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[CecilRousso]

3) Valve literally employees its own customers to do development work for them via modding, items, etc.

And are paying quite a lot of money for the things they create.

 

[AlteredForms]

A very thoughtful and well-researched piece OP. Don't let the Valve loyalists detract you from your view. They have to make a habit of sucking Valve's huge dick in order to justify the amount of time, money and resources they have put into Steam.

 

[Qassim]

A very thoughtful and well-researched piece OP. Don't let the Valve loyalists detract you from your view. They have to make a habit of sucking Valve's huge dick in order to justify the amount of time, money and resources they have put into Steam.

Yeah. There's no possibility that someone could disagree without them "sucking Valve's huge dick". You're on a forum, this sort of comment doesn't actually contribute anything but a source of conflict. It's purposely coming into a thread with the aim of insulting people. You're not backing up either argument here with anything substantial, you've just chosen a side and decided to insult the other.

 

[Gattsu25]

I don't use the aspects of steam that do not interest me.

I didn't participate in the auction because it held no interest in me.

I'm not buying any games in this year's sales unless I find them compelling in some way.

I'm good.


And for the complaints about the client having a disjointed interface.. there us already a fix for that in big picture mode

 

[CosmicQueso]

You people are clearly not active on SteamGAF.

Who are you calling "you people".

I'm on steam GAF all the time, was there more when it wasn't all waifu and Russian trader pricing convos.

Back when your avatar was the dude from lost you were a much happier dude. You've changed man, what happened??

 

[Cizeta-Moroder]

This may be a bit tangential to the topic, but has there been any outrage over Steam's new update policy, or have I just been living under a rock?
Mandatory game updates are huuuge bullshit that consumers shouldn't tolerate. Especailly considering the GTA San Andreas incident.

bump
Has this been discussed? Or is it just another thing Valve gets away with?

 

[Leafhopper]

I fully agree.

1) Steam, as a client, is a joke.

2) Valve, as a game "developer", is a joke.

3) Valve literally employees its own customers to do development work for them via modding, items, etc.

4) There is no evidence whatsoever that they're actually doing anything with the piles of money they make.

5) Because Steam is an infinitely looping cash-cow, they have zero urgency to actually try to make things better, and this is made worse by the fact that they have a monopoly on the market.

1) I wouldn't say a joke, it isn't the best though and can always need improvements. Mainly the Friends server needs to be more stable.

2) You do know that the word developer doesn't mean one makes just video games right?

3) What? If you mean the workshop, no one gets paid for those things most of the time. They are just extras. Unless you mean people getting paid for making really good TF2 and Dota 2 items, which is the exact same as making mechanics for the game right?

4 W h a t? You honestly think they would have been able to make Big Picture, streaming, sharing, the steam controller, or even bother to have Mac and Linux versions of the client for free?

5) Companies like making money, that might be a surprise to you. The reason they have a "monopoly" is because most devs are scared of their game being pirated so its on Steam (using steamworks and such) the other and biggest reason because the amount of people using the service, most of which because of the store.

Define making stuff worse? You mean the stuff like Gems, which I don't give a fuck about, that I can just ignore? Much like almost every new feature that gets added?

EDIT: I am confused why I even gave this a serious reply after I submitted it.

 

[Lomax]

This may be a bit tangential to the topic, but has there been any outrage over Steam's new update policy, or have I just been living under a rock?
Mandatory game updates are huuuge bullshit that consumers shouldn't tolerate. Especailly considering the GTA San Andreas incident.

bump
Has this been discussed? Or is it just another thing Valve gets away with?

It isn't new, so what's to discuss? Granted, the GTA example is quite abusive, but that's the publisher's fault. You've never been able to play a game on Steam without updating (short of permanent offline mode). The only choices that were added were if it updated automatically as soon as possible, or if it waited until you started the game up.

 

[D3RANG3D]

A very thoughtful and well-researched piece OP. Don't let the Valve loyalists detract you from your view. They have to make a habit of sucking Valve's huge dick in order to justify the amount of time, money and resources they have put into Steam.

 

[NotoriousPUG]

I don't think that make bad games, not by a long stretch, but they are revered in some peoples eyes. I understand I'm in the minority and different stroke and all that but their games just seem so average to me.

Well what games do you think are great? Are they just completely different genres then what Valve produces?

 

[Cizeta-Moroder]

It isn't new, so what's to discuss? Granted, the GTA example is quite abusive, but that's the publisher's fault. You've never been able to play a game on Steam without updating (short of permanent offline mode). The only choices that were added were if it updated automatically as soon as possible, or if it waited until you started the game up.

Seems new to me. In my experience, I couple of weeks back launching an out-of-date game would prompt you with the option to update or play right away. And new or not, there's no justification for it.

 

[epmode]

A very thoughtful and well-researched piece OP. Don't let the Valve loyalists detract you from your view. They have to make a habit of sucking Valve's huge dick in order to justify the amount of time, money and resources they have put into Steam.

That must be it.

 

[inm8num2]

.

 

[Roshin]

A very thoughtful and well-researched piece OP. Don't let the Valve loyalists detract you from your view. They have to make a habit of sucking Valve's huge dick in order to justify the amount of time, money and resources they have put into Steam.

Totally not trolling.

 

[jshackles]

I keep seeing references to this thread, so I thought I'd weigh in on things.

Valve is still a great and wonderful company, and they have a great suite of products that people really enjoy using. It's true that they haven't released any of their own games recently and seem to be focusing on the F2P trend that has permeated gaming in our post-App Store world. Any time a popular and well loved company changes direction like Valve have, there are going to be people like the OP that are completely disenfranchised by that decision. But, a lot of people really love DOTA 2, CS:GO, and TF2 - they're the three most played games on Steam consistently. These games are making Valve more money than they would get if they focused all of their time and energy on making a new single-player game (which, BTW, they are anyway).

That being said, I'm probably the person most famously upset about the Steam client's (and website's) lack of features. Their server architecture is an absolute joke as the OP points out. Their support is laughable to the point that it may as well be non-existent. These are all things that Valve could improve on if they put the right people in the right positions, but haven't. For me, that's been especially frustrating.

I've volunteered my time for the past two years so that everyone can have a better experience while using Steam. If given the opportunity, I'd gladly volunteer to spend a number of hours each week working for Valve making improvements to Steam based on community suggestions. This wouldn't cost them anything except the small amount of time it would take for someone to get me started. Sadly, this proposal was turned down because (presumably) the people that work on the Steam team have too much pride. Meanwhile, a large number of Valve employees in other departments use Enhanced Steam every day and have told me that they couldn't live without it. I've heard similar stories from people that work in customer service that would gladly volunteer their time working Steam support a few hours a week so that they could give more human responses to the issues, but again it's considered a big "no-no" to bring in this sort of help whether it's free or not.

What's the solution? Nobody has really come up with one yet. Obviously, other gaming download services exist but are nowhere near as robust as Steam in terms of functionality and developer support. GOG Galaxy sounds nice, but the reality is that larger game studios will never use it because they'll never agree to release their games completely DRM free. Origin is improving by leaps and bounds but it's been available for years and still hasn't caught up in many respects to where Steam was at years ago. For a while it seemed like Amazon would have it's own digital download client that would be backed by a company with enough money to matter, but that's never come to fruition.

I'm holding out hope that Valve will eventually realize that Steam (as a platform) could perform so much better if it's scope was widened and more highly intelligent people were brought on board to help develop, maintain, and support it. The impression I get from Valve is "eh, Steam is good enough" and that's a pretty sad stance for the company to take. Until such a time as Steam gets the attention it deserves, I'll just keep researching and developing new features for Enhanced Steam that will probably get incorporated into Steam. I'm doing my part, but I wish I could do more.

 

[Helmholtz]

I think some of their initiatives over the past couple years have been pretty underwhelming.
But they've done so many great things with steam and for PC gaming in general that I find it hard to dislike them.
I really wish they'd seriously overhaul the shitty ass client though. That thing still looks like amateur hour to me, at least from a graphic design standpoint.

 

[orava]

I think some of their initiatives over the past couple years have been pretty underwhelming.
But they've done so many great things with steam and for PC gaming in general that I find it hard to dislike them.
I really wish they'd seriously overhaul the shitty ass client though. That thing still looks like amateur hour to me, at least from a graphic design standpoint.

They should. Until then i use http://metroforsteam.com/

About he initiatives. There is a lot of great stuff cooking at valve and it reminds me of the earlier days of PC gaming which is nice.

 

[Micromegas]

You will love them again in no time, OP. #stockholmsyndrome

 

[draetenth]

...Obviously, other gaming download services exist but are nowhere near as robust as Steam in terms of functionality and developer support. GOG Galaxy sounds nice, but the reality is that larger game studios will never use it because they'll never agree to release their games completely DRM free. Origin is improving by leaps and bounds but it's been available for years and still hasn't caught up in many respects to where Steam was at years ago. For a while it seemed like Amazon would have it's own digital download client that would be backed by a company with enough money to matter, but that's never come to fruition.

I'm holding out hope that Valve will eventually realize that Steam (as a platform) could perform so much better if it's scope was widened and more highly intelligent people were brought on board to help develop, maintain, and support it. The impression I get from Valve is "eh, Steam is good enough" and that's a pretty sad stance for the company to take. Until such a time as Steam gets the attention it deserves, I'll just keep researching and developing new features for Enhanced Steam that will probably get incorporated into Steam. I'm doing my part, but I wish I could do more.

Great Post jshackles. I didn't want to quote the whole thing (but it was all good), but these two paragraphs are the ones I agree with the most.

As someone who loves using Enhanced Steam, I'm happy to hear that you will keep up the good work.

 

[theusedversion]

snip

Well said. And I just want to say thank you for all that you do. I too am one that cannot imagine a Steam experience without ES.

 

[thepotatoman]

I still don't understand where this "Valve don't make games!" sentiment is coming from. They didn't release a game in 2014, the first year in probably a decade or more that they've done that, and suddenly Valve no longer makes games!

During this year they've supported their major games like DOTA2 and CSGO with lots of updates, content updates and tournaments. I don't see any other company being blasted for "no making games" because they're not releasing a game every, single, year.

They haven't really released a new game since 2011. You can't tell me the Dota 2 beta wasn't pretty much the full game when it released in 2011, and CS:GO is as much of a new game as SF4:AE is a new game.

They announced Dota 2 in October 2010. It is now more than 4 years since they announced anything new except for one slightly enhanced port of an old game. You don't see why that's making people a little antsy?

 

[cicero]

What's the solution? Nobody has really come up with one yet. Obviously, other gaming download services exist but are nowhere near as robust as Steam in terms of functionality and developer support. GOG Galaxy sounds nice, but the reality is that larger game studios will never use it because they'll never agree to release their games completely DRM free. Origin is improving by leaps and bounds but it's been available for years and still hasn't caught up in many respects to where Steam was at years ago. For a while it seemed like Amazon would have it's own digital download client that would be backed by a company with enough money to matter, but that's never come to fruition.

I'm holding out hope that Valve will eventually realize that Steam (as a platform) could perform so much better if it's scope was widened and more highly intelligent people were brought on board to help develop, maintain, and support it. The impression I get from Valve is "eh, Steam is good enough" and that's a pretty sad stance for the company to take. Until such a time as Steam gets the attention it deserves, I'll just keep researching and developing new features for Enhanced Steam that will probably get incorporated into Steam. I'm doing my part, but I wish I could do more.

Have you seen the most recent review by a former Valve employee on GlassDoor?
http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Valve-Corporation-Reviews-E24849.htm

Many of the ways in which Valve seeks to differentiate from other companies are not actually so valid. While it's true that Valve has no official job titles or promotions, compensation varies greatly among employees and many teams have an obvious pecking order. There is no formal management structure, but it's clear that some people have substantially more control over project direction and the work of others. Even though productivity is said to be the only metric that matters, people who are already connected or are accomplished social engineers will do just fine. Denying that all of these social forces are at work makes the problem intractable and difficult to even discuss.

For a company that makes so much money, Valve is surprisingly risk-averse. New projects, internal tools, dev infrastructure, and anything that doesn't contribute to a current product are met with disdain. Because teams are intended to be self-forming, it's rare that enough people will want to assume risk to all collectively embark on a new project. It's too safe and too profitable to just contribute to something that's already successful. Even though failure is supposed to be tolerated and even encouraged so that employees will try new ideas and experiments, there is little evidence of this. After a few rounds of bonuses, folks learn quickly what is rewarded, and what is not.

Valve's success has made folks arrogant, and this contributes to the problem of how new ideas are considered and discussed. Dogmatic thinking is actually common because people can always point to a great success in the past and use this to justify why everything should continue as it is. Some folks at Valve do not want the company to grow. Valve already has an incredibly strong profit/employee ratio. Why dilute it? This line of thinking crops up in project discussions as well, and causes many ideas to be dismissed because they seem too niche/unprofitable (at the time).

Makes sense why they would try to keep things in-house rather than hiring, who wants a smaller paycheck.

 

[jshackles]

Have you seen the most recent review by a former Valve employee on GlassDoor?
http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Valve-Corporation-Reviews-E24849.htm

Makes sense why they would try to keep things in-house rather than hiring, who wants a smaller paycheck.

I hadn't read that but I'm not surprised. It's a shame they're not willing to consider tweaking their evaluation process if it's not working the way it was intended and is promoting stagnation.

 

[not psycho]

This may be a bit tangential to the topic, but has there been any outrage over Steam's new update policy, or have I just been living under a rock?
Mandatory game updates are huuuge bullshit that consumers shouldn't tolerate. Especailly considering the GTA San Andreas incident.

I rage about it every chance I get, but apparently most people don't care.

It is really awful.

It isn't new, so what's to discuss? Granted, the GTA example is quite abusive, but that's the publisher's fault. You've never been able to play a game on Steam without updating (short of permanent offline mode). The only choices that were added were if it updated automatically as soon as possible, or if it waited until you started the game up.

This isn't true. For a very long time Steam did have an option that implied you could play without updating. It's just that the option didn't work.

But then there was a brief window where it did work. You could play games without updating. I gave them a lot of praise on this board for fixing it. Then they removed the option entirely.

And for the record, I would have bought less games on Steam if they didn't use to have the option. I assumed, since it existed, they would eventually fix it. Instead they removed it. Which just goes to show the danger of being locked in to a DRM scheme... they can remove things whenever they want. They can even remove entire games if they want, by calling it an "update."

 

[Qassim]

They haven't really released a new game since 2011. You can't tell me the Dota 2 beta wasn't pretty much the full game when it released in 2011, and CS:GO is as much of a new game as SF4:AE is a new game.

Haha, what?! Are you serious? Go and play Source or 1.6, to suggest CSGO isn't a new game AND to compare it to SF4:AE is beyond ridiculous. Have you played any of these games? I'm staggered that someone could make such a claim.

Yeah, it's a sequel, it's a counter-strike game being a counter-strike game, but to suggest it isn't a new game is really bizarre.

 

[Gattsu25]

They haven't really released a new game since 2011. You can't tell me the Dota 2 beta wasn't pretty much the full game when it released in 2011, and CS:GO is as much of a new game as SF4:AE is a new game.

Wait...so facts go out of the window because... 'reasons'?

I've volunteered my time for the past two years so that everyone can have a better experience while using Steam. If given the opportunity, I'd gladly volunteer to spend a number of hours each week working for Valve making improvements to Steam based on community suggestions. This wouldn't cost them anything except the small amount of time it would take for someone to get me started. Sadly, this proposal was turned down because (presumably) the people that work on the Steam team have too much pride. Meanwhile, a large number of Valve employees in other departments use Enhanced Steam every day and have told me that they couldn't live without it. I've heard similar stories from people that work in customer service that would gladly volunteer their time working Steam support a few hours a week so that they could give more human responses to the issues, but again it's considered a big "no-no" to bring in this sort of help whether it's free or not.

What's the solution? Nobody has really come up with one yet. Obviously, other gaming download services exist but are nowhere near as robust as Steam in terms of functionality and developer support. GOG Galaxy sounds nice, but the reality is that larger game studios will never use it because they'll never agree to release their games completely DRM free. Origin is improving by leaps and bounds but it's been available for years and still hasn't caught up in many respects to where Steam was at years ago. For a while it seemed like Amazon would have it's own digital download client that would be backed by a company with enough money to matter, but that's never come to fruition.

I'm holding out hope that Valve will eventually realize that Steam (as a platform) could perform so much better if it's scope was widened and more highly intelligent people were brought on board to help develop, maintain, and support it. The impression I get from Valve is "eh, Steam is good enough" and that's a pretty sad stance for the company to take. Until such a time as Steam gets the attention it deserves, I'll just keep researching and developing new features for Enhanced Steam that will probably get incorporated into Steam. I'm doing my part, but I wish I could do more.

It's a shame. The steam client is slowly adding features but they're still behind where they could be.

I still think they're pretty good compared to the competition but that smells a bit like 'damning with faint praise'

 

[Linearskillz]

[snip]

Great post. I agree with everything here.

While there's quite a bit of extra dramatization in the OP I don't think we should be going easy on Valve. I prefer Steam the majority of the time and have what I think is quite a large game library (over 500 titles - nothing approaching some of you!). I think we should be especially critical of them because of the amount of money we've invested in the service. It could blow up any time and we stand to lose the most if that were to happen.

Valve's customer support is embarrassingly bad and really should be their number one priority moving forward. It's pretty bad when EA looks like the good guy. The client is ancient and slow. I switched to using a browser with Enhanced Steam a while ago and it's been way better. Thanks jshackles!

I want to say that I think Valve does a lot of cool and smart things, they just need to get their shit together when it comes to the core of their business with Steam. From the sounds of things some of the people working there really need to swallow their pride and accept help from fresh eyes.

 

[epmode]

I just miss the old Steam metagame. You know, when they tied game achievements into their sales. It really gave a sense of community to the platform. The new meta with the cards and gems and all that other bullshit doesn't interest me at all.

This may be a bit tangential to the topic, but has there been any outrage over Steam's new update policy, or have I just been living under a rock?
Mandatory game updates are huuuge bullshit that consumers shouldn't tolerate. Especailly considering the GTA San Andreas incident.

Forcing users to play the latest version of a game is a lousy policy. It doesn't really affect me, though, so I haven't complained.

Regardless, can't you go to offline mode before launching the game? Origin also forces updates before launching but going offline bypasses the check.

 

[inm8num2]

edit - nm, I misread something.

 

[Etnos]

Steam is a pile of shit. It completely destroys PC gaming with it's unnecessary feautures. Valve is dead to me after all this "living room" dreams they have.

You entitled to your own opinions, but man...

 

[Carlius]

i think steam is better than it has ever been now. the new additions to the service and stuff. lets make it clear, steam is owned by valve, but they are both separate things that i bet take a lot of work and money. so you have a game developer who is working hard to maintain what most consider the savior of PC gaming, Steam and who needs to ocus on not only creating a new engine but creating new games.

This is not an easy job i bet and with the explosion dota 2 has had as well as their free to play system, valve just has too many things to do. if you ask me, i could care less bout l4d3 or portal 3. i want my dota 2 to be finished and constantly updated. that is my addiction right now and all i care about.

Steam implementing streaming and other things is amazing, so i dont really see the hate for valve.

 

[Rabbit Lord]

The GabeN meme feels so sarcastic, now.
I used to see an industry visionary - now I see a guy that got lucky 15 years ago and has been desperately hanging on ever since.

What is he desperately hanging on to?

 

[cicero]

What is he desperately hanging on to?

His company dominating PC digital games, industry wide accolades, making the Forbes top Billionaires list since 2012, winning a 2013 BAFTA Fellowship Award. It's all just one big downward spiral for him, his desperation is pretty obvious.

 

[sandy1297]

But think about it from this perspective: you have a hard drive from 2009 and 2GB of DDR2 Ram. You have about 3-4 games in your library and play one of them occasionally. Now suddenly to play the next game in your favourite series you have to install a client you never needed before, it has an ugly interface that doesn't match anything else in your operating system and the options to disable pop up ads are buried within it. Are you thinking wow what an awesome tool to help me with my games, or are you thinking, how do I get rid of this?

maybe you should be asking 2K/Firaxis why they make Steam mandatory, even for the disc version

 

[hooijdonk17]

I'm not even sure that I'm using the same Steam as most people on this thread anymore...

 

[JaseC]

It isn't new, so what's to discuss? Granted, the GTA example is quite abusive, but that's the publisher's fault. You've never been able to play a game on Steam without updating (short of permanent offline mode). The only choices that were added were if it updated automatically as soon as possible, or if it waited until you started the game up.

You're right that the "update policy" hasn't changed (ever), but beginning late last year there was a relatively brief period where it was possible for users to skip a detected game update provided they were already downloading something else (i.e. it was queued); however, instead of expanding upon this to allow users to skip detected updates regardless of the situation (which, incidentally, would have made Offline Mode just about perfect), Valve stepped away from the feature entirely and renamed "Do not automatically update this game" to "Only update this game when I launch it" to more accurately reflect the original (and current) behaviour of the setting. Whether or not Valve intends to bring back the ability to skip updates is entirely up in the air.

Also, and I've said this a million times now, but the situation with San Andreas was not the result of how Steam handles updates -- there was absolutely nothing preventing R* from making new packages for the game that included the modified track list in lieu of the original so that those who purchased it before the licences expired would still have access to the original music, and in fact this is precisely what happened with Vice City. The truth is deceptively simple: R* got lazy.

 

[Laughing Banana]

I thought the hostage part was referring to the fact that since Valve holds so much percentage of PC gaming in their palms, if you disagree with them/don't want to do anything with them you'd be pretty much screwed.

Don't you folks perceive such monopoly to be at least somewhat worrying in the future...?

 

[BrassDragon]

I thought the hostage part was referring to the fact that since Valve holds so much percentage of PC gaming in their palms, if you disagree with them/don't want to do anything with them you'd be pretty much screwed.

Don't you folks perceive such monopoly to be at least somewhat worrying in the future...?

The thing I dread most is a security breach similar to the PSN outage. There are a lot of dedicated hackers trying to poke holes in Steam. Valve's gleeful lack of customer-facing employees at least somewhat protects them from social engineering but the client is still vulnerable (like the recent chat malware.)

Right now, trusting Valve is a given for most users but larger companies have fallen prey to huge breaches (Apple, Blizzard, Ubisoft, Facebook etc.) I wonder what such an incident will to do to people's confidence.

 

[JaseC]

The thing I dread most is a security breach similar to the PSN outage. There are a lot of dedicated hackers trying to poke holes in Steam. Valve's gleeful lack of customer-facing employees at least somewhat protects them from social engineering but the client is still vulnerable (like the recent chat malware.)

Right now, trusting Valve is a given for most users but larger companies have fallen prey to huge breaches (Apple, Blizzard, Ubisoft, Facebook etc.) I wonder what such an incident will to do to people's confidence.

http://store.steampowered.com/news/7323/

 

[BrassDragon]

http://store.steampowered.com/news/7323/

Ohhkay then, how about that Steam Sale?