steam hate, why?

[Caiphus]

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

Well, that's fine. I've also never needed a refund because I'm usually rather careful with what I buy. And I would imagine that a lot of people are the same. Origin pretty much only sells EA games anyway, though. Third party stuff is usually horrendously overpriced (which is another, separate issue that EA needs to fix). Let me go onto Origin and check the price of The Witcher 2... $100. Yeah, that's laughable.

Granted it is tougher for Valve to offer refunds because it would almost certainly require re-writing contracts with everyone, and having to deal with developers who really don't want people getting refunds on Steam. What happens if 2K (hypothetically) refuses? Do you take their games off Steam? Then everyone loses. There are probably ways to get around that though. They could start by offering refunds for Greenlit games only, for example.

But I still don't think it's really acceptable to say "it's just too tough for Valve to offer refunds" considering Valve really doesn't have to do anything when you ask for a refund, they just remove a game from your library. In brick and mortar stores, they have to replace packaging, manuals (although those don't really exist anymore, I guess), put stuff back on shelves, and have a staff member deal with you immediately. It's not much, you might argue. And you'd be right. But Valve doesn't have to do any of that. They could just untick a box next to your account whenever they get around to it.

And especially with shitty indie games, like Guise of the Wolf, for instance, Valve essentially has all the market power. Small developers are desperate enough to get on Steam that Steam should really be telling them that some things just aren't acceptable. If your game has falsely advertised, Steam can quite easily say "We're going to give out refunds of your game until you fix your store page." And most developers (apart from EA and Ubisoft, obviously), would have to deal with it. Because Steam is currently the key to selling your game on PC.

But I do understand that it can't happen overnight, there are too many separate parties for Valve to deal with.

Oh, and for Origin, it is technically 24 hours after you first launch a game, or 2* weeks after you buy it (whichever comes first). Which would stop people completing a game and then getting refunds, which you can kind of understand.

There we go. Sorry for that minor rant.

*Edit: I was incorrect. It is one week.

 

[loa]

There are more than enough valid reasons to dislike steam and you'd be well advised not to fall into idealizing worship of a company.

 

[theSovietConnection]

Let me go onto Origin and check the price of The Witcher 2... $100. Yeah, that's laughable.

Caiphus, if you don't mind double checking, what is the price for it for you on Steam? I just got Witcher 2 off Origin for the identical price it is on Steam, so I'm curious as to why it'd be so much more expensive for you there then it is up here in the Most Glorious People's Republic of Canuckistan.

Anyways, on-topic, I can see why people might not like Steam. I've had my own run ins myself with poor customer service. Steam has also had a funny habit of wanting me to completely redownload several games, all of which were several gigs large, and would have taken me days to completely redownload.

 

[Caiphus]

Caiphus, if you don't mind double checking, what is the price for it for you on Steam? I just got Witcher 2 off Origin for the identical price it is on Steam, so I'm curious as to why it'd be so much more expensive for you there then it is up here in the Most Glorious People's Republic of Canuckistan.

Anyways, on-topic, I can see why people might not like Steam. I've had my own run ins myself with poor customer service. Steam has also had a funny habit of wanting me to completely redownload several games, all of which were several gigs large, and would have taken me days to completely redownload.

No problem. It's currently 20 USD. Which makes it roughly 23 NZD (The Origin price of 100 earlier was in NZD).

Huh, so it might just be that EA gouges Australia/NZ to a silly degree. How lovely. High five.

And it's not that I don't like Steam, necessarily. Although you probably weren't referring to me. I actually do like it. It was, and still might be, one of the best things about PC gaming. For most people, anyway. I'm just personally annoyed that the ways in which it has evolved (trading cards, workshop, Greenlight, etc.) don't really affect me, while it's stayed stagnant or gone backwards in ways that do (general average quality of games offered, refunds). Some people are the opposite, that's fine. Though, it is frustrating to see consumers act in rather anti-consumer ways for no reason other than corporate favouritism (and I'm not referring to NuclearKangaroo - or anyone - he's mostly been civil).

And I am loving the Most Glorious People's Republic of Canuckistan. They should have you on some kind of committee.

 

[Aaron Beam]

I will weigh in here and tell you that it's actually, literally not Steam's job to ensure that the game you purchase works. (Either through current developer or something like Jade Empire or KoToR II, etc. All steam is is a sale page, a middleman. It's great when steam steps in and defends your customer rights when actual, literal theft is occurring, (The War Z v1) But the idea that a game built around windows 95//Fat32 should just plug and play is asinine, and to yell at steam about that is to go into Gamestop and buy a PS4 game, then come back in twenty minutes later and yell at the clerk for not telling you it was for the Xbone. Expect to do a bit of work. GoG doesn't modify the executables or provide pre-patched products ready to go either.

More refunds would be nice, but honestly I can understand their point of view. 99% of people's "customer service issues" are resolved by googling the problem for fifteen seconds anyway, and people who want a refund because they're dissatisfied should probably try to return a game to Gamestop because they didn't like it and see how it goes. Steam's responses are canned because they've got most of that information you need about getting the game to run on an older system stickied in their forums.

 

[Guy from the 80's]

Just wait until Steam randomly breaks one of your games with an update. Then you get to do the fun dance of submitting a ticket, being told to contact the developer because it's not Steam's fault (includes developers who are now defunct, wahey), venting your frustrations with other people on the forums who all have the exact same problem, keeping the ticket open because the issue isn't solved, being told to do things you've already done like verifying game files and restarting Steam etc.

On balance I find Steam has worked well enough, but their customer support is pathetic.

Say what? I have about 200 games in my library and I've never experienced what you talk about.

 

[Guy from the 80's]

There are more than enough valid reasons to dislike steam and you'd be well advised not to fall into idealizing worship of a company.

For me there are more valid reasons to like than dislike. Easy and instant access to games, crazy sales not to mention having all the games in one library. Win win win.

 

[AD-Stu]

I don't like it because GOG is 153,207 times better. Exactly 153,207. I counted.

In all seriousness I have zero brand loyalty to Valve. The only reason I even have Steam is because my brother wanted to gift some games to me years ago. Now I only use it when I have to for DRM on store bought games. I've never actually bought a game through Steam, even on sale.

I can't for the life of me see why people hate Origin but then like Steam - as far as I'm concerned they're as bad as each other. The idea that I could buy something that disappears if Steam disappears bothers me. And otherwise it's just bloatware. Meh.

 

[C14N]

I don't hate Steam by any means and I use it regularly, however there are a few things I still dislike about it:

Prices are usually very high outside of sales, to the point where I will never buy anything that isn't on sale
The software is pretty sluggish
No way to limit download speeds which means I have to pause everything to watch videos online
Messy with adding non-Steam games into the library, they have disappeared suddenly from my library a few times or had their custom cover art just removed
Far too many "Early Access" games are getting pushed to the front page these days

I have no really problem with the DRM because I can still play offline and the generally extremely low prices I pay for games negates any feeling of wanting to re-sell or trade the games. I also don't give a crap about quality control because I've never seen a game shop in my life that exercises quality control on it's games. It really never occurred to me to just buy obscure games randomly without checking some reviews first or even just looking them up.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

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

Well, that's fine. I've also never needed a refund because I'm usually rather careful with what I buy. And I would imagine that a lot of people are the same. Origin pretty much only sells EA games anyway, though. Third party stuff is usually horrendously overpriced (which is another, separate issue that EA needs to fix). Let me go onto Origin and check the price of The Witcher 2... $100. Yeah, that's laughable.

Granted it is tougher for Valve to offer refunds because it would almost certainly require re-writing contracts with everyone, and having to deal with developers who really don't want people getting refunds on Steam. What happens if 2K (hypothetically) refuses? Do you take their games off Steam? Then everyone loses. There are probably ways to get around that though. They could start by offering refunds for Greenlit games only, for example.

But I still don't think it's really acceptable to say "it's just too tough for Valve to offer refunds" considering Valve really doesn't have to do anything when you ask for a refund, they just remove a game from your library. In brick and mortar stores, they have to replace packaging, manuals (although those don't really exist anymore, I guess), put stuff back on shelves, and have a staff member deal with you immediately. It's not much, you might argue. And you'd be right. But Valve doesn't have to do any of that. They could just untick a box next to your account whenever they get around to it.

And especially with shitty indie games, like Guise of the Wolf, for instance, Valve essentially has all the market power. Small developers are desperate enough to get on Steam that Steam should really be telling them that some things just aren't acceptable. If your game has falsely advertised, Steam can quite easily say "We're going to give out refunds of your game until you fix your store page." And most developers (apart from EA and Ubisoft, obviously), would have to deal with it. Because Steam is currently the key to selling your game on PC.

But I do understand that it can't happen overnight, there are too many separate parties for Valve to deal with.

Oh, and for Origin, it is technically 24 hours after you first launch a game, or 2 weeks after you buy it (whichever comes first). Which would stop people completing a game and then getting refunds, which you can kind of understand.

There we go. Sorry for that minor rant.

there are also games that are short but not really bad, noitu love devolution 2 comes to mind, as well as metal slug, i fear a refund policy could affect those devs negatively by people who could exploit the system

but yeah steam should add a clause for false advertisement or something like that, some kind of punishment that would really stop devs from doing that

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

I don't hate Steam by any means and I use it regularly, however there are a few things I still dislike about it:

Prices are usually very high outside of sales, to the point where I will never buy anything that isn't on sale
The software is pretty sluggish
No way to limit download speeds which means I have to pause everything to watch videos online
Messy with adding non-Steam games into the library, they have disappeared suddenly from my library a few times or had their custom cover art just removed
Far too many "Early Access" games are getting pushed to the front page these days

I have no really problem with the DRM because I can still play offline and the generally extremely low prices I pay for games negates any feeling of wanting to re-sell or trade the games. I also don't give a crap about quality control because I've never seen a game shop in my life that exercises quality control on it's games. It really never occurred to me to just buy obscure games randomly without checking some reviews first or even just looking them up.

errmm you can limit download speeds

steam>settings>downloads>limit badwidth to

I don't like it because GOG is 153,207 times better. Exactly 153,207. I counted.

In all seriousness I have zero brand loyalty to Valve. The only reason I even have Steam is because my brother wanted to gift some games to me years ago. Now I only use it when I have to for DRM on store bought games. I've never actually bought a game through Steam, even on sale.

I can't for the life of me see why people hate Origin but then like Steam - as far as I'm concerned they're as bad as each other. The idea that I could buy something that disappears if Steam disappears bothers me. And otherwise it's just bloatware. Meh.

steam has more and better sales as well as many more features, as simple as that

but well i understand your DRM stance

 

[C14N]

I don't hate Steam by any means and I use it regularly, however there are a few things I still dislike about it:

Prices are usually very high outside of sales, to the point where I will never buy anything that isn't on sale
The software is pretty sluggish
No way to limit download speeds which means I have to pause everything to watch videos online
Messy with adding non-Steam games into the library, they have disappeared suddenly from my library a few times or had their custom cover art just removed
Far too many "Early Access" games are getting pushed to the front page these days

I have no really problem with the DRM because I can still play offline and the generally extremely low prices I pay for games negates any feeling of wanting to re-sell or trade the games. I also don't give a crap about quality control because I've never seen a game shop in my life that exercises quality control on it's games. It really never occurred to me to just buy obscure games randomly without checking some reviews first or even just looking them up.

errmm you can limit download speeds

steam>settings>downloads>limit badwidth to

Now there's one less thing I dislike about Steam.

 

[The White Hunter]

1) DRM fucking sucks

2) Needs some kind of QC badly

3) Buggy

4) Lacking certain features, for example it took until last year to add the in-client option to spread libraries across multiple disks.

5) People licking Gabe Newells arse and praising Valve as the bestest games company even though they barely ever actually make a game, even rarer they create one from scratch.

6) Customer service is fucking appalling, making me wait days for an answer when competitors barely even make me wait hours is a poor showing for the market leader. (GMG, GoG and even Origin have responded to me much faster, within a day, whereas it's 2-3 before I get anything from a steam support ticket, Uplay is substantially shittier inthis regard though)

Otherwise steam is functional and mostly does it's job without annoying me.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

1) DRM fucking sucks

2) Needs some kind of QC badly

3) Buggy

4) Lacking certain features, for example it took until last year to add the in-client option to spread libraries across multiple disks.

5) People licking Gabe Newells arse and praising Valve as the bestest games company even though they barely ever actually make a game, even rarer they create one from scratch.

6) Customer service is fucking appalling, making me wait days for an answer when competitors barely even make me wait hours is a poor showing for the market leader. (GMG, GoG and even Origin have responded to me much faster, within a day, whereas it's 2-3 before I get anything from a steam support ticket, Uplay is substantially shittier inthis regard though)

Otherwise steam is functional and mostly does it's job without annoying me.

Valve has released atleast 1 game per year for the last decade

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valve_Corporation#Games


thatd a pretty damn good record if you ask me, specially since they update their existing games constantly

 

[Bruce]

Okay then:

1: Steam has quite slow servers where I live, so it takes an age for a game to download.

2: Buying games on disk is a way around this slow downloading issues, except you've generally got to jump through hoops to get it to install from the disk. Somehow the geniuses at Valve never quite figured out that people might actually be buying game disks as something other than highly priced coasters.

Origin is actually better than Steam in this regard.

3: Deceptive marketing in the Steam store. The store's new release page is currently being flooded with games that are not in fact new. If a game was released in 2008, slapping a label on its claiming it has only just come out is lying, and lying to customers is never acceptable.

4: No quality control. The games are quite simply not always in working condition on purchase.

5: Flooding: Currently their new releases page is being flooded with old crap, games which were bad when they were first released, nevermind now. Steam has essentially allowed publishers to put their back catalogues through the system, essentially flooding them with tat, pushing all the worthwhile titles off the page.

Overall, GOG is by far the better service, though it is limited to indie and old titles I find it a lot more honest, and the games require a lot less work.

 

[alceste007]

I buy lots of products on Steam but I refuse to sell my Intellectual Integrity for a few cheap games.

1. DRM simply blows. Having been knocked offline and unable to play games for a couple of days also blows. Note, you can go into Offline mode if you know before of the problem does not help. Steam has a nice Webpage for the error that states your connection is not working, please fix your connection.

2. If you know anyone that has been banned from Steam for any length of time. You loose your entire library. Yes, the entire library. Steam is setup similar to a service where they can cut you off. Note, Steam never ever discloses reasons for any bans. My buddy never ever found out why he could not play any of his library for over a month.

3. Return policy: Steam has one of the worst return policies out there. Both GoG and Origin are better.

4. No trading: Due to Steam being setup similar to service, Valve has been successful in not allowing license trading on Steam despite EU laws to allow the same. Microsoft and Oracle were complying with the law, before Steam showed how setting everything up as a service allowed you to avoid allowing trades (ala software as a service).

Valve and Steam are just another corporate entity out to make money. You make like their policies but do not expect me to idolize them.

Btw, Valve does make great games. Portal is one of my favorite games of all time.

 

[Plinglebob]

I have 2 issues with Steam and neither are with the software/store itself.

The first is, like with all digital distribution platforms, no-one wants to go near the discussion of "What if they go under?" We're currently seeing this with GFWL where there are some games being patched, some abandoned and some left in a grey area that only less then savory sites are likely to help with. Thankfully with a PC its relatively easy to get round the problem, but its why I still buy films/music/non PC games in a hard copy format.

The second is the attitude of "I won't buy if its on Origin/Uplay, but Steam is fine". I've been PC gaming for over 20 years and I was there when Half Life 2 was released and it needed Steam to run. The PC community when ballistic with complaints everywhere, boycotts threatened, refunds demanded etc. Now I see people bitching when a game DOESN'T include Steamworks.

 

[Bruce]

I will weigh in here and tell you that it's actually, literally not Steam's job to ensure that the game you purchase works.

Actually what you just said here? Is wrong. Just about every consumer protection law out there puts the burden of assuring quality upon the seller - which is to say the middleman.

If you return something to a shop because it is not fit for purpose, they have to then take it up with their suppliers.

So in real terms it is literally Steam's job to make sure the game you purchase works.

 

[The White Hunter]

1) DRM fucking sucks

2) Needs some kind of QC badly

3) Buggy

4) Lacking certain features, for example it took until last year to add the in-client option to spread libraries across multiple disks.

5) People licking Gabe Newells arse and praising Valve as the bestest games company even though they barely ever actually make a game, even rarer they create one from scratch.

6) Customer service is fucking appalling, making me wait days for an answer when competitors barely even make me wait hours is a poor showing for the market leader. (GMG, GoG and even Origin have responded to me much faster, within a day, whereas it's 2-3 before I get anything from a steam support ticket, Uplay is substantially shittier inthis regard though)

Otherwise steam is functional and mostly does it's job without annoying me.

Valve has released atleast 1 game per year for the last decade

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valve_Corporation#Games


thatd a pretty damn good record if you ask me, specially since they update their existing games constantly

We'll just quietly ignore that at least half of them are either expansions or mods then.

Also released =/= made.

See just how many EA has released: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Electronic_Arts_games for comparison

It's not the same as actually making them. Valve makes some good software, sometimes, but mostly they seem to just pick up mods and fuck around with Half Life 3 trolling.

 

[Laughing Man]

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

but really man, steam is VERY different from other DD clients, trading,

A fairly new feature if I am right and I am also right in saying that Valve accept no responsibility for people who get scammed during trades? Even Ebay accepts a measure of responsibility if the end user gets screwed over during trades but I guess that fits with Valves generally crap customer service.

big picture,

Utter pointless, clearly designed for their Steambox and actually makes searching big game libraries slower on a PC. Of course big game libraries ain't an issue for Steambox since Linux has next to no supported games anyway.

community features,

What would these features be exactly?

workshop,

Great idea in practice but since it requires you use the god awful slow Steam interface to navigate it it actually turns out to be pretty crap. In fact their isn't a game on Steam where the workshop is a better option to a dedicated community websites.

trading cards,

Another pointless feature, or clever marketing because it keeps the weak minded coming back to buy stuff on the off chance they will get a new trading card out of the deal. In the worse instance it is frankly pathetic because you HAVE to collect these cards to then craft them to do stuff to your Steam interface, stuff that should be included AS STANDARD. Collect cards, craft cards, increase your level, increase your friends list and get custom addons to your Steam profile interface, yeah sounds like Steam, a stupid slow ass long winded way of doing something that you should be able to do in 30 seconds. The whole trading card thing is just another achievements tree, achievements for playing Steam.

By all means if you really do love the amount of shite that is included with Steam, the massive amount of pointless nonsense and the side effect a slow, ugly, poorly laid out game management / launcher then go for Steam as it is but the fact that Valve haven't released a Steam lite, a cut down version with all the shit cut out, that runs quickly gives you access to your games, the auto update and access to the store and nothing else, well it amazes me to be honest.