The Valve and Steam Platform Discussion Thread

[illuknisaa]

Games shouldn't have refunds.
Games shouldn't have demos.
Games shouldn't have reviews before release date.
Games shouldn't have anything that might allow the players to find out your game is a piece of shit before their money is in your pocket.

This is pretty easy. Just go the nearest lady with a purse and then you grab it and sprint like a nigger. If the police catch you just say you are an indie dev.

 

[Metro]

Can't even rely on cancer these days...

 

[LESS T_T]

Steam top sellers (by revenue) last week, two Platinum crowns:

#1 - PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS
#2 - Bayonetta
#3 - Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
#4 - H1Z1: King of the Kill
#5 - Planet Coaster
#6 - Stellaris: Utopia
#7 - NieR:Automata
#8 - Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator
#9 - Grand Theft Auto V
#10 - Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor Game of the Year Edition

 

[Metro]

The amount of money they rake in on CSGO loot crates must be insane.

 

[Turtle-Zone 3000]

Ruskies, give us a translation.

Spoiler

Аномальные Материалы, Сомнительная Этика, Blast Pit — для многих из вас это не простой набор словосочетаний. Для нас так точно нет. Мы очень любим игру Half-Life "Black Mesa" и очень хотели бы вернуть наш 2012 (а кому то и 1998), чтобы поиграть в нее еще раз снова. Но вместо этого мы решили воссоздать атмосферу и чувство игры так, как мы это умеем - в виде квеста в реальности. Вас ждут (за углом, конечно!!!) милые сердцу хэдкрабы, безжалостные турели и, конечно, те самые интерьеры. Мы долго боролись с Valve, чтобы пригласить Гордона Фримэна, но, к сожалению, он опять попал в передрягу и у вас есть 60 минут, чтобы помочь ему.

http://questplay.ru/quests/teoriya-poluraspada/

 

[Latelistener]

Anomalous Materials, Questionable Ethics, Blast Pit - for many of you this is not a simple set of word combinations. For us, so definitely not. We very much like the game Half-Life "Black Mesa" and would very much like to return our 2012 (and then it's 1998) to play it again again. But instead we decided to recreate the atmosphere and the feeling of the game the way we can do it - in the form of a quest in reality. Waiting for you (around the corner, of course !!!) Cute headcrabs, ruthless turrets and, of course, those very interiors. We fought Valve for a long time to invite Gordon Freeman, but, unfortunately, he again fell into a mess and you have 60 minutes to help him.

Google translator with a few edits.

 

[kris]

If there is something Steam should fix now then it is the the tags. I try to find games based on tags, but is overwhelmed as the massive ovetagging mean that I will get most games regardless of chosen tag.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

The tags thing was a wonderful system, which is exactly why Steam broke it. We're not allowed to have nice things.

 

[Alienman]

The tags thing was a wonderful system, which is exactly why Steam broke it. We're not allowed to have nice things.

How did they broke it?

 

[Unkillable Cat]

At the start we could choose as many tags as we wanted to exclude, i.e. not show games that had those tags.

Then Steam decided that was too much, so now we're only allowed to have 3 exclusion tags.

And also what kris said, so even if you put "Anime" as an exclusion tag, but have a large amount of RPGs on Steam, you're still gonna get flooded with ads for every anime jRPG Steam has on offer.

 

[moraes]

I've never player loli anime hentai shit in my life (I swear!) and my Steam front page is indistinguishable from MangaGamer's. Now my sister thinks I'm a pervert. Thanks, Steam!

 

[pippin]

Your sister knows you're a pervert because she can recognize every single one of those filthy games

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I've never player loli anime hentai shit in my life (I swear!) and my Steam front page is indistinguishable from MangaGamer's. Now my sister thinks I'm a pervert. Thanks, Steam!

Your sister knows you're a pervert because she can recognize every single one of those filthy games

BRB, using those two lines as the base of a crappy Anime dating simulator.

I'll post again when I'm richer than Notch.

 

[pippin]

I've never player loli anime hentai shit in my life (I swear!) and my Steam front page is indistinguishable from MangaGamer's. Now my sister thinks I'm a pervert. Thanks, Steam!

Your sister knows you're a pervert because she can recognize every single one of those filthy games

BRB, using those two lines as the base of a crappy Anime dating simulator.

I'll post again when I'm richer than Notch.

"Moon Moon-kun, steam says you were playing that perv game again! W-what do you mean how do I know???? I mean, I just know, ok!"

 

[Jick Magger]

I'm pretty sure this is the actual premise of some shitty anime that was popular on 4chan a few years ago.

 

[Country_Gravy]

I'm pretty sure with Steam Link and two controllers, I can talk my wife into better computers when I get a new one because I don't have to buy an Xbox or PS4 or Nintendo shit.

I also think that if the Razer Turret was a bit wider and had a backlit keyboard...I would have many more hours logged on my game, playing on the 65" 4K. But that's just an excuse. I have three kids, a job, and a house to take care of. Who has times for games anymore.

I wish they focused on controller support more than VR shit. I can't even play GTAIV when I want my consolefag shit. There is a bunch of login screens and it never works and I give up and smoke hashish and watch streaming video on Netflix or Amazon.

I feel like my childhood tech dreams came true and now I'm just too old to give a fuck.

I am sure my eight-year old self really hates me.

[/olddrunkguyrant]

 

[LESS T_T]

Now Chet Faliszek (writer of Portal and L4D games, recently VR ambassador) left Valve: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-05-02-chet-faliszek-leaves-valve

Chet Faliszek, writer, VR ambassador and for many developers the public face of Valve, has confirmed exclusively to GamesIndustry.biz that he has left the company after 12 years.

A regular attendee at several conferences and industry events worldwide, Faliszek's approachability and passion for progressing the medium has made him many friends amongst the development community, particularly in his most recent role as the de facto developer relations liaison for VR developers looking to publish on Valve's Vive VR platform. Always happy to offer the benefit of his experience at one of the industry's most prestigious organisations, Faliszek has been a strong advocate of VR technology and the possibilities it offers for his first love: storytelling.

Faliszek is undoubtedly one of the industry's most talented writers, with a CV which includes two Half Life episodes, two Portal games and both Left 4 Deads. Working with his long time friend Eric Wolpaw, with whom he ran hugely influential gaming site Old Man Murray, and author Mark Laidlaw, (and later Jay Pinkerton and Ted Kosmatka) Faliszek and his contemporaries defined Valve's incredible story writing for its formative years. Between them, they have answered more questions about Half Life 3 than there are grains of sand on a beach.

Faliszek's departure was preceeded by both Wolpaw and Laidlaw, with Wolpaw leaving in February and Laidlaw departing last year. Like them, Faliszek has given no indication of what may come next, but made clear in a message to GamesIndustry.biz that there were no hard feelings between himself and those who remain at Valve.

"[It was]Nothing exciting or drama filled," he wrote of his departure. "I worked there 12 years, shipped a bunch of great games and some amazing hardware and wanted to change things up. There's no news on what's next etc, I will let you know when that happens."

 

[Don Peste]

Only MCA could save Half-Life 3 now...

 

[Alienman]

Guess he got tired writing background stories for Dota characters.

 

[LESS T_T]

Valve launched Steam Support stats page: http://store.steampowered.com/stats/support/

REQUEST CATEGORY / SUBMITTED LAST 24 HOURS / TYPICAL RESPONSE TIMES
Refund Requests / 49,351 / 1.36 hours to 2.00 hours
Account Security & Recovery / 12,682 / 2.46 hours to 14.89 hours
Game & Steam Technical Support / 2,191 / 2.13 hours to 18.21 hours
Purchase & Billing Support / 1,879 / 2.89 hours to 1.76 days

http://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1301948399251160549

Steam Support Update and Stats Page

We’ve been hearing from users for several years about the need for us to keep working on improving Steam Support. As always, our goal with Steam is to be continuously improving and creating better user experiences across the board.

We hope that most of you never need to contact support because your experience with Steam is issue free to begin with. However, we know that there are times when something just goes wrong and when you need to get help from an actual person. Improving Steam Support to make that experience as smooth as possible has been a big focus for us over the last couple years. We overhauled our support site, we’ve built better integrated tools, we no longer require a separate account to contact support, and we’ve increased our support staffing. We’ve also fixed as many bugs as possible and have provided new self-service options where they make sense. Today we are launching our Steam Support Stats page and seeking to improve transparency around users’ experiences getting support from us. We believe that increasing transparency will both help users understand how we are doing and will help make sure we keep improving over time.

HELP REQUESTS AND BACKLOG

The first thing you’ll see on our stats page is a graph of the volume of submitted help requests that are waiting for a response alongside a graph of the backlog of waiting requests that our support staff has yet to respond to over time. As of today you can see that we receive somewhere around 75,000 help requests per day. We currently end up with around 8,000 requests waiting for responses at most times. We’ve worked hard to expand our staffing and to improve our support processes to get to this point. You can see on our graph that earlier this year we had more than 50,000 requests as our backlog which meant that we had nearly a full day worth of requests waiting for answers at any given point in time. Our goal going forward is to keep the backlog of requests shrinking and to be able to respond to all requests as quickly as possible.

HELP REQUEST CATEGORIES AND RESPONSE TIMES

75,000 requests each day is still a big number. Most of these requests are resolved within a few hours. We’ve broken down some of the categories of request types we receive as well as their typical wait times below the graph on the stats page. These typical wait time numbers shown tell you the timeframe that 90% or more of the requests submitted receive a response. We’re still working on further improving wait times and also quality of responses in all categories.

A large number of our help requests are actually related to our refund policy. We’re proud to be able to offer users refunds when appropriate. We think our refund policy is good for users and good for the platform and we’re happy that we are able to respond to more than 90% of refund requests in just a few hours.

The next largest category of support issues is Account Security & Recovery requests. These requests include users who have simply forgotten their password all the way through users who have been phished or hijacked by someone targeting their account. We’ve been working to improve self-service for some account recovery cases and we’ve also continued to push forward adoption of security features like Steam Guard and the Steam Mobile Authenticator. The cases we still receive requests for can be more complicated to handle and wait times can sometimes be a little longer as a result. However, we’re happy to say that we’ve reduced wait times on these requests from once being over a week in many cases to now under 24 hours for more than 98% of requests.

ONGOING IMPROVEMENT

We hope you’ll find the new support stats page interesting and that you’ll keep letting us know what your experiences with Steam Support are. We know that reducing wait times and backlogs is not enough on its own, and we’re also committed to continuing to improve the quality of each interaction. We’ve been continuously investing in staffing, training, and process improvements to that end and while we believe we’ve made progress we know there is always more work to be done. Let us know how we are doing.

 

[LESS T_T]

Gift hoarding is no more: http://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1301948399254001159

STEAM GIFTING CHANGES

Today we’re announcing changes to gifts on Steam. The gifting process has had a bunch of friction in it for a while, and we want to make it easier for you to share the games you love with friends. Steam Gifting will now be a system of direct exchange from gift buyer to gift receiver, and we will be retiring the Gift to E-mail and Gift to Inventory options. Here's a quick breakdown of benefits from the new system:


Scheduling Gifts Is Even More Straightforward

Go ahead and buy a gift months in advance and have it delivered to a friend on time, every time.


Declined Gifts Resolve The Way They Should

In the old system, a declined gift would sneak back into the giver's inventory and remain on their bill. Now, if a recipient already has the title, or just doesn't want it, they can click decline and the purchase is refunded directly to the gift giver.


Safe Cross-Country Gifting

No more worrying if a Gift to E-mail or Gift to Inventory is going to work for a friend, gifts sent through the new system will always work on the receiver's account. When there is a large difference in pricing between countries, gifting won't be available and you'll know before purchase.


These changes are now available. Please let us know if you see any issues or have any feedback.

Note: Pre-existing gifts will be unaffected by this change.

 

[Country_Gravy]

At least people with pre-existing gifts are still covered.

 

[Grif]

Till this day I'll never understand why gifting cross-region isn't allowed. Just use the more expensive price when gifting, FFS.

 

[Country_Gravy]

It has to do with international trade laws an the Illuminati. Or Steam is made up by a bunch of tards that have too much money and not enough sense.

I can't remember which one.

 

[LESS T_T]

Last week's Steam top sellers (by revenues, microtransactions are not included), Prey for the Unknown:

#1 – PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS
#2 – Prey
#3 – Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
#4 – Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War III
#5 – H1Z1: King of the Kill
#6 – The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition
#7 – Grand Theft Auto V
#8 – NieR:Automata
#9 – Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands
#10 – Outlast 2