Suggest improvements for Steam.

[DoPo]

I'd like to see "specials" sorted better. If there's 136 specials, I'm probably not going to browse past the first page or two, and if it's flooded with DLC costumes that are going for 25% off

You can filter to show games only.

Become gog.com, except with Linux support.

It's sad being a mere one step away from Utopia on two different fronts. gog.com doesn't support Linux, and Steam doesn't do DRM-free downloads. ;____;

GOG are going to support Linux, however [http://www.gog.com/news/gogcom_soon_on_more_platforms]

6. Provide a 'No DRM' option for developers/publishers. I'm not sure if this is a thing, but it should be.

For what it's worth, that actually is a thing. For example, Bindings of Isaac can (and does) happily run without Steam.

7. Better quality control. Don't sell me broken games like Air Control. And don't sell me fixable broken games like Vampire the Masquerade, while they're still broken.

Bloodlines is not officially fixed, though. Or do you want Steam to offer games with unofficial third party content incorporated with it? I don't even want to imagine the shitstorm if that happens.

every game with that Early Access green bar makes it emphatically clear what Early Access means to the consumer (i.e. this game could stop development right now and you'd have to deal with it).

If people aren't getting this message right now, then I doubt much can be done to improve it, aside from somebody physically visiting them and shouting at them until they agree that, yes, they are OK with the game. Or call the police or something. It pretty much says it there right now.

 

[Lilikins]

Also a petty one I spose, but nevertheless.

Id personally like to 'raise' the steam level via trophies/achievements you get in games. As of now the only way you can raise it is by buying cards/using them to make badges. Donno, Id find it alot better if you could raise your steam level via trophies and achievements that are there. Even if its a minimal number such as..what do I care..5, but you'd still be able to raise it to a specific level then.

Id personally just find that more rewarding to actually get them then, seeing as atm as far as I can tell (please do correct me if Im wrong) they have absolutely no point in getting except for gloating reasons to those who care (which is practically no one.).

 

[Dr.Awkward]

Either get rid of or retool the trading card/badge nonsense you're required to do to get customization. If I've played a game for over 100 hours, that itself should mean that I get the badges, avatars, backgrounds, smilies, etc. for being so dedicated to that game instead of going through a card game. Or just do what GOG does and give to me immediately, and don't make anyone go through the stupidity that is card collecting/trading.

It's bad enough you broke your own adventure game in the Summer Sale by allowing to sell team change items.

 

[Arakasi]

7. Better quality control. Don't sell me broken games like Air Control. And don't sell me fixable broken games like Vampire the Masquerade, while they're still broken.

Bloodlines is not officially fixed, though. Or do you want Steam to offer games with unofficial third party content incorporated with it? I don't even want to imagine the shitstorm if that happens.

No, I want them to A: Fix it themselves, or B: Make the developer/publisher fix it before they sell it again. Or C: Mention it is broken on the store page, and recommend a fix.

every game with that Early Access green bar makes it emphatically clear what Early Access means to the consumer (i.e. this game could stop development right now and you'd have to deal with it).

If people aren't getting this message right now, then I doubt much can be done to improve it, aside from somebody physically visiting them and shouting at them until they agree that, yes, they are OK with the game. Or call the police or something. It pretty much says it there right now.

Ah, it has improved since I last saw it, but it's still not perfect. It should say something to the effect of what I said there.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Scrap Early Access. And rein in you Library. Yeah it great to brag that you've got more games than anyone else, but you're so oversaturated that I don't want bother sorting though it all looking for somthing that's actually worth buying, considering most of it is shit or goddamn Early Access which I won't touch with a 500 ft. pole.

 

[DoPo]

No, I want them to A: Fix it themselves,

It would still be a third party unofficial fix. Unless done officially, as in contract with the developer/publisher. Even then, that means that Valve has to dedicate a lot of resources on that task. I believe it's quite simply unfeasable.

B: Make the developer/publisher fix it before they sell it again.

I do agree with this. And it's a big problem I have with Activision selling Bloodlines, to be honest - they just took the hard work of many, many people and now get essentially free money out of it, without doing anything. I don't just mean Troika - there are also all the people who worked on fixing the game through patches, and all the people who spend time in the message boards solving other player's problems. All of it is work that Activision should have at least participated in, yet they haven't the slightest. Bloodlines manages being "out there" despite Activision, yet Activision is getting money out of it.

Or C: Mention it is broken on the store page, and recommend a fix.

I really don't know about that. On one hand, it is not "official" information, which is what the store page tries to offer, then again, it's not that far off either. Moreover, they do have "this game is best played with a controller" after Dark Souls which is a similar concept. There is something that can be done there, but I am not sure of the best approach - perhaps sticky-ing a thread with unofficial fixes on the forum and linking to that might be a useful compromise.

every game with that Early Access green bar makes it emphatically clear what Early Access means to the consumer (i.e. this game could stop development right now and you'd have to deal with it).

If people aren't getting this message right now, then I doubt much can be done to improve it, aside from somebody physically visiting them and shouting at them until they agree that, yes, they are OK with the game. Or call the police or something. It pretty much says it there right now.

Ah, it has improved since I last saw it, but it's still not perfect. It should say something to the effect of what I said there.[/quote]

It does. Not directly on the store page, in there is says

This Early Access game may or may not change significantly over the course of development. If you are not excited to play this game in its current state, then you may want to wait until the game progresses further in development

but then again, you have a limited amount of information you can stuff there. The FAQ, which is linked immediately after, should answer most questions a customer may have. It even explicitly states

You should be aware that some teams will be unable to 'finish' their game. So you should only buy an Early Access game if you are excited about playing it in its current state.

 

[Arakasi]

No, I want them to A: Fix it themselves,

It would still be a third party unofficial fix. Unless done officially, as in contract with the developer/publisher. Even then, that means that Valve has to dedicate a lot of resources on that task. I believe it's quite simply unfeasable.

I doubt it'd take a lot of resources, get the mod, make sure there's nothing unsavoury/malicious in it, and bundle it with the game. Unofficial or no, players would need it anyway, could even just include it as a separate download link with the game and tell them it's 'unofficial'.

B: Make the developer/publisher fix it before they sell it again.

I do agree with this. And it's a big problem I have with Activision selling Bloodlines, to be honest - they just took the hard work of many, many people and now get essentially free money out of it, without doing anything. I don't just mean Troika - there are also all the people who worked on fixing the game through patches, and all the people who spend time in the message boards solving other player's problems. All of it is work that Activision should have at least participated in, yet they haven't the slightest. Bloodlines manages being "out there" despite Activision, yet Activision is getting money out of it.

Yeah, and that's the kind of practice that should be punished.

Or C: Mention it is broken on the store page, and recommend a fix.

I really don't know about that. On one hand, it is not "official" information, which is what the store page tries to offer, then again, it's not that far off either. Moreover, they do have "this game is best played with a controller" after Dark Souls which is a similar concept. There is something that can be done there, but I am not sure of the best approach - perhaps sticky-ing a thread with unofficial fixes on the forum and linking to that might be a useful compromise.

I'd still rather it go off-sale until Activision fixes it though. So publishers learn they can't get away with this crap, same would apply to that Air Control game.

every game with that Early Access green bar makes it emphatically clear what Early Access means to the consumer (i.e. this game could stop development right now and you'd have to deal with it).

If people aren't getting this message right now, then I doubt much can be done to improve it, aside from somebody physically visiting them and shouting at them until they agree that, yes, they are OK with the game. Or call the police or something. It pretty much says it there right now.

Ah, it has improved since I last saw it, but it's still not perfect. It should say something to the effect of what I said there.

It does. Not directly on the store page, in there is says

This Early Access game may or may not change significantly over the course of development. If you are not excited to play this game in its current state, then you may want to wait until the game progresses further in development

but then again, you have a limited amount of information you can stuff there. The FAQ, which is linked immediately after, should answer most questions a customer may have. It even explicitly states

You should be aware that some teams will be unable to 'finish' their game. So you should only buy an Early Access game if you are excited about playing it in its current state.

I suppose I'd just want that part of the FAQ on the main page, and a banner of 'EARLY ACCESS' on the games for sale on the main page, i.e. the ones with only macro images.

 

[Souplex]

Physical locations you could go to to buy a hard copy of your game instead of waiting for a download.
I call it "Steam: Solid"

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

1) some form of udev accountability for early access
2) a personalized recommended list on the front page pased on the amount of positive user reviews a game has and the tags of your most played games
3) making famility sharing easier, its a bit too complicated at the moment

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

6. Provide a 'No DRM' option for developers/publishers. I'm not sure if this is a thing, but it should be.

this already exists, game devs are for forced to use steamworks for their games, many games, particulary old ones, have no DRM and you can play em by simply clicking the game's .exe fine, steam doesnt have to be executing

 

[Atmos Duality]

11. During big sales events, ensure that if you're offering a game for a certain discount, that it won't be discounted further sometime in the sale. It discourages buying games until later to see if they are discounted more, and loses potential sales. If you're going to keep it the same, you could provide a steam credit for the difference for all users who bought it earlier, and this would also encourage them to keep spending during sales.

I agree with that in practice as a matter of convenience, but I know why they don't do this. It's to pressure people into buying on the spot; and it works well enough that even those of us wise to this ploy are still in the minority.

Either get rid of or retool the trading card/badge nonsense you're required to do to get customization. If I've played a game for over 100 hours, that itself should mean that I get the badges, avatars, backgrounds, smilies, etc. for being so dedicated to that game instead of going through a card game. Or just do what GOG does and give to me immediately, and don't make anyone go through the stupidity that is card collecting/trading.

It's bad enough you broke your own adventure game in the Summer Sale by allowing to sell team change items.

Considering that Steam takes a cut of all money-type transactions involving market items (even if the cost is zero cents, oh Steam) I believe their hypothetical response would be akin to "Sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of all my MONEY!"

...Damn, I just quoted Yahtzee just like those sycophantic fanboys.
I need to take a shower...I feel unclean.

 

[Random Argument Man]

I would love a more Mac-friendly platform. It works and manages to give a decent amount of games out there. However, I remember it to be very slow and a bit clunky at times.

 

[Something Amyss]

Well, I'd like a refund policy, at the very least for games that are profoundly broken. Ideally, it would be a "satisfaction guaranteed" deal, but just the capacity to get a refund on the next steaming pile of crap without a major PR campaign would be an improvement. Also, better library management and to a lesser extent a better browsing system.

I don't hold any hope for reform, though. Valve has no reason to do so outside of customer service, and I think most people have figured out that their pledge of customer service is little more than a marketing deal.

I agree with that in practice as a matter of convenience, but I know why they don't do this. It's to pressure people into buying on the spot; and it works well enough that even those of us wise to this ploy are still in the minority.

Indeed. I bet the cost in sales is far outweighed by the number of people they get to do it.

Scrap Early Access. And rein in you Library. Yeah it great to brag that you've got more games than anyone else, but you're so oversaturated that I don't want bother sorting though it all looking for somthing that's actually worth buying, considering most of it is shit or goddamn Early Access which I won't touch with a 500 ft. pole.

After the response to EA's jab at Steam, I'm pretty sure the consensus is "quantity beats quality."

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Scrap Early Access. And rein in you Library. Yeah it great to brag that you've got more games than anyone else, but you're so oversaturated that I don't want bother sorting though it all looking for somthing that's actually worth buying, considering most of it is shit or goddamn Early Access which I won't touch with a 500 ft. pole.

After the response to EA's jab at Steam, I'm pretty sure the consensus is "quantity beats quality."

Well that is not a sentiment I can agree with. That is just stupid, but I guess some people like to spend their free time sifting though landfills too.

 

[KungFuJazzHands]

A lot of people here have already effectively covered many of the annoyances I have with Steam, so I'll just add a couple:

1.) Tone down the Market shenanigans, Valve. Trading cards, hats, crates, stickers and keys have turned the community into a bunch of petty, greedy, abusive and careless consumers. The currently running Summer Adventure contest and the multi-sided manipulation surrounding it are clear evidence of that.

Despite the fact that I've personally managed to wrangle around $300 in credit since the Market system was initiated, I've never really been comfortable with the impact it's had on the way Valve now run their business and how the customers have blindly and openly accepted it as "just another thing that corporations do to make money". It's turning Valve into a shallow microtransaction-obsessed company, and it's obviously affecting their creative output in negative ways.

2.) Reign in your Community volunteer moderators, Valve. They are turning into thuggish policy enforcers, and you do little to curtail their increasingly outrageous behavior. Deleting threads that dare to bring up questions about Steam downtime or performance issues, banning users that they have personal vendettas against, circling the wagons when valid accusations of overreach are directed against one of their own, ignoring complaint reports, using false justifications to ban concerned troublesome Community users, and on and on. Mod impartiality is something that's becoming harder to find these days at the Steam Community forums.

Given how much Valve love to tout their "close-knit" user community, it's shocking to see how much they allow their mods to get away with. There's absolutely zero effective oversight.

 

[Something Amyss]

Well that is not a sentiment I can agree with. That is just stupid, but I guess some people like to spend their free time sifting though landfills too.

And I agree with you, but I sort of get the feeling that we're in a stark minority. I mean, there are even a large number of people arguing against other gorms of quality control, too. Even beneficial ones like "refunds if they deceived us or if the game is broken."

 

[anAngryHamster]

3) The ability to own Free to Play titles.

I've played Path of Exile and what I want to do is install it whenever I want. But I can't. Not immediately, at least - if I don't have it installed, I need to go to the store, find the entry there and then install it that way. Instead, I really want to have it in my list of games, so I can access it any time. I've got so much time invested in it, I do consider it "mine". Even if I haven't played it for a while.

A button that amounts to "add this to my library" is going to be really useful in that regard. Also, it'd be good to have the option to remove the games from there, too.

This all the way. Considering the Valve's two biggest money printers are FTP they really should have sorted this out by now.

 

[shintakie10]

-snipped-

I've said it before, I'll say it again. Why should we be worried about this?

Seriously, why at all should anyone care? Why does Valve care?

Amazon has given full refunds for games, digital or otherwise, for as long as I remember. They literally have a no questions asked policy. You say that you want a refund, they give you a full refund. Not store credit, not partial credit, not questions about whether its really broke or if you're just an idiot. Request a refund, you get it.

It literally can be any reason too. They made a big public thing about how they were willing and able to accept refunds for DA2, a game that by all accounts worked perfectly fine, but people didn't enjoy. They made a big thing about accepting refunds for Mass Effect 3 specifically because they saw people wanted refunds because they didn't like the endings.

Press releases and everything. Didn't matter whether it was a digital title or the actual game discs. It didn't matter if it was a preorder or you've owned it for a month. Didnt matter if you even played it at all or played the whole game to the end and beat it. As long as you don't abuse the system and ask for a refund for every single game you buy, they'll give you your money back with no hassle at all.

Amazon can do this, both for digital and boxed games (and they pay for the shipping for the boxed games so they take an extra hit from that too!) yet somehow its such a gigantic hassle for Valve to give refunds? Bull. Shit.

Aside from that, why do people call it refunds for a preorder? Refund implies you bought something and want your money back. A preorder is a down payment on a game that will come out in the future. I've never seen anyone get all excited about the idea of being able to cancel a preorder and get your money back, yet somehow its a big deal when Valve lets us cancel a preorder? I don't get it.

On topic!

Obviously, refunds. There is literally no good reason that they don't allow preorders except cold blind greed. And no, cancelling a preorder and getting your money back is not a friggin refund.

 

[Not Lord Atkin]

I'm just going to add to that refund policy by saying that the support is god awful and that I did not get a refund for a game that I bought when I was visiting my parents last summer. the game turned out to be region restricted to Russia and countries of former USSR. I'd just like to point out that the county where my parents live is not within that region. There was no warning on the game's store page. I live in the UK. Steam support not only refused to refund me - they refused to acknowledge the issue. Kept repeating the same stock answers, ignored all of my questions. The game just sits in my library, laughing at me at how I wasted money on a game that doesn't work as intended and no one seems to be too bothered by it.

Here's the fun bit. I contacted them almost a year later, with a completely different issue. Brought that one game up briefly, more as a passive-aggressive jab than anything... and they decided to fixate on the year-old unsolved issue, giving me the same stock answers I've heard a million times over, ignoring my actual, completely unrelated question. Every single email. No matter how many times I told them to stop talking about that bloody game and answer my question. They ignored me, ignored the contents of my emails and the questions I was asking and kept repeating the same fucking stock answer to a question that I never asked and that answered nothing at all. Like a high-functioning autistic. With a limited grasp of English.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Well that is not a sentiment I can agree with. That is just stupid, but I guess some people like to spend their free time sifting though landfills too.

And I agree with you, but I sort of get the feeling that we're in a stark minority. I mean, there are even a large number of people arguing against other gorms of quality control, too. Even beneficial ones like "refunds if they deceived us or if the game is broken."

Seriously??? Are you referring to people who throw that "buyer beware" bullshit around? This is why we can't have nice things.