Suggest improvements for Steam.

[Grimh]

This is just a personal small thing but make a grid library option that function similarly to the way google image search or the GoG library works. You click on a game and an info box drops down below it. The way the grid works now when i press info it just takes me to the list version of the library meaning I have to switch back every time.

Have some kind of refund policy.

Do not promote Early Access anywhere but the Early Access page.
Definitely don't have them in the featured box on the front page for crying out loud. It sends a mixed message.
Product page: [small]This game is incomplete and you shouldn't buy it until it's complete unless interested in being a small/larger part of the development process.[/small]
Front page: Yooo! But dat game tho bro! Check it! Check it! F****NG SIIIIICK!

Continuing from that rework the storefront and the way you promote and showcase all other content as well.

At least check that the game is a working functional product before putting them out for sale.

 

[Bedinsis]

Well, I only have one which is relatively minor/slightly petty:

Local currencies. Whenever I want to see what the price is in krona I have to use Google, it would be a greater convenience if the Steam client shows the local currency based on where the physical location of the computer is. Possibly with the more-popular-currency price written greyed out, to show what currency my money is converted to when I pay.

 

[Jak2364]

This is a small thing, but it should be much easier to buy separate DLC's. I shouldn't have to go onto a separate page for a DLC item just to add it to my cart, why can't they just add some "+" signs next to the DLC's and add them to your cart that way?

 

[DrunkOnEstus]

Customer support and talking to them overall should be a lot simpler than it is. A few months ago my bank account got hacked, and I had to re-do everything with my debit card and shit, a total nightmare. My bank got it sorted out and I had a new card and account number within a week, but the process tripped some kind of thing with Steam where charges for games had been chargebacked and I was suspended for like 2 months. No trading, no selling cards, no multiplayer, no talking to my friends.

I tried to have my bank call them, and they said they couldn't get anywhere. When I finally got a hold of a person from Steam, I was told that I wasn't able to just give them the amount of money contested in the chargeback to unsuspend my account. I was pretty much told that because a chargeback happened at all, for any reason, that I had to wait out my suspension and that I couldn't fix it.

That's pretty much the only negative thing that's happened to me directly with Steam. I agree with all of the suggestions listed in this thread, but Valve acts so secretive and cloak and dagger about talking to its customers that I feel I have a strange business relationship with them. My recommendation would be to be more available to consumers in general, and have a sense of humanity and avoid being so black and white with all customers no matter what.

Thankfully, I was able to play my single-player games during the suspension. If I had been locked out of the games I bought (or licensed, whatever), I would never ever buy a game through them again. It was during that suspension that I felt such little sense of ownership over those lines of code that are assigned to me.

EDIT: Another thing. If you're going to release a game from 1997 or whatever and give it a release date of 2014, make the fuck sure that the game runs on Windows 7/8. GoG is a much smaller company and do an amazing job of making sure that the older titles they sell run properly. If something isn't working, they'll work to make sure it does. They say it costs them money to update these older titles or use DOSbox or whatever, but it's worth it as it fosters good will with their customers. I don't like it when an older game on Steam is pretty much a rip of the original CD from 1996, with a "good luck figuring out what compatibility mode you need to use, and that's if you don't need fan-made mods".

 

[Headsprouter]

I'd like to be able to sell games on the marketplace or, as others have said, have some sort of refund policy.

Multiple tabs would be nice on the browsers, and I'd like to get extra copies of bundled games I buy. I was dissapointed that I didn't have an extra copy of Castle Crashers to give away after I bought the BBT bundle.

 

[DoPo]

1) Better download management.

At the moment, the download management just about ticks the box of "it's there" but it's not really good - the speed limits, in particular, are somewhat coarse grained and on top of that, they don't work really well - if the speed limit is reached, the downloading stops for a couple of seconds, then starts again trying to build up to the speed cap. And when it reaches it it repeats that cycle. It might be my location or something, but it shouldn't happen at all.

Also, the download scheduling is pretty much non-existent - you can only limit the patches, but as far as I see, it doesn't seem like you can schedule something to be downloaded overnight or at least have the speed cap be enforced/dropped for some portion of the day.

While not vital, these are certainly good features to have that would help a lot.

2) Better search. To be honest, the search works, but it always left something to be desired. For example, I'd like more complex positive search options than "this one thing", at least offering ANDed multiple instances of the same parameter would be useful, for "it has to fit this AND that". For example, I may want a game that has categories "Local co-op" and also "Full controller support" at the same time. Or, also, I might want to have both "Free to play" and "RPG" listed as genres or something.

What I'd like even more is having negative search parameters, so you can do stuff like "All games but not Early Access" when searching.

And finally, the price ranges are not really useful. Introducing a minimum as well as maximum could help, but more importantly, at least it should have a variable input for what the price is. Currently you can only do the following:

Under £4
Under £7
Under £12
Under £15
Over £15

Which brings up a shitton of results back and if you only want under £1, for example, it's an overkill. Now, you can just fix it using the query string when searching (I do it all the time), however, I also understand the fact that it's probably not everybody's thing. On top of that, you can't do it in the client.

3) The ability to own Free to Play titles.

I've played Path of Exile and what I want to do is install it whenever I want. But I can't. Not immediately, at least - if I don't have it installed, I need to go to the store, find the entry there and then install it that way. Instead, I really want to have it in my list of games, so I can access it any time. I've got so much time invested in it, I do consider it "mine". Even if I haven't played it for a while.

A button that amounts to "add this to my library" is going to be really useful in that regard. Also, it'd be good to have the option to remove the games from there, too.

4) Various improvements can be done with Early Access.

No, I don't propose ditching the idea or heavily cutting back on it, not the slightest. Quite the contrary, to be honest - I do want to see it evolve, however, I want to see it become better for all parties. One criticism against Early Access is that people don't want to pay for beta testing games, for example. And I agree - people should not beta test games for money. However, one thing that somewhat escapes notice is that Early Access is not supposed to be, or essentially amount to, "beta". No, instead I see it as an agile development of the game - the people who bought Early Access title should be the ones dictating how it develops. Of course, conversely, the developers should be putting stuff on Early Access if they plan on working with the community as they (literally) are the customer for whom the developer works. Well, agile principle 6 requires face to face communication but whatever - devs should be able to work around it. After all, agile development is nothing if agile, and even the manifesto starts with "Individuals and interactions over Processes and tools".

So, in essence, the "public as a bug hunting monkey" aspect just shouldn't be. On both sides. There are various things that can be done to achieve that, and I will not (also, I quite probably cannot) go over all of them. But if I were to suggest one thing, then it'd be the option to withdraw from participating in Early Access. Maybe the developer broke their promise, maybe the game starts going in a direction you don't want, maybe you just lost interest or whatever - it should be possible to stop playing it and receive a refund. Maybe not 100% of your money[footnote]after all, you did play it. Or if you didn't, you maybe should get all your money back.[/footnote] but not a symbolic refund either - say, 80-90% refund sounds reasonable. Of course, there can be a lot of variations and options here as well, but a refund should be a possibility.

5) Refunds in general.

I do agree that refunds should be an option. Various ways to implemented with a lot of hurdles to overcome, all of them, but I do think something needs to be done, some time.

6) Valve should be more receptive to feedback.

I am talking about the incident with the Euro Truck developer and the XSS vulnerability. Now, I do not support Mr Duda - I do believe that what he did was wrong. However, Valve should also have handled it better - a security vulnerability is something you do NOT just leave hanging around. Ignoring the information and neglecting to take action is something that absolutely should not have happened in the first place. Again, I'd like to point out that exploiting the vulnerability is not the correct action to take in this case, even if, it resulted in a fix. Two wrongs don't make it right.

7) Option to not have achievements.

I don't like them - it's that simple. I find them annoying. Now, I could disable the Steam overlay, and I wouldn't get achievements that way, but I'd rather have it, as it's useful - I just don't want the non-game popups on my screen.

8) Have the option of not including a greeting message when purchasing a gift.

Seriously. OK, it's really just very mildly irritating when I have to fill one in, but I don't see the real need for one. It's just making the act of purchasing a gift ever so slightly more complex and slower. As in, about twice as complex and slow. I am buying some games from the Steam sale for my housemate[footnote]due to issues with his bank card he can't himself right now[/footnote] and every time I do, I have to fill in this greeting with a name, message, signature. I do just type in a single letter in each to get it over with quickly, but it's just a mix of annoying and amusing - I can literally just shout and he'll hear me - including a formal greeting is redundant. Also, if I weren't buying it for him, I might still just not want to fill this in - I might be on chat with somebody, or I might want to just send them an email or otherwise communicate in a different way than the greeting card.

 

[The Madman]

Better DLC management on the storefront. As someone who loves Paradox games it's a pain in the ass to try and sort through all the DLC on the store page for something like Crusader Kings 2 or Europa Universalis and figure out which I have, which I don't, and which I'm interested in.

How is there not at least a 'don't show DLC I already own' button? You'd think that would be pretty damned obvious. Hell it's so obvious maybe it's already been implemented and I just don't have it enabled or something. Is it? Because if steam doesn't have that option or at least one like it they really need to get around to implementing one.

 

[selce]

The most obvious change is to HAVE a refund policy. Currently Steam will only refund pre-orders, and that took many years to be implemented, and then on rare occasions you might get another refund.

When the reviled EA's much hated Origin has a better refund policy than you, you are doing something very wrong.

It's a shame you limited me to ONE change, as I can suggest several more, the simplest being a toggle to hide all early access games on the front page, like already exists for DLC (I'm not suggesting removing early acces, just giving the option not to have the page clogged up with it)

I agree with you 100% on the early access toggle.

Don't get me wrong, I've bought quite a few games on early access and have enjoyed a few of them but i does kind of annoy me when half the front page is listing games that are essentially not finished.

 

[Shadow-Phoenix]

A big one for me is a "game night" checklist. Go into your friends page, tick a box for who you want to play with, and Steam spits out a list of every game that all of you own. When some of us have over 500 games, it becomes exceedingly tedious to go through each one trying to make note of who has what. Steam already knows all of this information, there is no reason that they don't implement something like that.

YES THIS!, I cannot vouch for that improvement enough, me and friends last night were going through which games we all own and it took us around 15-20 mins going through them all and asking if we'd all agree to play one or the other and it was hella tedious.

But yeah I would very much love that option along with my own suggestion of better and improved filters, I dislike seeing early access games all plastered on the front page along with DLC split from other games, it's why I find places like GoG and Origin more manageable and not throwing junk in your face to wade through.

I can say though that with all these suggestions that really should have been a thing a few years ago really shows how Valve need to step it up in the improvements area.

 

[RandV80]

Concerning a refund, how much of Valve not having one while EA does have to do with the fact that Origin is essentially a platform to sell EA games while Valve sells games from damn near everybody? I mean I can understand why people would want this but I have a hard time perceiving how it could actually be implemented without becoming a nightmare.

Simple, have a short window where the game is refundable. The consumer has X time to check out the game and see if it works. Make it a reasonable say 7 days, the game can't reach past Y hours (avoid people zerg rushing stories and finishing). In this 7 day period the money doesn't go to anyone, it sits in limbo, once that X or Y time passes the game becomes non refundable and Valve hands over that cut to the publisher. I doubt this would be much of a hassle since it would be unlikely that valve hands over the cash to the developer after each transaction.

Steam tracks your time played when you're connected to the internet. You can play offline, but it doesn't count towards played time or any achievements/stickers/cards/whatever. This is likely a security design, as if Steam allowed users to upload these sorts of things while offline you open the door for all sorts of mischief. For example, scummy developer with a shit early access game. Gets some buddies to switch Steam offline for a week, play a little bit then hack the file that's to be uploaded to read 100 or so hours played. Now he can log back into Steam and get a glowing review from a 'player' that's spent significant time in the game.

Now obviously it wouldn't be that easy, these files would be encrypted. But the point is it significantly increases the security risk because you're essentially handing the end users your locked box then walking away. And while decrypting the 'locked box' is one thing, for a refund all you have to do is destroy it. Buy the game, switch to offline mode, play it through, kill whatever file Steam is going to want when you log back in, then log on and ask for the refund.

So basically how I see it is this comes down to a choice between an offline mode or a refund policy. Yes Origin has both, but again they're really only selling EA games. Makes it much easier to eat any loss through abuse, and write it off as a necessary expense to promote goodwill with their brand.

 

[Elfgore]

1. Refunds. I've got a few games I can't play because of issues. I want a refund, well tough shit.
2. Early Access. I don't mind the concept and I like that they point out you're playing an unfinished project. But I don't like seeing them on the front page or on sale. Like for this sale we've had Maia and Spacebase DF-9 on flash sales. Both are completely in states not worth the price. They're nothing but demos at best. They shouldn't be on the sale.

Other than that, I enjoy Steam.

 

[Callate]

I'd like to see "specials" sorted better. If there's 136 specials, I'm probably not going to browse past the first page or two, and if it's flooded with DLC costumes that are going for 25% off preventing some poor indie developer from getting his or her shot in the sun, that's a damn shame. I also don't think anything going for full price should *ever* be listed under specials (I haven't seen that one for a while, but just to be clear, I never want to see that again- as I say, the typical list of specials is cluttered enough as it is.)

Don't let developers run their own forums. I know it would be a hassle for Valve to have to have moderators to oversee all the Early Access and Greenlight forums, but short of a determined trolling effort, I don't think a game's developers should be able to censor criticism; we've already seen that kind of abuse more than once.

 

[lacktheknack]

Become gog.com, except with Linux support.

It's sad being a mere one step away from Utopia on two different fronts. gog.com doesn't support Linux, and Steam doesn't do DRM-free downloads. ;____;

 

[Arakasi]

1. Better refund policy. If I bought Air Control (for example) I'm going to want a refund.

2. Stop allowing developers to moderate their own forums. Let them flag posts for Steam to deal with if they actually violate the ToS.

3. Display the Metacritic (or Steam equivalent aggregate review store) on the store page regardless of the content-creator's wishes. Although I and many other gamers take these scores with a grain of salt, it's important to see general reaction before going into a game, so if necessary we can research more deeply why others disliked it.

4. Better DLC management. I want to be able to see what DLCs I do and do not own for any game I own.

5. Allow me to not show my friends what I am playing without my consent. It's really annoying.

6. Provide a 'No DRM' option for developers/publishers. I'm not sure if this is a thing, but it should be.

7. Better quality control. Don't sell me broken games like Air Control. And don't sell me fixable broken games like Vampire the Masquerade, while they're still broken.

8. Make it clearer what is actually a new release and what isn't. Putt Putt Saves the Zoo was not released in 2014.

9. Make it clear what is/isn't Early Access on the store page, and ensure that every game with that Early Access green bar makes it emphatically clear what Early Access means to the consumer (i.e. this game could stop development right now and you'd have to deal with it).

10. If I don't want to download an update for a game (by indicating that I don't) don't leave it on my downloads page until I decide to download the update. Just allow me to untick the option to turn it off when I feel like it.

11. During big sales events, ensure that if you're offering a game for a certain discount, that it won't be discounted further sometime in the sale. It discourages buying games until later to see if they are discounted more, and loses potential sales. If you're going to keep it the same, you could provide a steam credit for the difference for all users who bought it earlier, and this would also encourage them to keep spending during sales.


Having said all of this, I still really like Steam. I just think it needs improvements in those 11 areas.

 

[The Artificially Prolonged]

1. Proper simple refund procedure.
2. The ability to automatically put those trading cards on the market place for whatever the average price is once earned. So those of us who aren't too fussed about the whole trading card thing can have their inventory clear of all the clutter.
3. The ability to play without logging into steam at all. I'd prefer no drm full stop but at least make it so that I can chose to log in to steam when playing after the game has been downloaded, installed and booted up once before. It can be annoying when steam decides to up date when I just want to get into a game straight away. On that note;
4. Flat out not allow games with that require additional third party services to work onto the store without removing it first. It's completely redundant and just adds another potential load of updates to have to wait to download.
5. Have some way of dealing with no longer wanted games on the library. I've closing in on 200 games on steam and while I've enjoyed the majority of them some I'm honestly never going to play them again or I found I just didn't enjoy them. If I could do a trade in for some steam wallet funds or just even remove the game from my library and be able to gift it to someone else would be appreciated.

Become gog.com, except with Linux support.

It's sad being a mere one step away from Utopia on two different fronts. gog.com doesn't support Linux, and Steam doesn't do DRM-free downloads. ;____;

gog.com announced a few months will be supporting linux on a number of games in their catalogue from this autumn. So some silver lining their. Of course all games that run through DosBox and SCUMMVM will work on linux already, just extract the install files using innoextract and then run them through the native linux clients for those programs.