Valve Discusses Charging Customers Based on Popularity

[Buizel91]

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.

Maybe getting these points by doing certain achievements? to be honest, your system sounds ALOT better than Gabes...

OT: Yeh this would get abused to hell, if this does happen then i'm kinda glad i rarely use steam...

 

[Harbinger_]

I like Valve but I dislike the idea that they are putting forward. Attempting to enforce manners and good behavior through price shifting will only chase away potential customers.

 

[Panorama]

Theory sounds good, execution may be poor.

 

[Sgt Doom]

Absolutely ridiculous. Valve seems to live in some fantasy world where people don't lie. Imagine, if you will, that you're doing really well in a TF2 match. People get butthurt, and rate you down for it. Thus, you have to pay more because of pricks and morons. How Gabe ever even conceived of such a system being workable is absolutely beyond me, unless he's getting some really good deals on LSD.

How he justifies such a system by pointing at hat-makers is also ridiculous; content makers are not the same thing as just friendly/asshole players. The worth of a content-maker is very clear to the point of almost being objective fact; one just looks at the quantity and quality of stuff they make.
It's nowhere near as clear with determining the friendliness of a player. The viewer's own likes and dislikes factor into it as well. Do they dislike quiet players? That quiet person could be a very nice person, perhaps they're just shy of their accent, or simply don't have anything to say. Then there's xenophobia; it's not that common, but I do occasionally get given shit for my southern English accent, by e.g. Americans and other Brits.

 

[SaintWaldo]

Worst. Idea. Ever.

I'm sure he pretends to be ignorant of the fact that there's a hidden counter-incentive: being RICH is moral justification for being an asshole in this system. That's EXACTLY the problem society has been working to eliminate for, oh, about 5000 years. Unless they go double-Sweden and make this MEANS TESTED, it's still unfair, exploitable, and will mean that it's still useless to moderate down rich dicks because they just wave that stupid paper with color around and make whores dance for them.

At least before this idea, even POOR RACISTS could have an outlet, too.

 

[teh_spartan]

If Gabe newman charges charging me per month i will knock him the fuck out and stick a copy of the orange box in a place the sun don't shine.

^i am actually am a pacifist so i will probably write a strongly worded letter or call his office or something.

 

[Evil Moo]

I like the idea in theory, though I really can't see any way of implementing the idea without it being horrendously abusable and or not completely reliable.
I would like an absolute guarantee that my the amount I spend is not dictated by a flawed system or a malicious stranger and I wouldn't be truly comfortable with anything less.

 

[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

 

[bam13302]

im interested, might end up getting cheated, have a bunch of people follow one person, have all of those people buy that game through that one person, that guy gets + points for having all the people, which gets his games cheaper, and cheaper for everyone that buys through him
that all depends on how this is implemented though

 

[KublaKay]

This is a wonderful ideea.
Make jerks pay more.
But guys that's just the first step.
We should make black people pay more too. Oh and girls. And muslims. And homosexuals. And that guy I really, really don't like.
Yes, sir, nothing wrong with this ideea at all.

 

[teebeeohh]

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.

 

[samsonguy920]

Seriously, Valve has been just about the fairest company out there, and suddenly Gabe wants to do this? Did he go on a diet suddenly and now he is cranky because his blood sugar is low?

The ?1=/=$1 [http://steamcommunity.com/groups/1e1us] group would like a word with you.

Here's just one recent example of how Valve treats gamers in Europe, when Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit was discounted 50%, it turned out that the following prices were present around the globe.

US: $14.99
UK: £14.99 or $24.29
EU: ?24,99 or $35.26

Admittedly, most of the time the UK gets a fair price conversion, but almost invariably games on Steam are vastly more expensive on the European mainland due to Valve keeping the number of the dollar price and replacing the $ with a ?, thus effectively boosting the price by whatever the euro has over the dollar at the time of purchase (on average some 35%, at the time of writing 41%)

I have seen that pricing displayed quite often. But one wonders if Valve is directly responsible for that? I take into consideration the part where Microsoft feels the desire to charge for Valve DLC that otherwise is free to PC and PS3 customers. It is quite possible the price hike for overseas is due to shipping costs and tariffs which Valve has zip control over except maybe taking a loss on the price so it actually equates better.
Valve games aren't the only ones with those price numbers being mirrored between two different currencies.

 

[Vykrel]

id still prefer a price based on quality and replayability... itd be nice to see the great, but still single player-only games being priced at like 40$ instead of 60$.

 

[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.

 

[Negatempest]

I am essentially a living example of why Gabe's idea is terrible. For about 1 year the only games I played on the Xbox was MW2 and War for Cybertron. Halo: Reach near for about a month or so. I have no mic, I died more often than killed but I enjoyed playing the games. For some reason though I have a really bad reputation score. The only reason I believe this to happen is because I have the word "Hentai" in my gamertag name. Because of the way it is placed a well educated individual would tell I was calling myself a pervert, which is humorous to me. Though under Gabe's idea I would be punished for making fun of myself. So yeah, bad idea.

 

[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...

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...

 

[MegaManOfNumbers]

This sounds like a good system, but surely this would become griefed. What happens if I happen to have a really crappy connection and then I drop out a bunch of times. I don't want other people to have to pay extra for other games.

Or if it was like a reporting system where you report a person being really offensive. That'd just end up being misused all the time...

But it's an interesting concept. I'd love to see where it goes and how this idea develops.

I second this.

Remember MvC3, the system might not be able to distingiush between ragequitters and people with a bad interweb connection.

and its hard for a system to gauge how much of a "prick" someone is.

now if live humans were gauging this, then we will run into the problem involving corrupt or untrained moderators.

Hopefully, Valve will acknowledge such possible issues and make a workable system.

but nonetheless, this sounds like a BRILLIANT idea! just don't confuse bad people with newbies.

 

[Magnalian]

What about neutral players? People who don't actively join communities, but who also don't cause trouble?

It's gonna be interesting to see how this develops, for better or worse.

 

[jasoncyrus]

My one singular issue is this:

I don't play multiplayer games. I suck at them, end of story, thus I don't play.

Why should I be forced to miss out on the discount because I spare people from my multiplayer rage outs?

Aka, why should you get a discount just because you play nice on multiplayer?

 

[Fr]anc[is]

FUCK NO. The potential for abuse seems way too high. How is one rated? I'm not going to let random internet people rate me and determine how much I pay. This is bull