AAAAH, The steam store-front is all changed around! D: (AKA new Steam store-front discussion thread)

[MHR]

I dunno if I like the new layout. It's like your best friend got a snappy blue suit and a clean haircut and suddenly he's acting like he's better than you. Where's all my gray?

Store pages for the games don't link to forums anymore. The hell is going on? That's the only way anyone was talking about low-key games.

Pre-approved user-defined game tags means Team Fortress 2 isn't tagged with "Hats" anymore.

Garbage/10

 

[major_chaos]

Not a fan. The overall look is Meh, but I'm far more concerned that
a. Its still a pain to browse through the 231(!!!) running sales to find the 5 that aren't 10% off prerelease deals or shovelware garbage, when filtering that was the one thing I was hoping this update would ad.

b. The whole steam curators thing scares me. Seems like a good way to make catering to YouTubers more important than making a good game. "hey talentless hacks, want your awful game to make back a 10000% of its original budget while appearing on the front page of millions of users as soon as they open steam? Well then just make sure pewdiepie plays it and puts it on his storefront, ensuring tens of thousands of sales from his cult like fanbase.". Also steam is being steam and the system isn't moderated or verified at all. Within hours there was a sarcastic troll curator claiming be be Feminist Frequency.

c. The Recommendation system is as bad or worse than the one on youtube.

d. Tag system seems to have been neutered to uselessness, to the benefit of devs of course, never let it be said Steam isn't a great enabler.

e. Store pages don't link to fourms anymore. Again most likely to protect shitty devs form being called out so that people buy their garbage and valve get its cut.

About the only thing I'll give credit for is the new release tab defaulting to "popular new releases", but while better than nothing, this is Valve realising they have a ruptured sewage pipe spewing shit everywhere and choosing to try and make people look at the walls with slightly less errant poo on them instead of actually fixing the problem. So overall IMO its a terrible update focused on serving the worst kind of devs (and by proxy, Valve) not the user.

 

[chozo_hybrid]

The whole steam curators thing scares me. Seems like a good way to make catering to YouTubers more important than making a good game. "hey talentless hacks, want your awful game to make back a 10000% of its original budget while appearing on the front page of millions of users as soon as they open steam? Well then just make sure pewdiepie plays it and puts it on his storefront, ensuring tens of thousands of sales from his cult like fanbase.". Also steam is being steam and the system isn't moderated or verified at all. Within hours there was a sarcastic troll curator claiming be be Feminist Frequency.

It's not something anyone has to use, you select who you follow, so only their stuff shows up. I don't really see how seeing someones opinion on it makes it all that bad. None of the curators are getting paid for this or anything. As for people being stupid and pretending to be other people, they won't last long. Oh, and looking at a curators content on steam can link you to reviews, so there is that bonus too.

c. The Recommendation system is as bad or worse than the one on youtube.

There's always going to be some issues with it, but it seems better then it used to be for me, not that it's saying much for it.

. Tag system seems to have been neutered to uselessness, to the benefit of devs of course, never let it be said Steam isn't a great enabler.

Really? The tags seem a bit more relevant and less nonsense now, since as far as I know, they have to be approved or something, so people who dislike something can't flood it with stupid tags.

e. Store pages don't link to fourms anymore. Again most likely to protect shitty devs form being called out so that people buy their garbage and valve get its cut.

Community hub is right at the top, click that and you will see discussions loading before you, usually the popular ones, so if the game has issues they're right there. And you can click the discussion tab after clicking community hub and then you're at the forums anyway, not like it's hard to do. A bit less convenient, but I doubt this is all to protect shitty devs.

So overall IMO its a terrible update focused on serving the worst kind of devs (and by proxy, Valve) not the user.

That's a bit far reaching isn't it? The fact that I can select to not see any more early access titles by filtering them out is awesome. We have more say in what we see when we visit the store. How is this some evil developer protection stuff? You don't have to like the update, that's fine, but I feel you seem determined to just see it all as bad before giving it a chance. They also have the ability to improve upon it from feedback too.

 

[major_chaos]

It's not something anyone has to use, you select who you follow, so only their stuff shows up. I don't really see how seeing someones opinion on it makes it all that bad. None of the curators are getting paid for this or anything. As for people being stupid and pretending to be other people, they won't last long.

You are totally misunderstanding what I'm worried about. My primary issue is that it gives Youtubers with huge subscriber numbers a very effective way to influence the success of a game more than they already do. Its basically a "buy this you sheep" list for stupid people in the wrong hands, which could give shitty games that would normally have passed without notice a huge spotlight for people subbed to morons like pewdiepie and smoshgames on both steam and youtube.

Really? The tags seem a bit more relevant and less nonsense now, since as far as I know, they have to be approved or something, so people who dislike something can't flood it with stupid tags.

I always considered tags useless outside of humor ("nanomachines son") or warning that a game was awful ("bad port" "scam" "not finished" ect.) and those seem to be what got removed. I never cared about tags as supposed search aids and I still don't.

Community hub is right at the top, click that and you will see discussions loading before you, usually the popular ones, so if the game has issues they're right there. And you can click the discussion tab after clicking community hub and then you're at the forums anyway

Fair enough, I was wrong about that one. Still a bad change, but just in a convenience sense instead of a manipulative one.

You don't have to like the update, that's fine, but I feel you seem determined to just see it all as bad before giving it a chance.

Its Valve. Unlike most people here I never liked them, and the more they creep tword a monopoly on PC gaming the less I trust anything they do.

They also have the ability to improve upon it from feedback too.

It took them how many years to let you chose where games are installed? Or to cancel preorders? Yes they may improve based on feedback, just expect those improvements sometime around 2020.

 

[chozo_hybrid]

Snip

Ah, okay. I get what you mean about the curator thing then.

Fair enough, appreciate the level headed reply, I understand properly where you are coming from. I happen to like the update for the most part, guess we'll just have to see how it works out in the grand scheme of things.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

Sometime in between this morning and this afternoon the Steam site was updated with a new UI. While I personally thought the older one was fine and functional, I must say I quite like the new one. Gradiated blue, contrasting light and dark blues for tabs and boxes are quite attractive and make everything more distinctive and easier to read.

As well as the colour and layout changes, the "Tags" feature is more prominent with a box all its own beneath "Genres", making searching for games of particular interest a one-click affair. The "recommended for me" suggestions are fairly astute but likely based on more recent purchases/games I've played than my longer history (they more reflect my most recent games than my overall preferences, but still fairly accurate).

My favourite feature by far however, and it's such a small thing, is that now games I already own are dimmed and have an icon on them to show I own them. I have a large library and have picked up many titles over the years in sales and often-times click-thru to a game's page to find the green "You already own..." box waiting. This shows up in search results, the home page and any other listing I've tried. "In Library" and "On wishlist" are both available. I've been secretly wishing for this for a long time now and am glad to see this minor change that for me is a great improvement.

Overall, I like the new UI for both its look and improved searching, personalisation and usability tweaks. Now if only they'd exercise some damned quality control to curb the excess of crap that's spewed forth onto it since they opened the floodgates to all and sundry. What are your thoughts on the update?

 

[Riotguards]

i hate how there's no giant icons on the week long deals (example the 89 this week), why not just have giant pictures and have them all on one page instead of long wastes of space which take 4 pages : /

things that i dislike is the placement of both the steam curators and Explore Your Queue, i'd rather them at the bottom out of the way instead of in my face (where i'll never use them)

and whats up with the wording on "popular new release" i'm hoping it doesn't mean that slightly less popular games will not be featured

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

What do I think? Sliced bread, move over. New king is in town.

 

[Harleykin]

i wished i could un-see prepurchase and in development games....now i can i <3 it to death
have to wait how it really works....i kinda dislike sites like tumbler (i guess?) that keep you scrolling down and steam seems to do that now but oh well...

it's a good new thing to me...
unlike the gta v pc release date (WTF ROCKSTAR WTF?!)

 

[omega 616]

Specials is below that curator bullshit? "hey, whats on sale today? Let me just scroll to hades to find out!".

Also, stop recommended shit at me! You don't think I have heard of fable, elder scrolls oblivion/morrowind?

You can click customise to see "early access, games already in your account, games, software" ... firstly why would I want to buy a game I already have? Gifting? Secondly, why put games there if I can't uncheck it?

Maybe it's me being a boring old fart or a whiny spoiled brat but "I don't like it! Change it back!"

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Specials is below that curator bullshit? "hey, whats on sale today? Let me just scroll to hades to find out!".

Also, stop recommended shit at me! You don't think I have heard of fable, elder scrolls oblivion/morrowind?

You can click customise to see "early access, games already in your account, games, software" ... firstly why would I want to buy a game I already have? Gifting? Secondly, why put games there if I can't uncheck it?

Maybe it's me being a boring old fart or a whiny spoiled brat but "I don't like it! Change it back!"

Relax dude. They'll probably update it further. It's Valve. They're all about updates.

 

[The Goat Tsar]

I like it a lot, it's much more aesthetically pleasing than the old store. Plus I've been using a blue steam skin for a while, so it matches the new store quite well. I also find the steam curator thing interesting, it'll probably be better once more people make collections.

 

[ExiledCreature]

It'll probably not take long for that curator feature to be abused big time. I can imagine somebody bribing somebody else on placing a game on a curator's list. Are there any regulations put into place to prevent companies from just making a curator list of their own games?

 

[Zipa]

Seems pretty good so far, and long overdue. It's nice to see Valve update Steam to keep in line with its competitors. It seems like they have listened to community feedback to since we can now press a button to get rid of the shitware.

 

[sonofliber]

God who picked that blue color its horrible, also curators? i really dont respect most of the opinions of people there, let me remove them