Valve Discusses Charging Customers Based on Popularity
- Thread starter Tom Goldman
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Valve has really embraced this digital system. The product isnt REAL, so you can do whatever you want with it. Give it for free to nice people, give out a thousand copies, have the price change according to how many games you have.
You can do anything, as long as it motivates them to stay on steam and buy more. Way to embrace the future.
You can do anything, as long as it motivates them to stay on steam and buy more. Way to embrace the future.
Not fair at all. I don't wanna pay more than this girl just because she has a shitload of perv 12 years old following her ass
I don't wanna pay more than this guy just because he has a broadcast in justin tv and he broadcasts gameplay or whatever
I don't wanna pay more just because I don't like to talk with random people who would most likely insult me for no reason
That without counting the massive trolling this system could involve. Let's say you get in an argument with someone in the middle of a Team Fortress 2. Now your argument is misunderstood and suddenly you have half of the server against you for no good reason. Now I have to pay 5 more dollars if I want to buy a new game. Well, excuse me Valve, but fuck that.
I don't wanna pay more than this guy just because he has a broadcast in justin tv and he broadcasts gameplay or whatever
I don't wanna pay more just because I don't like to talk with random people who would most likely insult me for no reason
That without counting the massive trolling this system could involve. Let's say you get in an argument with someone in the middle of a Team Fortress 2. Now your argument is misunderstood and suddenly you have half of the server against you for no good reason. Now I have to pay 5 more dollars if I want to buy a new game. Well, excuse me Valve, but fuck that.
That would be true... if the point of griefing was to get attention. People grief to hurt others, be it minor annoyances or emotional distress. Giving people the ability to inflict actual financial harm on others if they can get a large enough group of friends to back them up is nothing short of bullying. When people grief, they don't care if the other person knows who did it, they just want the other person to suffer.FeralCentaur said:
Now imagine this system being readily available to people like Anon or Goons (Something Awful guys). Now imagine you piss one of them off somehow. Now imagine him getting all his little friends to downvote you, report you or whatever form this might take. Now imagine logging in one morning, having done nothing wrong, only to find you now have to pay extra for your games.
It's a terrible idea. Rewarding good behaviour might be ok, since abuse of this system wouldn't hurt anyone. But giving the people the ability to target others with a rating system that can cause them actual harm sound like something only a person who has never been on the Internet would think of...
I hate this idea. I don't want to hear people being nice because they want me to approve of them and so on. I also don't want followers nor do I want to have to bring friends just to get discounts. This model does two things I don't like:
It creates insincere niceness, which is just useless.
It reinforces nepotism.
It creates insincere niceness, which is just useless.
It reinforces nepotism.
Problems I see right away:
-Say hello to thousands of servers dedicated to nothing but idling/botting around to gather "popularity."
-Women already drink for free at the bar...now they get to game for free at home. I also predict a whole new crop of men acting as women online to score cheaper games. Creepy.
-The assholes are going to want to get their money's worth after being surcharged. I foresee some really hardcore trolls with a nasty sense of entitlement (and too much money).
-It would be very difficult to implement well in multiplayer games that require heavy cooperation, like Left 4 Dead. New players, even ones with good intentions who are eager to learn, tend to get bailed on by the more experienced. It would be a terrible idea to penalize someone -- intentionally or not -- for being new to gaming or a particular game by hiking their prices. Not exactly an incentive to keep playing.
-People will spam friend requests like it's life or death. I already get more than I want as it is.
I like the idea of having some sort of built-in feedback loop to promote civility, but this just isn't the way to do it.
-Say hello to thousands of servers dedicated to nothing but idling/botting around to gather "popularity."
-Women already drink for free at the bar...now they get to game for free at home. I also predict a whole new crop of men acting as women online to score cheaper games. Creepy.
-The assholes are going to want to get their money's worth after being surcharged. I foresee some really hardcore trolls with a nasty sense of entitlement (and too much money).
-It would be very difficult to implement well in multiplayer games that require heavy cooperation, like Left 4 Dead. New players, even ones with good intentions who are eager to learn, tend to get bailed on by the more experienced. It would be a terrible idea to penalize someone -- intentionally or not -- for being new to gaming or a particular game by hiking their prices. Not exactly an incentive to keep playing.
-People will spam friend requests like it's life or death. I already get more than I want as it is.
I like the idea of having some sort of built-in feedback loop to promote civility, but this just isn't the way to do it.
That still seems unfair to me. They get games cheaper because they play one or two online a lot?FeralCentaur said:
-Unpopular opinions
-New/unskilled players
-Experienced/highly skilled players
-People who just happen to have annoying voices
-Using overpowered strategies or weapons
-Using underpowered strategies or weapons
Here are just SOME of the things that can get you paying more for your next game! Such a cool idea, Gabe. I suppose next you'll implement voice modulators to make everyone sound the same, then we can just start fining people for voicing opinions and we can all have that happy padded-walls world where nobody's feelings ever get hurt! You can eat those twinkies without fear of social whiplash.
Hey, here's an even BETTER idea! How about we change a game's price based on how long it's been in development? I mean, when one company comes out with a 20 hour shooter in two years, they've obviously worked very hard and deserve full retail price. But when another company takes five years to release a 10 hour long shooter, well, they've obviously been gigantic idiots and should be penalized.
Even as a joke this is idiotic. Maybe instead of making dumb jokes Valve should try doing their jobs. The amount of delays is something I would expect from a group handling 20 projects, not Valve and their four IPs. You can point out their low staff number but there's a solution to that called HIRE MORE STAFF. Except Newell doesn't want to because that would cut into his snacks funding.
-New/unskilled players
-Experienced/highly skilled players
-People who just happen to have annoying voices
-Using overpowered strategies or weapons
-Using underpowered strategies or weapons
Here are just SOME of the things that can get you paying more for your next game! Such a cool idea, Gabe. I suppose next you'll implement voice modulators to make everyone sound the same, then we can just start fining people for voicing opinions and we can all have that happy padded-walls world where nobody's feelings ever get hurt! You can eat those twinkies without fear of social whiplash.
Hey, here's an even BETTER idea! How about we change a game's price based on how long it's been in development? I mean, when one company comes out with a 20 hour shooter in two years, they've obviously worked very hard and deserve full retail price. But when another company takes five years to release a 10 hour long shooter, well, they've obviously been gigantic idiots and should be penalized.
Even as a joke this is idiotic. Maybe instead of making dumb jokes Valve should try doing their jobs. The amount of delays is something I would expect from a group handling 20 projects, not Valve and their four IPs. You can point out their low staff number but there's a solution to that called HIRE MORE STAFF. Except Newell doesn't want to because that would cut into his snacks funding.
I think this is a really interesting theoretical pricing model, but it is not very practical.
I can see this system being broken very easily - just like the achievement farming servers - a whole bunch of assholes will get together and boost each other's popularity rating in order to get lower prices, all the while complaining against people they don't like (read: people who aren't assholes) so that the people who are supposed to be getting rewarded are the ones being penalized.
I can see this system being broken very easily - just like the achievement farming servers - a whole bunch of assholes will get together and boost each other's popularity rating in order to get lower prices, all the while complaining against people they don't like (read: people who aren't assholes) so that the people who are supposed to be getting rewarded are the ones being penalized.
In this thread, many people condemn a system that doesn't even exist yet on their unbased assumptions of how it would work. Have a little faith, guys. What's described here is little more than hypotheticals at this point, so neither Valve nor we can make any meaningful predictions about its effects and success. And if anyone is able to make it work, it's Valve.
It sounds like an innovative system, but could seriously be corrupted. People could false flag people so they have to pay more.
This sounds good, but I think it will fail on execution.
Points
A) You say its based on players popularity. If he joins a game then others join after him. Does this work for all games that are not as easy as right clicking the persons name and selecting join game? If not how will you decide who gets the credit for being the popular one if a bunch of people get together and decide to play a certain game and all join around the same exact time?
B) Whats to keep people from promoting each other just for the sake of getting games for a cheaper price, or keep quitting and joining games to cheat the stats? Is there going to be a team of people or a mechanic that doesn't register the popularity counter for so long after joining one game?
C) Whats to keep people from bad mouthing others with slander just because the victim quit the clan or pissed off the wrong people so way more people then interacted with the group bad mouth him over steam.
D) Opinion on this one: Most people are assholes by nature or they may have different opinions on something in a server and get banned for it. I play a lot of games by myself. I do a lot of solo pubbing. So I might get a few bad marks here or there from players who disagree with me, but not from everyone. So I will just continue a downward spiral until all games cost full price? Because I am not popular and I usually join off of other people I will never get the benefit of having a cheaper game, but a more expensive one all the time cause I get trolled by people who just want to be assholes and report me for nothing?
I dunno sounds like this will take a whole lot of work to make right.
Points
A) You say its based on players popularity. If he joins a game then others join after him. Does this work for all games that are not as easy as right clicking the persons name and selecting join game? If not how will you decide who gets the credit for being the popular one if a bunch of people get together and decide to play a certain game and all join around the same exact time?
B) Whats to keep people from promoting each other just for the sake of getting games for a cheaper price, or keep quitting and joining games to cheat the stats? Is there going to be a team of people or a mechanic that doesn't register the popularity counter for so long after joining one game?
C) Whats to keep people from bad mouthing others with slander just because the victim quit the clan or pissed off the wrong people so way more people then interacted with the group bad mouth him over steam.
D) Opinion on this one: Most people are assholes by nature or they may have different opinions on something in a server and get banned for it. I play a lot of games by myself. I do a lot of solo pubbing. So I might get a few bad marks here or there from players who disagree with me, but not from everyone. So I will just continue a downward spiral until all games cost full price? Because I am not popular and I usually join off of other people I will never get the benefit of having a cheaper game, but a more expensive one all the time cause I get trolled by people who just want to be assholes and report me for nothing?
I dunno sounds like this will take a whole lot of work to make right.
Lol a dickhead tax, I like it. Does that mean most CoD players will be paying like 50k for their copy?
Possible issues I have with this idea (may vary depending on actual execution):
- very easy to manipulate
- if people are required to so something like click on "Like" or "Dislike", you don't know if that's an honest vote or a redirect from the person's blog/YouTube Account/whatever saying "hello, all my subscribers, even if you don't know what this rating system is about, please give me a Thumbs Up!", making the entire system pointless.
- peer pressure when you just want to relax/have fun; I have no problem with people being more friendly than in the past, but it's a hollow, strained happiness and fake smiles - indeed I think it'll make it hard to judge who is honest and who wants a discount. The internet can be a rough sewer, but this roughness is a side-effect of deliberated honesty, something I also value.
- buying things over a shared "goody good person" proxy account should still be possible
- popularity doesn't equal likability and both things cannot be expressed in simple numbers imo
- seems hard to break out of this system, once you get a pretty negative rep nobody will give you a second chance, starting a vicious cycle.
- of course, MASSIVE griefing potential, be it through your own friends, by accident because you thought your little sibling was more well-mannered on the internet than he really is, or because Anonymous or another group of people just dislikes you - so they take revenge by making you pay in the future. That can be because you're behaving like an asshole, that can be because you had the "wrong" opinion among a certain kind of people. Again, that would make the system pointless as people don't judge your playing behavior.
- Expect massive amounts of Dislikes if you're a good player and people ragequit because of you.
...and this is from a guy that mains Medic and Engineer and helps his team despite he'd like to play Spy; but alas, two Spies on a 5-man-team are already too much.
Really, just imagine a 100-member-strong group of people that dislikes this system so much they just leave negative feedback on pretty much any account. I don't think Valve would track every single Like/Dislike or hear both sides for justification or their mailbox would explode, so these events could become possible.
- very easy to manipulate
- if people are required to so something like click on "Like" or "Dislike", you don't know if that's an honest vote or a redirect from the person's blog/YouTube Account/whatever saying "hello, all my subscribers, even if you don't know what this rating system is about, please give me a Thumbs Up!", making the entire system pointless.
- peer pressure when you just want to relax/have fun; I have no problem with people being more friendly than in the past, but it's a hollow, strained happiness and fake smiles - indeed I think it'll make it hard to judge who is honest and who wants a discount. The internet can be a rough sewer, but this roughness is a side-effect of deliberated honesty, something I also value.
- buying things over a shared "goody good person" proxy account should still be possible
- popularity doesn't equal likability and both things cannot be expressed in simple numbers imo
- seems hard to break out of this system, once you get a pretty negative rep nobody will give you a second chance, starting a vicious cycle.
- of course, MASSIVE griefing potential, be it through your own friends, by accident because you thought your little sibling was more well-mannered on the internet than he really is, or because Anonymous or another group of people just dislikes you - so they take revenge by making you pay in the future. That can be because you're behaving like an asshole, that can be because you had the "wrong" opinion among a certain kind of people. Again, that would make the system pointless as people don't judge your playing behavior.
- Expect massive amounts of Dislikes if you're a good player and people ragequit because of you.
...and this is from a guy that mains Medic and Engineer and helps his team despite he'd like to play Spy; but alas, two Spies on a 5-man-team are already too much.
Really, just imagine a 100-member-strong group of people that dislikes this system so much they just leave negative feedback on pretty much any account. I don't think Valve would track every single Like/Dislike or hear both sides for justification or their mailbox would explode, so these events could become possible.
So what happens to those of us who are good people but only play singleplayer? Do we get charged full price because we don't play multiplayer? That's just stupid and
I would join this group.
So what about Joe Schmoe who doesn't talk to much but doesn't cause much trouble either? Do they still pay the same price? Do they pay more because a lot of people happen to leave (to go to bed or because they are done playing) when they join a server? Do they pay less because they happen to join before a whole slew of people get off of school/work? Are people going to be charged more because they don't have a mic for games like DotA 2, and therefore can't communicate as effectively, thus making fewer people want to play with them? Are they a bad shot, but just really enjoy playing games (though these are not on steam) like Gears of War or Halo, where slaying your opponent is the objective? I can think of so many other examples where people would be overcharged for utterly terrible reasons (like SSF4, you ONLY get negative reviews, because no one bothers to give you a positive one)
I don't like the idea in the slightest, nobody should ever be charged based upon their popularity. The products value is exactly what should be paid, that's why it's the product's value. Now understandably, NO ONE wants to play with an utter dick, and EVERYONE wants to play with that super awesome guy who knows all the tricks, but that should (in no way) change how much they are charged. There are ban systems in place for people who are troublesome, and there are other ways to reward nice players.
I also find it very interesting that he chose DotA 2 as an example of a reward. I cannot think of a single MOBA community that is not a bile-spewing pit of hate, and I also cannot fathom a way of figuring out how someone acts in different games and in different communities. If they implement this payment scheme, I hope Valve can do the social science dance.
I don't like the idea in the slightest, nobody should ever be charged based upon their popularity. The products value is exactly what should be paid, that's why it's the product's value. Now understandably, NO ONE wants to play with an utter dick, and EVERYONE wants to play with that super awesome guy who knows all the tricks, but that should (in no way) change how much they are charged. There are ban systems in place for people who are troublesome, and there are other ways to reward nice players.
I also find it very interesting that he chose DotA 2 as an example of a reward. I cannot think of a single MOBA community that is not a bile-spewing pit of hate, and I also cannot fathom a way of figuring out how someone acts in different games and in different communities. If they implement this payment scheme, I hope Valve can do the social science dance.
Gabe, this business model can go wrong in many different ways:
-Abuse from users outside of steam like Youtube or Facebook who decide 'Holy shit, I want free games, better exploit my fanbase!'
-Abuse from overly hateful, aggressive and competitive gamers who get bent out of shape over a loss or what they consider 'cheating' or 'against the rules' (I could totally see some butthurt FPS player neg modding/disliking/downvoting some newbie who used the grenade launcher in the FPS of their choice)
-Newcomers who don't get part of some inner circle or don't wish to do anything besides play solo games would have no use of this system whatsoever OR they'd be the victim of the system
It's not an idea that needs to be pushed off the table completely, but it is an idea that is in DIRE need of rethinking and reorganizing. There's potential... It's just too likely to be abused.
-Abuse from users outside of steam like Youtube or Facebook who decide 'Holy shit, I want free games, better exploit my fanbase!'
-Abuse from overly hateful, aggressive and competitive gamers who get bent out of shape over a loss or what they consider 'cheating' or 'against the rules' (I could totally see some butthurt FPS player neg modding/disliking/downvoting some newbie who used the grenade launcher in the FPS of their choice)
-Newcomers who don't get part of some inner circle or don't wish to do anything besides play solo games would have no use of this system whatsoever OR they'd be the victim of the system
It's not an idea that needs to be pushed off the table completely, but it is an idea that is in DIRE need of rethinking and reorganizing. There's potential... It's just too likely to be abused.