What do you anons actually think of Steam? Is is good for vidya to have this place...

inb5 some one says steam drone

>game is exclusive to steam
???

I like steam because its the only place with fair prices for my country.

Online only DRM is objectively a bad thing. It was shit on day one and it's still shit today.

i use it but it's a bloated piece of shit.

it doesn't let me buy games. it doesn't let me play games. it just keeps on loading, crashing, halting, updating because i am using a low end laptop ( that can totally run 2D games and 10 tabs of freezefox without a problem).
i know there aren't many people using low end machines, but when DRM doesn't let you play/buy at all it's a very big fail so it does matter more than other minor complaints people have.

don't bully my laptop. i also own a 1000$ gaming PC, but i am stuck with this piece of shit at work or when moving.There is nothing wrong with wanting to play games on a low end machine.Explorer.exe and DRM free stores/pirating are just better.

it does have offline mode for for offline games ( and if you are playing online games then of course you are already online).
it sure is annoying when it updates but you just want to fire up some old RPG.

I haven't had any difficulties with Steam. They have refunded games I didn't like and they keep track of my achievements which I'm obsessed about with some games. Also, occasionally I stream games to my friends and share screenshots I've taken with the community.

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You can't install games offline. Even if you keep a local "offline" installer which is created by Steam itself it doesn't work unless you are online. It's online only DRM.

>There is nothing wrong with wanting to play games on a low end machine
I use a laptop right now too user, I don't have room for a big desk in my current place. No shame fren :)

But what do you mean by explorer.exe? You mean having them isntalled the old fashion way and launching them from your libraries? Pretty based.

If your fucking laptop can't even handle steam, then no shit we're going to bully it. You're blaming your laptop's garbage aging hardware being shit on Steam? What a fucktard you are.

>game is epic exclusive
This is shit because it's all EGS has going for it. It's not creating competition by being the better product, it's just trying to choke the other one out with marketing bullshit.
>game is steam exclusive
This is fine and is basically the default of PC publishing.

>This if one because steam is a monopoly
Kys steam drone

Whats the problem really? Do you not have internet?

I assume that's cos the files are not on your computer. If the files are on your computer, they are installed?

Examples include RE2 remake, Sekiro and DMC5 - on the PC, you can only get these games on Steam

Steam is basically a glorified web browser with a backend service for bypassing your system security. If his laptop can run Firefox it should be able to run Steam too. That is unless Steam was a poorly coded bloated piece of crap which it is.

...

I don't know why they don't drop the browser and all the other shit. It should be a store, library, workshop. I don't even know how welcome all the forum and community shit is really.

how is it poorly coded

exclusive to steam only because the developers/publishers choose to, not because steam bribed them to. Games on epic are paid to be there.

It's alright, Valve always considered services a priority and it shows on the way Steam is handled.
Yeah they fucked up with the early access bullshit and lack of quality controls but all in all I've never had much issues with them.

>I assume that's cos the files are not on your computer
What do you think a local offline installer is? Steam itself gives you the option to generate these for your games but it's fucking useless. What is the point of an offline installer that doesn't work when you are actually offline?

>Games on epic are paid to be there.

Which would be the only way they'd be there. Epic needs to because Steam is too entrenched.

I went to reinstall Sonar X3 this month because after years of not bothering, I actually had a need for it again. I went to the website to redownload the installer, and Cakewalk was completely out of business, their website defunct, and accessing the installer was impossible.

I went to ThePirateBay to download an installer of Sonar X3 but the only one I could find had no seeders or leechers. The software is that dead. I did have my old box copy of Sonar 8 in my closet, though, which I had upgraded digitally to Sonar X3. I was able to reinstall Sonar 8 using that and at least have access to (an older version) of the software I wanted.

So boxed copies of the software is something to want if
>Valve goes out of business entirely
and
>There’s a particular game you don’t have installed
and
>the game is unpopular enough that it can’t be torrented
and
>you don’t mind installing the unupdated version of that game

If all of those things come true, the boxed software is super handy. Otherwise it’s taking up a space the size of a cookbook on some shelf for something you’ll never use past first installation.

>services a priority
you mean stuff like their community and forums and workshop? These services annoy me. I would prefer something more like iTunes (can't believe I would ever say that) that is just a store and a player.

I assume you mean having a library folder with the game and the installer like in the good old fashion days with disk games? Like we have now when you download a browser or other program? Like GOG use?

If this is the case, sure, but I would liekly keep a small library installed for offline use. But if that is the way you roll, then sure I can see how you would hate it.

When you getting that shopping cart tim

Steam is pretty poorly optimized, but can’t you just buy the games through the Steam website instead of trying to navigate the store?

Several games want to also be on EGS too but Epic only allows the largest AAA games and exlusives to be there

Go ask a developer how it was before Steam and after.
Yeah,it's not perfect now,but is like a million times better

That is fair, and why I went tosteam first, as I had no room for books and my shelfs were decked out with older titles in their plastic boxes and some cardboard ones.

I would think that most games are pretty pirateable though these days, even niche ones?

I don't know. Steam is pretty cool, my only beef with them these days is there stance on porn games.

Aside from that, it's good time all around.

digital games were a fucking mistake
we were all tricked into it because
>le ebin steam sale maymay
>take my money gaben haha
and now we are stuck with 7.8 GB DRM on every game because if you do not release on steam nobody knows you exist

>not because steam bribed them to
To be fair, in the early days of Steam Valve was making their own shady deals to get games on their platform. It was around for years before it got a single third party game on it and Valve had to actively entice people to join because why the fuck would anyone join a dead platform without a kickback?

interesting, source?

You think there are kino games we have now thanks to steam that we didn't have before?

It was one game, and Valve paid them $10,000 to sell it through Steam, not to make it exclusive (though as a result of Steam distribution those devs did stop selling it through their own website directly).

It’s not comparable at all, really. Of course, it’s also true that at the time there wasn’t any real competition on the platform in terms of what Valve’s service actually was.

Fuck You!

yes

I stopped liking steam when they started the trading card bullshit and the influx of early access shit from greenlight campaign. Obviously I still use it because PC gaming is a fucking monopoly which sucks but I buy from GoG when possible

Whats wrong with trading cards?

Proton is pretty cool. It's kinda sad that valve is doing a better job at game preservation than GOG now.

based retard

Sure is a lot of Chinaposting during Euro-Yea Forums

Unironically yes.

Games are now more accessible than ever because of three things:
1. Engine Accessibility courtesy of Unreal and Unity
2. Platform Accessibility courtesy of digital storefronts but mostly Steam's no holds barred policy
3. Booming industry with lots of money flying around everywhere

Its the same in US time

I have never used steam and never will. I quit pc gaming until I learned about a viable alternative to steam

I like Steam because I get to have comfy chats with literal who indie devs on their forums.

I don't like it. I remember sales used to be fun where you could open xmas presents for tradable discounts and free games. They don't do stuff like that anymore.

I do find it hilarious how the old meme of hentai games on steam came true thpu he

You can purchase these games through plenty of retailers without a cent of your money going into Valves pockets. And I'm not even talking about the grey-market resellers. The problem with the EGS isn't its platform exclusivity, it's its market exclusivity.
>b-b-b-ut you can buy keys on Humble now
For a price set by Epic, where Epic still takes their cut.

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Its a store for video games, and it works pretty well as such, dnno what else to say

It's just a place to buy cheap games. I have no attachment or loyalty to it and the one time I had to deal with support was a nightmare.

I just pirate, wont pay money just to license a game

The browser is the easiest way to handle the store, especially since you can purchase games from the actual website without downloading Steam. Instead of coding some strangely specific store into their client, they opted for a far more useful method that allows them to easily implement those other features.

There was also the EA thing. Valve gave EA their games for consoles and EA gave Valve their games for PC. Didn't last too long though. Valve got pissy later when EA stopped paying the "Valve tax" on DLC and kicked them out.

>implying timezones are relevant to neets

I agree that events used to be better before but if you dont like trading cards you literally dont have to use them

Well indie market is in the shape it is today thanks to Steam taking care of forums and such, sure there is a lot of garbage but so are there genuinely good games

There's like 4 or 5 EGS shill posts up right now at 7AM EST. Later in the day it's rare to even see one.

Early access only affects people who can't wait and every game released is a PC game that can be pirated if you really wanted to.

It's a benevolent dictator.
Like I can imagine a timeline where the main digital storefront is MUCH MUCH WORSE than the benign shit that we have now with Steam.

Though on the flip side, it means that Valve would still be making games.

>For a price set by Epic, where Epic still takes their cut.
No they don't. Also on GmG, fanatical, microsoft store,physical retailers and others.

Also

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plz no bully

I tried Proton for linux and it did one game perfectly, and a more niche one crashed. They did really well just to boot up though, desu. And all built into the client with no config necessary too. Very promising.

Fair does. I wonder what the landscape of vidya would be without? Just tonnes of people having you use a "buy with paypal" button on their own shitty websites?

pirate them?

I give two fucks about trading card and all the other meta bullshit (“it’s a sale! Unlock sale points to craft sale badges for sale trophies and sale achievements! Roll them over into the next sale! Your team could win the sale!!!”) but the hardware support is fucking great.

Steam didn’t just integrate an alternative to XPadder/Joy2Key/etc into itself, it added a much better version of that software that has completely eliminated the need or desire for any other controller remapping software ever again. Also the Steam Controller is fucking dope.

Guess we are unlucky then

My only real problem with Steam is the complete lack of curation. It's so flooded and cluttered with literal trash that it's become almost comical.

That's on the Mordhau devs. It's not Steams fault that the devs aren't utilizing the way the store works. They are free to distribute keys to other sellers to sell their game without Valve taking their cut.

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Reminder that Gamestop is dying right now because of Steam.

They're a tyrannical monopoly that keep on bullying indie devs every step of the way.

>The browser is the easiest way to handle the store
You mean your own browser or the steam browser? I can see navigating to steampowered.com in firefox and buying a game, but not the steam client browser lol. that is what I meant, sorry for the confusion.

But I am in Europe?

Yeah right now it seems to work best on pure DX11 or DX10 games that don't have any external launchers or .NET bullshit ahem, ubisoft
The last update added experimental DX9 to vulkan support too but you have to enable it with environment variables.

It makes sense to attach the store to the client, and like I said their inhouse browser makes the most sense. They already have the web page version set up, and having browser functionaility in the client is useful for more things than just the storefront.

>cherrypick a title
>it's still wrong
Doesn't change the fact that Mordhau isn't legally bound to sell on Steam and Steam only like EGS exclusives.

>inhouse broswer
So wait, let me get this straight....
You use the steam browser to go to steampowered.com...
To buy games?....

Well mine was Arcanum from 2001 so I don't think I will get that support lol.

The digital era was going to happen at some point. If it wasn't Steam, it was going to be something else.

This is the cold hard truth and nothing we can do can change that. Fuck. Just look at the rest of the entertainment industry.

Or ARE you?

I don't really care that they don't personally inspect every thing submitted and determine whether or not it passes the "quality" test. I care that their search engine is a buggy piece of shit lacking basic features. The lacking features shit is especially irritating because I know the features exist, they just haven't implemented them into the frontend, e.g. you can exclude results in searches but only by manually editing the URL. It's just such a pain to effectively see what Steam has to offer. It's no wonder 90% of people don't go past the front page.

I press the "Store" button and use the store. Spoiler: The store page in the client uses the clients browser, even if you're not typing in the URL yourself

This, all things are getting pulled into the fucking vortex of the internet rent-a-service model. I love the web, but fucking hell it is an insatiable monster sometimes.

because setting up your own would take millions, keeping it running would cost money every month, hosting and maintenance is nothing to scoff at, and actually getting someone to trust you is not happening for years.

steam removes a game, you still get to keep it, I think there was one time they fully removed a game from librarys and you were refunded full purchase cost.

personally with early access, there are alot of games I would likely never get without it, see anything that has feature creep because it was a popular idea, and the games I would get would in no way be the same game.

as for quality control, I don't care, I want every game on steam because I trust steam due to track record of how they handle removals.

without steam, every publisher would have their own storefront, of various security, and would likely host games from other publishers who were big enough.

if we are talking without online stores at all? then pc gaming would likely just be 100% dead due to the cost of pc games vs relative sales and storefronts, along with some older games just getting lost outside of piracy.

every now and then I find a 'trash' game that is fun, with curation, steam would not have an indie scene, steam has reviews, steam gives you the games name, and if a quick 5 minute search isn't worth wasting 10$ to you then its your own problem.

steams only real misstep is the 'review bombing protection' if a dev or publisher does something profoundly shitty, why protect them?

What do you anons actually think of Steam?
It's shite. GOG for life.

other way around Sweeney

the UI is garbage, valvE is garbage, but the platform is ok

steam isn't bribing them like epic

same

how is it a monopoly, and how is it shit?

Steam's DRM is shit, and easy to crack

erm.... yes, in Britain.

Oh i see, so you use the conventional store option (the default landing page). I do this too. Never buy from steampowered.com of Firefox or anything, and I never use the steam browser to browse the internet.

Well you guys certainly are trying not to be

My favorite part about steam is that it outed all these horrific indieshitters as the scum that they area. Even during the days of greenlight it opened my eyes to how fucking insufferable indie developers are.

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>Steam's DRM is shit, and easy to crack
Yep, and it always will be. Half of the purpose is the DRM is for features like auto logging in through your Steam account. The other half was to satiate big name devs/publishers that feel like they NEED DRM. Steam's DRM will always be easy to crack, because they don't see piracy as an issue that's solved by DRM. They see it as an issue that's avoided entirely by good service, which they provide.

It's meh. I prefer to get games on GOG where possible because it's DRM free. That said Steam DRM is very permissive, which is good. Games are cheap. I don't really have a problem with their business practices.

>then pc gaming would likely just be 100% dead due to the cost of pc games vs relative sales and storefronts
That would only be true if Amazon were gone too. I still buy PS4 discs and get them shipped to my house. If online shopping never happened, then the industry might still be fine as it was in the 90s when you went to a stor and went over to the racks to look at the cool artwork and browse new games.

indie devs will always bitch
always

fpbp

>steams only real misstep is the 'review bombing protection' if a dev or publisher does something profoundly shitty, why protect them?
Because a dev saying "trans rights" on twitter doesn't mean a game they made 15 years ago suddenly sucks. Valve isn't protecting the dev, they're protecting the other customers that don't care about that "outrage", for anyone that doesn't give a fuck about whatever ended up getting the game "review bombed" it just fucks with the review score and makes it harder to tell if the game would be good or not.

Like, if Bethesda said something that triggered ResetERA tomorrow and they started review bombing all of Bethesda's games on steam to 'boycott' them until they apologize or something, I wouldn't want that to impact the score for New Vegas.

Review bombing is stupid, what steam really needs to do to fix this is add a spot where you can review the developer / publisher themselves
Let people see how much people like that company in general.

kek good one :) we're still europeans though. People think we hate european ways of life or their cultures. We don't we just don't trust committes and councils at all (even our own) so why should we hav emore set up miles away?

I have no beef with steam really, it's just the more convenient option. Only criticism really is how saturated it is with shitty indie and porn games.

It's also on them that the game is forever exclusive to steam. No one seems to care about full exclusivity in both shops and storefronts as long as it's on steam, weird right?

>Review bombing is stupid, what steam really needs to do to fix this is add a spot where you can review the developer / publisher themselves
This is a fucking fantastic idea. They’re starting to roll out the idea of “developer pages” (which actually don’t work too well, PlatinumGames has two) but it should be visible on the game page for any game they make.

You should be able to see, at a glance, the recent and overall scores for the game, and then below that, the developer and publisher.

I also wish that review scores could be cut in half for “game” and “software”; doing the old magazine thing of scoring “GRAPHICS / GAMEPLAY / MUSIC / STORY” is too far, but I should be able to tell if a game’s poor reception is because it’s a good game with a bad port.

>Steam circlejerk thread
LMAO do you drones even know what is happening right now? Steam updated the discoverability algorithm AGAIN and said that this time it would recommend a more diverse selection and not just the same old popular shit.
>steamcommunity.com/groups/steamworks#announcements/detail/1591381408652851752
But guess what? Indie devs are reporting that IT'S THE COMPLETE OPPOSITE and that no-name and smaller indies are getting culled off the recommended and getting replaced by popular shit. Literally the complete. Fucking. Opposite. Of what Valve said.

KEEP DEFENDING STEAM YOU DRONES
BECAUSE YOU CAN'T

only use it on sale. have never trusted valve. things are getting uglier. its full of sjw employees. a company monopolising a market is generally garbage such as snoy, ms, marvel, dc, disney, etc. epic can be a competitor of steam but i really dont want to use the chinese platform. both are garbage companies. gog is useless as well

ive seriously considered buying nitenndos next gen console cause it seems other companies are full of sjws faggots banning/censoring games. also i need some good indie platform. its such a shame some niche indie devs release their games only on steam.

>customers complain about seeing shit they don't care about
>steam updates the algorithm to be better
>shitter devs cry because their $1 meme games aren't showing up anymore for some reason even though they like, worked really hard for two whole days on it

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Did you even click the image? They've started to properly distribute keys. But again, the point is that it's not a signed-and-done exclusive, like EGS exclusives, they are free to do whatever they want.

Maybe they should release on itch.io like all of the other indie devs that aren't 12

VALVE IS LITERALLY FUCKING OVER SMALL INDIE DEVS FOR THE NTH TIME RIGHT THIS VERY MOMENT AND YOU'RE ALL HERE JERKING EACH OTHER OFF OVER HOW GABEN IS OH SO GOOD

problem is the moment a game is no longer in print, the price skyrockets till you find someone who doesn't know what it is.

except that doesn't happen, what does happen is developers put in a microtransaction system post launch, bend the knee and censor a game, or antagonize their customers. this developer put out a patch that fucked with the exp rate so you are more incentivised to buy premium currency? No, can't give a negative review for that, thats a review bomb.

what's this, the developer promised shit will get better, then says fuck you and jumps to a new game to get paid a second time instead of fix the game they sold?

developers, when something big happens to be a 'review bomb', get shit on for a reason, steam forces customers to write reviews, you can't bomb without owning the game.

If valve wants to fix the system, then potentially discredit people who buy the game play for a minute and write a review to refund. I dont blame people who put time into a game and its shit, but when someone bombs with 1 minute played its obvious what they did.

>Valve ran the numbers
>Unique Games Visited increased by 75%, meaning more unique games wound up on SOMEONE’s recommendation feed, even if a few games got less overexposed as a result
>developer of overexposed meme game crying because some customer saw a game that wasn’t his

Cope harder, Chang. This is a good thing, nobody wants to see the same shitty stuff that barely even qualifies as a game get suggested to them over shit they know will be good. Should have went to itch.io instead if they were that desperate for attention.

Valve revolutionized the indie scene by giving them a means of distribution that they previously never had access to.

I don't give a fuck about small indie devs, I care about fun games.
There are a fucking billion small indie devs pumping out shitty, uninspired, banal games every fucking day just to make money, I don't care about them, I want the inspired games that stand out on their own.

Shitty devs can go fuck themselves, work harder and get better. Personally I want steam greenlight stuff to get its own storefront, just get the small indie level shit right off of the store entirely and put it somewhere else until it hits 1M sales or some shit

Reminder epic faggots need rope

A game getting shit on for post-launch DLC isn’t a “review bomb”. Steam’s systems are theoretically designed to filter and flag periods of “off topic review activity”, not sudden turns toward the negative.

Are there actually examples of a situation where a game got review “bombed” for post-launch changes to the game itself and those were filtered, rather than the review bombing being an act of protest against the developer/publisher unrelated to the game itself?

THEY SAID THERE WOULD BE MORE DIVERSITY BUT ALL THAT'S HAPPENING IS THAT AAA GAMES AND ALREADY POPULAR INDIE GAMES ARE GETTING RECOMMENDED

GO AHEAD, GO PICK A NICHE INDIE GAME ON STEAM, CHECK THE "MORE LIKE THIS" PART OF THE PAGE, AND SEE THAT ALL THE THINGS THERE ARE POPULAR FUCKING GAMES WHEN BEFORE THERE USED TO BE EQUALLY NICHE INDIE GAMES ON THE PAGE

IT'S
FUCKED

>they are free to do whatever they want.

Are they free to release their game on other storefronts, or do they need to rebuild their game to do it becaue steamworks does not function outside of steam? The only reason sekior is not on battlenet is the fact that they would need to change a lot of things for it to work. Even big publisher is not going to do that, epic timed exclusivity is the only way to combat that. And since epic servers and functions are not tied to their store you can sell the game even on itcho.co with no problems, and i'm not talking about selling keys. This is far more competitive than valve
>you can sell keys,but you can compete only on discounts. And you can't offer steam customers a worse deal on price.

If all it’s showing are the same AAA games then how would “unique games visited” increased, dummy? That number increasing means, a priori, that the total number of games shown to a random sampling of people has fewer repeat entries.

BECAUSE CLEARLY VALVE FUCKED UP AND/OR LIED TO "APPEASE" INDIE DEVS WHEN IN REALITY THEY'RE JUST SENDING IN MORE CASH TO THE COFFERS OF BIGGER DEVELOPERS IN HOPES OF KEEPING THEM ON THEIR STORE

Just fucking use itch.io
Steam isn't meant to be the fucking be-all end-all place for starter devs to break into the market with their first project in Unity.

Steam doesn't owe these devs anything, they're already getting a fucking massive amount of help from steam by having access to shit like the forums, friendslists, steamworks etc. If their game can't get any attention then maybe they should have spent a little time networking and advertising instead of just hoping it'd just market itself by being on steam.

Their game was getting attention before you idiot but the new algorithm literally hid small indie game titles.

>first three posts shilling for epic
If this isn't confirmed astroturfing I don't know what is

Can you disable your caps lock and stop reddit spacing? It's giving me a headache.

No one cares aside from you, just make a better game and/or put it on more stores that are focused on niche indie games like itch.io.

There is a reason why basically anyone that plays games often is likely to have GoG, Steam and Itch.io installed and probably nothing else as far as launchers go.

It's bad and GOG is better.

Both it's not as bad as Epic.

Also, there are Steam emu, just in case when Steam gets nuked.

So it was getting attention because of a bug in the algorithm and not because people were actually interested in it?
You're saying now that steam's automatic discovery thing is giving more accurate results, their banal derivative indie game isn't getting any attention even though its one of 100,000 released just that day?

Valve did not invent e-commerce. Indies have always been able to distribute over the internet since long before Valve released Steam. The only revolution Valve gave us was a massive centralization of the market. What many are calling a de facto monopoly.

>mfw people call steam "invasive DRM" even though the handshake with the steam servers is so simple that cracking teams have the process automated for any steam games that don't have third party DRM installed because the DRM from steam is only meant to stop people from literally dragging and dropping files into their steam folder to get free games

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What Steam actually gave us is a far more streamlined process when it comes to distribution. Release a game solo before was a complete fucking ballache that required lots of work that you could dedicate to developing the game instead.

>GO AHEAD, GO PICK A NICHE INDIE GAME ON STEAM, CHECK THE "MORE LIKE THIS" PART OF THE PAGE

I just did it with two games: Aztez and Assault Spy

Note how despite the extreme similarity in genre, there is only one game common to both recommendation sets (DMC HD Collection). Note also how despite the presence of some "AAA" (not really, but in terms of the genre, definitely) stuff on each page, there's also a lot of niche stuff on there mixed in.

Really the biggest fault here is that in that limited real estate, where other games could go, Steam is showing me shit that it knows for a fact is already in my library.

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I don't consider any DRM that has unencrypted assets and indefinite offline to be intrusive tbqh.

Tbh the worst thing that happened as a result of steam is the death of boxed PC games, but thats not steam's fault. Valve never told devs to only do digital releases on their storefront, steam was just good enough and people liked it enough that major publishers saw it as the best option.

personally I'd like to go back to the days of buying your PC game physically and putting the CDKey into steam as a backup like it used to be. Kinda sucks that publishers are so lazy that even if a game does get a physical release its just a generic DVD case with a steam key inside.

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B-But muh indie devs.
Why are we paying attention to indie devs again? They literally find a way to bitch about any change Steam makes.

These EGS Shill threads are kinda nice cause I get to learn about all of the cool features steam has, or all of the nice things they do that I didn't know about

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Steam as a service is great. Valve as the parent company do a great job in making a marketplace with plenty of extra features for both game and community engagement. My only complaint with Steam as a service is one I predicted when Greenlight became a thing, the store is far too littered with indie games meaning new releases have about 12 hours to be seen on the frontpage before they are lost in obscurity forever.
The Steam community itself however is a shit and cum filled toilet that hasn't been flushed in years. Most reviews are low grade shitposts like "Ha ha I downloaded this game and farted it smelled good 11/10.". Review bombing is chasing big devs off the platform faster than Epic can buy them. The forums are full of braindead eastern europeans saying "WHY WONT NEW GAME RUN ON MY 128MB ATI VIDEO CARD SCAM DEVS VALVE DO SOMETHING!!!". Other services with forums and user reviews like GoG show a stark contrast in the quality of communities.

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>What Steam actually gave us is a far more streamlined process when it comes to distribution.
No, it's still just a web browser you put your credit card information into and then download the game. They didn't even come close to inventing a new way of distributing software online so I don't know what you keep claiming that. Again, all Steam did was centralize the market. Nothing else.

>Again, all Steam did was centralize the market. Nothing else.
Actually, all they did was give people a place to backup their games and it got fucking popular.
For the first few years I never bought any games on steam, I'd just slap my CDKeys into my account from games I already owned to have a digital backup just incase anything happened. Didn't cost anything, they'd just give me a copy of the game on their platform because I already owned it.

Yeah well niggers don't have rights so you shouldn't have fair prices either.

Having a centralized downloader distribution system that manages updates in the background is a bit of a thing. I mean, coming from the music software world nobody had anything like that (of course, in the music software world you're expected to pay for updates, but still).

Honestly I think its just that there are actual zoomers on Yea Forums that don't know what it was like when Steam came out

They probably wouldn't know why the N64 controller was actually impressive as fuck, or why the Xbox 360 letting you download demos was mindblowing. They've been growing up in the lootbox era where innovation has kinda stagnated

>they'd just give me a copy of the game on their platform because I already owned it.
>OWNED IT

HAHAHA

The thing about printing boxes and pressing discs is that the cost increases exponentially the fewer you do in a run. In a world where only 5% of the customer base actually wants the plastic, it costs a whole hell of a lot to produce the plastic, ship the plastic, and put the plastic on store shelves, versus if 95% of the customer base wants that.

I have no idea what you are talking about. Steam was never a free online backup service. When you bought a retail copy of a game for the first few years of Steam's existence you didn't get a Steam code. You got a CD or DVD with SafeDisc or SecuROM or whatever and that's it. Shit, Steam didn't even have anything but Valve games on it until like three years after it was released.

Yeah, I still have the boxes in my closet, the CDKeys probably still work just fine.
I also have copies on steam as backups, which still work just fine over a decade later.

>why the Xbox 360 letting you download demos was mindblowing

To this day I can't believe Steam hasn't fucking jumped on that. It kills me. I bought so many fucking games on the X360 because I downloaded the demo, played it, loved it, and got to level 2 and had the game go "so, you're done with the demo... but if you buy it right now, you'll just keep playing from here, save and cheevos intact, we won't even kick you back to the title screen".

Steam still has demos as separate download links with separate store pages, not integrated into the "identity" of the game itself. I can't believe they haven't figured that shit out yet.

>Shit, Steam didn't even have anything but Valve games on it until like three years after it was released.
Yeah, and it wasn't really a big deal when it was just a place to buy Valve games. It was when they started getting third party games that it kicked off, and whenever they added a new game you could just register the key on steam if you already owned it.

Steam was pretty rad when it came out, I started using it just because it was a really nice and convenient service. Hell, most of the time if a game I owned was on steam I'd never have to touch the box again cause it was all just stored digitally

Demos with save transfer are awesome. Its what made me buy Etrian Odyssey and it's what made me buy Oreshika.

So? Put your game elsewhere and see if it's found there then. Or I dunno, market your game? Or make it interesting enough for it to be seen by people interested in your genre of games? Or maybe it's because those devs made some shitty ultra-niche game that they overprice like mad and then get pissy when customers aren't interested.

>indie devs

And nothing of value was lost.

>Honestly I think its just that there are actual zoomers on Yea Forums that don't know what it was like when Steam came out
The only zoomers here are the ones who think Steam was this amazing thing that everyone loved when it come out. For people who were actually there at the time they know it was generally despised and it didn't start getting popular until around 2009-2010 when Valve starting doing sales with ridiculously high discounts which have now gone away and everyone whines about having gone away. If you consider updating your games and drivers to be some terrible burden and God bless Valve for ridding us of that then go back to fucking consoles.

There's no way of actually pleasing the indies either way at the moment. Steam is so oversaturated with shovelware that the only way it can benefit the small indie studios without giving the shovelware attention, which has the opposite effect for the indies. Meanwhile, the opposite solution doesn't exactly work either for the indies, since you're giving attention to AAA titles they know will sell well rather than devs who might actually need the money. What Steam actually needs to succeed in pleasing the indie devs is to actually curate what devs want published on there beforehand in order to filter out the shovelware. This shouldn't be that hard really, just check if the game actually works and isn't slapped together with fucking duct tape in hope of making some quick cash (looking at all the shitty hentai sliding puzzles on the store right now that apparently became a huge thing once the hands-off policy started), and hopefully the fucking indie devs will actually pull their heads out of their asses and stop being so bratty.

Tim Sweeney is here to S A V E
V I D E O
G A M I N G

Okay so I checked what this tard was talking about with this new "VALVE IS FUCKING OVER INDIE DEVS" spin again but aside from a few twitter posts there doesn't seem to be much drama over it. In fact, if it was that big of a problem I'd have expected lots more indies bitching about the update.

These are some of the people bitching. Even hounded some leddit shit to see.
twitter.com/myroidtc/status/1172436696480153600
twitter.com/AMO_Crate/status/1172245927849074692
twitter.com/AMO_Crate/status/1172267825555226625
twitter.com/LorenLemcke/status/1172398353943945217
twitter.com/woodland_games/status/1172418589439086592
reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/d3ly0s/steam_did_your_more_like_this_section_change/
reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/d3c54m/steam_store_discovery_update/
(Note: fair warning on these leddit threads, from what I can gather this subleddit is home to the picture perfect "bitchy" indie dev that Yea Forums hates)

But there are also a handful of people who say this not to mention this user's post seems to show that the system still works.
twitter.com/onebit_studio/status/1172449851314864128
twitter.com/pcmacgames/status/1172228606787031043

So I'm almost 90% convinced these are just the same old indie devs trying to find a way to bitch at Steam as per usual. They will never be satisfied.

cool language and meme usage raj

There is no fairer price than free

Mate. If a game can't beat hentai puzzle games then I'm afraid that's not Steam's fault at that point.

By putting a gun to it's head and pulling the trigger? I guess you consider it a mercy kill then, gaming has been shit for years.

Attached: Epic Andre.png (1280x1440, 1M)

get a job and stop stealing

It's shit, but every other launcher is more shit.

Literally who are any of these fucking devs? Do any of you anons even know these dudes?

>opposing epic's bullshit means you have to be a fanboy

I am not getting a second job just to line a fat Jews pockets

Oh boy can't wait for the Kotaku article tomorrow personally written by >NATHAN GRAYSON quoting all these poor oppressed indies.

If I were a developer with a somewhat of a following, I'd simply do a poll of how many people would be interested in a boxed version with a proper manual and maybe an artbook or something for moderatly more money, do a budget analysis, and inform on those basis how many I'm going to make. If the demand is adequately bigger than the demand, I'd do a second run. So... I'd be doing a collectors edition essentially. Fuck.

Has its downsides, but overall its benefits outweight them. Having a download manager, updater, online shop and social media platform all in one is great, and so is the Steam Workshop.

>but I should be able to tell if a game’s poor reception is because it’s a good game with a bad port.
THIS
>problem is the moment a game is no longer in print, the price skyrockets till you find someone who doesn't know what it is.
Ah that is true. I guess it is a good thing that Steam came along to get stuff digital, and there is fringe piracy scenes, and GOG, and niche places like itch.io for those who don't want a rent-a-game from Valve.

>twitter.com/LorenLemcke/status/1172398353943945217
>twitter.com/woodland_games/status/1172418589439086592

Hello? Do you not see a problem with this? What more proof do you need that Valve is TARGETING small developers with this algorithm?

umm
excuse you, cuckboy.
But Tim Sweeney is trying to save video games.
So how about you go back in your basement, sweetie. The real world is too scary for you.

It's just a launcher you crybaby. A launcher that is saving pc gaming from valve greed in fact

>everyone playing and associated with pc games needs to be gassed
found the raging console shitposter posting in every thread

cool memes, where did you learn them fellow Yea Forums poster?

Faildevs fail because they think they are entitled to sales without putting anything into marketing their game or even just making it appealing to begin with.
If you think you can't compete with the russian assetflip garbage then the problem probably lies with your game and not that Steam isn't promoting your "visual poetry" properly.

Also reminder that Valve actually does remove the absolute worst garbage.

You must've had a stroke and now you're thinking in reverse.

He is talking about steam and steam only, steam is not pc gaming. It's a parasite of pc gaming at best.

If you want to have one launcher you should go back to consoles where you belong faggot, pc is an open platform

>r/gamedev
What the fuck is this horrendous place? Even Yea Forums and /vg/'s game dev threads are better than this shithole.

...

these are the same people who used to write shitty poetry and think they were gods gift to literacy revisited.

Not just save transfer, it was more than that. The "demo" literally downloaded the entire game, booted the entire game, and just had a flag set so when you tripped some point specified by the developer, it checked if your copy was purchased, and if not, it froze the game with a nag screen to buy. you could either quit, or you could buy, and if you bought, it just bypassed the nag screen and you kept playing. No further download or install process, no delay, nothing. Just click the thing and you keep playing.

It's fucking genius (and again, something music software developers have been doing forever) and it makes you so much more likely to buy games.

Reminder that Sneed Sweeney literally ragequit the PC industry because of piracy before Steam showed him he was wrong.

>Surely a game with a 92% positive rating over 378 reviews is worth recommending to somebody right?
A clone of a NES game at that price? Why would anyone ever recommend that?

>If you want to have one launcher you should go back to consoles where you belong faggot, pc is an open platform
It won't be for long if Epic gets their way. If Steam is a parasite upon PC gaming, then Epic is a malicious tumor, and if you'd rather have that over "just" a parasite, then you really must be bonkers.

>ragequit
What is Unreal Engine?

In fairness, I will never not be mad that Aztez was a flop. Sometimes good games do get buried, especially if they have a niche appeal and their niche is largely unaware of them.

I don't "blame Steam" for that, it's not their job to act as a marketing firm, but as a storefront, it's better for everyone if you are more successful in getting products in front of the customers who want to buy them. That's something every retail operation always thinks about, and while it's much more complicated for Valve than it is for, say, a grocery store putting up a display of hamburger buns next to the hamburgers before the 4th of July, it's ultimately the same core problem and same core "responsibility" that all retailers have in the pursuit of increasing sales.

Yes, it's seen by those people that the algorythm looks at and thinks might fit their tags and the games they have played. So, not a lot of people. These devs want their game plastered on everybodys front page like they made AC Odyssey when in reality they made a small NES-esque two bit indie game.

>before Steam showed him he was wrong
You say that like piracy is not still rampant on PC. You do know it's actually increased, not decreased, right? This "Steam saved PC gaming" shit is such a load of bollocks.

I require proofs.

Okay I'll be honest with you user. Are you literally in every thread about Epic/Steam? Because I keep fucking seeing someone mention Aztez and I'm sure it's just you every time. Months ago even which is crazy.

No, he said that PC is done for single player games and he was pretty much right. afterall even valve agree on that. But you are talking about what cliff bleszinski said not tim, Don't worry, it's common for steamdrones to not check their sources and just mindlessly repeat the narrative. Fucking sjw of gaming industry fags

Attached: 1544564977088.jpg (586x466, 82K)

That's actually sort of interesting; is it possible that the reason for this "problem" is that upcoming games have been devauled somehow?

Dude says "upcoming games are removed" but that's bullshit, as per
since Devil's Hunt isn't out yet.

But it may have something to do with the new 30 day rule... I do wonder if Valve is no longer putting games in the recommended slot unless they are very nearly out.

I think the should be more strict with what they let in and not allow asset flips and other trash games made on a shoestring budget. But even then the indie scene is so saturated that everyone expecting to be the new Bendy or Shovel Knight is going to be disappointed.

a 3d computer graphics engine that doesn't work well for video games because of input latency

Not every one, but a lot of them. I talk about it in these threads when someone brings up "indie games get buried!", I also shill the fuck out of it (and Transformers Devastation) in all CUHRAYZEE threads. There are a few other people on Yea Forums who like it (maybe that was my doing, maybe they found it on their own, who knows) and I know they also shill it. But yeah, there's a good bet it was me who brought it up in a thread months ago. I'd be willing to bet I'm like 70% of the uses of the word "Aztez" on this board for any given span of time.

Unreal Engine is used on consoles too you sub 80 iq monkey. Making an engine for people to use does not imply an active support for PC as a platform any more than for consoles the same engine is used on.

UE4 is the most influential engine on the market right now and it's free.
Multiple great games have been enabled because of it.

>That's something every retail operation always thinks about
Want to know how it works in retail? Companies pay for stores to give prominent display to their products. Shit, they even pay to get their products put on the middle shelf as opposed to the top or bottom shelf. It's utterly ridiculous that these devs are complaining about Valve not doing enough to advertise their products when they don't pay a fucking dime for advertising. There's no other way to put it, it's entitlement bullshit. Valve is not obligated to do your marketing for you and especially not so when you aren't even paying them for it. The recommendation system is for the BUYERS, not the sellers.

sure thing consolefag
all those poorly made games look and play worse because of it and unreal engine 3

Based. It's comfy recognizing the same anons on Yea Forums that's not autistic spammers, ACfag, etc.

>and it's free.
Sure. Except for the 5% cut of the revenue that Epic get to punish devs with for releasing their game on Steam rather than their own store should they decide to flip them and their exclusive offer the bird.

It was fine when games had to pass greenlight to be part of steam. Now its just a shithole.
Still better than any alternatives that we have today tho.

fake quote epicdrone "indie dev"
find the source

>It was actively supported on pc all the time
>It does not mean it was supported on pc

Gaben please go

Valve is no different. Aren't releasing your Source game on Steam? Then you pay more for the engine.

One does critical damage to the wild Chinaman when you inquire sources to their claims.

unrealengine.com/en-US/release-notes/unreal-engine-4-23-released

Are you okay Steamdrones? I wonder where Source 2 is right now? Oh wait.

do you think your garbage shitpost means anything or that you are fooling anyone into thinking something you want?
go back where you came from and stop bumping and mass replying shitposter

>Companies pay for stores to give prominent display to their products
In some places and some cases, yes, but it's not as common as you think. I run a grocery store for a living, this is literally my job, in and in half a decade of having my position I can think of two instances where we got the directive from home office "such and such company is paying for the product that goes on this display" or "so and so paid us for the labor that will go into sampling this" and as such we weren't allowed to veer from The Plan on how that was to be handled, because it was paid for.

Other than that, no. We build displays ad-hoc all the fucking time because pairing up is essential to growing baskets. Impulse buys make us our fucking money. Same is probably true of Steam.

Also, our "shelf space buy" agreements were typically only for very small companies, and it was usually a guaranteed buy-back (i.e. if the product expires, we'll pay for that, we're confident that it will sell), and we also charged them money if they changed UPCs or packaging since it meant our space management team had to redo layouts and whatnot to reincorporate the product, but that was it. I know that some much larger retailers like Wal Mart make a lot of money selling their shelf space because just fucking existing on their shelves is a form of advertising and "legitimacy", we were a smaller operation so we never really negotiated for that, but outside of Wal Mart (and maybe Whole Foods now?) I don't think there are any grocery retailers, at least, big enough to command that kind of power where they can just charge you for the privilege of having your product on a shelf.

You also have to remember, retail is dying. Everywhere. Food will be the last to go because it's a logistical nightmare to ship it from a warehouse. It's real tough to flex on a company and demand thousands of dollars for shelf space when Amazon doesn't charge them shit. I think you've got a bit of an outdated view.

>Valve is not obligated to do your marketing for you and especially not so when you aren't even paying them for it.
True, but it's not about an obligation to the devs. Valve wants to sell games because selling games makes money. Valve should, therefore, want to show games to people who will buy those games. If a game exists, and I would buy it, but I don't know about it, then Valve making me aware of it is a good way to get money out of me. That's just basic retail merchandising and customer service; you do what you can to put things in front of the people who want to buy them.

Scratch that, from the way you're respondning to it, it seems that your iq must be way below even 60. Before Timmy Tencent decided to come back to PC with his barely functional little storefront, the only due he payed to PC was the token support to make sure people could develop games using the engine, because guess what, the vast majority of console games are developed on PC. The fact that people can use it to develop for PC anyway is just a side note, not a sign that he openly gave a fuck about PC gaming, because guess what, all engines can be used to make games for PC.

Attached: 1560684985371.png (645x729, 131K)

Unreal Engine 4 is so fucking great. I hate Epic for the EGS, but I love them for UE4. It's sometimes hard to believe it's the same company behind both.

Let me ask you a question, if one of your smaller suppliers whined to you that you weren't doing enough to promote their product and they demand you do more and they aren't going to give you anything in return for that promotion what would your response be? I suspect it would not be "You absolutely right! Let me rectify this immediately!" Especially if their products were just plain crap.

>because guess what, all engines can be used to make games for PC.

Attached: 1514939160287.gif (384x372, 2.83M)

Its more like epic has a hatedom.
Kinda amazing how a store can fuck up so bad people actively hate it.

I fucking hate how it's bloated with useless "community" features. Clicking on game's title/banner often leads to fucking community hub instead of store page. What pisses me off the most is fucking pile of game journos' articles instead of actual update logs. Meanwhile crucial features like Steam Input or recent experimental recommendation algorithm are buried under tons of meaningless garbage.
Search/tags/filters system is garbage. It should have a fucking booru-like curated tags system instead of 99% of the game being tagged with RPG, Action, Great Soundtrack and messy franchise collections missing half of titles.
Steam is great but it needs serious overhaul. Redo search from scratch, reorganize all the features in order of usefulness. And make review-bombing filter disabled by default.

Attached: 1565713167656.png (633x874, 56K)

Well, outside of indie game developers, most businesses don’t “whine” at all. We did sometimes have company reps come out to our stores to check our in-stock conditions and look for missed out-of-dates on their brands, though, and they would “tattle” to home office on us if we weren’t doing it well (which usually involved conversations about why the fucking warehouse suppliers don’t keep that product in stock). Of course the reason that home office cared about that tattling was because an out of stock product is a product that sold, and could therefore sell more (and thus make the company more money) if it was in stock.

They didn’t ever bitch about not being on displays, but then a grocery store isn’t a digital store, I can’t build a unique set of displays for every shopper who comes in the door, and digital can’t ever go out of stock. It was the same core problem, though; they wanted their product to sell, and some failure of execution on our part was preventing that from happening, and since it was also costing US lost revenue, someone upstairs would have something to say about it. Our interests were aligned in the common goal of “sell more stuff” and they’d get upset if, in their view, we weren’t doing what we ought to have been doing to generate that revenue.

Remember, Valve doesn’t give indie games away for free. The $10 lost on an indie game sale that doesn’t happen is money not going into Valve’s pocket, same as the developer. It doesn’t affect Valve as much, but it does still affect them. It is in their best interest to optimize the recommendation algorithm because it will make them more revenue.

>Timmy Tencent

Epic ledditor i see. Well, just so you know epic was developing pc games after they were done with gears 3 so they were back on the secene in 2011 already.

Like it or not, just how valve killed retail and physical copies now tim will kill valve cut. You can't stop the future crybaby,

you are right i do not know what i am thinking. oh wait i was thinking about the .02 cents i get per shill! EPIC RULES ANYONE WHO USES STEAM IS A BRAINLESS DRONE

It has a lot of features I like, I just don't like DRM.

>It is in their best interest to optimize the recommendation algorithm because it will make them more revenue.
That's not what is being complained about here. If Valve truly optimized their algorithm to maximize sales then indies would see almost no exposure on the platform whatsoever because, let's be honest here, big budget mainstream games are vastly more popular than indies and Valve makes more money from those. These devs are merely complaining that they personally are not seeing sales, not that Valve is not seeing sales. The fact that nobody really cares much about their games is incomprehensible to them but it's probably the reality here. Maybe their game isn't objectively crap but if it's mediocre pixel platformer #1652624 then it may as well be because people will be about as interested in buying it as they would if it was crap. Even if there is something unique about your game if it's not as fun as generic big budget third person action adventure #37645 then 999 times out of 1000 you are still going to lose because people prefer that over unique and indie. They are blaming Valve for shit that isn't Valve's fault. Valve can't change the personal preferences of the market and why the fuck should they? I don't want Valve in the social engineering business and that is what most of these whining devs are basically asking for.

This. It's less that people are fans of Steam itself, and rather that users of it and other stores hate Epic for strongarming their way into becoming the new big player in town.

Just imagine how people would be reacting to the EGS if Epic decided to compete by actually giving people a choice in what store to use but also actually offering better prices and features, then you'dn bet your ass that there would be nowhere near as big of a hatedom towards Epic as we're having now. And that's when I'd actually start taking the Epicfags calling everybody complaining about EGS Steamdrones seriously, because then it would almost certainly only actual Steamdrones be left complaining.

Attached: 1568145740685.png (687x1241, 600K)

It's pretty great.
Anyone who comes up with issues is mostly nitpicking and just wanna hate on something that works and professional.

Just don't use those features. They're all browser-based anyway. Not like they're taking up space of memory.

>If Valve truly optimized their algorithm to maximize sales then indies would see almost no exposure on the platform whatsoever because, let's be honest here, big budget mainstream games are vastly more popular than indies and Valve makes more money from those.
Incorrect. If Valve truly optimized the algorithm, it would tend to not show AAA games, because there's no point in using a discoverability algorithm to introduce people to the products they know about. And honestly, that's what the front page is for.

I don't need to be recommended Call of Duty. I am aware of Call of Duty. Everyone is aware of Call of Duty. If a tool for finding games similar to a niche game is recommending me Call of Duty, it has failed. It should be helping me to discover games I WOULDN'T find by typing them into the search bar. The people who want to buy Call of Duty are going to find, and buy, Call of Duty, without any help. I would venture to say that there are literally no customers who buy Call of Duty only after having it recommended to them because it is similar to other games they played on Steam and they didn't know of it.

So developing a tool to show people Call of Duty is a waste of money. It's a waste of money because it's not generating new revenue. But developing a tool to show people (who would enjoy it) Vanquish? Maybe. Developing a tool to show people (who would enjoy it) Ion Fury? Definitely. You generate sales by showing people the stuff they didn't know they wanted to buy until they saw it. That's what the algorithm should do. It's not perfect, of course, and it never will be, and you're right that indie devs live in a bubble world where their game is something everyone wants to play and the only reason they've made no money is a lack of exposure, but the core argument still stands. Valve's whole "job" is getting games in front of the people who want to buy them, but wouldn't have bought them otherwise. They make their money by doing that.

this. i don't care too shits about gaben. i just hate the epic shitpost. its getting sony and smash levels of bad at times.honestly i do not mind epic shill threads if they were: OY lads based uncle tim gave us a new free game! let's talk about the game!

valve needs to learn how to start judging my anime pedo games equally. it pisses me off that actual quality developers who care get shit on by valve and never have their calls returned, while hundreds of shit anime naked schoolgirl games get through no problem.

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I have only one problem with Steam and it's that they rejected Rance.

The algorithm's purpose is not to expose under the radar titles. It's not to promote the indie scene. It's not to promote progressive gaming. It's not to do any of that shit at all. It's purpose is nothing more than recommending titles to you based on their popularity and how similar they are to shit you've already played, i.e. shit you are likely to pay for. That's going to result in recommending well known titles. That's not a fault in the algorithm, it's it doing exactly what it's supposed to do. Valve has no idea what the fuck you know and don't know and expecting them to is ridiculous. Also, there's a difference between being aware of the existence of the Call of Duty franchise and knowing a particular Call of Duty title is available at a particular price. Plenty of the market, maybe even the majority, doesn't really have any idea when major titles are released until they happen to see it's available in a store. Not everyone is a die hard fan that counts down the days to the release. Even for the big franchises like Call of Duty. And I'm sure there's a weighting system at work anyway where games that are routinely ignored in recommendation lists are less likely to be recommended in the future.

...

>It's purpose is nothing more than recommending titles to you based on their popularity and how similar they are to shit you've already played, i.e. shit you are likely to pay for.
It's purpose, from Valve's point of view, is to recommend games you are likely to buy only because you saw them in the algorithm. I mean, that should be obvious on the face of it: if they're spending labor resources, and thus money, on developing the tool, the tool should be generating revenue. Its job is to generate additional revenue.

It doesn't make a lot of sense to spend resources developing a tool whose only purpose is to say "you might want to buy X" when you were already going to buy X. That's just bad business. It's not increasing sales, for Steam as a store, to do that.

You're right, there are other factors at play. For example, just because you are aware of Call of Duty doesn't mean you are aware that it's on sale for 60% off right now. Or that it just released some new DLC expansion (does CoD even do that anymore?) Those are obviously also pieces of information Valve wants to put in front of you. But, and I think this is the point you're missing, I'm not arguing that Valve has a moral obligation to the "indie scene" or whatever, I as a customer want to be shown games that I do not know about yet, and Valve wants to show me games I will want to buy.

Again, refer back to
12 games at the top of the "similar to" page for Assault Spy, and fucking five of them I ALREADY OWN, and the 6th is on my Wishlist. Is that good use of the real estate? Never mind what indie dev has their butthurt dreams crushed, if there is a game out there that I might like which is similar to Assault Spy, and I am actively looking for games similar to Assault Spy to play, shouldn't that game be put in front of me before a game I've already fucking purchased? What game might I buy that I'm not seeing because of that failure of the algo?

Continuing this train of thought, there's a game in my Wishlist called Hippocampus. It looks pretty cool from the trailer, like a stylish action platformer thing. Very similar to Assault Spy. Definitely a low-budget indie jank title and probably not for everyone, but for me as a customer, something I am very likely to spend money on when I can.

That game has had a Steam page since at least May of this year (since that's the first forum post) but I didn't hear about it until like 2 weeks ago. I don't even know how I found it, because it's not showing up on any of the recommended pages that I regularly use to check out what new stylish action games are coming. That, from my perspective AS A CUSTOMER, is a complete failure of the algorithm. I would have loved to hear about that game, I would have loved to be exposed to it. If the algorithm is doing its job properly, then I, as a customer who would want to buy this game, would have been made aware of it. That way, Valve can take my money. Yes, from the perspective of the guy developing Hippocampus, it's obviously frustrating when people don't know about your game, but I'm not frustrated for him, I'm frustrated for me. For MONTHS of regular checking that game didn't show up any place where it reasonably ought to have.

What other games am I missing? What other indie stylish action titles am I not being made aware of because Valve wants to let me know once again that DMC5, a game I bought day 1 and got all the DLC for and logged a shitload of hours in, is out and similar to some niche title I played? I don't need to know that. I have DMC5. I'm aware of DMC5. What I don't want to miss is some hidden gem that scratches my particular stylish action itch. That's what I want the algorithm to show me.

>I as a customer want to be shown games that I do not know about yet
I don't know how you expect Valve to develop an algorithm that can read your mind. They don't know what you know and don't know. They don't know what you once knew but have forgotten and would like to be reminded of. They don't know what you once knew but have forgotten and don't want to be reminded of. They don't know what you know and haven't forgotten but just aren't interested in. This shit is nowhere near as simple as you are making it out to be. "Just tell me what I don't know!" Well, the obvious answer to that is "We don't know what you don't know."
>fucking five of them I ALREADY OWN
Valve has never recommended to me I buy a game I already own unless they don't know I already own it and I can't fault them for not knowing that.

Who uses Steam to find out about new games? I just follow a couple indie/gaming blogs that report on upcoming shit and wishlist based on that.

i occasionally use one of those new methods they put up. The steam labs search i think. i found one or two games i liked.

user, look at the screenshot. It says right there "in Library" on 5 of the titles and the top of the page and "On Wishlist" on the 6th. I don't fault Valve for not knowing that I have DMC3 on emulator, that's a fair recommendation, I'm not counting that, but the rest? That's ridiculous. No reason for that.

Especially when there are games
that it isn't showing me, and that I found out about through unrelated means, which would have been PERFECT recommendations based on their similarity to the titles in question and which I legitimately had not heard of. Instead of showing me those titles, it shows me titles I literally already have and it knows that I have. Routinely. For months on end.

>This shit is nowhere near as simple as you are making it out to be
Good thing they have a team of professional engineers developing it and advancing the technology that works behind the scenes to make it happen, then. Why am I the bad guy for calling out the places where the algorithm faltered? They obviously want it to work in the "magical" way I'm describing, it's why they hired people to develop the algorithm and actively continue developing it in the first place.

I think we kind of take for granted the things it gave us first that no other place did. It let us make our own profiles very freely with any pic we wanted, create our own groups and chatrooms in the same way before it was very easy to do that elsewhere and other great community features that were built up.

Now its not so amazing, but there was a time when Steam was releasing cool things like Workshop that made modding a game alot easier, and the ability to trade TF2 hats for items in other games felt kind of awesome at the time and really got ahold of my imagination.

>[Deleted]

>user, look at the screenshot.
That doesn't look like the recommendation thing, that just looks like you are searching by tag. The recommendation system is not the same thing as the search engine. I have my problems with the search engine and it's lack of features and user controls but I don't really care it returns things I already own. There should be an option to omit things you already own, maybe even make it the default behavior, but I think of a search engine as a general tool where it's usefulness should have more to do with the ability of its user to utilize it than some behind the scenes fiddling with results.
>They obviously want it to work in the "magical" way I'm describing, it's why they hired people to develop the algorithm and actively continue developing it in the first place.
No, they don't. Nobody there wants the algorithm to read your mind because nobody there thinks that's possible. All it can do is analyze your behavior on the platform and compare that to other users and that's exactly what it does. There's no way for Valve to develop an algorithm that can make subjective calls about whether an obscure title is shit or niche, that's up to the users, and I would prefer their recommendation system doesn't recommend random shitty games and turns its users into test subjects.

>Are they free to release their game on other storefronts
yes
>or do they need to rebuild their game to do it becaue steamworks does not function outside of steam
Yes. Those things aren't mutually exclusive
>The only reason sekior is not on battlenet is the fact that they would need to change a lot of things for it to work.
No? Steamworks isn't that ingrained into Sekiro, or most games. There's a reason it's so easy to crack.
> Even big publisher is not going to do that
Grim Dawn. Grim Dawn sells on Steam and GOG. For a while, the GOG and Steam versions used different servers, but that's no longer the case.
Destiny 2. They jumped ship from the dying b.net client over to Steam. That there's other fuckery going on is on them and how they're doing it. They want to detach themselves completely from battle.net.

Demos are linked from the main games' page. Things like being able to use your demo save in the full game aren't a Steam problem, it's a dev problem.

>That doesn't look like the recommendation thing, that just looks like you are searching by tag
It's what you get if you click "see more" on the 3 games in the Similar To box on a game's store page. That's why it says at the top "the tags customers have most frequently applied to Assault Spy", because that's how it generates those recommendations.

>Nobody there wants the algorithm to read your mind because nobody there thinks that's possible. All it can do is analyze your behavior on the platform and compare that to other users and that's exactly what it does.
That is mind-reading, essentially, because the human brain is a fairly predictable machine. Haven't you ever heard the stories about Target's recommender algorithm identifying teenage girls as pregnant before their parents find out? It's a thing that happens.

The cool thing is that the Steam Labs recommender and search functions are an improvement over the existing ones, work is still being done on it. The new Steam Search lets you filter out wishlisted and owned titles. The recommender has a "niche-ness" slider, which is also cool. The real problem it suffers from is that the tagging system in place is pretty lackluster; filter to remove the tag "2D" and 2D games don't go away. "Action" as a genre includes like 90% of games. There are problems like that, where user-only tagging isn't doing a great job of optimizing, and when the primary means of filtering is by tagging, it runs into problems.

They also are starting to use tools, in the new recommender, that just scrape user libraries, and say "people who own the games you own also own these games", regardless of tags. They could probably incorporate the review scores you've given as well. That data matters a lot more than tag similarity when tagging is a pretty sloppy system.

It's maybe a Steamworks problem. If Steamworks had the tools in place that XBLA had, where you could flag a "demo endpoint" and Steam was able to let you download the full game in demo-format and interrupt it in that way, devs would do it. "Save Transfer" wasn't the XBLA magic, it was the fact that a single piece of software (the game) could be configured to operate in "demo mode" with integrated in-game purchase to upgrade to the full software, sort of like how most software works. You went to the store page, and right next to the "buy" link was a "try" link, which downloaded and installed the full game, and all that it did was cause the game to fail the demo endpoint flag and bring up the dev's nag screen, whereupon a "yes" engaged a quick purchase and kept the game running.

That's kind of a foreign concept to how game authorization works and the tools need to enable it to happen.

It's a shame Steamworks doesn't facilitate that is what I'm saying.

I pay for so few games nowadays. The chat update they shipped recently is one of the only reasons I still use it. I have less problems with it than discord, also I play some of valve’s first party games still. The storefront is a fucking mess. I just keep my eyes out for games people are talking about and then I pirate them. I usually only buy multiplayer games, last one I got was insurgency sandstorm.

>devs choose steam to use tools that does not allowe them to sell their games outside of steam
>devs choose epic to sell their game only on epic for one year and then everywhere else with no strings attached in terms of additional costs.

I wonder, which is more pro-competitive and therefore more pro-consumer

the one where actual facts are used and not in your alternate universe example

>That is mind-reading, essentially, because the human brain is a fairly predictable machine.
Now you are just being stupid. It's observing behavior, nothing more. Behavior alone is not much help in figuring out what's going on in someone's head and humans are far from being predictable, You're just one of those "Everyone is a sheep" snobs.
>Haven't you ever heard the stories about Target's recommender algorithm identifying teenage girls as pregnant before their parents find out?
Target remembering the teenage girl looked up birth control on their site is hardly ingenious mind reading or advanced algorithms at work.
>The cool thing is that the Steam Labs recommender and search functions are an improvement over the existing ones
You mean the new system which basically throws out everything for recommendation consideration except for user behavior? You think that is going to result in more obscure hidden gems being found? I doubt it. It's just going to mean you no longer have recommendation based on individual game basis but a composite of all games. It's not more likely to give you hidden gems, just more likely to make useful recommendations. In theory, at least.

You are too young to remember, but steam had a few competitors before. And they were all killed by agreements between big publishers and steam. Other storefronts were better and even wanted to keep our ownership on pc games such as stardock. But they were killed of due to the fact that steam required steam drm for 4 years of it existence as a store essentially refusing other storefronts to compete. Keep on worshiping gaben zoomer, but people old enough to remember what valve did to pc gaming will not stand your bullshit

let me guess. Adults prefer tims DRM. alright Chang, guess i am a zoomer then *WINK*

Unlike epic games neither me nor my friends have recieved emails of random gooks hacking into our account so I say I like it.

It's awesome. Great set of tools, really convenient and great global community. Love almost everything about it.

I prefer being able to sell games that i "own"(not anymore). That's a wild thing for a zoomer, unimaginable in fact. I don't blame you were born in a world where steam already has close to full control over the market, but that is no longer the case and it's time for you to accept this

why did you come here and from where?
i'm extinguishing neurons just by reading your idiotic trash and fanfics. Stop

>selling games
oh so you are a poorfag who can only afford one game at a time and needs his gamestop trade in to help purchase his next game. checks out

You still haven't figured out half the pro-epic posters are pretending and are console only/Playstation players that hate pc and by extensions steam huh?
Judging from their incorrect use of Yea Forums speak and poor english they are also newfags or underage thirdworlders.

You do not own a game. If you did, it would be legal for you to distribute as many cracked copies of it as you want. If there is any legal restriction against you doing this then you don't actually own it, you just have permission to use it.

Are you all ready to get dabbed on?

youtube.com/watch?v=p8cy8U3z4qs

>When the Chinese try to rewrite history
>Again

Attached: 1515426269501.gif (357x479, 252K)

this, most games since the beginning of gaming have been like this. do you think it was actually legal to copy doom 2 on a bunch of floppys and pass them out "oldfags". No. the only difference between now and then is that corporations selling to steam have better control to stop you. Also if the Big 3 had it their way they would stop 2nd hand, Microsoft already proved that

youtube.com/watch?v=DMgfPU9y3yo
daily reminder steam drones are subhuman

That looks pretty sexy desu, love all the side panel stuff. The actual library for steam is fag central.

I dearly wish GOG and Steam would just suck each other's dicks already so I can use some of Steam's features I like on Galaxy.

No, i don't own copyrights of that game. I used to own the copy of it you faggot. And you know what i am talking about, you're just blind to it because of gaben sperm in your eyes
I came from here, how is digg or leddt or whatever you tourists use these days?
Living and walking cuck, and he's not even ashamed to admit it

>it's only gaben
weird how these people only seem to hate steam and not all platforms huh. user if you reply for this i want you to shit on every gaming platform who does not allow resell of digital games. if you do that i will apologize to you

I do shit on all of them, but steam is culprit behind this so i'm happy for anyone who is fucking with them for that. And since epic is making steamdrones and gaben mad, i'm going to support them just for the fun of that

>No, i don't own copyrights of that game. I used to own the copy of it
Then you don't own it you fucking retard, you only own a copy of it.

see you could not do it.

Not him but yes you do, you own that copy. If I bear a Ford truck I don't own ALL the ford trucks in the world. I own mine though. I can trash it if I want. Now with steam you own nothing.

It's got some good features like steamworks and proton but aside that it's just bloat (market, forums, everything aside reviews and the store itself)
basically it's the same shit as epic except a bit better but much more bloated
i just want to play my games not another pseudo social network

You own the physical disc, you don't own the data on it. That is intangible and falls under the purview of intellectual property, which you only hold a license to.

If I want to mod my game on my disc (not nowadays with draconian laws but originally in hte 90s) I can. I just cant distribute it.

If I want to mod my car I can, I just can't set up a dealership and say these shitty modifications I made are Ford's own designs because when they go wrong and the car breaks down, it hurts Ford's brand.

>I just cant distribute it.
So you don't own the data, like I said.

Not true, you can own something with limits on its use. You can own a gun in the USA, you cannot carry it in a school. You own a car, you cannot drive it on private property that isn't yours.

When did this retardation occur when people started to think that ownership means the right to do anything your heart desires with your own stuff. You have limits to EVERYTHING you own. It is still yours. If it is stolen, you can go to court and get the guy fined. If it is destroyed, you can sue them for damages. It is your property.

>You can own a gun in the USA, you cannot carry it in a school. You own a car, you cannot drive it on private property that isn't yours.
Both of these cases are infringements of others' property rights. Not the same thing at all.

They're alright. They have games I actually want to play

Attached: Copen's game.jpg (1265x729, 141K)

Just stop dude, you can't argue with cucks

It's not an issue of rights with a distributed piece of software though. It is an issue of branding (or should be, but devs want sharing banned to protect sales of course). I cannot mod a car, open a dealership and say this is how Ford's are made these days. I have to state it is full of aftermarket addons.

I cannot mod a game and ship it around the world and claim I am the dev.

Here is the litmus test for you. If you have a game on disc, can the dev come into your house to take it back?
>inb4 but muh house is not enterable without a warrant
Can they send a Cease Desist Playing letter that demands you can no longer play the game and the disc is useless from now on?

unfortunately I just did here: but you are right I am wasting my time.

Gunvolt ? It's that franchise when cute girls usually die ? This one is a spin off about shield guy ?

>I cannot mod a game and ship it around the world and claim I am the dev.
You can't mod a game and release the modded version if you don't. All you can do is distribute the mod - the part you made and implicitly own the IP rights to. You can't distribute the rest of the game, becauese you don't own it.
>Here is the litmus test for you. If you have a game on disc, can the dev come into your house to take it back?
This is the litmus test I also apply when making a purchase, but whether this means you "own" the game or not is purely colloquial and has zero legal relevance. The content is IP and what you bought is a license. That license might be permissive or it might not be, but it's still a license.

I use it to play TF2 and talk to people I play TF2 with and nothing else

Attached: 1550132389810.gif (344x400, 305K)

>It's that franchise when cute girls usually die
Yep
>This one is a spin off about shield guy?
yep

They still around and making games and also porting them to PC ? That's cool i suppose.

>port
not this one, it's a multiplat

Previously decent developers and game lovers turn into jewish video game retailer sjws.
I do have to thank them for helping me transition into becoming a full time pirate though.

What about Gunvolt 2 ?

It's the lesser of the evils around.

>All you can do is distribute the mod. You can't distribute the rest of the game, becauese you don't own it.
Yes, but this is an entirely different category, because you are duplicating something that is inherently duplicatable, which is data and files. It is an exact replica of the game in the digital era, meaning you are depriving a sale from the dev. But you can own/play/mod/break your own copy however you want.

In the era of discs though, there was no way to do this as you cannot magic a new disc out of thin air. If I could magic a car out of thin air, I would be banned from selling those too. If I had a star trek replicator, sure.

>but whether this means you "own" the game or not is purely colloquial and has zero legal relevance
No it is not, you own your discs, you do not own the digital copies. The line is fine but clear. See above. So no, it is not a license if it is a disc.

It's on Switch, but not PC, not yet. When they released the switch version of GV striker pack (collection containing GV 1 and 2), they also updated the steam version of GV1 and brought it more in line with the switch version, so there's hope GV2 ends up on steam sometime in the future

Well, i'm actually never played their games but i'm kinda glad they around and kicking.

do the majority of you remember buying games physically in boxes? did anyone have any issue with this system? did you have any issues with moving away from it? did you eventually embrace digital game libraries or are you still not okay with it?

the main reason i came to accept it was probably a thought along the lines of "well, at least steam is mega popular and i won't have to worry about them closing shop and losing all this money i spent" so personally seeing steam slowly fall by the wayside in terms of customer favor and overall popularity is not a good feeling because it re-opens that initial worry.

yeah. Shield guy Hitler here plays wicked fast, so he's a lot of fun, cant wait

Yeah, i heard that he is kinda a best part in gunvolt 2. Is it a prequel ?

>Yes, but this is an entirely different category, because you are duplicating something that is inherently duplicatable, which is data and files.
This is the point I made in . You do not own the data on the disc, just the disc. Owning the data would mean you have no restrictions on how you choose to use it. Because you do not own that data, you are granted a license to use it.
>But you can own/play/mod/break your own copy however you want.
On the rim of the disc of nearly every physical game you can read the terms of the license granted to you. Sometimes they even explicitly rule out reverse engineering, which may be necessary to mod it.
>So no, it is not a license if it is a disc.
The text printed onto your disc disagrees.

I still buy physical on console unless it's a game on sale for

>is it a prequel?
Honestly? Dunno. The setting of this one is really divorced from what was established in GV1 and 2, and yet his character and Lola's powers imply this one is a sequel to GV2
Also you heard right, copen's gameplay is maximum SPEED meets Megaman Battle network, check it out
youtube.com/watch?v=gROZNRf0gMM

Ha ha literal thot slayer.

>Is is good for vidya to have this place?
there wasn't any unified pc market before steam (even considering steam sucked absolute shit and was just drm for half-life 2 on release), it's far too convenient and has too many features to really be ignored
>Was it a mistake to have a place that promotes early access
ignoring the leading present in the question there's nothing intrinsically wrong with early-access, it's up to the developer to not fuck up with things like killing floor 2 shoving lootboxes and a trade api into the game before it was even finished
>a place where you don't really own the games?
legally speaking you have never owned your games, ever, it doesn't matter if you had a cartridge or disk and could resale it, if they could have controlled your physical media and your ability to resale your copy they would have done so

>You do not own the data on the disc, just the disc.
You own YOUR data. If you did not then you could theoretically get a Cease And Desist letter from the dev. The can tell you to play fribee with your disk, but they can't tell you to not run the software.

> If you did not then you could theoretically get a Cease And Desist letter from the dev.
Well no, that would not be part of the terms of the license you were sold. You have to violate the terms of the license for it to be revoked, which would be when you are not legally permitted to use the software any more. That's the point of a license agreement.

>Well no, that would not be part of the terms of the license you were sold
exactly, and no such terms exist, so if you buy a disk you get to play that dic forever. Is Bethesda allowed to tell me I am not allowed to play skyrim at 3am? No, I own that game disc and its data. Steam copies are a differnt matter.

in the hellscape of possible realities, steam is the best out of the innumerable alternatives

>exactly, and no such terms exist
Like I said several times, the terms exist and are printed on the disc as well as the case it comes in.
>Is Bethesda allowed to tell me I am not allowed to play skyrim at 3am
They would be if that's what they told you when you made the purchase.

>What do you anons actually think of Steam?
it's ok i guess
>Is is good for vidya to have this place?
eh
>Was it a mistake
yeah

>Was it a mistake
>yeah
post age

18
i don't know how that's relevant, i just think gog just have a better idea of what a digital game store should be. no drm and all the online features and friends and whatever are optional
and also steam is why every big publisher now has its own storefront with its own client that you have to install, and all of these clients made people make many absolutely useless clients which just launch your other clients and it's all just a big headache

t. EGS bugman

the filter hasn't been in place long enough for devs takeign a game in a bad direction to tell and there hasn't been a high profile ea game recently that kicked off, so we can't see if they are constitution that as a review bomb yet, the most recent game to do an oopsie was ion fury where everyone who could refund did and a fuckload of negative reviews came in from people, if it wasn't for the refunds with no new purchases I don't think they would have reneged on the censorship.

bethesda I don't think is launching first party on steam anymore so I doubt we will see their great non patch patches and most of the games that slip the microtransactions in post launch were not on steam in the first place.

I am keeping a watch on what they constitute a review bomb though, because this is going to trigger a shit fit of epic proportions if they call patching in micro or fucking the games balance a review bomb.

>he was born in 2000
obviously, kiddie. Dont involve yourself in discussions you have no idea about

after Gog, it's the lesser evil

someone could be born in 1987 and play on consoles exclusively, so he won't know anything about pc gaming including steam
i bet you haven't even read my post you shitposter
also i was born in 2001, fuck you

So don't use the social networking features? I haven't and I'm perfectly fine. Stop whining about nothing jeez.

Attached: e88aee.png (509x411, 18K)

There needs to be some quality control. games that are obviously trash asset flips should never make it onto the store, but they do.