Vargavinter
Member
Steam have been down much lately. Almost one or two times ever evening when we are playing dota.
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STEAM Announcements & Updates 2014 III - Don't Believe The Tags
- Thread starter MRORANGE
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Atraveller
Banned
NingenJanai
Member
Enjoy Mass Effect 3.
SteveWinwood
Member
What would you like them to say?
Yeah, we're having problems and we're trying to fix them?
What's the point?
NingenJanai
Member
I've noticed that people seem to value communication more when the company in question is known for its secrecy, even in cases where it'd be of no actual value. See also: Those who wish Valve would state outright that Half-Life 3 is in development instead of being somewhat candid about it under the guise of Ricochet 2.
Well you must be happy since Valve agrees with your sentiment. This just isn't a new thing anymore.
I think you are wrong. Communication in cases like this is as important no matter what's the company in question. If you don't believe that then that's completely fine too but I'm afraid I'm not wrong on this matter.
Well, we'll have to agree to disagree. I don't see much of a distinction to make between Valve saying it's working on a solution and Valve later implementing one alongside acknowledging the issues it resolves.
Also, the store is back up.
Edit: Well, it was.
Edit edit: And since this seems to be a contentious subject I should clarify that I'm merely explaining things from Valve's perspective.
CheesecakeRecipe
Stormy Grey
Any indication that things are being looked at and what exactly is causing the constant service outages would be nice.
Steam DCs ended up screwing a friend into a nice 24 hour CS:GO ban thanks to it happening several times over the course of a week. It's affecting more than just the store and chat. I wouldn't expect a huge blogpost breaking down the ins and outs of what makes steam tick and why they don't have better setups to prevent the constant rolling brown/blackouts of service but god damn
Steam DCs ended up screwing a friend into a nice 24 hour CS:GO ban thanks to it happening several times over the course of a week. It's affecting more than just the store and chat. I wouldn't expect a huge blogpost breaking down the ins and outs of what makes steam tick and why they don't have better setups to prevent the constant rolling brown/blackouts of service but god damn
Speaking of PW trouble...
I changed mine yesterday, and (of course) couldn't remember what it was in the morning. Still have access to my steamguard email, have a few invoices saved in email, but I did only bought digital products on Steam.
What are my options for password change, anyone knows?
NingenJanai
Member
One lets your customers know you care and are working to fix it, the other makes your customers worry and feel they are abandoned.
Wait its tuesday isn't it? Isn't tuesday maintenance day? (Or was that for PSN)
When I last did it, I think I had to verify with my steamguard email as well as enter a code sent to my phone.
When I last did it, I think I had to verify with my steamguard email as well as enter a code sent to my phone.
I said much of a distinction, not a distinction. Valve saying it's working on fixing things may instil a warm, fuzzy feeling within those who are worried that Steam is going to collapse and Valve is going to go out of business and people will be left with many-thousand-dollar accounts that are now worthless and Gabe Newell will flee the US to live in secrecy in the Caribbean, but it doesn't actually begin to resolve anything. It should go without saying that Valve is aware of the downtime issues.
That's exactly what I want to hear.
I want a representative to come forward and say, "We're having problems with X. We haven't been able to fix it yet because Y. We're planning to address it by doing Z, which should take ______. We're sorry for the inconvenience."
I want to know what the hell's going on. I want to hear something that'll reassure me that they know what's going on, and that they have a plan to fix it. I want an idea of how long they think it'll take to fix. Knowing these things would make it easier to deal with the frustration of these outages.
Well I was mostly referring to your post I was answering to. I don't really think people expect any special treatment from Valve just because they're so secretive (are they really?).
But yeah naturally only thing that really matters is that they fix whatever is wrong. It's just that being transparent about it and fixing it aren't mutually exclusive.
Exactly. I think majority of Steam's regular users (there are a lot of them now) agree with you. It seems to me people are a little frustrated because they don't know what's the problem and how long will it take for this problem to go away.
SteveWinwood
Member
I don't believe it matters right now as anyone with half a brain doesn't assume that Valve doesn't care and isn't abandoning steam anytime soon. They are surely working on solutions to this problem.
oh okay then
NingenJanai
Member
Sure, of course they are aware and working to fix it, but I'd always take a company that acknowledges its problems over one that keeps silent.
Also, if it was Origin or Uplay or Sony or MS having this kind of issues people would be up in arms ( specially if they kept silent ), but since is Steam all is forgiven.... they shouldn't get a free pass just for being Steam.
Not expect it, but desire it more.
What I'm getting at is that from Valve's perspective there's little value in reassuring customers that a fix is coming because the issues are still present in the interim and so frustrations will continue.
People would be up in arms because they'd expect EA, Ubi, Sony and MS to respond. Steam users aren't crying out from the rooftops because they love Steam and sleep on pillows shaped like Gabe's beard; they just know that Valve won't talk until it's ready to talk. Because that's how Valve has always conducted itself.
Actually yes, that would be fantastic.
Because it would at least let me know they plan on fixing this garbage. This has been going on for at least a month, probably more. It's gotten worse.
This might not apply to most of the Steam community that only buys games to not play them, or those that only play single player games only. But for those of us that are primarily multiplayer gamers this is getting ridiculous.
People are getting 1 week to 1 month long bans in CS from servers crashing, and I assume the same would hold true in Dota as well.
Look maybe I was being really unclear so let me be straight:
you said thing x
I answered x
JaseC said something different that is y
I answered with y
Now you come and combine what you said (x) with my answer to completely different matter
. I don't think what I wrote was that hard to understand really.SteveWinwood
Member
Mr. Luchador
Member
Steam Customer Service is World Renown!
Since you wanna be a smartass, when do they plan on fixing it? Sometime this month, maybe next month? Or maybe they'll just wait until the Summer Steam Sale when they know people will spend 100s of dollars on games they'll never play.
And what happens to those of us that get a ban in CS (and Dota if it works off the same matchmaking mechanics) because Steam is garbage?
or they can just keep doing nothing like they've been doing.
Thanks Wario for the awesome game.
Which is also my 1000th game on steam
Congratulation! I am only 11 games to 1000 games. After I have reached that then I can join the 1000 games club
I'd expect any service provider to issue a public statement in response to repeated (and worsening) outages. Yes, even a "notoriously secretive" one like Valve.
Conspicuous silence in the face of problems tends to give the impression that the company's having a hard time dealing with the issue - either they haven't isolated the cause, or they can't come up with with a solution, so they're trying to avoid talking about it. That may not be the case at all, but remaining silent certainly isn't reassuring anyone that they have the situation in hand.
Maybe no one at Valve wants to handle PR, but that doesn't mean it's not important, or that they shouldn't be expected to do it when circumstances require it.
Atraveller
Banned
*Looks at account page.
Only 714 games to go.
Only 714 games to go.
SteveWinwood
Member
In order: As soon as possible.
They'll try to find a way to keep people happy in CS. (You get abandons in Dota and that just sends you to a different matchmaking pool, but I don't think many are getting those as the servers being down seem to be preventing anyone from playing period so you can't exactly abandon a game that isn't happening.)
They're not doing nothing.
There ya go!
BoosterDuck
Banned
dammit Gabe
stahp it
stahp it
That's all well and good but I'd rather you didn't use my post as a springboard considering I was responding to the implicit question of why there isn't a large-scale outcry as one might expect there would be if the likes of PSN and XBLA had similar intermittent issues. In quoting my post and responding in the way you have you've removed it from that context and made it appear as though I was shrugging off any and all voices of dissatisfaction.
carbonbased
Member
dota is up
edit: or it is at least slowly coming back up
edit: or it is at least slowly coming back up
oipic
Member
A lazy corporate-style copy-and-paste notification along the lines of 'we apologise for any inconvenience' would ring a little hollow, given these outages are practically a daily thing at the moment. That said, it may not add value for many, but it's a little conspicuous in its absence, I think.
For a service with so many (often heavily-invested) customers to be so lacking in the communication department is a little staggering, though. It's not exactly a like-for-like comparison, I know, but even my relatively tiny ISP, with a fraction of the turnover and customer base, can manage to maintain a (per-exchange, per service) status page, which I've been told is almost entirely automated, and they also have the courtesy to communicate any scheduled outages etc.
A closed shop is perfectly acceptable as a developer, but I'm not so sure the same applies when you're a service provider.
For a service with so many (often heavily-invested) customers to be so lacking in the communication department is a little staggering, though. It's not exactly a like-for-like comparison, I know, but even my relatively tiny ISP, with a fraction of the turnover and customer base, can manage to maintain a (per-exchange, per service) status page, which I've been told is almost entirely automated, and they also have the courtesy to communicate any scheduled outages etc.
A closed shop is perfectly acceptable as a developer, but I'm not so sure the same applies when you're a service provider.
I'll be honest man, that's a feature I really don't need and I hope it's off by default.
What I meant to address was the notion that Valve was somehow different than Sony or MS because people expect those companies to respond publicly when issues arise.
What I took away from that statement was that there wasn't (or shouldn't be) that sort of expectation from Valve - since they have a reputation for being secretive, people are being unreasonable and/or unrealistic if they expect them to issue some kind of statement at times like this. Hence my response, which was basically, "Okay, we all know Valve sucks at PR, but that doesn't mean we should give them a pass on it."
I'm sorry if I took that statement differently than you'd intended it. : /
Mr. Luchador
Member
Probably the wrong time to have tried if you attempted it in the last day or so, since the servers seem to be shit. Again.
Dusk Golem
A 21st Century Rockefeller
They might be, as Valve has made it so that developers and publishers can set their sales themselves now as of a month ago, as opposed to them having to be approved by Valve ahead of time.
BoosterDuck
Banned
well the more games the more sales
Reviewing the "suspicious activity", turned out it was a botched attempt from me to login from work (and I hadn't my phone with me to get past both Steamguard and Google's 2-steps verification. Nevertheless, are even Steam's mail servers down?
I seriously hope that means HL3 is coming.
Without even noticing, I've been on a little stealth binge with bundle games... Didn't even know that I like stealth quite a bit! I was just going to test them and counted on putting them in my bundle junk category but ended up playing both for hours.
Dynamite Jack: Old one, so I guess everyone interested in it has already played it, but I'm having a ton of fun with this one. Distracting guards and setting bomb traps while sneaking around in the shadows is great and I think my only complaint is that it could be a little bit harder. Some people would've wanted it to be longer too, but I think 4-5 hours is pretty perfect.
Not The Robots: A stealth roguelite, which is actually a better idea than it might sound! You hit random levels and have to eat your way through them, hopefully picking up some powerups along the way, while dodging sentries and guard lasers. It's a lot of fun, but my only complaint here is bigger than for DJ: the sentries are just too god damn good at spotting you! The game changes from action stealth to extremely methodical stealth kind of suddenly 5 levels in, and I still haven't really adjusted for it. I'm gonna give it a few more shots before I decide if the sentries just make the game too hard.
Dynamite Jack: Old one, so I guess everyone interested in it has already played it, but I'm having a ton of fun with this one. Distracting guards and setting bomb traps while sneaking around in the shadows is great and I think my only complaint is that it could be a little bit harder. Some people would've wanted it to be longer too, but I think 4-5 hours is pretty perfect.
Not The Robots: A stealth roguelite, which is actually a better idea than it might sound! You hit random levels and have to eat your way through them, hopefully picking up some powerups along the way, while dodging sentries and guard lasers. It's a lot of fun, but my only complaint here is bigger than for DJ: the sentries are just too god damn good at spotting you! The game changes from action stealth to extremely methodical stealth kind of suddenly 5 levels in, and I still haven't really adjusted for it. I'm gonna give it a few more shots before I decide if the sentries just make the game too hard.
Dusk Golem
A 21st Century Rockefeller
I have made it
half-way to JaseC in the time-span of two and four months, now sitting at 1,251 Steam games. I know he's not the biggest, but realizing I was at half his game number almost when he's a collector made me think about some things.
I also have decided my current Steam goal is to purchase every Steam game that you can find if you search 'horror' on the Steam search bar. Not surprisingly, I have almost all of them already, but now have a goal to own them all.
almost
I also have decided my current Steam goal is to purchase every Steam game that you can find if you search 'horror' on the Steam search bar. Not surprisingly, I have almost all of them already, but now have a goal to own them all.
Except for Infected Stories or whatever that War Z game is called. I shall not purchase that for what the developer did at all.
Well, by and large there isn't, but of course that doesn't mean there shouldn't be and those with loftier expectations are in the wrong. I don't think anybody would disagree with Valve suddenly becoming more of an open book... Half-Life fans especially.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=450653 It's still active but the OP hasn't updated the opening post in over a month despite being active.
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