steam hate, why?

[DoomyMcDoom]

I really used to love Steam but the UI has hardly updated in ages, years in fact. This gives it a very late 00s feel whilst Origin has moved onwards and is much much faster and cleaner in it's UI.

Also I've just got too many games. When a game used to be on Steam I know it would be a quality game and always worth a buy, especially if it was on sale. Now they've just flooded it with too much shovelware, old games being passed off as new ones, so if you don't do your research it's like playing Russian roulette with your money to get a game that works.

I'm guessing that you have no idea about the large variety of UI overhauling skins that people make that change everything from the standard button layouts to the way the game overlay looks, so I'm going to just go ahead and let you know, those exist, and installing them is really easy. Also user reviews, and meta critic scores and whatnot are right there, so it makes the looking at the games you intend to buy thing easier, but really that issue is the same with EVERY pc game, gotta see if it works, or how it works on your machine if you wanna know if you should get it.

Hope the info about UI skins helps you.

 

[Lotet]

With or without steam, physical copies are dying. They cost too much, and ultimately provide nothing over online shopping in the 21st century.

Well, physical copies are supposed to allow me to install a game faster, but, you know, Steam.

and there is an option to install physically. Its on steam's support page. you didn't use it.

Don't be daft, I tried, repeatedly, a forum said it might be because I'm using Windows 7 or some such, so apparently Steam doesn't want to fix that little bug. Just because it worked for you (maybe you even use Windows 7) doesn't mean it works for everyone else with every game on every operating system.

steam has tools to check a game if its corrupted, but instead you installed and uninstalled multiple times. A simple check on its files in its properties would have fixed it. You don't treat steam like a CD game because it has the extra tools to fix itself without a whole new install.

Of course, I should have known this when I first signed up for steam, silly me. Why would I have treated a steam game like a CD game? Oh right, BECAUSE IT WAS A CD GAME and IT WAS THE FIRST TIME I USED STEAM. Mate, NuclearKangaroo has already acknowledged that my time with Steam has involved more nonsense than most people. My experience is not the typical experience, don't try so hard to defend steam from me. It is simply more functionally frustrating than my non-steam experiences.

 

[Lotet]

-snip-

I already tried that, but I'll try it again, for you. It hovered around 7 hours to install Empire Total war, now it has stopped on 103MB of 16132MB, I'm going to go eat, if it doesn't work, then I'll try it with Rome II, which is definitely not damaged.

 

[endtherapture]

I really used to love Steam but the UI has hardly updated in ages, years in fact. This gives it a very late 00s feel whilst Origin has moved onwards and is much much faster and cleaner in it's UI.

Also I've just got too many games. When a game used to be on Steam I know it would be a quality game and always worth a buy, especially if it was on sale. Now they've just flooded it with too much shovelware, old games being passed off as new ones, so if you don't do your research it's like playing Russian roulette with your money to get a game that works.

I'm guessing that you have no idea about the large variety of UI overhauling skins that people make that change everything from the standard button layouts to the way the game overlay looks, so I'm going to just go ahead and let you know, those exist, and installing them is really easy. Also user reviews, and meta critic scores and whatnot are right there, so it makes the looking at the games you intend to buy thing easier, but really that issue is the same with EVERY pc game, gotta see if it works, or how it works on your machine if you wanna know if you should get it.

Hope the info about UI skins helps you.

I still think the UI is somewhat slow and not that smooth so skins might just make that problem worse.

Point I was trying to make was that Steam used to be synonymous with value and quality. Now it's just let too much shit in to be compared with either.

 

[Kathinka]

because ANY type of post-purchase control tool for publishers and distributors is a terrible idea. it enforces stuff like you not being able to sell your property, and region locking.

one thing is the worry what happens when some day steam closes its doors. you hear the myth thrown around a lot that valve would make your games playable without steam in that case, but that's extremely implausible from a technical and legal standpoint, and as long as they are not legally bound to do something like this the mere promise to do it is absolutely meaningless. if it was ever actually promised, i've never actually seen this said anywhere but in hearsay.

granted, most of the unpleasant issues are easily circumvented manually, but that should not be necessary. players should be able to play THEIR games that they bought with THEIR hard earned money when and where and how they want, not under the specific circumstances that please some arbitrary valve overlords.

i will, however, admit that as far as shitty drm schemes go, steam is probably the least shitty.

 

[Lotet]

Oh wow, would you look at that. Empire Total War installed, it'll take a few hours to update, but it installed, good thing I never complained about this one. Now for a proper test. Shogun 2, this game had a flaw that affected many people, not just me, where it installed the entire game from the disk then it downloaded the entire game again. Oops, nope, it didn't do that, after doing your method again, it instead decided to install 143MB which took 20 minutes for some reason (E:TW breezed to 103MB) and it didn't even install a single MB from disk 1, just wants disk 2 right after it begins, now it's just gone straight for the digital update, woo...

And why do you hate disks so much? Kids these days. Would you hate me more if I said my mobile phone is only a phone? That I don't connect my money to the internet? Joking aside...

I never said Steam or digital distribution is "evil." I don't even know why you put that word in quotes. I never complained about a lack of support. You know how some people never have an incident with steam? That's how I felt about PCs till Steam. The only incident I had before was a disk for Empire Earth 2 looked like it had a 5x2mm bubble carved into it, so the folks at EB Games (pretty sure they're GameStop elsewhere) replaced it.

 

[00slash00]

Well the idea that Steam is the best thing to happen to PC gaming, is damaging. That kind of mentality is why so many indie developers have trouble selling their game if they can't get it on Steam. Aside from that, Steam has a borderline monopoly on PC gaming, which is not a good thing, plus there's the fact that you don't own any of your Steam games. You're borrowing all your Steam games and if they ever decide they don't like you anymore or if the service somehow goes under, you lose all those games and will not be getting any money back. Finally, there's no quality control anymore and Steam is getting flooded with the kind of crap that you would expect to see selling for $2 at Target

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

I really used to love Steam but the UI has hardly updated in ages, years in fact. This gives it a very late 00s feel whilst Origin has moved onwards and is much much faster and cleaner in it's UI.

Also I've just got too many games. When a game used to be on Steam I know it would be a quality game and always worth a buy, especially if it was on sale. Now they've just flooded it with too much shovelware, old games being passed off as new ones, so if you don't do your research it's like playing Russian roulette with your money to get a game that works.

I'm guessing that you have no idea about the large variety of UI overhauling skins that people make that change everything from the standard button layouts to the way the game overlay looks, so I'm going to just go ahead and let you know, those exist, and installing them is really easy. Also user reviews, and meta critic scores and whatnot are right there, so it makes the looking at the games you intend to buy thing easier, but really that issue is the same with EVERY pc game, gotta see if it works, or how it works on your machine if you wanna know if you should get it.

Hope the info about UI skins helps you.

I still think the UI is somewhat slow and not that smooth so skins might just make that problem worse.

Point I was trying to make was that Steam used to be synonymous with value and quality. Now it's just let too much shit in to be compared with either.

i think you mean the client, an UI is just that, an user interface, it cant be slow


but yes, the client has been deserving a good speed increase since forever, ive always prefered to make my purchases through the browser because of it

Well the idea that Steam is the best thing to happen to PC gaming, is damaging. That kind of mentality is why so many indie developers have trouble selling their game if they can't get it on Steam. Aside from that, Steam has a borderline monopoly on PC gaming, which is not a good thing, plus there's the fact that you don't own any of your Steam games. You're borrowing all your Steam games and if they ever decide they don't like you anymore or if the service somehow goes under, you lose all those games and will not be getting any money back. Finally, there's no quality control anymore and Steam is getting flooded with the kind of crap that you would expect to see selling for $2 at Target

but it IS the best thing to happen to PC gaming, Steam is largely responsible for the revival of the platform, remember that not a long time ago PC was seriously struggling

also if steam has a monopoly on the market is not because of any shady practice, theres no lauch parity clause like with the xbox, steam doesnt force devs to use steamworks, in fact, many games on steam are DRM-free, specially old games



i think before asking valve to do worse so they loosen their grip on the market, maybe we should ask everyone else to be better

 

[Bombiz]

God, these people, saying haters gonna hate and other such distanced troll logic

Why do I hate Steam? Because Elder Scrolls used to only need the disk. Because Shogun Total War had to download the entire game after I already installed it. None of their dumb advice helps so I couldn't play till the next afternoon and I don't have infinite internet. Because Dawn of War 2 didn't work after I installed it repeatedly, physically, then I downloaded the entire thing but it still didn't work, so I uninstalled steam completely, reinstalled it and reinstalled Dawn of War 2, THEN it worked. What the hell was wrong with it?? But since I needed the obligatory patch, I couldn't play till the next day. Oh, I also had to wait for the patch to download EVERY TIME I installed it to check if I could play, it took 3 days to play a game!

Steam won't let me install Rome II: Total War physically, guess the estimated download time... 4 Days, 7 Hours.

You gonna tell me it's not Steam's fault? That no game dev is forced to use it? I'm sorry, it's hard to understand that when Steam is the only difference between 'games then' and 'games now' and so far, it's only gotten in my way.

to be fair i think it did you some good by not allowing you to install Rome 2. you know since it's still broken/not good after 6 months of patching.

 

[Artaneius]

I played Kotor 2 and played it through Steam. I tried playing it last week, so many issues, it wouldnt load and Steam passed the buck. Sorry but when i buy something, i expect it to work. Wasnt this the whole point with PC? Took me ages to find out a way to fix and play it which now seems only without cut scenes. What bullshit. If a shop sold a faulty game, the shop is responsible. Its why i stick with gog. Once you download the game, its yours. With steam, there is bullshit DRM and you dont own it, just like with Kotor 2, i bought it but couldnt play it.

Dumb and lousy excuse because I have the original copy and it has very similar problems. Older games usually have issues like this on newer PC's. Not Steam's fault for you having a newer OS.

 

[Zydrate]

I played Kotor 2 and played it through Steam. I tried playing it last week, so many issues, it wouldnt load and Steam passed the buck. Sorry but when i buy something, i expect it to work. Wasnt this the whole point with PC? Took me ages to find out a way to fix and play it which now seems only without cut scenes. What bullshit. If a shop sold a faulty game, the shop is responsible. Its why i stick with gog. Once you download the game, its yours. With steam, there is bullshit DRM and you dont own it, just like with Kotor 2, i bought it but couldnt play it.

Dumb and lousy excuse because I have the original copy and it has very similar problems. Older games usually have issues like this on newer PC's. Not Steam's fault for you having a newer OS.

I just got Jade Empire for 15$. First it wouldn't load and then I had no cursor.
However, two minutes of research fixed my problem. Two minutes was all it took to fix it.

Steam isn't the source of all gaming evil

 

[StriderShinryu]

My biggest issue with Steam really is just the fanboys. I accept it for what it is and appreciate the selection of games (and, of course, the sales) but I don't dismiss the fact that it's really not all that different from it's competitors once you look beyond the game selection. Just because Steam has Valve and Gabe attached to it doesn't somehow magically mean that they are not a digital download service that includes DRM and has a near monopoly on the space.

I suppose my other issue with Steam is the question of quality control and promotion. Honest indie developers still have to fight to get on the service and are lucky to get any additional promotion at all while garbage mobile game ports and barebones ports of 10 year old garbage games get through without any issue and get listed on the front page? Yeah, nothing to complain about there...

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

My biggest issue with Steam really is just the fanboys. I accept it for what it is and appreciate the selection of games (and, of course, the sales) but I don't dismiss the fact that it's really not all that different from it's competitors once you look beyond the game selection. Just because Steam has Valve and Gabe attached to it doesn't somehow magically mean that they are not a digital download service that includes DRM and has a near monopoly on the space.

I suppose my other issue with Steam is the question of quality control and promotion. Honest indie developers still have to fight to get on the service and are lucky to get any additional promotion at all while garbage mobile game ports and barebones ports of 10 year old garbage games get through without any issue and get listed on the front page? Yeah, nothing to complain about there...

i know some might call me a valve fanboy, including myself


but really man, steam is VERY different from other DD clients, trading, big picture, community features, workshop, community market, trading cards, etc

you might not use these features, thats fair, but they still exist

 

[prpshrt]

UI's slow and clunky and steam's also kinda bloated. Not really a problem on my tower but it does have issues on my laptop. I think a lot of peoples have issues with the pricing outside the US is all. Download speeds are actually pretty high. I have actually had speeds up to 50 megs on steam so a lot of the problems talk about are regional

 

[Troublesome Lagomorph]

As someone with over 200 games on Steam, I can't say that I hate it.
With that said, however, it has problems. The biggest one as of late is how much its been flooded with absolute tat. Good games are being buried under sub-par or ancient titles, which is terrible. Its the same problem the Xbox indie store had.
Also, terrible return policy. Pretty much doesn't exist. They really should give refunds for games that don't work at all. You know you've got problems when origin does it better.
Then there's the fact that its getting a monopoly. That isn't inherently Steam's fault, but that's never a good thing. Never.
And of course, it IS DRM, which sucks. Lose your account, lose all your games. Maybe its your fault, but what if its not?

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

Because some people are never satisfied, and some people are just pussy aching console fanboys who don't know the first thing about Steam or PC gaming, but are so mind blowingly stupid that they willingly debase themselves without even knowing it. They are exactly the reason why consoles will never be as good as PC's.

Or they could have legit gripes?

The OP made no mention of consoles, why are you so mad about them?

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

i do admit steam has some flaws, even when many of them dont affect me, and im willing to listen to any criticism as long as its valid

for instance, saying origin provides a better customer service is absurd

Bull.

Origin has a proper refund system. Steam doesn't. EA has a Customer Service phone number in which you can speak to real people. Valve has an email that takes days to respond.

EA wins in customer service.

gog.com, sure you could argue they treat their customers slightly better

More bull.
Refund system and quicker respond time for customer service.

The fact that Valve only gives you one refund is piss poor in terms of customer service.

first greenlight was critized for letting too few games in, now its critized for letting too many, there are 2 sides to this

Greenlight was never majorly criticized for letting too little games in. It was criticized for Greenlighting games while not releasing them. As has always been with Greenlight there are more games waiting to be release than have been. There are still dozens of games that were the first to be Greenlit and haven't been release. Greenlight has failed. Gabe admitted as such.

you critize Early Acess for not giving devs incentives to finish their games, and yet, games like insurgency were finished thanks to it, also games like dayz, rust and kerbal space program gained a great following and have managed to increase their scope thanks to early access

Insurgency is one of the few Early Access games to get finished. The majority are still incomplete and will be for a long time. There are more games being released through Early Acces than Greenlight. This isn't debatable.

devs have an incentive to finish their Early Access games, because early access games sell much less than finished titles, insurgency has proven it, shortly after its release, the game peaked at around 2.5 k players

http://steamcharts.com/app/222880

the game released on late january but it was on early access long before that

Even more bull. One game's data does not an argument make. Also, SteamCharts is not a sales tracker so its unreliable in this debate.

DayZ and Rust have sold millions. Planet Explorers has thousands, as does Kerbal Space Program. There are many Early Access games that have outsold Insurgency by a large margin.

i suggest you use some real data before comming up with your assumptions, because this is mere "hate", not criticism

And I suggest you use more than one game's data to make an argument, as so far I've taken your point and dismantled it quite effectively.

as for QC, i think yo got the wrong idea, shitty games shouldnt really be used as evidence of faulty QC, ride to hell retribution was released on the PS3 and xbox360 for instance, but games that dont work properly, or games that lie about its features SHOULD be used as examples of faulty QC, something i never said wasnt a problem with steam, the problem is that standard QC might be too clumsy for the sort thing valve wants to do with steam, they want to make it more open and put the least amount of barriers between the developers and the customers

There was much more QC on Steam before Greenlight. That can't be denied. Publishers couldn't just dump their back catalog of 10+ year old games that may not work on to the New Releases tab before. I'm aware that crap games have always been on Steam but Valve seems to have stopped all curation period. Games like The War Z lying on their Store Page didn't happen before.

Games developers that got bad impressions of their bad games didn't get away with censoring negative opinion, like in the cases of Day One Garry's Incident and Guise of the Wolf actively blocked people on the forums who said they didn't like the game. Or using the YouTube Copyright Claim system to illegally take down negative opinion videos.

Or in the case of Miner Wars banning people from their Steam Forums for calling the devs out for lying about secondary DRM.

This BS wasn't happening 3 years ago. Now it seems every other month a game on Steam is busted for lying or for devs abusing people's freedom to express their opinion. Valve would remove the forum admin abilities from devs for that nonsense. Now it takes a YouTube video from TotalBiscuit that reaches a million views or articles from Forbes pointing out potential for class action lawsuits in the case of the WarZ to get Valve to do something.

Valve needs to reinstate quality control. One way of doing this would be to have a tab for "Legacy" releases, releases of games from a decade ago, instead of filling the front page with Barbies Adventure 1 through 6 in the New Releases tab.

Greenlight not having a ranking system also allowed for many copy cat devs to release titles.

To say that a standard QC solution for Steam is a bad idea is nuts.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

Bull.

Origin has a proper refund system. Steam doesn't. EA has a Customer Service phone number in which you can speak to real people. Valve has an email that takes days to respond.

EA wins in customer service.

so steam has more features, steam accepts more user feedback, steam gives more liberty to its users, EA has apparently threatened people with a ban for asking for a refund, but since it offers a VERY limited refund program and an admitedly better support, it treats the customer better? i disagree, but well, maybe the only thing you care about is a refund of EA games within the first 24 hours of playing em and some good technical support, and under that perspective sure, Origin must seem like a more customer friendly service

however in my 3 years using steam ive needed a refund exactly 0 times, and ive asked for support probably less than 5 times, considering i use all the other features on a daily basis i consider steam a much more customer friendly, but well, each on his own

More bull.
Refund system and quicker respond time for customer service.

The fact that Valve only gives you one refund is piss poor in terms of customer service.

again, if you care so much about refunds, sure

Greenlight was never majorly criticized for letting too little games in. It was criticized for Greenlighting games while not releasing them. As has always been with Greenlight there are more games waiting to be release than have been. There are still dozens of games that were the first to be Greenlit and haven't been release. Greenlight has failed. Gabe admitted as such.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/07/26/open-letter-criticizes-the-steam-greenlight-process-valve-responds/

http://indiestatik.com/2013/07/21/valve-react-to-greenlight-criticism/

you do know its up to the developer to release the game once its greenlit right? i quote

My favorite game just got Greenlit. How long before it launches on Steam?

Games are submitted to Steam Greenlight in various stages of completion. Once a game has been Greenlit, Valve will reach out to the developer to determine their timeline for finishing their game and launching on Steam.

Source: http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/about/?appid=765§ion=faq

also check the wording of the open letter in the articles i sent you, it talks about greelighting games, not releasing them

will you do your homework?

you cant just critize something without even knowing a damn thing about it, again, thats just hate, not criticism

Insurgency is one of the few Early Access games to get finished. The majority are still incomplete and will be for a long time. There are more games being released through Early Acces than Greenlight. This isn't debatable.

true i think, and your point is?

does this affect you in any way? if you like a game on early access but you dont want to play an unfinished game, dont fucking buy it, wait until it gets released

Even more bull. One game's data does not an argument make. Also, SteamCharts is not a sales tracker so its unreliable in this debate.

so 5 times more concurrent players does not even suggest a significant increase in sales?

since sales numbers are only known by valve and developers, i cant provide you with exact sales numbers, but it would be completely ridiculous to not even consider insurgency sold much more after release than it ever did during early access

DayZ and Rust have sold millions. Planet Explorers has thousands, as does Kerbal Space Program. There are many Early Access games that have outsold Insurgency by a large margin.

im now saying they havent, im saying they will sell MUCH more after they get released, which is an incentive to finish their games

funny you mention KSP, that game got its huge following thanks to the beta access provided by the early access program, expanding the scope of the game and the devs even got in touch with NASA, if that isnt a win for the early access program, i dont know what is

And I suggest you use more than one game's data to make an argument, as so far I've taken your point and dismantled it quite effectively.

ok, heres another

http://steamcharts.com/app/249650

blackguards, released on january

you havent dismantled a damn thing, your entire argument is that devs are willing to sacrifice their reputation, future earnings and success just to run away with the money they have already made, that is just insane

it would be like arguing for instance that nintendo could release a new console tomorrow, and kill off the wiiu and all its services, just so they can stop losing money with it. it makes no damn sense


lets check the score:

games abandoned while on early access: 0

games that left early access: atleast 2, there are more but i dont feel like checking

There was much more QC on Steam before Greenlight. That can't be denied. Publishers couldn't just dump their back catalog of 10+ year old games that may not work on to the New Releases tab before. I'm aware that crap games have always been on Steam but Valve seems to have stopped all curation period. Games like The War Z lying on their Store Page didn't happen before.

Games developers that got bad impressions of their bad games didn't get away with censoring negative opinion, like in the cases of Day One Garry's Incident and Guise of the Wolf actively blocked people on the forums who said they didn't like the game. Or using the YouTube Copyright Claim system to illegally take down negative opinion videos.

Or in the case of Miner Wars banning people from their Steam Forums for calling the devs out for lying about secondary DRM.

This BS wasn't happening 3 years ago. Now it seems every other month a game on Steam is busted for lying or for devs abusing people's freedom to express their opinion. Valve would remove the forum admin abilities from devs for that nonsense. Now it takes a YouTube video from TotalBiscuit that reaches a million views or articles from Forbes pointing out potential for class action lawsuits in the case of the WarZ to get Valve to do something.

Valve needs to reinstate quality control. One way of doing this would be to have a tab for "Legacy" releases, releases of games from a decade ago, instead of filling the front page with Barbies Adventure 1 through 6 in the New Releases tab.

Greenlight not having a ranking system also allowed for many copy cat devs to release titles.

To say that a standard QC solution for Steam is a bad idea is nuts.

dont pay attention to whats on greenlight, pay attention to whats greenlit, even if a game gets enough votes valve still has to give it thumbs up

im not agaisnt a legacy feature, ive proposed that before i think

what i dont think would work is to get valve to sit down and review every single game that wants to get into steam, thats what got steam in a bad situation with indie devs a few years ago, this will slow down the process in which new games get into steam, and steam is aiming towards being more open, not more closed


plus for the last time, user reviews, if you want to critize a game use that, your reviews gets shown on the store page which hurt the devs of bad games more than a forum post, as for the devs having admin powers on their own forums, im neutral about it, i think valve wants to give devs their own user forums and reach a bigger audience via steam than they could ever get via their own website, its only natural they also get some control over that, but agaisnt bad reviews, they have no more power than the standard user i believe

 

[Caiphus]

EA has apparently threatened people with a ban for asking for a refund

Just going to jump in, this is a bit of an urban legend (so not your fault, NuclearKangaroo). Assuming you're talking about the Simcity debacle. They threatened a customer with a ban when he threatened to go through his bank and get a chargeback. While not offering refunds for a clearly broken product was bad service, Valve would do the exact same thing if you tried to get a chargeback for one of their games.

If they actually threatened to ban someone for asking for a refund, that would indeed be really, really bad. I don't think that has actually happened though.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

EA has apparently threatened people with a ban for asking for a refund

Just going to jump in, this is a bit of an urban legend (so not your fault, NuclearKangaroo). Assuming you're talking about the Simcity debacle. They threatened a customer with a ban when he threatened to go through his bank and get a chargeback. While not offering refunds for a clearly broken product was bad service, Valve would do the exact same thing if you tried to get a chargeback for one of their games.

If they actually threatened to ban someone for asking for a refund, that would indeed be really, really bad. I don't think that has actually happened though.

oh ok, my bad, i take that bad

but honestly, the refund policy of EA is in my opinion, overrated, only applies to EA games and theres a 24 hour limit


of course a refund policy for steam would be nice, but ive never found myself in a situation where i need a refund