Valve on Customer Service: "We Need to Do Better"

[Lightknight]

Yet people fellate Steam and refuse to even consider installing Origin because it's made by EA and therefore possessed by Satan or something. Despite the numerous statements by users about how their customer service is actually pretty solid.

Yeah, Origin is even worse because it's owned by THE company spearheading atrocious anti-consumer policies that specifically make trusting them with our libraries an even larger liability.

I'm not sure if Steam is good or bad in that department. I've actually never had a problem with them. No one I personally know has ever had an issue with them. Only chocolate and rainbows from where I'm sitting.

If you've had problems with them, then that's your own anecdotal experience. Don't expect us to head over to Origin just because something bad happened to our third cousin thrice removed on our step brother's side.

My experience with Origin as a company has been horrendous. Why would I trust them with the future of my gaming library? My options as I see it are to keep using Steam but never use Origin or to not use both. Because fuck EA. You can point to Steam's performance on BBB, but do you care to take a look at EA's customer performance? Such as getting the worst company award multiple years in a row? I mean, this is small potatoes compared to EA.

 

[Haerthan]

Yet people fellate Steam and refuse to even consider installing Origin because it's made by EA and therefore possessed by Satan or something. Despite the numerous statements by users about how their customer service is actually pretty solid.

But it is possessed by Satan. I had to exorcise my computer after installing the Mass Effect 3 demo to ensure my privacy. And yay EA is doing something right for once ppfffft yea right. Lets see shitty, broken, rushed games (unless its Bioware usually), a competitor to Steam that looks at the data on ur PC and sends it back (there was an article on that somewhere, not enough time to search for it though), insincere apologies and dead developers.

EA IS THE FUCKING SATAN OF THE GAMING INDUSTRY.

Edit: I had Uplay but after screwing up I removed it. so yea fuck Ubisoft too

 

[Lightknight]

Yet people fellate Steam and refuse to even consider installing Origin because it's made by EA and therefore possessed by Satan or something. Despite the numerous statements by users about how their customer service is actually pretty solid.

But it is possessed by Satan. I had to exorcise my computer after installing the Mass Effect 3 demo to ensure my privacy. And yay EA is doing something right for once ppfffft yea right. Lets see shitty, broken, rushed games (unless its Bioware usually), a competitor to Steam that looks at the data on ur PC and sends it back (there was an article on that somewhere, not enough time to search for it though), insincere apologies and dead developers.

EA IS THE FUCKING SATAN OF THE GAMING INDUSTRY.

Edit: I had Uplay but after screwing up I removed it. so yea fuck Ubisoft too

Ubisoft is very quickly nearing EA level of evil dickery. I used to think of them as EA in training but they appear to have gained their own special brand of consumer hatred.

 

[alj]

Err no shit you need to do better.

I don't have any faith in the "we need to do better"stance many companies take. Just shut up and take action. No "we are sorry"or we will improve. Just do it , no if's no but's.

When EA ( EA of all people) have better customer service than you ... well do i even need to say why this is terrible.

Just give refunds . Thats all you have to do , allow people to return a game. And possibly check stuff fucking works before you allow it on steam. And bloody check stuff on green light to make sure its not total garbage. Hears and idea, don't let people charge for games in greenlight. Once its out of greenlight then its removed form your list and you have to pay for it if you want to play once its out.

Oh and close the floodgates for publishers dumping shitloads of crap onto the store.

Oh thats more than one thing but, the first thing ( refunds) would at least negate the effect the other things are having.

And improve your store front its terrible , when http://www.enhancedsteam.com needs to exist then you know something is wrong.

You are an embarrassment to yourself valve.


EDIT

I am just wondering if valves "no refunds"policy will cover steam machines and the controller as well ? CPU was DOA , sorry mate your shit out of luck, no refunds .

If anyone is ever working in a restaurant and sees gabe they should shit on his plate and then say "sorry no refunds".

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

The good news is that Valve is rather ashamed of this.

No, Valve isn't ashamed, Valve released a statement apologizing, as any other company will do.

 

[zumbledum]

Yet people fellate Steam and refuse to even consider installing Origin because it's made by EA and therefore possessed by Satan or something. Despite the numerous statements by users about how their customer service is actually pretty solid.

or because steam and origin dont do the same thing, origin just sells EA games

 

[Aeshi]

They "need to", but they probably won't, unless they manage to pawn the job off on to the community somehow.

I can see it now: "Customer Service: Now with Steam Workshop support! Provide your own fixes for other people (so we don't have to!)"

 

[Evonisia]

I'd sooner believe that Valve was making a game with a "3" on the end than believe that they're sincerely sorry and wish to improve.

 

[Laughing Man]

and this report is what confusing me over the whole worst company rating and specifically why EA keeps getting voted top for this achievement. Now yes they may well take small companies and bleed them dry and yes they may well release buggy and half finished games (although compared to Ubi they really aren't that bad) and yes they certainly love to DLCify anything and everything that they think can make them money but here's the thing. ALL of that is an option, they don;t make you buy their product so how good they are to their customers or how good a company they are should be based on your, the customers, interaction with them, their customer service team.

So while they are total gits in some respects the general consensus that I've seen from people who have had to deal with EAs customer service is that they are usually pretty quick and pretty decent when it comes to resolving issues. Yet here you have a report telling us what we already know that Valve's customer service is utter shite, over 500 complaints of 700 unresolved. That means that Valve had made no attempt or deemed the report unworthy of any action. As a company who deals with customers that's a fucking disgrace it shows that they treat their customers with such disdain as to not even bother trying to resolve the issue the customer is having. Then again when you are in charge of an open sewer trench I suppose it's easier to just ignore the non stop complaints of people stepping in shit than it is to actually try dealing with them.

I should look into GoG. See if Factorio's on there

I think it can only be bought direct from the Factorio website at the moment. Just buy it from there, I did and have loved the game so far.

 

[OverEZ]

Honestly, I've always had a pretty good experience with Steam's customer service. So long as I explained my issue well and was a little bit patient, they made sure to take care of me. Opposed to the poster above, I don't mind Origin per-se, but they don't provide games I am interested in.

You misunderstand. I wasn't criticizing Origin, I was stating how people's hatred of it and praise of Steam is bizarre given the poor track record of Steam's service.

Yes, Steam has had a bad track record of customer service but if you don't know why people mistrust or just flat-out don't like EA then you haven't been paying attention. Steam has garnered enough goodwill from it's users via sales and quality, user-friendly games for years while EA has showered it's audience with contempt for years upon years. Insane amounts of overpriced DLC, bad games from good licences, the slaughtering of audience-cherished studios, "if you didn't like the game, it's your fault" excuses from Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age 2 directors, glitchy unpolished games like the latest Dragon Age, the attempts to shoehorn in micro-transactions into every game and so much more. The dislike of Origin is more reflexive because it's attached to EA, not because of some tribalistic prejudice of anything not Steam.

 

[grigjd3]

Honestly, I've always had a pretty good experience with Steam's customer service. So long as I explained my issue well and was a little bit patient, they made sure to take care of me. Opposed to the poster above, I don't mind Origin per-se, but they don't provide games I am interested in.

You misunderstand. I wasn't criticizing Origin, I was stating how people's hatred of it and praise of Steam is bizarre given the poor track record of Steam's service.

I misspoke. What I meant is that as opposed to those you appear to run into, I don't mind Origin, but rather they just don't have much in the way of games I want.

 

[grigjd3]

Well the only time I've ever had to deal with Valve's customer service was quite pleasant, but I'm gonna buck the trend and not assume that their service is stellar just because I was an exception.

I will say this: It was highly amusing to score a refund on a game (accidentally purchased it twice; this was before they changed it so you couldn't do that), while still receiving an email telling me that they absolutely do not give refunds.

I basically had this experience several times. I was in Germany but I was trying to buy games in English. At the time, a game would often list English, French, Spanish and Italian ass languages the game comes in but if you bought the game, you occasionally could not get the English version because the German censors would not allow the violence to be depicted in the same way. This happened to me like five or six times and each time I would email in pointing out that the store page was misleading. I would get the standard email that said there are no refunds and a couple of days later, I would get an email apologizing and notifying me of the refund.

 

[Magmarock]

Yes Valve needs to do more then nothing to improve their customer service.

 

[Denamic]

Yet people fellate Steam and refuse to even consider installing Origin because it's made by EA and therefore possessed by Satan or something. Despite the numerous statements by users about how their customer service is actually pretty solid.

Good customer service doesn't change the fact that Origin is possessed by Satan EA. Charging 700 SEK/80 USD for digital downloads, more than actual physical copies of the same game cost in retail, is just disgusting. I will boycot the shit out of that bullshit.

 

[bossfight1]

I honestly haven't had any bad experiences with Steam customer support; any tech issues I have I just go to the forums to find a fix for, or just wait for a patch.

What I DO take issue with on Steam is its disregard for quality control and - you know what, just watch the relevant Jimquisitions on the subject, since I'd just be parroting them anyway. ...Though you should watch Jimquisition in any case, because Thank God for Jim Fucking Sterling, Son.

 

[Combustion Kevin]

Guys, Guys, you clearly don't get it, everything works on Valve-time, why would the customer service be an exception?

OT, I like Steam, and thankfully never needed to make use of their customer support, but I'm also tired of needing an account name and password for EVERY BLOODY THING I interact with, so therein lies my reluctance to joining Origin.

I would also like to make use of GOG, but as far as I know they do not have and IDEAL service for payment, and credit cards are another hassle I'm too lazy to deal with.

 

[Steve the Pocket]

I'd like to remind everyone that this company made it against the customer service agreement to sue them, on penalty of having your account banned. Did even Origin stoop that low? (Granted, they will ban you for complaining about them on the Internet, on a site they're not affiliated with, under an account no one can prove is you... but maybe not for suing them.) When a company that does that says they realize they have a customer service issue, do you really trust them to do anything about it?

The "does not respond at all" phrase rings particularly true for most people I know, (including myself), who have had their complaints fall on deaf ears whenever there's a problem with Steam.

Yeah, I've ... never been convinced that Valve even has an actual customer service department, just a bot that's programmed to look at what game you're talking about and respond with pre-written bullshit on par with "Is your computer plugged in?"

It's just lucky for them that I've never had a real problem that didn't get magically fixed within a week or two.

They "need to", but they probably won't, unless they manage to pawn the job off on to the community somehow.

I can see it now: "Customer Service: Now with Steam Workshop support! Provide your own fixes for other people (so we don't have to!)"

The irony is that it would be a major improvement; generally, when people take their complaints to the forums and aren't rude about it, they can find a fix for their issues maybe half the time. At least, provided they're having a problem with a game and not Steam itself. So maybe what Valve really needs to do is hire someone to build a database of common issues and likely solutions, kind of like the PC Gaming Wiki, so people who are having problems with games can be directed to that before wasting anyone's time or, worse, assuming the worst right off the bat and just demanding a refund (oh yeah, and they need to allow refunds too, but that's like saying plants need water). That would take care of a lot of the volume, and leave them with basically nothing to do besides fielding complaints with their own games and the Steam client/service itself, most of which are so fundamental that I'm not sure they could be fixed anyway.

 

[FoolKiller]

Honestly, I've always had a pretty good experience with Steam's customer service. So long as I explained my issue well and was a little bit patient, they made sure to take care of me. Opposed to the poster above, I don't mind Origin per-se, but they don't provide games I am interested in.

You misunderstand. I wasn't criticizing Origin, I was stating how people's hatred of it and praise of Steam is bizarre given the poor track record of Steam's service.

Yes, Steam has had a bad track record of customer service but if you don't know why people mistrust or just flat-out don't like EA then you haven't been paying attention. Steam has garnered enough goodwill from it's users via sales and quality, user-friendly games for years while EA has showered it's audience with contempt for years upon years. Insane amounts of overpriced DLC, bad games from good licences, the slaughtering of audience-cherished studios, "if you didn't like the game, it's your fault" excuses from Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age 2 directors, glitchy unpolished games like the latest Dragon Age, the attempts to shoehorn in micro-transactions into every game and so much more. The dislike of Origin is more reflexive because it's attached to EA, not because of some tribalistic prejudice of anything not Steam.

The dislike of Origin was the last straw because Origin, in its early configuration, and with their terms of service, was allowed to data mine your whole system. On top of that, there was a rule that if you left the service dormant for 2 years they could delete it and you would lose all your games.

 

[Lightknight]

EDIT

I am just wondering if valves "no refunds"policy will cover steam machines and the controller as well ? CPU was DOA , sorry mate your shit out of luck, no refunds .

The no refunds policy isn't anything to do with steam. It's an industry standard for digital downloads. Can you return digital downloads on say, Amazon? The answer is no [http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201380130] and yet Amazon has the best customer service I've ever seen. This is because you can always copy a digital file and then just return it. Even encryption is quickly broken by the gaming community. The hardware to do the same with physical copies is far harder.

Besides, this allows us to be able to operate Steam in offline mode. I like being able to have my games installed on more than one machine at a time.

Hell, even a lot of game stores have a no-return policy unless the disc is damaged and it's within a week of purchase.

So what's your point? What are you expecting to see them change that someone else is doing correctly (or what you believe is correct)?

They really just fail in one main area:

Product information.

The page front owners are the game manufacturers. They are able to delete posts and not display negative information whereas Amazon allows free market reviews.

You might say that curation is a problem but given sufficient information for consumers to make their decisions on, it doesn't really matter if you let all games through as long as the free review market allows the good games to shine through.

 

[DrOswald]

Great service, quality product, low price, choose two.

Steam provides a solid product at a fantastic price. Service is what gives in the equation, which is known by anyone who has paid attention for the last 10 years. Expecting good service from Steam is like expecting a smile from the soup nazi. Sure, it would be nice, but you knew the risks going in.

My only real problem with Steam is the lack of a decent refund program. Fix that and I really don't think there is much of a problem. And even then chances are if you need to refund a game it is your fault anyway.