Valve Discusses Charging Customers Based on Popularity

[Kingsnake661]

This can never work... how would it work? Who decides what? Everyone knows popularity polls are easly scewed from outside sorces. A person may geta hair up his butt about some other guy and lobby a bunch of his e-friends to screw him over. Is Valve going to have people montering every online match watching and rating ones behavor? You have any idea how many people they'd need to hire...how many "that wasn't me my kid brother/friend/dad logged into my account..."

It's an intresting idea, but it'll never work and end up being WAY more trouble then it saved.

 

[Feralcentaur]

So, how would this work? Would you have to go onto the Steam profile of someone and then give them a Like, Dislike or Meh rating?
I don't think that many people would really feel like bothering to do that just because there a couple friendly people on the server who make the game more enjoyable, people would be far more likely to only bother using the system when there's someone that they don't like.
And still, what about the pleasant people who don't really worsen the game, but just don't seem to stick out at all, wouldn't they end up being ignored entirely or only get voted on when there's someone they dominated or is just spamming down votes for the heck of it?

 

[Assassin Xaero]

So, being a person who doesn't care for online play, I'd have to pay more because of it?

 

[PhoenixUp]

I like the idea...but it will never work. With countless players, there's no way to accurately quantify how big a douche someone is and adjust the cost of the game accordingly.

I can see this working as a punishment/reward system for exceptional cases...but as an over-arching business model? Nope.

 

[mjc0961]

Because there is no potential for abuse in such a system at all. Nope. After all, nobody on Xbox Live would file a negative review on another play for something the player didn't do such as trash talking simply because they got beat in an online game, and that kind of behavior would never carry over to other platforms.

Oh wait.

 

[AndrewOfHell]

I think this is really something that would work for Valve, they can afford to make risks like that...but why treat customers differently? I just don't see anything wrong with a simple kick/ban function.

EDIT: Plus, why would a publisher want less sales? Especially considering current economic strains already.

 

[Kakashi on crack]

In theory its a nice idea

In practice? Not only no, but hell no. There are so many avenues for abuse, and in the long run you'd just end up pissing off a lot of players. On top of that, as bad as those assholes who spout nonesense are, you shouldn't force them to pay more. I love the positive = pay less aspect, but negative = pay more is just a bad business model I think.

 

[Rednog]

I kinda like the idea, maybe I'm a little impartial because I have a really magnetic personality and general can get a dead silent server to chatting like best friends in 10 minutes. But I would definitely love to get benefits for just being myself in games.

 

[MisterM2402]

What if you're an outstanding individual but you're just buying your first Steam game? Surely you'll have to pay full price since they have no way of knowing how valuable a customer you are.

I think it would work better if everyone paid full price but Valve introduced ways in the game or community of earning points to spend in their store - that way, your game is cheaper as you're kinda getting money back on it (albeit money that's still technically Valve's). How you would earn points, I have no idea, but I think it's a better system. Whatever system they choose to employ, it will need to go through extensive grief-proof testing hehe.

 

[Giest4life]

I don't troll online and I'm pretty amiable to play with. But hell fucking no to this idea. Hell fucking no. I'm sure this is just theoretical and like many ideas, may never see an actual launch. But if Valve--or any other company--does that, it has lost my business.

 

[AndrewOfHell]

What if you're an outstanding individual but you're just buying your first Steam game? Surely you'll have to pay full price since they have no way of knowing how valuable a customer you are.

I think it would work better if everyone paid full price but Valve introduced ways in the game or community of earning points to spend in their store - that way, your game is cheaper as you're kinda getting money back on it (albeit money that's still technically Valve's). How you would earn points, I have no idea, but I think it's a better system. Whatever system they choose to employ, it will need to go through extensive grief-proof testing hehe.

...that actually sounds like a much cooler idea! Nice thinking.

 

[Feralcentaur]

So, being a person who doesn't care for online play, I'd have to pay more because of it?

No, the idea is you just wouldn't get to pay less than usual like the people who would play online and are liked by most of the community but you also wouldn't have to pay more than usual like the people who play online but are disliked by the community.

 

[Jandau]

Soooo... trolls can now grief me by making me pay more for video games? Really? And someone thought this would actually be a good idea? I mean, I can see why it might be nice to reward upstanding community members, but punishments are just silly...

 

[Wieke]

I was wondering when the steam store was going to have achievements.

 

[Shifty Tortoise]

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...

 

[RA92]

That's a terrible idea, if some of the trigger happy mods at the Escapist had taught us. A lot of people are already uncomfortable enough about Valve controlling their entire library of games and having the power to ban them from accessing said games they paid for; even more control on products based on the vague parameters of what constitutes of an 'asshole' is certainly not desired. Also, expect a lot of 'asshole' customers contributing to pirating Valve titles out of spite.

I understand their good intent, but I can also see it being open to abuse.

 

[Shifty Tortoise]

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...

 

[Ranooth]

The reward part of this model is really good, people that help the community in a massive way should be seen in a positive light by fellow player and developers.

But in all honestly you cannot punish people when trying to sell your product, it would be nice to get one up and get a little pay back on idiots that deserve it but they are paying customers. If you charge more for something people just aren't simply going to buy it.

Nice idea Gabe, but this is the real world, we all have to put up with twats and just carry on with our lifes.

 

[Pedro The Hutt]

I'm really not sure how they're going to distinguish griefers from honest players dealing with sore losers. In Team Fortress 2 there have been occasions where a large portion of the enemy team was griefing and against all odds and despite all their gloating and insults we managed to win, and well, most of the griefers ragequitted in an instant.

How would Gabe's system differentiate that from people who ragequitted due to being griefed rather than griefing backfiring on the griefers?