Valve on Customer Service: "We Need to Do Better"

[gardian06]

Honestly, I've always had a pretty good experience with Steam's customer service. So long as I explained my issue well and was a little bit patient, they made sure to take care of me. Opposed to the poster above, I don't mind Origin per-se, but they don't provide games I am interested in.

lucky you. I have to date filed 20+ separate steam support requests (granted some of those were having to resubmit a ticket because to much time had passed with no answer) my experience is that if you state that there is any problem with the steam client they will tell you to re-install the whole thing (even when I can give them the error codes, and stack trace the system is throwing), or when one day like half my games just disappeared form my library (granted my library was at around 400 games), and it took them almost a month to get it back (even when the account details not only showed that I purchased them, but most of them I bought from Steam direct) like 200 hundred purchased items just gone it took them 10 days to even respond (not even an auto response), and they told me to re-install steam (I had done that twice by then), but when I threatened legal action (before the no litigation clause) I got a response the within an hour, but it still took them 20 days to actually fix the issue.

 

[lacktheknack]

Valve has had that F forever. Why are they only noticing now?

btw, guys, EA has an A. Figure that out.

 

[thehorror2]

Standing in stark contrast to EA Origin, where the base service is only just barely starting to rise from the pits of despair and mediocrity, but the customer support is top-notch.

 

[Olrod]

Valve needs to to better on their customer service?

"Laxative delivery for a Mr S. Holmes."

 

[Sarge034]

So they say,

"The BBB is a far less useful proxy for customer issues than Reddit," he claimed. "We don't use them for much. They don't provide us as useful of data as customers emailing us, posting on Reddit, posting on Twitter, and so on."

But they only acknowledge their customer service is shit and vow to improve it when called out by the BBB after YEARS of customer emails, tweets, and reddit posts...

 

[Doom972]

Yet people fellate Steam and refuse to even consider installing Origin because it's made by EA and therefore possessed by Satan or something. Despite the numerous statements by users about how their customer service is actually pretty solid.

Origin has really become a pretty good service. They offer better service and faster downloads speeds. The reason I don't buy games there is because of the terrible pricing in the Euro zone.

Steam still has major advantages over it: Better pricing in certain zones, more sales (and better ones), the biggest community of players and the most important advantage: Many people already had huge libraries of games on Steam when Origin came out.

 

[TZO2K12]

By tying access to one's games via a $40-80 third party, you are effectively locking out customer's access in purchasing your games!

I was without internet for 4 years and could not purchase a thing from steam as I was required to have my own internet/prog installed, making coffee shop/public library purchases impossible! (Hell, I was even locked out of downloading patches for my pre-ordered copy of Skyrim!)

Yet my gog account hadn't any such restrictions whatsoever.. Simply purchase your game, and download it to laptop/mem stick...To actually block your customer's access to your product is absolutely absurd, pirates or not!

A simple solution is to simply have an ACTUAL customer service in which customers can phone in their concerns, like 99% of businesses outside the gaming industry has!...Uffckin' morons...And as far as it being too expensive bollocks to that, the gaming industry's a stinkin billion dollar one, so what about the thousands of small to medium sized businesses that do just fine with the operation of their customer service model?!

Don't get me wrong, I love the everlovin' hell out of the creative genius of Valve, and by extension, steam, however, if they were to actually adopt Gog's model of online access (Being able to access your game via external download methods not tied to a resident program that is..) and using a automatic phone-in for your game purchases (Like many Euro-Game devs/Publishers) then you'll be able to see those negative reviews plummet, and your revenue skyrocket...

BTW, Gog has a 30 day money-back guarantee on their games, go figure...

 

[shirkbot]

Does anybody else notice that they're only vowing to improve their customer service as they're also simultaneously preparing to launch the Steamboxes and SteamOS? I mean, yeah, fix the problem (though I've not had one personally), but it seems a little suspect that they're only motivated to do anything about it now that they're about to enter a new arena where they'll actually have to compete.

 

[SecondPrize]

My biggest problem with steam is their so called one "refund" for life. No more refunds after your first. I wanted a refund for X Rebirth and the gave me a FAQ page for the game and said sorry no refunds. I did refund a game like 2 years ago and got my money back. But I heard steam won't give anyone more than just one. I still want a refund for XRebirth

But why should they give you a refund for that?

 

[Kahani]

Yet people fellate Steam and refuse to even consider installing Origin because it's made by EA and therefore possessed by Satan or something. Despite the numerous statements by users about how their customer service is actually pretty solid.

The thing is that while customer service is obviously important for the people who need, that's usually only a very small minority of customers. Most people who use Steam don't have any problems with it and therefore never even care whether customer service exists. Origin, on the other hand, may well be better than it used to be, but "better than a broken piece of shit" isn't exactly a hard standard to reach. I've had serious issues every time I've tried to use Origin, with offline mode not working at all, getting stuck in endless loops of it refusing to launch a game because it claims there's a patch and then refusing to patch because it's up to date, and game files constantly getting corrupted and the "repair" option effectively just reinstalling the game from scratch. I don't care how good their respective customer service departments might be, Valve's actual product is still far better than EA's. Although of course GoG is much better than both.

 

[Kameburger]

Oh man... Nooooooo.... Steam doesn't have bad customer service... I'm not even sure it has customer service.... Does it? I've contacted them tons of time... But no service that's for sure...

Nah but for real. There customer service was nightmarish everytime I contacted them.. They asked me to scan my passport once and send it to them to prove my credit card was from the country I said it was. I was astonished. I was completely and utterly taken back by this question. When I asked them what they needed this for, their response was almost literally "hey you contacted us."

Unless steam makes some sweeping promises and follows through I won't ever be making a purchase there anytime soon.

 

[BeerTent]

A few things people have pointed out.

Seems Valve is on the same PR wheel as many others. Steam box is coming out soon. Steam OS banners are on the rise. This, "We have humility, go buy our stuff." has been the PR standard for numerous companies for years. Valve just now seems to be adopting it, from what I've noticed. If they've done it earlier, I either haven't noticed, or my hands have been a bit busy.

This is a problem. To me, anyway.

This could mean that Valve is going to start fucking around. I know I'm a bit of a fanboy. I mean, I even called it when Steam became the big thing. But the main reason I liked them so much aside from the games was that, by me, they've done no wrong. Every question I've submitted to support (6 or so?) has been responded to within the week. Things may have changed since the transition TF2 made to F2P, so my experiences may be invalid, if they have, then I'll make another prediction. Valve is gonna get fucking worse over the years. Hardcore.

Someone also mentioned Origin. I've never used it because I believe about 95% of the games on there are EA exclusive to origin, or also found on steam. EA's business practices over the past 5 years have lead me to boycott their games and service. I consider myself to be the only fucking person doing it. I was going to stop, but the recent shut-down of Maxis, and looking into it, (Beyond Jim's video.) I don't like the reasoning into it. They haven't changed. Boycott still stands.

Really? Hardline was the only thing that caught my interest in these past 5 years. I'm not missing anything by circle-jerking Steam. Hell, The last game I've fallen in love with isn't even on Steam.

I should look into GoG. See if Factorio's on there.

 

[bug_of_war]

Well I'll happily stand behind Steam seeing as my account has never been compromised, whereas my Origin account has been compromised 3 times in the space of a week (and has probably been so again since I last logged on).

Yeah but see, Origin still comes off as more customer friendly on the very fact that they actually have a returns policy. It takes a big shit storm to make Valve offer people refunds, but if you just happen to say, "Wait, I don't like this game personally" Valve basically gives you the finger whilst EA gives you a time frame of when you can decide if you actually wanna keep the game.

It sucks that your account got hacked, but at least Origin will probably offer you compensation.

 

[major_chaos]

Well I'll happily stand behind Steam seeing as my account has never been compromised, whereas my Origin account has been compromised 3 times in the space of a week (and has probably been so again since I last logged on).

You do realize that Origin has its own version of Steam guard right? If you don't have that enabled it's your own fault, if you do have it enabled and your account is still getting hacked you have bigger problems, namely a compromised Email.

OT: Just now figuring this out Valve? Really? More like "Hmmm we should really spout some bull to appease the fanbase before all our new shit hits market".

For how bad EA's reputation is, my experience with them has been:
"find easy customer support link -> spend 5-15 minutes in live chat or on phone -> problem fixed"

whereas Steam is more like:
"dig through layers of bull meant to dissuade you from contacting customer support at all -> send mail describing problems and steps I have already tried without success -> wait a 3-7 days -> receive CTRL+C\CRTL+V response asking if I tried verifying cache and restarting even though I explicitly said I already tried that twice -> realize that talking to a robot that sequentially spits out chunks of a .txt file is pointless and close ticket -> problem never gets fixed"

 

[Strazdas]

FIrst of all worth mentioning that BBB actually takes money for better reviews and openly admits it. so their rating is less that of quality and more that of bribery. that is to say, Valve obviuosly did not bribe them.

Secondly, it was reported by Kotaku, so there is still no source in the article.

Now, that being said, i agree that Steams costumer support is bad and the vast many users that tried it seem to agree. Altrough i have done no studies on it and all of it is anecdotical evidence.

Yet people fellate Steam and refuse to even consider installing Origin because it's made by EA and therefore possessed by Satan or something. Despite the numerous statements by users about how their customer service is actually pretty solid.

I think this is becoming a meme more than reality. ive seen plenty of people complain about Steam and praise Origin. Heck, even Uplay isnt that bad nowadays, just useless DRM.

The biggest reason people like Steam is same as for Facebook - everyone they know is already there.

My biggest problem with steam is their so called one "refund" for life. No more refunds after your first. I wanted a refund for X Rebirth and the gave me a FAQ page for the game and said sorry no refunds. I did refund a game like 2 years ago and got my money back. But I heard steam won't give anyone more than just one. I still want a refund for XRebirth

I too have a problem with steam utilizing illegal sales practices.

Wow, after what, 8 years of people saying your customer service sucks you finally step up and say, "Yeah, they're probably right"?

They do everything in Valve Time (tm)

It is a bad sign when EA has better customer service than you. This is definitely one area they badly need to work on. A refund policy would be nice also.

To be fair EA always had good costumert support. its just that everything else sucks.

 

[Abomination]

Only issue I had was my purchase of Lords of the Black Sun which I played for about 90 minutes then realized it was not up to standard that it was advertised.

I requested a refund but Valve pretty much touted its "No refund" policy even though the game was essentially incomplete at launch.

It was only $15 down the drain but it was a quick lesson to not expect Valve to presently give a shit about its quality control unless thousands complain.

 

[Rednog]

Every time I've complained about this I get flogged. For a company that rakes in so much money, considering how big they've gotten, and how long they've been around. Having email support only that takes 24-48 hours for a single response is a fucking joke. Any complex issue can take weeks to get resolved, if you're lucky.
I had my own personal nightmare when I lived in eastern europe for 2-3 years. I bought Portal 2 from a local retailer, had the box and everything. Registered on steam played it a bit no problem. Had to shelve it when I moved to the US. Finally got settled in tried to boot up Portal 2...region locked, what? Contacted steam, yup your game is region locked, deal with it. You're welcome to purchase another copy or ask for a refund from the retailer. So yea I'm going to fly thousands of miles across the sea to try and go to a retail chain and ask for a refund for a game that is tied to a an online account. So I try to buy a US copy, lol sorry you can't you already own the game! Ask to remove the region locked copy, lol are you sure you only get 1 favor from us in your lifetime, choose wisely. Try to buy it once it was removed from my account, oh sorry you get auto redirected to the european steam store *trollface*. It took 2 weeks to get the game removed from my account, and I had to jump through like 50 hoops to fix it so that I could buy from the US store again, even though my account was created in the US and my credit card is a US card.

So yea when Steam says they're rolling out with the Steam Box all I can do is laugh because people are going to get absolutely fucked should any problem arise.

 

[happyninja42]

Honestly, I've always had a pretty good experience with Steam's customer service. So long as I explained my issue well and was a little bit patient, they made sure to take care of me. Opposed to the poster above, I don't mind Origin per-se, but they don't provide games I am interested in.

You misunderstand. I wasn't criticizing Origin, I was stating how people's hatred of it and praise of Steam is bizarre given the poor track record of Steam's service.

I might agree if I personally have ever had any issues with Steam. On an individual level, my Steam experience has been fantastic. I've never had any credit card errors, I've never been locked out of my library, and the few times I had an issue with a game (which were incredibly few), the steam support contacted me in a timely manner with advise that resolved the problem.

Now I understand my experience isn't the average, if these reports are accurate. But yeah, I really can't demonize Steam, but I also don't demonize Origin either. I just simply don't use Origin because my customer experience with Steam has been perfectly fine.

I'm glad to hear that Steam is at least acknowledging the flaw in their business model, and if they really are going to make a concerted effort to improve, then good for them. I'd like to hear more people having the kind of Steam experience I've enjoyed for years.

 

[Erttheking]

Admitting you have a problem is the first step to fixing it. Just hope that they actually take the next step.