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I'm ever more annoyed with Steam
I still think it is effectively the best possible version of a mainstream game platform that can realistically exist under current conditions and I think it is better that it exists than if it didn't. In particular their desire to not be reliant on Windows means the Linux gaming is in significantly better place than it would have been otherwise. They simply constantly remind me how low absolute bar the best possible version of the worst possible kind of game store platform is.
My non exhaustive list of problems in no particular order is
- Inability to filter by addtional EULA/DRM/account needed. Steam is already about all of what I am willing to tolerate. Not letting me hide these products is only wasting my time.
- Review system heavily biases towards positive and kills nuance.
- Inability to turn off game updates. For me personally this is the single biggest problem I have with the platform
- Related is inability to go back to previous game version.
- Refund window is a bad joke. For some kinds of games it is fine, for others it does not even allow to get out of tutorial. Sadly it is still better than a lot of other platforms
- I'm seeing more helpful recommendation features that are not possible to turn off - Calendar
- The wishlist/sale feature is extremely effective in enticing impulse purchases. Features that would limit this are of course not implemented. For example setting wishlist alerts only for below a certain price
YSK, this is developer dependant, some games allow it, others don't. Paradox games for example allow you to walk back to previous versions
Well kinda. It's not just a simple "allow older versions" checkbox. Some developers upload old versions as "beta" versions. Then the steam client allows you to opt in to a beta version. It's a good workaround, but it's a workaround nonetheless.
Uh, didn’t know that. Always assumed it was a normal versioning system
For the technically inclined, you can downgrade most games using depotdownloader and goldberg emulator. This assumes the developer hasn't blocked downloading old manifests from steam, and that there's no real drm (goldberg emulator shims steam specific APIs so you can launch games without steam).
You can do this without either of those; you can simply use the
download_depotcommand in the built-in Steam console and run it (with a bit of file fiddling). This gives you all the normal Steam features, even online multiplayer works I believe.I didn't know about the steam console, that's neat! The goldberg bit allows you to decouple the game from steam because, as others have pointed out, otherwise you have to do a song and dance to keep steam from updating it (remembering to always switch to offline mode before launching it).
It's also nice when you just want multiple copies of the same game at the same time (I.e. Vanilla vs modded, or running multiple copies with drastically different mods).
Ultimately, it depends on your use-case for it. Goldberg emu is awesome and super useful if you want to keep a working snapshot of the game forever.
However, if you primarily use the latest version and want to spin up old versions now and then while leveraging full Steam functionality, you can do this without offline mode. The modern copy of the game keeps the app manifest updated, which is what Steam uses to determine whether the installation is outdated.
7 Days to Die lets you walk back the major point releases to over a decade ago.
I’d go out on a limb and say that an overwhelming number of gamers are not up to the task of writing nuanced reviews of games. You couldn’t add ‘nuance’ to the system even if you wanted to because the people writing the content just can’t do it. It’s also a fundamental problem with review systems in general that the only people who are going to write a review will be people who feel strongly about a game. The bar for “I hate this game so much that I care enough to write a negative review” is much higher than the “I love this game so much that I care enough to write a review”. Every review system of steam’s size is gonna fall into the 500 assholes trap.
Games journalism is bad, but there’s gonna be a much higher ROI from finding a few select reviewers that you respect, and trusting their opinions. That and getting recommendations from friends/family.
The system does have nuance,it's just not enabled by default.
Filter the reviews. My filter is:
If you see playtime has gone up since time of review, that's a good sign. If it hasn't, it's not.
It elimates the rage reviews that happen from users with 2000 hours when a developer makes a mildly controversial update. It insures somebody got past the intro, which is often garbage or the best part of the game. It eliminates a ton of 'played for 6 minutes then thumbs upped'.
Its like finding the three star reviews; When most people wouldn't bother reviewing something middling, these people go out of their way to put in a lot of effort to say 'its fine I guess.'
This is a good idea. Can you set it so that it pulls those up all the time, or do you have to manually filter each time you go to a new game?
Personally, I'd love if Steam could look at what I've played and for how long, match that to other users with similar profiles, then give me a "Reviewers Like You" score composed primarily of their thoughts on a given game, rather than just a full aggregate of everyone. I feel like this would help add nuance to their current system as well.
I'm sure somebody modded the Steam UI to do so, but best I can tell, no it doesn't persist.
So I'd written up a comment about how the conversations around the review system reminded me of a recent game that had some... interesting reviews, and I had a small epiphany about why Steam likely weighs positive reviews a bit more.
Basically, we're kind of hardwired to vent about stuff we don't like. It's not just gaming, we're more likely to rant about a bad day at work than talk about a regular or above-average day. Unless something exceptionally good happens, typically bad stuff will stand out in our minds more.
In the case of games, players who fall in love with a game will sing its praises and find excuses to rave about it, but not many games will evoke that sort of passion on a wider level. Players who merely like or feel content with a game aren't as likely to have much to say.
In comparison, it's a lot easier to be irritated by a game's issues, and a review is a great space to complain.
To add to that, leaving a review requires buying a game. For the most part that's good since it limits review bombing, but it also acts as the first "gate" to the bias by limiting it to people with an interest in the game. For more niche genres, the players are more likely to be passionate, so reviews can lean in either direction for valid reasons. For more broadly appealing genres, though, they'll need more motivation to leave a review. And as I said above, we have an easier time complaining than just saying something's is alright.
Also, sometimes people leave negative reviews for really dumb and petty reasons. And people are unlikely to ever change a negative review, as many bad reviews come after reaching a final straw that causes them to drop the game entirely. Even if the issues that they complained about are fixed, they're unlikely to return. This is why Steam specifically mentions "overall" versus "recent" reviews, as updates can bring out large waves of bad reviews as people quit. Satisfied and content players likely won't feel compelled to leave a new review on every update.
Altogether, review systems are just really complicated to keep balanced and fair, let alone nuanced. There's a reason other storefronts dropped them entirely. Steam does a pretty good job all things considered.
By the way, if anyone's curious about the game that brought on this revelation (spoilering because it's tangential and also has racist and political themes):
It was a game released last month called Plantation Manager. Title says it all. You play as a white guy with a big hat who whips black men to make them more productive. Initially all the reviews were positive, because you need to own a game on Steam to leave a review and obviously non-racists didn't want to pay money to people behind such a project, while racists are always eager to sing the praises of anything racist.
I became aware of the game's existence after it was updated to replace the black men with white women in bikinis (or maybe femboys, given other games by the same developer), and had the player kiss them instead of whip them. Obviously, the reviews tanked because all of the racists were very mad about being trolled, and racists are loud and vocal when they aren't being actively ragebaited by a massive troll of a developer. The devs were clearly having a lot of fun poking at bigots and getting them to froth at the mouth.
The developers have since had the game delisted from Steam since they felt they've "said what needed to be said" (though unfortunately guides apparently float around to get the original version running). But reading the reviews from angry bigots ranting about the updates made me keenly aware of just how much buying a game creates an immediate bias in reviews. After all, the only people who'd buy it in the first place were racists. All initial critique was external.
Most games won't have such an extreme bias in the reviews (or come from such a vocal group), but a bias does automatically exist on Steam reviews, for better or worse.
Moving on, I want to comment on this point:
Refund systems are also complicated, as even now, the 2 hour refund window causes issues for smaller indie devs. Several indie games can be completed under 2 hours, and there have been cases of developers leaving game development because of mass refunds despite the game getting good reviews. A friend active in the game development scene mentioned knowing multiple indie devs who had issues with "4chan memers" in particular bulk-refunding short and inexpensive games, and that it apparently caused issues for some due to the refunds being processed before they got paid for the initial sale.
While not many games on Steam are under 2 hours, there are a lot of indie games in the 2-5 hour range, so extending the refund window would increase refund abuse. It's tricky to balance since there are long games that would benefit from a longer refund window, but Steam just doesn't have a good way to measure that sort of thing. Newly launched games don't exactly have stats they can use as a reference, and asking developers about the game's length would obviously be abused since they want to avoid refunds. Really no clean solution, the two hour window is probably the best "sweet spot" available without analyzing every individual game on a case-by-case basis.
This.
You can order by “less than $10” and “less than $5” or so, but that’s manual, and you need to be looking at the list. I like your idea of allowing us to get notified when the sales fall below a certain price much better.
As someone playing on Apple Silicon, I’d like Valve to... have pity on us and improve our side of things? Please?
I'm sympathetic, but I don't expect it to ever happen. Ever.
Steam made a massive lift with WINE / Proton; they spend ungodly amounts of money, worked (AFAIK) politely and long-term with WINE's stewards, and were unafraid of playing the long game.
Getting Proton off the ground, to not just be viable, but good (to the point Microsoft is targeting SteamOS as their performance benchmark [0]), was treated as life-or-death because Microsoft had recently revealed "Look, we could run everything through the Microsoft store - we can charge tolls, or even leverage owning the OS, the store, and the competing platform to turn dominance in one (the OS) into dominance in another (game stores)". Valve knows how Microsoft loves to abuse being a monopoly, and saw the writing on the wall.
Apple will never (IMO) get a Proton equivalent because Apple is the same. Same notarization, same locked-by-default OS, same "Our way or the highway" attitide that spooked Valve to the tune of millions of dollars spent on Proton.
The hardware's nice, but Valve knows it's a trap, and a gilded cage that will not serve them long-term.
[0] Relatively clean link, with a source cited in-story, and Microsoft News shouldn't be too hard on MS: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/microsoft-targets-steamos-level-gaming-with-windows-11-overhaul/gm-GMA80B85E5
Same! I can't help but feel that proton built for macOS and Metal would absolutely kick ass. Base model Apple silicon processors pack quite a punch, and the pro/max processors are so crazy good.
The parts already exist, even. WINE works on Macs, DXVK/MoltenVK exist and are used by things like XivOnMac (more modern wrapper for Final Fantasy XIV than the official one)...and Apple even made the Game Porting Toolkit. If Valve gave a damn, they'd have Proton on MacOS.
I feel like Valve aren't pouring resources into Mac compatibility for the same reason that they are pouring it into Linux: Mac is yet another walled garden, subject to the whims of another corporation that Valve would have no control over. The whole reason for the push into Linux wasn't some kind of ethical stance, it was because Microsoft was flirting with making their gaming on their OS walled off (and thus either cutting steam out entirely or forcing them to bend to MS's demands), so Valve decided to hedge the bets for the future by going with the open-source compatibility
There's isthereanydeal.com for advanced wishlist management and notifications.
It automatically imports wishlist from steam and periodically updates it.
There's probably something in the works once FEX really takes off. Also Gamehub had a MacOS beta if you're willing to put up with that, and I have to assume there are enough MacBook Neos in the wild for someone to get some sort of bridge working.
Valve is working on a Proton for ARM - although it's undoubtedly meant for Steam Frame. Maybe somehow-someway it can be used for Apple devices? Or allows development for such a thing? One can hope
I believe the current setup for the Mac side of things is to use Crossover. It's made by CodeWeavers who contribute to WINE and I've read that Valve contracted them to work on Proton for Linux. It's a bit of a pricy setup though as its a $75/yr subscription or a $500 lifetime subscription. Gamehub is a new workaround too. Andrew Tsai's channel does a great job of focusing on gaming on Mac and he's got a ton of useful videos: https://www.youtube.com/@Andytizer
Looks like a list of things that would just hurt their business. Do any other online stores, not just games stores, even implement such features?
That is the worst kind of games store part and they would enable more deliberate purchasing decisions of the consumer, yes.
Yes other stores do implement at least some of these features. No, they are not mainstream due to various reasons.
This reminds me of some old Youtube video by I think, Extra Credits, or I may be misremembering. In it they explained that game demos are not a thing because they would enable the buyers to see what they are buying. Though not in these words.
Yes we live in a society with the kind of user-platform power balance that enables that behaviour
Why would enabling updates hurt their business? I get if the game is an online-only MMO or something. Running an old version doesn't do anything for you and just means you might accidentally boot up the game to see an error for having an outdated client. But for most other things it doesn't seem reasonable to disallow opt-outs.
Because it’s development time and support time on something you don’t need mixed with people who will almost certainly run on an older version and then say something doesn’t work and the fix should be back ported.
Seems really easy to filter those out and auto reply with a message to update.
Given we've got another topic here talking about how FOSS tends to lead to death threats, i think you underestimate the toll it takes on people. Support is probably one of the hardest things about software, and having any extra noise in the already never ending supply of "my weird setup won't work" doesn't help.
I've never tested it, but if you set updates to only download on launch and only launch games using a third party launcher like playnite, would games still update?
Can you explain this in a little more detail?
Probably at least partially because they still just use a "Thumbs up/Thumbs down" system meaning that a lot of reviewers ends up hitting the thumbs up, and then leaving qualifiers in their reviews like "I like this game but you should know these things before picking it up: xxx" but then all you see on the store page is "very positive." Especially a problem for niche games where the player base is much more likely to rate a game positively because they are more invested in the health of the genre.
A star system or 1-10 rating system would probably allow for more accurate ratings.
I don't disagree, but here are some counter examples:
I think more could be done to get more nuanced information out of reviews but my point is that rather than more granularity in a single axis overall score, both platform support for nuance (more axes of information and fixing deterrence - and steam does at least attempt to mitigate brigades!) and a cultural desire to review accurately are necessary.
Assuming your niche player base is still being honest in the body of the review (because if they just never mention the game's issues, then there's no information to be had), as much as it pains me to say it, this might be a task where AI could actually be a good tool, allied with parsing tools capable of gleaning information from review bodies as they are added to the pool of reviews and some sort of iteratively refreshed index of "sentiment" counters that can be efficiently read and displayed with the game's summary...
You're certainly right about what you said, but at the same time; a 1-10 rating system may result in some users (or even the majority of users) only using a 1 or a 10 when they rate... but a binary system pretty much guarantees that they're putting either a 1 or a 10 (either recommend or don't recommend.)
Giving people the option for some nuance will allow at least some people to put in some effort when rating a game. I'm not an avid Letterbox user, but I know that they've had at least some success with giving users more freedom in rating movies.
I believe they still update. Steam will refuse to launch anything that isn't updated. The only workaround is if the game doesn't use steam drm, and you can launch the executable directly with steam not running. If it does use steam drm, launching the game will launch steam to confirm ownership and update it.
Playing offline will not update "required" updates.
True, unless the system already knows about an update. You can't just flip to offline mode to avoid installing an update that just showed up.
Hmm, good to know. I don't typically utilize this, but for about 12-18 months (2023-24), I played offline as a sort of experiment (I also rarely play online-requiring/multiplayer games). Racked up probably around a thousand hours of gametime (or more) that weren't charged to me - I have whole [small] games I finished with 100% achievements with zero play time. That being said, I'd usually go online once a week and update, but it is definitely feasible if you don't play games requiring a connection. (Unrelated to the topic, but it seems that offline play is now counted against your playtime.)
Given the origins of Steam launching with CS 1.6 (to much pushback during the beta) and HL2 after that, this would the absolute last thing I'd expect Valve to do with the platform aside from developers providing a workaround on their own via the beta functionality, as this is contrary to the principle of what they've built Steam for. I just don't expect them to provide it nicely when they can, even though syncing to a specific depot snapshot have been a thing for a while if you know how to use the debug console. More like begrudingly with finally renaming the beta section as "Game Versions & Betas" recently. Just like refunds, they have to be forced into it.
We just got versioning on the Steam Workshop this year, nearly 15 years after the Workshop launched.
You mean the updates in your library?
It's pretty straightforward to remove the "What's New" section if that's what you're referring to:
Don't add games to your Steam wishlist or turn off all email and push notifications. If you don't check the store page, you'll never notice when wishlist titles go on sale.
I guess I might understand a desire for games that are solo player to play on a specific version if you don't particularly like an update but it would likely be very inconvenient for both the devs and the players if it's a multiplayer game, no? Even as things are currently, version mismatch causes all sorts of annoyances. I think I like how mega crit handles their updates to slay the spire 2. The main branch gets fewer updates, but more stability if you're trying to play with your friends. The beta branch gets more frequent updates, but I've experienced minor annoyances like connection interruptions with friends or a fresh update weirdly means I can't start a new game with a friend or the game says it's up-to-date but it's not...I can't imagine the headache other game devs experience with bigger/more "live service" type games a la something like apex legends, LoL, or whatever. Even as I'm typing this, I'm not sure this is a steam issue? Aren't they just providing us a method to connect with a bunch of developers who then give us those choices? Or are we saying that steam needs to provide the devs more options in terms of supporting versioning? I guess I don't really know what it is like behind-the-scenes of what the devs can do to accomplish that in steam itself. I'm still developing my own game and haven't even looked at what the "upload your game to steam" work will entail. I guess I will find out someday (fingers crossed).
I don't agree with the refund window for much the same reasons that have already been cited in this thread more eloquently than I could put it (@CannabilisticApple, thank you for your comment, I enjoyed reading it). I might tend towards "It would be really nice if they gave you some sort of reminder notification in the steam app to finish a refund when your friend refunds a game you bought for them because it still requires you to finish requesting a refund AFTER your friend requests the refund." but that's really only because I've done the "oh dang I forgot to do that aaaand now it's past the two week period to refund it" which feels frustrating but is ultimately on me (and my adhd) A notification on the little bell in the upper right corner that says "Finish refunding your gift?" or something would be really nice :( but I can also imagine that the steam devs have their plates full with lots of other things and I'm under-estimating how much time would go into such implementation. An an aside to this whole point, I just recently suffered the "no refunds, all purchases final" nonsense that nintendo uses on their e-store. I literally thought of steam during that and was like, "steam would not have done this to me :(" haha
I don't know...I can imagine lots of "this would be nice to my super specific set of desires" but there are so many nuances in providing a storefront to so many different companies, right? It needs to be stable, it needs to provide all these specific tools, and they need to work for everyone on their super specific pc set up, and provide support to the devs and to the players who can't make xyz work, etc. Maybe I'm being overly generous but I think steam does a good job or at least makes a real effort to do a good job. I don't think I've read anywhere that they're overly greedy, that they make things overly difficult for companies/solo devs to share their work, etc. Maybe that's not reality and I'm just not in that sphere where those things would come up? I guess I'll keep browsing the comments to see if something like that pops up. Regardless, I think steam offers a lot more respect to my time and money than something like apple or microsoft or nintendo, etc. But maybe that's just the walled garden of my internet usage and when I finally dive into the "please let me share my game in your store" experience then my opinion will shift? Idk!
Sitting with my own comment a moment before I post, I do wonder if my positive opinion is also mostly positive because it is SO negative with other companies? Is this like, a hostage situation? (Is there a better phrase for this?) Maybe I only like them because other companies make me feel so much more disrespected? Then again, I think I have heard many times that people fear the day that Gaben is no longer calling the shots at steam and I think I really do just appreciate what we have right now before it's gone like so many other companies who fall down the rabbit hole of late-stage capitalism.
Wait, a last thought occurred to me before I post. I DID dislike when steam changed how their family sharing works. I think there were plenty of families that live apart or across borders and found themselves on the negative side of the updated experience a year or two ago. That wasn't very nice. But I also saw many folks admit that they really only used it to share games with their friends? And while there's an argument to be made for found family, media sharing as a customer right, corpo greed, etc. I can imagine that there was also plenty of people who were using the flexibility of that to take advantage of the system and/or the game devs and that sort of stuff just makes the system worse for the people who were using it with good intentions. (If there was more to this situation and I'm just ignorant, someone please feel free to correct me! I really didn't think about this too deeply and I certainly didn't go research it before writing this opinion.)