Jimquisition: Steam Needs Quality Control

[cerebus23]

Steam is going through their nintendo wii phase, make anything and everything and glut the market.

 

[That Eeyore]

As much as I'm amazed at the kind of crap winding up on Steam nowadays (Analogue, Depression Quest, Revelations 2012, Gone Home, The War Z/Whatever it's called now), I also accept that it's my responsibility as a consumer to actually know what I'm getting into when I make a purchase. It's not Steam's job to save us from buying shitty games.

Very true. Buyer Beware.

Although that sort of goes out the window if the dev is actively trying to decieve the consumer. Not saying that's happening here, just a little note.

 

[HK_01]

I agree completely, but I personally don't find all that crap getting onto Steam to be much of a problem since I only buy games that I am actually interested in and am fairly certain I will like (went wrong once though - Godus, never should have trusted Early Access). So, if you think before buying something just because it's there, you probably won't have much of a problem.

 

[ran88dom99]

But finding the good games in piles of trash is reviewer's job Jim. Forget greenlight use desura.

 

[Sanunes]

Never thought i'd say it but Origin is starting to look better and better, at least with them if you buy a game that turns out to be toxic waste you have 12 hours or so in which to return in for a refund, no questions asked.

The one catch with Origin's returns is that it only works on EA games, probably because they need other publishers to agree to a refund policy first.

 

[Thanatos2k]

Does it matter if a murderer does community service on the weekends? This is not "typical corporate shenanigans" this is criminal and screwed their employees out of perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars. I hear Bernie Madoff was a great father, by the way.

Right, allegations of unfair labor agreements equals murder. Glad we had an intellectual discussion on the matter.

Ah, the intellectually dishonest method of intentionally ignoring a damaging analogy and hand waving it away. The analogy was "excusing criminal behavior because the perpetrator did something nice to others." Address that.

I'm not sure this is off topic, given many seem to be trying to cover for a company like Valve's failings with "But they do such great things elsewhere!" Look at how you even defend Google like they were the victim here! Unbelievable.

Apple literally bullied them into this. The same link you sent has direct quotes of Steve Jobs himself threatening war against them if they so much as looked at Apple employees with desire. The bigger question is how you aren't seeing their actions as coerced? This is 2005 when this happened.

Sergei SERVED ON APPLE'S BOARD at the time! Why is he serving one of the highest positions in a company that is "bullying" him?! He was a ringleader with a non-compete agreement with another company he was an EMPLOYEE of!

If you actually read the article you'd know that George Lucas' version of these policies weren't evil at all because he didn't get or force any agreements with others, he just put those policies in place at his own company because he felt it was a waste of time and money. That's not illegal or immoral. Companies like Apple and Google (and more) took it to the next level where it became evil.

Huh? Evil is murderer. Evil is not an ambiguous labor agreement that didn't even result in lower wages for employees at Google. Sorry, but this "google is evil" bit is just shenanigans and pulling at straws. Maybe if you find something that actually results in public harm then we can begin to say that they did something that was wrong. But that's a far stretch from getting to the they're evil master criminals bent on world corruption and puppy murder. Huge leap there. Few companies succeed in doing nothing illegal just like few people do. There's so many laws.

Because when Google coined the slogan "don't be evil" they were obviously only talking about murder. Uh huh. Glad to see you debating honestly. It's clear that nothing short of murder would cause you to stop defending them.

A poor behavior Valve sometimes inspires in others, ironically.

 

[Timf]

I agree with every word. I heard about Steam for a long time before finally trying it out. Crap crap and more crap. No more than one game in ten on that site is worth a second of your time let alone any of your money. Which is too bad because buried within all the bad are some real good games. I feel sorry for the developers of quality games that have to share the site with so much junk.
And while I'm on a rant I bought Skyrim at a brick and mortar store only to find out that in order to play it I had to go through Steam. I think this new trend annoys me even more than the crap games. It started for me with GTA 4 and their "Social club" bs. They try to make it look like it's some big advantage to be signed into Steam ( or social club or whatever) when in fact it is nothing but over the top anti piracy baloney.
The new paradigm in the gaming industry is that you are their beta testers and you will pay for the privilege. And they own the games forever and can dictate how you use their products even after you've plunked down your hard earned cash for them.
Screw 'em.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Hey, who would have thought we'd look back fondly on Nintendo's totalitarian Seal of Approval days, huh?

It is kinda funny in hindsight, isn't it?

Of course, the industry may not have recovered from the crash (or as quickly) if they didn't impose some standards for their own games after effectively rebooting it.

Nintendo did good and Nintendo did bad.
It wasn't ideal, but we don't live in an ideal world (and we're never gonna).

 

[Dragonbums]

I feel bad. I am literally those kinds of people who are into games that are so shit, it's funny. Maybe if Steam keeps this up, videogame Youtube poopers will finally have a fresh source of poop material that isn't corrupted Nintendo games, TF2, and Zelda CDi.

 

[Therumancer]

For the most part I agree.

The problem here is that this kind of system is difficult to make work if your going to impose enough standards to prevent these kinds of problems. To properly "vet" every one of these games coming out of Greenlight or appearing from an indie developer would mean a company like Valve would have to hire dozens of employees just to check the games at the very least. Something which would also fly in the face of Valve's much publicized "nobody has a position" policy since it would involve people very much having a dedicated position and also a lot of power from the perspective of those looking at Valve from the outside since they would be the ones making the decision about what games make it and which ones do not. Not to mention the cost of hiring these full time employees would probably result in increased expenses being passed back to the consumer.

Not to mention the entire issue "bigotry" this kind of thing would create, since when it comes to early access some companies would probably be given a pass, while other less reputable, or just unknown, companies like "Five By Five" (which I had not heard of until now, probably because I don't play shooters) would be treated with a lot more suspicion. Not to mention the issue of newly arising game developers and their economies. That "Unearthed" game seems to be showing up a lot in Jimquisition videos, and while I do not play it, I have to defend it to some extent because it's only charging $5 and if I've heard correctly it's programmed in the third world, not to mention at least having a lot of ambition for a small and inexperienced team. In short it seems to represent exactly the kind of game Greenlight was intended for, allowing a small developer to make back some of their costs as they learn their craft. Something which might sound odd to those who have heard some of my other political posts. Consider also that "Ubisoft" just did "Might and Magic X" for old school RPG fans, which came out early, partially functional, and was taking input from series fans (My Dad got an early access copy, I bought it after release). Many people are doubtlessly going to call it a crappy game, but honestly it's what a lot of fans wanted, and I imagine it will be fairly successful given it's intent. The point being that despite my general dislike of "Ubisoft" they have at least used the early access system as intended and being a big publisher did exactly what they were promising, pretty reliably, "vetting" the system and acting based on reputation and such would probably defeat the purpose by simply giving big publishers like this a pass to release games early access and in unfinished states, under the presumpsion that they can generally be trusted, while effectively picking on the little guys the system was intended to promote. Basically STEAM could handwave "Ubisoft" as we've seen, but would have to take a microscope to the little guys to prevent publishers like "Five By Five" from flooding the market with crap, which makes the system increasingly subjective.


Probably not a well articulated post, but that's my thoughts on the subject.

 

[SecondPrize]

It's disingenuous to point at The War Z in the context of lying about features and omit mentioning how Steam actually removed it from their store for, wait for it, lying about the features. I mean, come on here, did you just forget that part?

You're different from most of us Jim, better of course, but you also have to sometimes play shitty games because it's your job. As that's not my job, I tend to actively try to avoid playing shitty games. Do you know why I'm not complaining about how much recoil sucks? Because of reviews like the one you did. It better informed me as a buyer, so I won't buy it. That's how many of us purchase games, we do a little homework before hand. I have sympathy for you here, because you actually needed to play Recoil or, god help you, Guise of the Wolf. I don't have sympathy for those who made impulse buys without doing any work. Caveat emptor, suckers.

Now, I'd like you to be happy too and not have to play awful games, but not at any cost. There are people out there who like Guise of the Wolf or Recoil. Who knows why, but they exist. Should they not have been able purchase the game because you didn't like it? Maybe someday Steam will sell a game which I'll like but the majority won't. Do you think I'll be okay with not being able to purchase it there to protect you from exposure to something you won't like?

 

[Sofus]

I have disliked Steam Greenlight for quite some time now. I have even stopped buying anything but tripple A games... and even then I still hesitate to complete the trnsaction. I have however started buying games on Origin... which is insane considering that I avoided it like the plague (I even refused to buy mass effect 3) when it was first launched.

 

[Naed]

Nice video, weirdly enough im in the middle of a situation with a dev, which uses the whole "censor and edit as they see fit" line of reasoning.

If anyone is interested.
http://www.reddit.com/r/darkout/comments/1wp951/dear_dev_your_community_wanted_help_and_to_help/

 

[truckspond]

It's disingenuous to point at The War Z in the context of lying about features and omit mentioning how Steam actually removed it from their store for, wait for it, lying about the features. I mean, come on here, did you just forget that part?...

He didn't forget that part because it is still on there to this day since before being renamed to Infestation: Survivor Stories

 

[Infernal Lawyer]

After some thought, I have to ask, is it really too much to ask for Valve to make sure games are at least functional? It's up to the user to decide whether a game is up their alley, but there simply is no excuse for buggy, broken games that simply do not work.

 

[KungFuJazzHands]

It's disingenuous to point at The War Z in the context of lying about features and omit mentioning how Steam actually removed it from their store for, wait for it, lying about the features. I mean, come on here, did you just forget that part?

It's important to note that Valve would never have bothered to remove The War Z if it hadn't been for the massive outcry from customers. Gaben and company would have been all too happy to continue selling it uninterrupted otherwise.

That's where the call for quality assurance comes into play. Valve have a relatively lengthy history of approving the most turgid, broken, and unplayable pieces of shit possible on Steam. It's all about profit for them.

If Steam is never going to have a more consumer-friendly refund policy, then Valve need to be prepared to budget a proper QA team that specialize in catching those games that are not playable on day one. Hell, it would have taken a Steam QA specialist just five minutes of testing crap like Dead Island, From Dust, Sword of the Stars II, and The War Z to realize those titles were just not in good enough shape to justify their scheduled release dates.

Steam is supposed to be a one-stop shopping experience. You should be able to browse a game's store page and get all the relevant information you need to make an informed decision. Instead, publishers are allowed to stack whatever dishonesty they want on their game's Steam profile. They can (mis)quote whatever critical blurb they feel like including (and in the case of console ports, they often completely ignore related reviews of the PC version and instead quote reviews for the console version of the game), they can choose to leave out the Metacritic link if they so desire, and they are given moderator status so they can censor their product's forum pages as they see fit. Even the user review pages have a tendency to be biased -- the most communally popular reviews are always sorted first at the top (sympathetic fanboyism ahoy!), so unless a game is universally panned by its player base, it's a challenge for the average consumer to find reviews that don't reek of blatant sycophantism.

Another big problem is Greenlight -- as far as I'm concerned, it's a calculated scam meant to take the responsibility of oversight off of Valve's shoulders and onto their customers. It's done absolutely nothing positive for the Steam customer experience. Early Access isn't much better.

"Quantity over quality" is becoming more and more of an issue at Steam, despite the fact that consumers such as myself have been railing publicly about it for years. Something needs to change, especially considering that Steam is set on becoming a virtual monopoly.

 

[lowkey_jotunn]

Question: at what point are you going to make the same demands of brick and mortar stores and other online stores like Gamefly?

Because everything you are accusing Steam of happens in every store, physical or digital. To say that Steam needs to filter when no one else does is disingenuous at best.

Brick and mortar stores already have a mechanism in place to curtail this behavior, though it will never be eliminated completely

Shelf space.

A retail store in the physical world can only display as many games as they can fit on the shelves. So it's in their best interest to NOT waste precious space on dreck that will never sell. Steam, on the other hand, has much more lax limitations. Sure, you can point to the disk space required to hold the games, or the bandwidth required to push it out to customers, but those limitations are FAR less restrictive.

Plus there's the issue of shipping in the physical world. In order for garbage to show up on a retail shelf, someone has to put that game on physical media (CD/DVD/Cartridge/etc), then put that in a box, send 100 of those boxes to each and every Game Stop, Best buy, etc ... it's a lot of work, and costs a fair bit of money just for the materials alone. You have to be pretty certain that your game is going to sell, so that you recoup your costs.

These prevent unfinished, incomplete garbage from being such a huge issue in the brick and mortar stores. Doesn't completely remove the problem, but keeps it to a minimum.

 

[Sotanaht]

Steam shouldn't limit what it sells based on "quality". It's too subjective and they could just as easily reject something like Dwarf Fortress which is buggy but awesome (and free so maybe not the best example) as it could some genuine shit indie content.

Instead of restricting content, steam should be much more worried about informing customers. The enemy isn't bad content, it's false advertising and the lack of proper, reliable criticism.

 

[TheUnbeholden]

Question: at what point are you going to make the same demands of brick and mortar stores and other online stores like Gamefly?

Because everything you are accusing Steam of happens in every store, physical or digital. To say that Steam needs to filter when no one else does is disingenuous at best.

Point to the bit in the video where I said "and no one else does," please.

Not just point to that, but also point to what other stores provide Early Access and community voted games?

 

[SecondPrize]

It's disingenuous to point at The War Z in the context of lying about features and omit mentioning how Steam actually removed it from their store for, wait for it, lying about the features. I mean, come on here, did you just forget that part?...

He didn't forget that part because it is still on there to this day since before being renamed to Infestation: Survivor Stories

It's not still there, it's there again after having been taken off and then allowed to return with an actually accurate feature list.