Valve Discusses Charging Customers Based on Popularity

[madmatt]

I think it's illegal. I mean, you can refuse service to anyone, but I don't think it's right to charge them more because they're jackasses. Their money is still good, if people don't like them they can simply play on another server (the gamer equivalent of leaving him alone to cry in the sandbox all alone). However, it's discriminatory behavior. Someone's going to play some lame card on Valve, and then they're gong to get sued.

Either that or everyone will go out of their way to be nice on Valve servers and Steam and valve will go out of business.

I could kind of care less. I'm not a Valve fan.

Let's just put it this way. I've never seen assholes in diners get bigger bills.

Surely it is only illegal if it is done on race or nationality or something like that? Isn't this a provision of service and therefore a degree of discretion is most likely allowed.

I think it could be a good idea - if and only if it is used very sparingly indeed. But it could encourage people to be a bit nicer to one another no?

 

[thirion1850]

Interesting idea, but no. Just don't do it. The sheer amount of flaws this idea holds is insane.

 

[coolkirb]

Something seems off about their Idea, I think its wrong, will lead to higher costs. And Im sure it will lead to a lawsuit of somekind that will probley make it illegal, infact I dont even know if this sounds legal.

 

[Adzma]

OK Valve, what about little old me who does not like to play Multiplayer games?

 

[SkinyJim]

HORRIBLE idea. I can forsee one single person being picked on for a small reason (ie an entire clan submits a bad review) and just for somethingas small as simply not agreeing with a particular persons idea that person would would have to pay mega bucks for the next game. It's completely unfair and would promote bullying.

 

[Tron Paul]

It's a shite idea, there isn't any 2 ways about it.

The amount of money someone pays for a game should not be dependant on their skill level. All this does is ostracise people for not being good enough. It would be the fully realised evolution of PC elitism. (in other words, the beginning of the end of PC gaming) No one new players would bother even buying PC games because they'd have to pay so much more than the 'accepted' players. You'd end up with a tight knit group of hardcore (no lifers) who do nothing but immediately mark people down for not being up to their level, so in future they don't buy games because they're greeted with nothing but contempt. How in the name of holy fuck does this sound fun to you?

Talk about taking the fun out of gaming, why not just class TF2 as a friggin Olympic sport while you're at it, make them do random console scanning's to make sure you're only using a regulation mouse and keyboard?

Inhibit peoples ability to speak based on whether or not they spew inflammatory language on the other hand. That's a good idea.

Stacked pricing based on skill level. That's not a good idea.

It's not talking about skill anywhere. It's talking about playercount. A griefer or hacker will generally cause a server's playercount to drop. Both of those people are undesirable to have in a server and adversely affects someone's enjoyment of a game.

I'm curious, how do you think this feature of classification involves skill?

HORRIBLE idea. I can forsee one single person being picked on for a small reason (ie an entire clan submits a bad review) and just for somethingas small as simply not agreeing with a particular persons idea that person would would have to pay mega bucks for the next game. It's completely unfair and would promote bullying.

Where has Valve said they are considering a player review system? If they did that of course it wouldn't work, but an autonomous system could work. Do you agree with that?

 

[Tron Paul]

Because people constantly give bad reports to players who aren't as good as they are.

People hold grudges. If someone thinks that person X caused them to lose the match, then they're going to report them, I've heard people do it on more than one occasion.

You wanna know what people do to the dicks who scream down mics? They mute them. Most won't file a report.

Again, where does it say Valve would implement a report system? Enlighten me.

 

[Rayne870]

its got a lot of promise but we would have to see it in practice first.

 

[Tron Paul]

Steam has a report system.

But the article does not say they would use it to determine the classification of players it says: "'Some people, when they join a server, a ton of people will run with them,' Newell continued. 'Other people, when they join a server, will cause others to leave.'"

It sounds like a change in player count would be a feature that Valve might use to determine if a player is good or bad. There isn't any mention of the reporting system in the article, which is what I meant.

 

[winter2]

Surely Gabe is trolling us..

 

[CM156_v1legacy]

This doesn?t even sound good on paper.
This is like me proposing that America invades the rest of the world so there can be no more illegal immigration

Really Valve, you can reward those who are nice. But charging more for people who aren?t? I don?t like the way that sounds.

 

[Estoki]

So essentially they're saying: "Be nice or we'll fuck your shit up."

Don't get me wrong, I'm nice, and I hang out with nice people, but this system has the potential to be exploited a lot, now, for example, let's take a large g-mod community and an average guy.

Guy plays on server, gets into argument with the owner, owner orders everyone in said large community to completely fuck him up. It doesn't matter who was right or wrong, that's just terrible.

 

[Tron Paul]

Every single comment talks about a rating system that ISN'T EVEN MENTIONED in the article. Honestly this could work. I'm thinking about writing a paper on it and sending it to Valve.

 

[Adam28]

I can see so many things wrong with this. People are going to be targeted if this system is put in place, and we will probably see a rise in cases such as Steam_User_1 being charged more for games because people don't like him speaking his own language, or "Noobs" being picked on for letting down team mates etc.

 

[Frankster]

Omg no, this is the worst idea I've seen in online gaming since....I can't even think of a suitable example.

Besides that the preferential treatment based on creating hats is somewhat arbitrary it's mostly the griefing opportunities that scare me.
So if a couple of peeps decide to give me a bad rating for whatever perceived reason i'd end up forking more money for the privilige of getting griefed? Fook that, thank god I've managed to stay away from the tf2 trend.

 

[ninja51]

Uh.... no? My Xbox live account has a horrible reputation. My brother played Halo 3 a long time ago, fucked around and got a bad rep. Dont really use the mike and I rarely quite midgame, but according to this system, I would have to pay more for games. That payment system involves paying real money for entirely subjective things, it means no one can share accounts, its generally all around bullshit

didn't you technically break some kind of rule when you let some else use your account?

but i agree, this is waaaaaaay to subjective to really work, i really ever talk to people in games(except for those i always play with anyway) and only occasionally snap when people really annoy me. This system would never see me rewarded for making playing with me fun because you wouldn't notice me, but it's quite possible that complaints could pile up that would lead to me paying more for games.

Its on the same xbox with one account and on the same computer. Im not sure if its breaking a rule if its on mutiple computers, but two people can use the same electronics device

 

[Isaac The Grape]

1984? On my Steam?

Serously, this is just too much potential for wrong. Valve installing themselves as law makers and giving awards to those they favor? I don't care how good Valve supposably are, this is just stuff waiting to be exploted. And it would also provide a goldmine of explotable data if of player actions and recorded behavoir are kept. If this goes ahead, expect "get out of jail free" hacks to start appearing for sale.

 

[Laser Priest]

It could be a good idea, but we know that the assholes this is trying to deal with are going to do everything in their power to muck up the system rather than simply stop being assholes.

 

[Tron Paul]

It was pretty much implied, if steam worked off of player count alone, the results would be even worse.

A classification system that has only one feature would do poorly, that is obvious, but if Valve added more data and trained a model on it. I think the classification would work if Valve had a large number of features and a large enough known data set to train on. Though both are a bit of an effort, I think it could be successful.

 

[harvz]

its a nice idea but i think you said it wrong and too extreme, Gabe.

how about a discount of say 10% (instead of saying that the bad people pay full price, nicer spin)? its a small enough ammount that few would not buy the game, even if paying full price. and how about $5 for voice for everyone, except it may get waved after spending a while in the community.

the extremes you are talking about ($100 for voice for bad people) is absurd, you would remove the trouble makers in theory but in practice this will only go off a user based rating system, which will and has never worked 100% and therefore flawed, leaving a broken community, filled with idiots.