Suggest improvements for Steam.

[Phrozenflame500]

Incorporate absolutely everything from Enhanced Steam. Absolutely everything. I cannot think of one single thing Enhanced Steam adds that I don't like. Although some things (like the "lowest retailer price" notifier) might be a bit counter-productive to Valve. Remove or renovate the "tag" system since at the moment it's a glorified genre listing and maybe try to make the forums less shit. And fix the fucking client up a bit games + inventory management is absolutely dreadful.

I can't think of much else Valve could reasonably add without support from the devs + modifying international law. Maybe refunds I guess although I honestly have no experience how difficult it would be to implement such a thing.

I guess the last thing would be distinguishing between "new on Steam" and "new everywhere". Removing re-releases should help the New Releases section be a bit less shovel-warey and give more advertising to the actual new games. I don't particularly want them to add in much more quality-control aside from removing blatantly scammy games though. It's fairly easy to distinguish a bad game from a good game if you have the intellectual capacity to Google it for literally 5 minutes.

 

[Kukakkau]

The ability to change the scale of the Steam interface without having to hunt down custom interface skins.

This is for people who use things such as a TV as a monitor and would need to set the text size on windows (if they use that OS) to large. Now for some reason going from normal to large font size causes steam to go for a nice neat layout to a massive clusterfuck that is all over the place and needs to be scrolled to see the main store page.

 

[ThePuzzldPirate]

Give me options to make multiple tabs, annoying as hell when your trying to look at games and you have to go back and scroll down just to get back where you are.

 

[SecondPrize]

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.

All of it has to do with that. Last I checked, Origin only offers refunds for EA games. Valve should offer refunds for their own games but offering refunds on everything would be vastly different from what Origin does.

 

[Lazy Kitty]

Hobbyist games.
Basically, if you make some games which you don't want to make money of off, but you still want to distribute them for free and possibly get feedback from players and maybe professionals as to how to improve.

In other words people make games which you get to play for free.
Could also contain a demos for things you'd like to get greenlighted (greenlit?), I guess.

 

[Something Amyss]

Seriously??? Are you referring to people who throw that "buyer beware" bullshit around? This is why we can't have nice things.

Well, yes, to a degree. There are people aggressively against it.

"Buyer beware" isn't in itself a totally bad idea. People should be better consumers. It's just...Yeah, people go too far in saying that it should be okay to swindle people for being all...swindlable.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Seriously??? Are you referring to people who throw that "buyer beware" bullshit around? This is why we can't have nice things.

Well, yes, to a degree. There are people aggressively against it.

"Buyer beware" isn't in itself a totally bad idea. People should be better consumers. It's just...Yeah, people go too far in saying that it should be okay to swindle people for being all...swindlable.

Yes. Exactly why I call it bullshit. Yes the buyer should beware because there are going to be douchebags out there who'll want to swindle them, however that doesn't make the swindling any less wrong, nor does it mean we shouldn't call people out for doing the swindling or put measures in place to prevent it from happening.

 

[AmberSword]

Seriously the amount of people believing in this caveat emptor bullshit in gaming makes me believe that we gamers don't even deserve consumer protections laws in the first place. Then we'll see what these hardcore smartasses think.

 

[Gankytim]

MORE CURRENCIES, HOLY FUCK I DO NOT WANT TO DO A CONVERSION EVERY TIME I PURCHASE

Seriously how many does Steam support? The United States Dollar and the Euro off the top of my head. Although, The Australian Dollar was doing better than the USD during the sale so I can't complain too much. Those Australian prices were criminal!

As for the actual games how about some fucking quality control? Force a developer to finish his game before he can make another for the early access stuff or have him sign a contract binding him to finish it if he wants it on Steam or limit the amount an early access game can be sold for, keep them off the front page so they don't get any real advertising yet. Something to ensure people aren't gonna get fucked over. Why not all of the above?

More competition with GoG and Origin would also make an interesting price war that I'd love to benefit from, but maybe I'm asking too much.

I like how Fallout 3 has a little warning that it's not up to snuff with Windows 7, they should do that more.

 

[Gledster]

I agree with pretty much everything people have already said in this thread so far. The priority for me would just be better browsing. The moment you start to browse ANYTHING that's not on the front page of STEAM you just get a list of 10 games and have to keep clicking "Next 10". It's just terrible design.

Why not have a screen-ful of tiles or an alphabetical list at the bottom of the screen or just anything would be better than just listing 10 games at a time! An infinitely scrolling list would be an improvement over "next 10".

 

[Arcobalen]

Personally, I want the steam overlay to have a plugin system. It is a tad annoying to have to tab out to control spotify/itunes.

 

[purf]

As I've just downloaded the Arkham City demo...

Steam, you need to forget my citizenship. My IP is danish, so is my creditcard/billing address. My Windows is english, so is my Steam overlay. Don't give me subbed versions, ffs.

 

[shintakie10]

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.

All of it has to do with that. Last I checked, Origin only offers refunds for EA games. Valve should offer refunds for their own games but offering refunds on everything would be vastly different from what Origin does.

Again, Amazon can do it for everything. Everything, ever. Digital games. Game codes. Physical box games that they pay the shipping for.

There isn't any good reason that Steam can't do the same. Why not hold Steam to a higher standard instead of hoping they at the very least reach the bare minimum?

MORE CURRENCIES, HOLY FUCK I DO NOT WANT TO DO A CONVERSION EVERY TIME I PURCHASE

Seriously how many does Steam support? The United States Dollar and the Euro off the top of my head. Although, The Australian Dollar was doing better than the USD during the sale so I can't complain too much. Those Australian prices were criminal!

More currencies or just less bullshit scamming. Possibly both.

And before people jump on me about this, yes publishers set the price. That doesn't mean Valve couldn't lower the prices themselves and eat the difference, or go the GoG route and give you something that makes up the difference.

 

[Sanunes]

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.

All of it has to do with that. Last I checked, Origin only offers refunds for EA games. Valve should offer refunds for their own games but offering refunds on everything would be vastly different from what Origin does.

Which is true and since Origin is starting to offer more and more publishers (I think the only big one they are missing right now is Activision and they were one of the last on Steam too) on their store it would be nice to have them develop a policy for refund there. What disturbs me more is that I expect EA to make changes to Origin to make it better for the consumer then I Valve changing Steam. Of course I would like to see some other features too, but I think they will come in time.

I have had Steam basically steal from me in the past, for I bought a game that charged my credit card and it never appeared in my library. After spending over three weeks dealing with their support I gave up because I felt like I was wasting my time which also has a value to me.

 

[pearcinator]

A lot.

People seem to hold Steam and Valve in high regard and while their games are great and their online distribution service is the best out there at the moment they are still VERY far from what I would consider excellent.

The market is a ***** to navigate around, their search filters are terrible, there are many things that are overly complicated to do, lack of refunds, customer service, quality control are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to problems Steam needs to fix.

There are a lot of really, REALLY shit games getting through greenlight. I could probably get a game greenlit if I wanted to despite not having any knowledge of how to make a game. The idea is fine but the implementation sucks.

Valve, fix your shit...but release Half Life 3 first

 

[Something Amyss]

Yes. Exactly why I call it bullshit. Yes the buyer should beware because there are going to be douchebags out there who'll want to swindle them, however that doesn't make the swindling any less wrong, nor does it mean we shouldn't call people out for doing the swindling or put measures in place to prevent it from happening.

Yeah, there really should be some reasonable expectation. And it seems like setting it as low as "a working product" is still too high for people.

 

[AmberSword]

Yes. Exactly why I call it bullshit. Yes the buyer should beware because there are going to be douchebags out there who'll want to swindle them, however that doesn't make the swindling any less wrong, nor does it mean we shouldn't call people out for doing the swindling or put measures in place to prevent it from happening.

Yeah, there really should be some reasonable expectation. And it seems like setting it as low as "a working product" is still too high for people.

It actually all comes down to our form of entertainment being a relatively young medium, we don't have solid laws in place to protect us, tonnes of gigantic gaping loop holes exist, and even if we do have those, not every country has the same laws.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Yes. Exactly why I call it bullshit. Yes the buyer should beware because there are going to be douchebags out there who'll want to swindle them, however that doesn't make the swindling any less wrong, nor does it mean we shouldn't call people out for doing the swindling or put measures in place to prevent it from happening.

Yeah, there really should be some reasonable expectation. And it seems like setting it as low as "a working product" is still too high for people.

It certainly is a sad case when demanding a working product is considered unreasonable.

Yes. Exactly why I call it bullshit. Yes the buyer should beware because there are going to be douchebags out there who'll want to swindle them, however that doesn't make the swindling any less wrong, nor does it mean we shouldn't call people out for doing the swindling or put measures in place to prevent it from happening.

Yeah, there really should be some reasonable expectation. And it seems like setting it as low as "a working product" is still too high for people.

It actually all comes down to our form of entertainment being a relatively young medium, we don't have solid laws in place to protect us, tonnes of gigantic gaping loop holes exist, and even if we do have those, not every country has the same laws.

That doesn't even begin to explain the phenomenon of gamers defending the influx of shitty broken games on Steam and other digital distribution sources (but mostly Steam).

 

[AmberSword]

snip

I suppose you're right, but we do have to start somewhere. If there's no one of authority telling shitbag developers that its not OK to swindle their customers, then you can be sure these people will take advantage of this while they can with no repercussions. In turn, wise but selfish consumers will call people out on their stupidity. If clear cut laws are set in place, then it no longer remains a case of "foolish customer getting swindled", it becomes "shitty developer breaking the law", then people will come out to start defending said customers.

Don't get me wrong, caveat emptor in this context is taken too far, and is quite frankly bullshit.

 

[Roxor]

No more regional pricing. Go through the game price database and make everyone pay whatever price it's being flogged to Australians for. Yes, I know there are a few examples which are cheaper for us (as unlikely as that sounds), so it won't mean a complete price hike for everyone else.

Quality control. Add some kind of system to filter out the crap, and put the entire existing store catalogue through it.

My idea for a quality control system so far:

Phase 1 filters by concept, Phase 2 by amateur assessment of quality, Phase 3 by professional assessment of quality.

Phase 1: Basically Greenlight, where anyone can vote Interested or Not Interested on all proposed games. No executable code needed at this stage, just a description, screenshots, trailler and proposed price. The server goes through the database every month and of the games which have been on for at least 3 months and with more than 1000 total votes, it auto-rejects the bottom 10% and passes the top 10% through to Phase 2.

Phase 2: An executable must be submitted for this stage. The Steam Beta Testers play-test the game for quality for a few hours. Once they're done, they vote Pass or Fail. Again, the server automatically passes or rejects games every month on the same sort of criteria as for Phase 1.

Phase 3: Professional game critics and developers assess the games for quality. Any game which gets a consensus of being good from the panel ends up in the store.