Valve Discusses Charging Customers Based on Popularity

[Grabbin Keelz]

This would just not work. Everyone on the internet is an asshole at one time or another, even me. What if that ONE time you were an asshole and someone popular noticed and told all his friends about it, making games cost more for you. In fact, lets go back to the popular part. This may cause games to become nothing but a popularity contest, with people bribing players with Microsoft Points and hats. There's just way too many ways this could go wrong.

 

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

This is, without a shadow of a doubt, the single worst idea I've ever heard from Valve.

Yeah. The potential for system abuse, the very idea that they would charge some people extra on the basis of being a "jerk", etc. This should be shot down immediately. Please be a joke.

 

[Flunk]

I'm on track for supporting charging jerks for voice but I'm conflicted on the varying charges for different users. It's an interesting idea, but I'm not sure it's not going to be too easy to game the system.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

interested i am but i mean who dosnt love a good trolling every once in awhile

I certainly don't. I play games to have fun. If my only means of having fun is trying to ruin the fun of other people, I move on to something else. There are plenty of better things to spend my time doing than wringing entertainment out of a product through jackassery.

 

[ItsAPaul]

Cute idea, but I highly doubt it'll actually work. Obviously Valve can charge less for community MVPs and such without much fuss, but the entire system seems very easy to either manipulate or be thrown under the bus because people will become extortionists for ratings.

 

[Sovereignty]

This sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen.

You can't let people sue over inequality in racial or sex based situations, and not allow users to say they're judged unfairly due to personality prejudice.

This would never work. Not even in a perfect world. One person thinking that your voice sounds annoying and leaving bad feedback cause you talking to teammates over the mic disrupted their game-play causes you to have to pay more for your next game?

No.

 

[Kyoufuu]

Does this mean because my 'popularity' is not likely to go anywhere that I'll still be paying full price, even though I'm not an arsehole...

Like you already are? Yes.

 

[BarbaricGoose]

This is bad for everyone, nice players, mean players, developers, everyone.

An asshole won't buy the game because his price went up, then the good players will have fewer people to play against, they stop playing the game and don't buy more steam games for the same reason. Simple...

Yeah, I'm gonna stop playing online because one asshole quit.

Not quite that simple.

I think you're taking what i said a bit too literally...

Okay, let's say more than one asshole quits. I still don't see how that's bad? It would only be bad if the assholes far outweighed the decent people, and they don't. It's easy to say that they do, but they don't. When I'm playing Call of Duty, I encounter one asshole every 3 or 4 matches or so, but most of the people in the match are just silent--not nice or mean. That's not a favorable ratio for assholes. If all the assholes quit CoD, I'd still have millions of to play it with. Same goes for Halo and TF2. Have you had that different an experience?

I'd consider it a selling point if no assholes played a certain game. If they could, I think they'd display that right on the case: "NO ASSHOLES PLAY THIS GAME! YEAH!"

I will say that the "DotA-like" games attract assholes. I would say that a large majority of the player base of those games are assholes. I don't know why, but those games corrupt people.

 

[Saelune]

No no no no no no no!
So much potential abuse and bs. This is an idea that is a rank or two below "Lets force everyone to use their real names as IDs"

 

[Thorvan]

What about us poor people with only a dozen friends, who only go online to play a game, rather than enrich or destroy the online community.

What are you, a Communist?

OT;
They're never going to actually do this, everyone stop getting up in arms. It'll probably boil down to moderators of reputable servers getting more hat points, or something of the sort.

 

[Dfskelleton]

Well, I never play anything online on steam. Does that mean I just pay full price except for sales?
This does however seem very griefer friendly.

 

[Nightvalien]

are you kidding me, i don't have time to make friends i am playing their games.

 

[Johnnyallstar]

That would be a great tool to commit heinous acts of super dickery. Just picking random people and reporting them, while acting like an angel all the time would become status quo.

 

[ArmorArmadillo]

Nope, you should never charge anyone extra money to unlock features of a game they own. Once they buy the game it is theirs even if they are a jerk...just police them without monetary charges. Extra $100 for using voice? Really? Wow.

Actually, the article talked about giving discounts for good behavior, and that jerks would only ever be charged full price.

 

[lacktheknack]

It's a great idea, but the griefing protection would have to be staggering.

 

[Creator002]

If this gets introduced and players have the ability to rate other players, this is going to be misused like anything.

Otherwise, good idea.

 

[Ch@Z]

This is almost as bad as the sex offender app on the iphone.
90% of the people valve decides as "jerk" may be jerks but the rest of the 10% may have a different story. They may have gotten banned by a server by mistake or they don't have anyone in their friends list because they are recluse.
I also don't see how Valve can even benefit from this. It's too risky.

 

[TheRealCJ]

What about us poor people with only a dozen friends, who only go online to play a game, rather than enrich or destroy the online community.

What are you, a Communist?

OT;
They're never going to actually do this, everyone stop getting up in arms. It'll probably boil down to moderators of reputable servers getting more hat points, or something of the sort.

What?

 

[CheeseSandwichCake]

Lol I hope you guys know he's probably trolling.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

It's a really nice idea, but I can't see it working. too open to abuse.

but if anyone can work around that, it's valve.

outside of steam games..online would be overrun by trolls


OT: nice concept but so is alot of other concepts and look how they turn out in human hands... (cough*communism*cough)