabe publicly denouncing Greenlight is because Greenlight has largely failed in these two points. Greenlight, I don't think, is the hub of energy and activity and participation that Valve wanted. I think that's debatable, because there are some games where the community is very active with the developers, but by and large it's mostly just a glut of games that show up to get greenlit, then fizzle out, and for the ones that do get greenlit, then just go dark. Rather than lively discussions, and community analysis and appraisal of projects, we get a few seconds and a "yes" or a "no". Greenlight, and the recent backlash against it bears evidence, has now succeeded in damaging its reputation with its problems. And since, it is not the threat to publishers that Valve wanted it to be. Rather than leverage Steam to leverage the indies, and act as a showcase for all that creativity and the satisfaction to be derived from community involvement in the development and curation of the content on Steam, it instead largely just acted as a showcase of all the flaws of indie development. Rather than patch up holes in Steam's new release schedule, and distract from those holes, it has only added more. Though I guess you could say it succeeds in the distraction. Think of it. Without the shitstorm caused by this Greenlight fiasco or that Greenlight travesty, people would look at the much slower-moving new release list and notice the lack of some big names a little more often than they do now.
I actually think Valve could possibly fix it by making every vote to Greenlight an effective pre-order. Though that just might turn it into a desert of indie games.
Next is Early Access. Early Access goes hand in hand with Greenlight, but it damn well shouldn't. Again, most of the reasons for Early Access are all fairly obvious. But, I think Early Access is actually, in part, an attempt by Valve to woo publishers with, again, something they might not want to do themselves. Imagine EA starting up something like Early Access on Origin. All the crap Early Access receives now would be doubled if it came from EA. Steam is a platform that publishers can get away with releasing unfinished games on, a platform that they can essentially skip all Q&A in lieu of. It's basically Valve saying "Release this early here! You can do it here! And it's ok because it's "beta! And we and our users will handle all the dirty work and tedious bug reporting! And you'll know how it'll go over too!". This, is Valve saying to publishers that they can release their games incomplete and Valve and its massive community will take care of the rest. That they will help with the kinks in their software, and also the market research, to make sure that any risks they take aren't the bottom-line harming kind, and that the game runs well on the backs of bug reporting players. This is why, I think, that if it has a publisher, it's in. This is because it's not about the game, I mean, why the hell would it be about the game? The game's not finished. It's not a game yet. It's about Valve courting publishers, in a way that others can't get away with, while hopefully building some nice relationships of the Bethesda kind. Valve needs that in a world where Origin increases its numbers with its titles. And sure, you could say that this borders on a conspiracy theory, or is one, even worse than my consideration on Greenlight. There are good Early Access games that prove the model. Like, oh I don't know I don't think I have any of them, games like Gnomoria and Starbound. But there's the other kind of them too. And there's more of them. The question "how did this get approved?" gets asked too often if you ask me. Surely smart guys like Valve would know they might be harming their reputation with some of the shit they're putting out before its cooked. So why are they doing it? There must be other reasons. You could say they're just being super-swell guys. But if they were so wonderful, they'd have refunds and the ability to trade games by now,and some of those other much asked for things and so on.
I think, ultimately, it all comes back to Valve maybe starting to worry about publisher influence on its turf. You look at the old games for example. Why's Valve doing that? Is it worried about gog? Is it just, "cursory" competition or something, just keeping on top of it? Is it using old games games to sell new ones as part of packs? That's actually a great idea and, in this case, I'd fully believe that was the only reason and call it a day. But if it's not that, then I think it might be due to publisher influence, and Valve needing to bend to it, and release those old games, to the large Steam audience, even if it had no intention of going to all the trouble to patch them to work properly. Now I'm not saying releasing old games is a bad thing. If you haven't played em, then you could argue a dollar or less is a fantastic deal. But without the necessary patching it's just basically a DLC pack masquerading as something else. In its unpatched form about as useful. Again, the publisher influence.
So that's what I think about it anyway. I think there's a fair chance it goes deeper and is more concealed than just, "Valve wants a big library at whatever cost". You could say that Valve thought up these things and wanted to release them for the obvious merits. A cool indie platform. A way to get games out early and help the community polish them and fix a problem as age old as pc gaming while they're at it. But they'd be little more than topics for friendly chats among Valve employees to put a smile them. That wouldn't actually get anything done. To get done it would need a tangible reason. Something propelling it. And I think that it could be to do with Valve worrying about competition from EA and those like it. And that competition creating a world in which Valve has to deal with more influence than the huge amount it already had to.
I personally don't think it. I think that Origin is a ticking time bomb ready to go off in the gaming community's face, with the counter the userbase it gets.
Thanks for the show! Keep it up!
Very true. Buyer Beware.T_ConX said:
Although that sort of goes out the window if the dev is actively trying to decieve the consumer. Not saying that's happening here, just a little note.
I agree completely, but I personally don't find all that crap getting onto Steam to be much of a problem since I only buy games that I am actually interested in and am fairly certain I will like (went wrong once though - Godus, never should have trusted Early Access). So, if you think before buying something just because it's there, you probably won't have much of a problem.
But finding the good games in piles of trash is reviewer's job Jim. Forget greenlight use desura.
Ah, the intellectually dishonest method of intentionally ignoring a damaging analogy and hand waving it away. The analogy was "excusing criminal behavior because the perpetrator did something nice to others." Address that.Lightknight said:
Sergei SERVED ON APPLE'S BOARD at the time! Why is he serving one of the highest positions in a company that is "bullying" him?! He was a ringleader with a non-compete agreement with another company he was an EMPLOYEE of!
Because when Google coined the slogan "don't be evil" they were obviously only talking about murder. Uh huh. Glad to see you debating honestly. It's clear that nothing short of murder would cause you to stop defending them.
A poor behavior Valve sometimes inspires in others, ironically.
I agree with every word. I heard about Steam for a long time before finally trying it out. Crap crap and more crap. No more than one game in ten on that site is worth a second of your time let alone any of your money. Which is too bad because buried within all the bad are some real good games. I feel sorry for the developers of quality games that have to share the site with so much junk.
And while I'm on a rant I bought Skyrim at a brick and mortar store only to find out that in order to play it I had to go through Steam. I think this new trend annoys me even more than the crap games. It started for me with GTA 4 and their "Social club" bs. They try to make it look like it's some big advantage to be signed into Steam ( or social club or whatever) when in fact it is nothing but over the top anti piracy baloney.
The new paradigm in the gaming industry is that you are their beta testers and you will pay for the privilege. And they own the games forever and can dictate how you use their products even after you've plunked down your hard earned cash for them.
Screw 'em.
And while I'm on a rant I bought Skyrim at a brick and mortar store only to find out that in order to play it I had to go through Steam. I think this new trend annoys me even more than the crap games. It started for me with GTA 4 and their "Social club" bs. They try to make it look like it's some big advantage to be signed into Steam ( or social club or whatever) when in fact it is nothing but over the top anti piracy baloney.
The new paradigm in the gaming industry is that you are their beta testers and you will pay for the privilege. And they own the games forever and can dictate how you use their products even after you've plunked down your hard earned cash for them.
Screw 'em.