Jimquisition: Salt Of The Earth - A Steam Fail Story

[KungFuJazzHands]

The people at Valve don't care about this kind of shit until the shit's been scooped up and thrown in their faces.

Ask yourselves this: if it takes a huge public outcry for these kinds of debacles - the Earth: Year 2066s, the From Dusts, the War Zs - to be rectified, what makes you think it's going to get any easier for the consumer end if Valve actually start handing more policing power to their customers like some of you apparently wish they would? There has to be a certain amount of responsibility and accountability expected from all parties involved, and Valve have historically shown a glaring lack of attention to their customer base by disregarding and prolonging situations like the one we're seeing with Earth 2066.

There can't be any meaningful changes until the guys holding the power at the top acknowledge that changes need to be made.

Valve have undoubtedly already received multiple direct complaints about Earth 2066 and Muxwell's behavior, yet the game is still being sold, and Muxwell is still getting away with manipulating the Early Access system and the Steam community itself. Valve need to start curating their shit before the pile gets any bigger and completely suffocates the rest of the industry.

Ultimately, I guess the most important question is this: how the holy horrible fuck did Earth: Year 2066 get onto Steam in the first place?

Steam Greenlight. The gaming community voted it onto the market.

That's depressing and disheartening, not to mention highly ironic.

And yet here we have people actually advocating that Valve give Steam users more control over how the system works.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Holy shit. That's just sad. Steam really needs to get it's act together or it's not going survive. If stuff like this continues Steam is going to earn itself the reputation of the place where all the shit is and people are going to look elsewhere. ...at least I hope so.

Steam has enough apologists that it will likely coast by. Between that and ZOMFG STEEEEM SALES! I'm pretty sure it will, in the medium run, remain pretty solid. Possibly even in the long run, because Steam has been run in a monopolistic fashion and this is what happens with monopolies. Hell, I've been pointing this out for like five years now. Maybe more.

Steam Sales won't mean much when the only things going on sale are crap like that Earth 2066.

 

[jehk]

To Valve it shouldn't be. Valve should be policing both out of its storefront.

You have yet to provide a "why".

I'm advocating for maximum consumer power. Having Valve tightly control what's being sold isn't empowering to the consumer because of lack of choice. We've been there and done that. Having Valve allow any game under the sun to be sold isn't empowering either because of the potential for abuse. There's where we are now.

There's a point where we can maximum the number of games consumers want and minimum the amount of abuse. Steam hasn't found that yet.

 

[DrOswald]

The people at Valve don't care about this kind of shit until the shit's been scooped up and thrown in their faces.

Ask yourselves this: if it takes a huge public outcry for these kinds of debacles - the Earth: Year 2066s, the From Dusts, the War Zs - to be rectified, what makes you think it's going to get any easier for the consumer end if Valve actually start handing more policing power to their customers like some of you apparently wish they would? There has to be a certain amount of responsibility and accountability expected from all parties involved, and Valve have historically shown a glaring lack of attention to their customer base by disregarding and prolonging situations like the one we're seeing with Earth 2066.

There can't be any meaningful changes until the guys holding the power at the top acknowledge that changes need to be made.

Valve have undoubtedly already received multiple direct complaints about Earth 2066 and Muxwell's behavior, yet the game is still being sold, and Muxwell is still getting away with manipulating the Early Access system and the Steam community itself. Valve need to start curating their shit before the pile gets any bigger and completely suffocates the rest of the industry.

Ultimately, I guess the most important question is this: how the holy horrible fuck did Earth: Year 2066 get onto Steam in the first place?

Steam Greenlight. The gaming community voted it onto the market.

That's depressing and disheartening, not to mention highly ironic.

And yet here we have people actually advocating that Valve give Steam users more control over how the system works.

Yep. The fact is that the gaming community is incredibly shitty at quality control. In fact, almost all of Steams current problems are a result of their idealistic approach that gamers should have great control over what is on their market.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Holy shit. That's just sad. Steam really needs to get it's act together or it's not going survive. If stuff like this continues Steam is going to earn itself the reputation of the place where all the shit is and people are going to look elsewhere. ...at least I hope so.

The thing is, I think most every Steam user knows better than to buy crap like this.
I'm kind of seeing this differently I guess; the attachment of so much shovelware to me says that the PC market is becoming more popular. I've seen (finished) games that are even more broken than this piece of crap on the ps2. QC isn't just something that needs to be addressed in Steam, something needs to be done across the industry.

Well yeah I suppose that's true, but I don't know of anywhere else in the industry where it's as bad as this.

 

[veloper]

But how much of a police state are we willing to put up with, just so the citizens nolonger need to be careful and think for themselves? Do we trust the police enough to arrest potential criminals before they can actually commit the crime?

You act like Steam is the only way to sell PC games. If Steam throws people out of the city, they can set up shop on the borders and hawk their wares there. Steam should be checking passports at the border instead of just dozing near an open gate.

That's too drastic. Not every small entrepreneur is a crook and even the skilled will have trouble making ends meet when limited to just the surrounding villages. I don't trust Valve with arbitrary criteria for entry.

That is not Valve's problem. Valve should not be feeding the homeless. Valve should be interested in one thing only - selling games that are worth the money being charged for them.

All others should be thrown out, violently if necessary.

Then I much prefer the nice, "Give me your tired, your poor," Valve that we have now.
Nothing is worth the money, unless I decide it is. I can take care of my own wallet just fine while some indies also get their change to strike big.

 

[DrOswald]

To Valve it shouldn't be. Valve should be policing both out of its storefront.

You have yet to provide a "why".

I'm advocating for maximum consumer power. Having Valve tightly control what's being sold isn't empowering to the consumer because of lack of choice. We've been there and done that. Having Valve allow any game under the sun to be sold isn't empowering either because of the potential for abuse. There's where we are now.

There's a point where we can maximum the number of games consumers want and minimum the amount of abuse. Steam hasn't found that yet.

Steam is taking steps toward that ideal. Steam greenlight was a miserable failure (and pretty much the source of all of Steams current QC problems) but it was a response to the previously tightly controlled nature of Steam that many gamers were mad about back then. They just swung the pendulum to far towards openness. They just need to swing it back towards closed, and hopefully land closer to the middle this time. I think the very first thing they need to do is get a return function in place.

Steam gets a lot of flak for their failed experiments, but I think it is worth giving them some slack for trying in the first place. Someone needs to if we are going to improve the digital market in the long run, and some experiments are bound to fail.

Steam is currently in the process of getting rid of Greenlight, but they need something else in place before that can happen. So they are working on the problem.

 

[jehk]

Holy shit. That's just sad. Steam really needs to get it's act together or it's not going survive. If stuff like this continues Steam is going to earn itself the reputation of the place where all the shit is and people are going to look elsewhere. ...at least I hope so.

The thing is, I think most every Steam user knows better than to buy crap like this.
I'm kind of seeing this differently I guess; the attachment of so much shovelware to me says that the PC market is becoming more popular. I've seen (finished) games that are even more broken than this piece of crap on the ps2. QC isn't just something that needs to be addressed in Steam, something needs to be done across the industry.

Well yeah I suppose that's true, but I don't know of anywhere else in the industry where it's as bad as this.

I think it goes well beyond our industry too. It's a societal problem really. A general move to massive deregulation over the last 3 to 4 decades. While I think over-regulation can be a serious problem we're not even close to that.

 

[DrOswald]

Holy shit. That's just sad. Steam really needs to get it's act together or it's not going survive. If stuff like this continues Steam is going to earn itself the reputation of the place where all the shit is and people are going to look elsewhere. ...at least I hope so.

The thing is, I think most every Steam user knows better than to buy crap like this.
I'm kind of seeing this differently I guess; the attachment of so much shovelware to me says that the PC market is becoming more popular. I've seen (finished) games that are even more broken than this piece of crap on the ps2. QC isn't just something that needs to be addressed in Steam, something needs to be done across the industry.

Well yeah I suppose that's true, but I don't know of anywhere else in the industry where it's as bad as this.

Almost all of Steam's QC problems can be traced back to greenlight. Earth 2066 was a greenlight game, War Z was a greenlight game, etc. And steam is in the process of getting rid of greenlight. But they need something to replace it with before they can do that.

Steam's greatest sin was their idealistic approach to game approval - let the gaming community decide what gets on our market. It turns out we are really, really bad at it.

Edit: Made a mistake! War Z was not a greenlight game. The developer had a previous game that succeeded on greenlight and the developer was therefore allowed to publish their second game. This is normally done to prevent established developers from having to jump through hoops for every single game.

 

[mysecondlife]

That's enough disgust towards a human being for one day.

That being said, people who are purchasing early access games certainly aren't being prudent with his/her money to say the least.

 

[Abnaxis]

Steam is taking steps toward that ideal. Steam greenlight was a miserable failure (and pretty much the source of all of Steams current QC problems) but it was a response to the previously tightly controlled nature of Steam that many gamers were mad about back then. They just swung the pendulum to far towards openness. They just need to swing it back towards closed, and hopefully land closer to the middle this time. I think the very first thing they need to do is get a return function in place.

Steam gets a lot of flak for their failed experiments, but I think it is worth giving them some slack for trying in the first place. Someone needs to if we are going to improve the digital market in the long run, and some experiments are bound to fail.

Steam is currently in the process of getting rid of Greenlight, but they need something else in place before that can happen. So they are working on the problem.

Exactly this. I'm hearing a lot of "well, I guess users are too dumb to have control," but that's not the issue at all.

Rather, the problem is "users don't have the proper tools to adequately control the system." In some cases (Greenlight) the problem is fundamental, and the system needs scrapped I mean, really? A concept is all it takes to be Greenlit? Who thought that was a good idea? Gamers aren't too dumb to approve games, they just need material that's farther along than "wouldn't it be cool if..?" before it's presented.

In some cases we might be able to make it work, if we give people the right tools. I think that's how Early Access can work, but we need a mechanism whereby user feedback can thrive, that can't be corrupted by either the developer or by review-bombing trolls or spammers.

These are all brand new things, that are going to need refining. They might work terribly now, but that's not the only way things can be.

 

[Deadagent]

Start adressing actual arguments or shut up.

But I am. If I wasn't, you'd wouldn't have kept talking to me past the point of telling me to shut up. xD

There was no point in that "look out for a scary woman" thing. It was a childish attempt to insult me. I personally dont exactly like to hear the same presumpsuous shit being recycled over and over and over again. "Why are you so afraid of her" "you are sexsist" "blablabla Patriarchy". Been there, I've heard it all. I was telling you to shut up on the matter because you added exactly zero of value to the conversation that was going on the side there.

To the issues at hand.

The issue Jim is bringing up isn't simply that there are bad games being put on Steam. It is that the devs doing so are able and sometimes do silence anyone saying something they don't like about their games in the forums.
Some are even putting out fake reviews.

Yeah I can agree that they shouldn't give the devs that much control over the forums

This means that we can't just go by word of mouth and have faith that what people are saying about the game on the site are true.
This is bad because not all people who play games are going on to site like the Escapist and having people like Jim let us know who is trying to lie.

Most people are, and in this case the word of mouth spread fast enough before really big damage could be done. Same happended with guise of the wolf etc.

People for quality control on Steam don't want such because they want Steam to die. They want it so Steam can improve and continue.

I didn't think Jim wanted Steam to die, but calling for Quality control goes directly against opening up the platform wich has been the entire goal for Valve. I dont think throwing greenlight or similar systems out of the window entierly is the solution, Improving it yes. But corporate curated quality control is not the answer. Community managed quality control maybe? An easy way to get a refund? Something like that but not the traditional quality control method definetly.

You and others seem to think that the discussion is about how getting rid of Steam, and other places like it, completely is the only way to go if we want quality control.

No-one has said or implied this, literally no one thinks Jim wants steam to disappear. Drop the strawmen and actually read what people write. But he clearly said he wants Steam to do quality control, and I'm saying thats opposite to their goals and I think their goals have merit wich is why I'm against the idea of corporate curated quality control on steam.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Holy shit. That's just sad. Steam really needs to get it's act together or it's not going survive. If stuff like this continues Steam is going to earn itself the reputation of the place where all the shit is and people are going to look elsewhere. ...at least I hope so.

The thing is, I think most every Steam user knows better than to buy crap like this.
I'm kind of seeing this differently I guess; the attachment of so much shovelware to me says that the PC market is becoming more popular. I've seen (finished) games that are even more broken than this piece of crap on the ps2. QC isn't just something that needs to be addressed in Steam, something needs to be done across the industry.

Well yeah I suppose that's true, but I don't know of anywhere else in the industry where it's as bad as this.

Almost all of Steam's QC problems can be traced back to greenlight. Earth 2066 was a greenlight game, War Z was a greenlight game, etc. And steam is in the process of getting rid of greenlight. But they need something to replace it with before they can do that.

Steam's greatest sin was their idealistic approach to game approval - let the gaming community decide what gets on our market. It turns out we are really, really bad at it.

Well it would've been helpful if Steam would've screened what was actually allowed on to Greenlight in the first place. So hack developers wouldn't be able to Greenlight hot air and promises. Maybe requiring devs to have at least a playable demo before being allowed on Greenlight would've improved things. ...maybe.

 

[jehk]

I mean, really? A concept is all it takes to be Greenlit? Who thought that was a good idea?

Seriously. A concept isn't enough for the community to make an informed choice.

Personally I think Valve should merge Greenlight and Early Access. You can put your game on Steam for no cost. People can download and play it. However, you cannot charge money for it until enough of the community votes on it.

Games like Earth: Year 2066 wouldn't make a cent. Games like Starbound would be making money from the start.

 

[Abnaxis]

Well it would've been helpful if Steam would've screened what was actually allowed on to Greenlight in the first place. So hack developers wouldn't be able to Greenlight hot air and promises. Maybe requiring devs to have at least a playable demo before being allowed on Greenlight would've improved things. ...maybe.

I don't know if a demo would be strictly necessary (though it would help filter, it's a little too steep of a requirement IMO). A development plan, complete with milestones, goals, work division between the programmers working on the job, an overarching plan of attack, maybe even a rough dev schedule would be nice though.

They wouldn't even need to explicitly require it, just add sections to the top of the game's Greenlight page which, if left blank, would make it conspicuously obvious that it's a bad idea to back the concept. Even better, let users filter search results by the contents of those sections, so Greenlight projects without a formulated plan can be ignored.

Just put something in there to let users know the difference between hot-air pie-in-the-sky wishes in one hand and solid concepts in the other.

 

[DrOswald]

Holy shit. That's just sad. Steam really needs to get it's act together or it's not going survive. If stuff like this continues Steam is going to earn itself the reputation of the place where all the shit is and people are going to look elsewhere. ...at least I hope so.

The thing is, I think most every Steam user knows better than to buy crap like this.
I'm kind of seeing this differently I guess; the attachment of so much shovelware to me says that the PC market is becoming more popular. I've seen (finished) games that are even more broken than this piece of crap on the ps2. QC isn't just something that needs to be addressed in Steam, something needs to be done across the industry.

Well yeah I suppose that's true, but I don't know of anywhere else in the industry where it's as bad as this.

Almost all of Steam's QC problems can be traced back to greenlight. Earth 2066 was a greenlight game, War Z was a greenlight game, etc. And steam is in the process of getting rid of greenlight. But they need something to replace it with before they can do that.

Steam's greatest sin was their idealistic approach to game approval - let the gaming community decide what gets on our market. It turns out we are really, really bad at it.

Well it would've been helpful if Steam would've screened what was actually allowed on to Greenlight in the first place. So hack developers wouldn't be able to Greenlight hot air and promises. Maybe requiring devs to have at least a playable demo before being allowed on Greenlight would've improved things. ...maybe.

Maybe, but a playable demo is a lot harder than you think. Speaking as a professional programmer who makes games in his spare time, making a playable demo that isn't complete shit is really, really hard. It will take months of work, hundreds of man hours of programming and game design, and a huge amount of initial capital investment (around $1000) to do things like buy sound effects, hire artists for assets, buy necessary software and equipment, etc. And that is for a very small and simple game. Asking people to put that amount of investment into a game before they even know if they are going to be allowed to sell it is a big problem. Steam greenlight was made to give the little guy a chance. Requiring a demo instantly destroys that goal.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Holy shit. That's just sad. Steam really needs to get it's act together or it's not going survive. If stuff like this continues Steam is going to earn itself the reputation of the place where all the shit is and people are going to look elsewhere. ...at least I hope so.

The thing is, I think most every Steam user knows better than to buy crap like this.
I'm kind of seeing this differently I guess; the attachment of so much shovelware to me says that the PC market is becoming more popular. I've seen (finished) games that are even more broken than this piece of crap on the ps2. QC isn't just something that needs to be addressed in Steam, something needs to be done across the industry.

Well yeah I suppose that's true, but I don't know of anywhere else in the industry where it's as bad as this.

Almost all of Steam's QC problems can be traced back to greenlight. Earth 2066 was a greenlight game, War Z was a greenlight game, etc. And steam is in the process of getting rid of greenlight. But they need something to replace it with before they can do that.

Steam's greatest sin was their idealistic approach to game approval - let the gaming community decide what gets on our market. It turns out we are really, really bad at it.

Well it would've been helpful if Steam would've screened what was actually allowed on to Greenlight in the first place. So hack developers wouldn't be able to Greenlight hot air and promises. Maybe requiring devs to have at least a playable demo before being allowed on Greenlight would've improved things. ...maybe.

Maybe, but a playable demo is a lot harder than you think. Speaking as a professional programmer who makes games in his spare time, making a playable demo that isn't complete shit is really, really hard. It will take months of work, hundreds of man hours of programming and game design, and a huge amount of initial capital investment (around $1000) to do things like buy sound effects, hire artists for assets, buy necessary software and equipment, etc. And that is for a very small and simple game. Asking people to put that amount of investment into a game before they even know if they are going to be allowed to sell it is a big problem. Steam greenlight was made to give the little guy a chance. Requiring a demo instantly destroys that goal.

Well maybe submit the finished product then. They need to require more than a lick and promise that's for sure.

 

[jehk]

Maybe, but a playable demo is a lot harder than you think. Speaking as a professional programmer who makes games in his spare time, making a playable demo that isn't complete shit is really, really hard. It will take months of work, hundreds of man hours of programming and game design, and a huge amount of initial capital investment (around $1000) to do things like buy sound effects, hire artists for assets, buy necessary software and equipment, etc. And that is for a very small and simple game. Asking people to put that amount of investment into a game before they even know if they are going to be allowed to sell it is a big problem. Steam greenlight was made to give the little guy a chance. Requiring a demo instantly destroys that goal.

Hrmm. That's a good point. It needs to be something more than just a concept but less then a demo. Maybe a design doc, even if it isn't 100% complete.

 

[DrOswald]

Holy shit. That's just sad. Steam really needs to get it's act together or it's not going survive. If stuff like this continues Steam is going to earn itself the reputation of the place where all the shit is and people are going to look elsewhere. ...at least I hope so.

The thing is, I think most every Steam user knows better than to buy crap like this.
I'm kind of seeing this differently I guess; the attachment of so much shovelware to me says that the PC market is becoming more popular. I've seen (finished) games that are even more broken than this piece of crap on the ps2. QC isn't just something that needs to be addressed in Steam, something needs to be done across the industry.

Well yeah I suppose that's true, but I don't know of anywhere else in the industry where it's as bad as this.

Almost all of Steam's QC problems can be traced back to greenlight. Earth 2066 was a greenlight game, War Z was a greenlight game, etc. And steam is in the process of getting rid of greenlight. But they need something to replace it with before they can do that.

Steam's greatest sin was their idealistic approach to game approval - let the gaming community decide what gets on our market. It turns out we are really, really bad at it.

Well it would've been helpful if Steam would've screened what was actually allowed on to Greenlight in the first place. So hack developers wouldn't be able to Greenlight hot air and promises. Maybe requiring devs to have at least a playable demo before being allowed on Greenlight would've improved things. ...maybe.

Maybe, but a playable demo is a lot harder than you think. Speaking as a professional programmer who makes games in his spare time, making a playable demo that isn't complete shit is really, really hard. It will take months of work, hundreds of man hours of programming and game design, and a huge amount of initial capital investment (around $1000) to do things like buy sound effects, hire artists for assets, buy necessary software and equipment, etc. And that is for a very small and simple game. Asking people to put that amount of investment into a game before they even know if they are going to be allowed to sell it is a big problem. Steam greenlight was made to give the little guy a chance. Requiring a demo instantly destroys that goal.

Well maybe submit the finished product then. They need to require more than a lick and promise that's for sure.

Require them the complete the entire game before they know if they are even going to have a chance to sell it? Yeah, that surely makes it work for the little guy.

Jehk said a good solid design doc should be required with each. I would agree with that one.