Filtering out the noise and marketing bullshit:
"We are really trying to get into the Chinese market, this is why we made a lootbox mobile game that we pretend is a desktop trading cards game. We are also worried about WeGame on that market, so we were desperate enough to partner with a local company. Jokes on them though, our client code is so bad, they have no intellectual property to steal from us!
Also, since amazon went into the streaming market and even Google is trying to pretend YouTube is a viable platform for it, we are half-decided to make something there, but only if we find a way to determine if Twitch is really making a ton of money. Then we may not abandon Steam TV like we did the broadcasting feature and our hardware stuff. (Do you guys even remember when we announced Steam Machines? We hope not, we are kinda banking on our users having the memory of a proverbial goldfish, this is how the CS:GO market is still thriving, after all.)"
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Were Steam Machines really that popular? As I remember people just laughed at how overpriced they were, for a prebult with Steam OS.
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No, it took years to sell the first batch and they never even made most of the promised configs due to zero interest. It was a laughingstock and Valve pretends it never happened. They still sometimes put some jolt into Steam OS to make its corpse twitch a bit so they are able to say they did not abandon Linux gaming, but that is just barely more than they did with the also-deceased Steam Link. The only gimmick they apparently managed to turn into something working was their controller.
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Steam Machines weren't popular but they were created in response to MS possibly locking down Windows with Win 10 release. Steam was worried how that might severely impact their business and started creating steam machines as a response. The idea was they'd offer an alternative open source solution if you didn't want to be stuck in a Windows gaming environment. It ended up not being necessary so they dropped production. I imagine if MS started talking about locking down windows again then Steam would look towards Steam machines again.
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huge: discoverability, i literally crave for those things.
-maybe- great: Steam China
great: library update (what's the "chat technology"?)
uhm: events and tv
grrreat: gif on mobile, might look kinda meh, but imo still a great news
donno/don't use: Trusted Matchmaking
why? : PC Cafe
thank you: Fffyantastic-o
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PC Café because China. China is a big enough market alone to make many Western game publishers totally whore themselves out so they can sell there. Especially lootbox games, since Chinese love to gamble (it is not a stereotype, it is the hard truth), so the local terrible shoddy copycat games make a ridiculous amounts of money; they hope hat giving them some quality code means even more money, even if they have to divide the earnings with a local company due to laws.
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when i've read "Steam China" first impression was "you're late". i really don't know, thou. I mean, might be not enough whore yourself.
plus, i've seen China coming to Steam, lately ...not the opposite :D
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Well it does in a way because Epic Store just got checked. All the publishers who are announcing their next games won't be available on Steam but will be on Epic, are having strategies meetings right now to find out how to grovel back to Steam if they make the China deal.
China's a huge market that's verrrry hard to tap into and they all want in so it might make a difference for the rest of us.
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40% of Epic is owned by Tencent. Considering Tencent's place on the Chinese gaming market, I would hazard that Epic will be much sooner in China with more favourable position than Valve.
After all, they only need to sell that other 11% and spread their legs wide, like Riot Games did. It is rather easy for a corporation.
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Most games in Epic store are region locked in China.I guess Tecent is unwilling to see another platform get involved in competition.Its own Wegame is already there.
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Eh... so apart from Steam China now officially being a thing, and the PC Cafe being new-ish, how is this any different from their plans in 2018 ?
Maybe the steam library changes will be worth it. If they somehow manage to get it right instead of half-assing their way through like they normally do.
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Steam PC Cafe Program
10 year too late, but there wasn't much on Steam 10 years earlier. Hm....
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The important thing here is "new".
Steam already has a Cyber Café progam.
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The Cyber Cafe program was a nightmare when it started, and really quite expensive. It got better as Steam got better though.
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pc cafe, like those places that used to exist for people who dont have comps or internet? the one's where u would pay to use a computer. those still exist????
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Library update? I mean, what could possibly go wrong?
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they forgot to announce how they plan on getting rid of greenlight/steamdirect/trash games and stop them from even reaching the store. 👍
Steam Chat: We're going to ship a new Steam Chat mobile app, so you can share your favorite GIFs with your friends while on the go.
good, i need this 😁
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We continued to work on our disaster recovery plan so Steam doesn't go under if our main data center is hit by a meteorite.
I like to hear this.
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cool but it is likely that none of these changes will keep AAA publishers on your platform, valve, and without those games slowly but surely the people will leave too
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So, marketing fluff aside, it's the usual stuff nobody asked for, that they hastily put together in their spare time to pretend they're actually earning their wages:
- a new algorithm that will likely make the existing broken ones, as well as the useless discovery queue, shine by comparison;
- a library update that, at best, won't break more stuff than it
fixestries to fix - if they even DO try to fix stuff; - a new Steam Chat mobile (as a separate app?) that, while long awaited, they'll
probablysurely bork in one way or another; - new anti-cheating measures that cheaters will still happily keep ignoring.
And if, by chance, the stars align correctly, and they DO end up doing something really useful, it will be too little, too late.
On top of that, Valve is hungry and wants to steal a slice or two of the streaming cake off Twitch's hands, without even knowing how big it is, or if it tastes good.
Can't wait to see how spectacularly -or miserably- they'll fail.
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Nice read, thanks for the heads up.
Also, if you click on the apply for a job link at the bottom of the article you will get nostalgic seeing the first sentence... "We make games, Steam, and hardware. Join us."
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They really should replace it with "We make paid textures, lootboxes, Steam, and have our brand on a controller. Join us, because we make more money per employee than Apple. Yes, fucking Apple."
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Oh boy, you made it sound more awful with that "we make more money per employee than Apple" part. The crappy part is that they are working on games for some time, not just recently as many articles claim, but I guess they are experimenting way too much to come out with the next best thing.
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[quote] "Steam Library Update: Some long awaited changes to the Steam Client will ship, including a reworked Steam Library, built on top of the technology we shipped in Steam Chat." [/quote]
Well... I hope the library page remains the fastest loading page in the Steam desktop application... although I doubt it, as Steam chat has log-in issues every single time I launch Steam since its new design came out... I can't load almost any Steam page except the Library and Badges page if I don't open up the chat window. I really hope they do not f*** it up...
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Link
Most of the post is geared to reviewing what valve has accomplished with it's platform in 2018, but the bottom portion details some of what is planned for 2019.
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