Suggest improvements for Steam.

[Sanunes]

Concerning a refund, how much of Valve not having one while EA does have to do with the fact that Origin is essentially a platform to sell EA games while Valve sells games from damn near everybody? I mean I can understand why people would want this but I have a hard time perceiving how it could actually be implemented without becoming a nightmare.

All of it has to do with that. Last I checked, Origin only offers refunds for EA games. Valve should offer refunds for their own games but offering refunds on everything would be vastly different from what Origin does.

Which is true and since Origin is starting to offer more and more publishers (I think the only big one they are missing right now is Activision and they were one of the last on Steam too) on their store it would be nice to have them develop a policy for refund there. What disturbs me more is that I expect EA to make changes to Origin to make it better for the consumer then I Valve changing Steam. Of course I would like to see some other features too, but I think they will come in time.

I have had Steam basically steal from me in the past, for I bought a game that charged my credit card and it never appeared in my library. After spending over three weeks dealing with their support I gave up because I felt like I was wasting my time which also has a value to me.

 

[pearcinator]

A lot.

People seem to hold Steam and Valve in high regard and while their games are great and their online distribution service is the best out there at the moment they are still VERY far from what I would consider excellent.

The market is a ***** to navigate around, their search filters are terrible, there are many things that are overly complicated to do, lack of refunds, customer service, quality control are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to problems Steam needs to fix.

There are a lot of really, REALLY shit games getting through greenlight. I could probably get a game greenlit if I wanted to despite not having any knowledge of how to make a game. The idea is fine but the implementation sucks.

Valve, fix your shit...but release Half Life 3 first

 

[Something Amyss]

Yes. Exactly why I call it bullshit. Yes the buyer should beware because there are going to be douchebags out there who'll want to swindle them, however that doesn't make the swindling any less wrong, nor does it mean we shouldn't call people out for doing the swindling or put measures in place to prevent it from happening.

Yeah, there really should be some reasonable expectation. And it seems like setting it as low as "a working product" is still too high for people.

 

[AmberSword]

Yes. Exactly why I call it bullshit. Yes the buyer should beware because there are going to be douchebags out there who'll want to swindle them, however that doesn't make the swindling any less wrong, nor does it mean we shouldn't call people out for doing the swindling or put measures in place to prevent it from happening.

Yeah, there really should be some reasonable expectation. And it seems like setting it as low as "a working product" is still too high for people.

It actually all comes down to our form of entertainment being a relatively young medium, we don't have solid laws in place to protect us, tonnes of gigantic gaping loop holes exist, and even if we do have those, not every country has the same laws.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Yes. Exactly why I call it bullshit. Yes the buyer should beware because there are going to be douchebags out there who'll want to swindle them, however that doesn't make the swindling any less wrong, nor does it mean we shouldn't call people out for doing the swindling or put measures in place to prevent it from happening.

Yeah, there really should be some reasonable expectation. And it seems like setting it as low as "a working product" is still too high for people.

It certainly is a sad case when demanding a working product is considered unreasonable.

Yes. Exactly why I call it bullshit. Yes the buyer should beware because there are going to be douchebags out there who'll want to swindle them, however that doesn't make the swindling any less wrong, nor does it mean we shouldn't call people out for doing the swindling or put measures in place to prevent it from happening.

Yeah, there really should be some reasonable expectation. And it seems like setting it as low as "a working product" is still too high for people.

It actually all comes down to our form of entertainment being a relatively young medium, we don't have solid laws in place to protect us, tonnes of gigantic gaping loop holes exist, and even if we do have those, not every country has the same laws.

That doesn't even begin to explain the phenomenon of gamers defending the influx of shitty broken games on Steam and other digital distribution sources (but mostly Steam).

 

[AmberSword]

snip

I suppose you're right, but we do have to start somewhere. If there's no one of authority telling shitbag developers that its not OK to swindle their customers, then you can be sure these people will take advantage of this while they can with no repercussions. In turn, wise but selfish consumers will call people out on their stupidity. If clear cut laws are set in place, then it no longer remains a case of "foolish customer getting swindled", it becomes "shitty developer breaking the law", then people will come out to start defending said customers.

Don't get me wrong, caveat emptor in this context is taken too far, and is quite frankly bullshit.

 

[Roxor]

No more regional pricing. Go through the game price database and make everyone pay whatever price it's being flogged to Australians for. Yes, I know there are a few examples which are cheaper for us (as unlikely as that sounds), so it won't mean a complete price hike for everyone else.

Quality control. Add some kind of system to filter out the crap, and put the entire existing store catalogue through it.

My idea for a quality control system so far:

Phase 1 filters by concept, Phase 2 by amateur assessment of quality, Phase 3 by professional assessment of quality.

Phase 1: Basically Greenlight, where anyone can vote Interested or Not Interested on all proposed games. No executable code needed at this stage, just a description, screenshots, trailler and proposed price. The server goes through the database every month and of the games which have been on for at least 3 months and with more than 1000 total votes, it auto-rejects the bottom 10% and passes the top 10% through to Phase 2.

Phase 2: An executable must be submitted for this stage. The Steam Beta Testers play-test the game for quality for a few hours. Once they're done, they vote Pass or Fail. Again, the server automatically passes or rejects games every month on the same sort of criteria as for Phase 1.

Phase 3: Professional game critics and developers assess the games for quality. Any game which gets a consensus of being good from the panel ends up in the store.