Steam Winter Sale 2016 thread of hoping for better deals elsewhere
- Thread starter JaseC
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Queue thing.
Finaika
Member
Probably a couple of days.
hardcastlemccormick
Banned
Folks in the Steam threads raked Valve over the coals for their shitty handling of the cache issue last year and rightly so. And SteamGAF threads are full of complaining about how Valve won't implement this or that.
Calling people "fanboys" is definitely childish drama.
Goes to show how badly that feature is used if people don't know cards are given from that.
uncredited male
Member
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arts&crafts
Member
Go through your queue twice and get 2 cards, vote for award get 1 card. 3 Cards a day. I havent bought anything yet but I assume you get cards for purchasing as well as you have for the past few years.
jediyoshi
Member
10 years ago I'm pretty sure servers were also required to play games online.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
my sense is actually that most of the meme gabe love stuff comes from people who primarily post on reddit, occasionally post in GAF pc gaming threads, and aren't regulars in the Steam community threads here at all.
Yes it's telling that PutinKeyz.ru/pravda/death_to_america has better user data protection than Steam.
I mean, it's a network based service, and it is, like you said, the busiest time of the year. DDoS or not, I always expect services like those to suffer outages at this time. It's just the reality of things when your service gets a few millions of users more than the average throughout the year.
ramoisdead
Member
Pretty much. The SteamGAF community has better things to do than just keep blurting out "Steam's the best" or "praise GabeN". The folks there are much too busy talking about their never-ending backlogs if anything.
Oh and GAMEPUMP.
It really wouldn't kill them to tweet that they're having problems and they're working to fix it. Customer support has been a bit of a joke on Steam for years and after a major outtage they come out and talk about how they're trying to make their customer support better and the difficulties they go through with it. They don't exactly help themselves though when stuff like this happens and they just remain tight lipped and leave people guessing at what's happening.
This community is plenty critical of Valve's shortcomings. It's utterly unacceptable for them to be down like this during a major sales period, and they can point the finger at "script kiddies" or whatever, but it's still endemic of their awful customer support and minimal efforts to improve the Steam service over the years, and plenty of us say it over and over again. Yes, lack of communication is a failure, but even moreso is the fact that it happened at all. The Steam awards thing is cool, but the amount of effort they put into each sale has just gotten less and less. People wonder why companies like Microsoft and EA continue to try to push their stores, and it's because Valve continues to do such a poor job with Steam that it seems like there should be room for competition. Of course to be competition requires being superior, something those other services still can't manage. So no, don't lump us in as simple fanboys when this community includes people like jshackles who actively works regularly to improve Steam's shortcomings and plenty of others of us who point them out on a regular basis.
They aren't new to this party, they've been doing this for years now. A minor blip at the beginning of the sale is one thing. Hours and hours of downtime is another. The amount of money they generate, they should be massively over prepared at every step for things like this.
I agree with you to the extent that this isn't unusual - it's becoming a joke for Valve and steam at this point. But to chastise people for wanting some kind of official word from the company, even for the most remote feeling of reassurance is asinine. Valve aren't gods, but they are capable of releasing at minimum a tweet saying 'Hey, we got this. hang tight'.
They shouldnt be given a free pass and a shrug because they're valve and this is to be expected.
TheLetdown
Member
This, plus Steam Community is plenty critical of Steam. All of the time.
Criticism of GAMEPUMP, on the other hand, is met with unfettered hostility.
SatelliteOfLove
Member
There should be a Jojos video about this outage.
You buy now*!
*whenever its possible
You buy now*!
*whenever its possible
arts&crafts
Member
Seems like Fallout 4 is on 75% discount at gamersgate. Feels like oldtime sales. Sadly my computer is also oldtime though...
https://www.gamersgate.com/DD-FALLOUT4/?caff=3964022&aff=cj
https://www.gamersgate.com/DD-FALLOUT4/?caff=3964022&aff=cj
Valve can't communicate with their users? Nothing new. Only uplifting news is that Valve got fined 3$ million in Australia for refusing refunds and misleading customers.
http://www.smh.com.au/business/medi...ion-for-refusing-refunds-20161223-gthdux.html
http://www.smh.com.au/business/medi...ion-for-refusing-refunds-20161223-gthdux.html
CelticKnight
Member
Written by a 12 year old?
Just wait it out and give these scrubs no attention, so much easier.
Valve's communication can be pretty shitty.
I just don't think this is a particularly good example of that.
Would be nice if cases against much worse companies in those regards were opened too.
arts&crafts
Member
Didnt the exact same thing happen last christmas? Valve should put up some counter-measures for next year.
Just play your games and wait it out. We all have healthy backlogs here, unless you're Leafhopper, or someone else who has literally played every game in their library. Sales aren't running or anything. Let's just hope it's back so you can go through your queue before 1 PM EST tomorrow and get your cards. Nothing else we can do but wait.
Still down eh.
A word or two would be nice, even if just to confirm what some of us are already assuming.
Pump it!
So if the servers are DDOSed or there internal server problems, Valve shouldn't even come out and ackowledge it?
If they are being DDoS'd, having more servers wouldn't stop shit. This isn't "Valve's fault" and I'm all for raking them over the coals when it comes to support (and making the client 64-bit finally). But a DDoS is something no company can control. You can try to mitigate it, but if the person(s) are wanting to shut you down, they can.
Even MS and Amazon aren't immune to this, the only reason they don't shutdown like Valve/Steam is because they have "mitigation" plans to try to stop the DDoS from completely shutting them down.
They also have DOOM for 75% off. Are there any coupon codes for the site?
Sr Kitsune
Member
uncredited male
Member
Steam client and support has always been varying degrees of shit. Selection, prices, and accessibility (when working) is what makes it a thing.
We will make a deal until it comes back up and for most it will be forgotten in minutes. They are counting on that sadly.
We will make a deal until it comes back up and for most it will be forgotten in minutes. They are counting on that sadly.
PandaPedinte
Member
I haven't being active in the Steam threads for some time, but when Valve messed things they could be called out on their mess. Of course just having a position from them could be nice.
Apparently they got DDOSed, but since they haven't officially come out and said anything, noone seems to really know what's happening.
You already know that by the very fact that Steam is down, so I don't see what kind of new information you're gaining from it. I'd expect communication if it goes down for a larger ammount of time (say like 24 hours), not a couple of hours.
I disagree. I think any company should come out and say what's happening, at least they they are looking into it, if it goes over 1 hour.
PLASTICA-MAN
Member
What's happening?
arts&crafts
Member
Nerds are hacking our gaming website!
DDoS kiddies at it again
Confirmed?
At this point Valve should have multiple employees who do nothing other than work to prevent and mitigate a DDOS style attack. All of those companies should (and I'm sure plenty of them do). If anything, it seems clear some companies (like Blizzard) enjoy being able to point the finger at a DDOS as blame for all their issues whether it is or not. Being reactionary isn't good enough, they need to be pro-active, and we've seen no evidence they are ever pro-active about much of anything.
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