Wow, this is great news. I'm glad Steam isn't going to continue with their misguided plan of censoring games.
As for the trash, like the asset-flips and achievement games, that was always going to remain. But Valve leave themselves open to be able to remove them in the future, or provide a filter that would let us filter all that crap out.
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As for the trash, like the asset-flips and achievement games, that was always going to remain.
Then how come that Steam, itch.io and PlayStation 4 are the only non-mobile gaming platforms that have them? You cannot find any such no-effort trash on UPlay, Origin, GOG, Nintendo Switch, XBLA, or battle.net (it only has high-effort trash).
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I was referring specifically to Steam, and that such games were always going to remain on Steam.
I couldn't say why there are so many asset flips on PC. I would guess that it's much easier to develop and publish them on Steam and itch.io than to do so for consoles - which all have more rigorous approval processes - but this is also why there are so many more diverse non-trash games for PC than there are for any console. No console can come anywhere close to the PC in terms of exclusives, and console exclusives themselves are steadily diminishing in number. I have dozens of exclusive PS2, PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii games. I have maybe 10 PS4 games, 6 Wii U games, and didn't bother getting an Xbox One or Switch yet because I'd only get 1-2 games for each.
I was not aware that the PS4 also suffers from asset-flips. I think a better question is why the PS4 has them, while the other consoles do not? I think if you answer that, you'll also get the answer for why they plague Steam and itch.io.
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The same reason Steam has them. PS4's online store is highly automated so it costs little money and wages to maintain. They have no quality control over what indie games they let there, nor even the pricing policy; as long as they pay the hosting and patching fees, and the algorithm that deems them good enough to run on the system is greenlit, they can be there.
Steam is similar. The entire store is one big pile of scripts with little to no human workers behind it. Also, as long as someone pays the 100 USD fee to post a game there, they just let them upload anything.
Two systems with little human workforce, high percentage of cost cutting, and no quality checks.
GOG (and more or less Nintendo), on the other hand, has people who actually play the new and "in development" (=early access) games to check them for basic quality, performance, and possibilities to make some money. And while there are games with mediocre reviews, some with even bad ones, in general, the average player rating on the GOG catalogue seems to be several times higher than on Steam.
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I'm glad Steam isn't going to continue with their misguided plan of censoring games.
That remains to be seen. Something like "things that we decide are illegal" is quite vague. For example, it would be considered illegal to sell some adult games since Steam has no proper age gating. So the censorship will probably continue.
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I hope you're wrong about the censorship continuing, as the post seemed to suggest the opposite. But that is a very vague statement.
I think they unfortunately need to have that in there because the US Congress - in a misguided attempt to crash down on sexual trafficking / exploitation - recently passed a law that can hold digital platforms liable for any illegal content on those platforms. This resulted in some platforms, like Reddit and Craigslist, removing sections of their service, and other platforms, like Microsoft, releasing draconian sounding Terms of Service. And, unfortunately, this also seems to have resulted in sex trafficking / exploitation sites moving underground where they're harder for law enforcement to track and harder for families to find their missing loved ones, thus ultimately hurting the very people the law was meant to help.
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Hmm only 1 person that blacklisted me from the posts that I made in this thread ...hmmm interesting :D.
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It's getting harder and harder to find well curated blacklists.
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The point is I don't really care the last time I won a public GA was let me see : 21 june 2017 so irrelevant for me :)).
I don't really enter public GA anymore :D.
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How are those 2 related? The ones triggering about * on forums aren't the ones making GAs to begin with. And I do care because having thrice as much WL as BL makes me look like a leecher, just like circlejerking in some groups.
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Well you may have a point there.
I only wanted 100 BL because I like that round number :)).
And WL are meh for me I enter mostly group GA :P.
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Yeah I was also satisfied with 100 before the ratio became too bad once again.
WL are included in the Group giveaway page so I count them as the same :)
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I don't get it. Are you trying to accomplish something here?
Should I get blacklisted just for the simple fact that I comment? Am I missing something here? I'm genuinely curious.
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You got it, you will be blacklisted when you share an opinion that is not so popular or any opinion that contradicts other opinions, simple as that :(.
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We have an Steam Dev here.
Every game pointed by the community was Banned.
Coincidence?
Hihi
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Look, those who want quality control... I get you. But where does the line start and where does it end? What's a good game? Who says what's a good game? Who says what developer should be on here?
This would just lead to a bunch of shit hitting the fan at a regular basis.
Learn how to use Steam... seriously. I use Steam's store regularly and I barely get any trash thrown in my way. Mainly AAA games and solid indie titles. Mark the stuff that you don't like as "not interested". Do some basic legwork and then start complaining. Those that use the store properly and use the tools given to them will not have a huge amount of these issues. And seeing shit once in a while just comes with the territory of open marketplaces. Ebay, Amazon, literally any grocery store... Just because you're the consumer, doesn't mean you're always the victim. Use your brain, people.
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I could point out a dev (but I don't know their game) who already pushed out like TWENTY of the same super simplistic platformer where they only change the style / visuals of the game, while the game is exactly same as the others. They could really bombard their asses.
Also, what would be good for quality control?
- Someone from Valve checking for the most "controversial" or "problematic" tags if they are legit: nudity, gore, violence and such, so there would be a reason to:
- Completely hide certain tags. We can do that with 3? tags currently (my hidden tags are VR, Sport and Racing but Racing would hide GTA 5 as well for example)
- Permanently hide certain developers / publishers and their games
- Make that these hides apply to the whole store, not just recommendations.
It really would be to have a lowest bar where Valve just kicks off any new game (Like what is a minimum? In case a house, walls, windows, doors and roof wouldn't hurt. Some games don't reach that level.), but in general, more ways to curate my own f******n store would help, without need to rely on curators and whatnot. I just want a way to cut through the shit that they let on the client because they are busy masturbating somewhere and not caring about their platform or customers.
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Or conditional features. Call me shallow if you want, but personally I would love to see every single game on the store with 100-200+ reviews AND mixed ratings hidden. If I hear something good about them I can look them up directly to check, but I have so many games in so many categories that I don't want the mediocre ones.
Similarly, for example hide RPGMaker & mixed/worse would be an instant option I would use. There are good ones, but they are GOOD ones, not the mixed ones. I would have no problem tinkering with the filters for a day to make my own store better, or modify it after every few days. Worse than the seemingly endless shit, slutter and uninteresting games. genre selection or newly released sections are useless because the length of the lists :|
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Nah, you're right. There should be more options for customizing the storefront. But what they have now is also very good.
Best sellers and newest releases per tag.
Wishlisting
The "Not recommended" button
Popular new releases
Explore queue.
If you have heard about a game, you can just search for it. If you want to find new games, then tailor your discovery queue and you'll get good games or just flat out you can search for games through tags.
I'm always up for more options, don't get me wrong.
But you already have a lot of tools available. You can hide RPGMaker by hiding the tag. You can press "not interested" to influence the exploration queue and the front store-page. It takes only 2 or 3 queue runs to tailor the algorithm to understand what you like and don't like. I haven't seen an RPGMaker game on Steam in months.
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I don't know, just did a quick search and Steam considers Planescape Torment Remastered as a racing game along with Divinity Original Sin, and when I search for Story Rich RPG they both show up. So either the tagging is totally shagged. Also Pyre is said as "not relevant" because of my sports tag, but shows up when I look for other tags of it (great soundtrack visual novel indie) so it shows that store is not hiding ignored games. Also I can only ignore (from the recommendations and discovery queue) three tags, considering these problems.
Not interested button does nothing except preventing Steam actively promoting that game to you (on main page or recommendation on other games' store page. They still clog up any search, including already owned games. (Enhanced Steam has options to hide these, Steam why can't be assed?) ( TBH this change would be the smallest, but most effective, at least for me with over 7k marked as not interested)
A friend (let's name him, Fnord) gets constant barrage of boob-visual novels in his discovery queue despite of never have played one.
And regarding these - how do I hide uninteresting assetflip mediocre platformers? Platformer, indie, retro, adventure, what tag do I use for that?
Wishlisting is useless as it contributes bloody nothing to discovering titles, only through the (fucked) tag-system.
Exploration queue has superslow loading, said problem with Fnord's case and sometimes just randomly throws in abysmal games "to see if you're interested".
Popular new releases only works with ... popular, and new releases. Ones that one likely already hears about through other means. Finding good games shouldn't necessary mean that I'm only interested in the new ones, and the general lack of activity on their pages makes the algorithm push them down on any search, usually in favour of the popular, new, best-selling ones. And sadly despite of it's name, the discovery Q is also better to get an idea of the top stuff, not to really find something unique, or interesting.
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I don't know, just did a quick search and Steam considers Planescape Torment Remastered as a racing game along with Divinity Original Sin, and when I search for Story Rich RPG they both show up.
Sorry what? :D
It doesn't have Racing tags. Neither game has them. I checked the full list multiple times for both of them. Maybe you're looking at the right side where you just have your previously used tags? Neither's considered a racing game by Steam.
Pyre is about sports though. Gladitorial arena sports. Sure, sports isn't the prevalent theme, but the tag is more than correct.
Not interested button does nothing except preventing Steam actively promoting that game to you (on main page or recommendation on other games' store page. They still clog up any search, including already owned games.
I'll be honest, I don't know what you are expecting here. You want there to be one button that can basically just restrict any access to that game? Steam won't recommend the game and no matter what you do, you can't access the game? I don't know why you'd want this, but fair enough. As to owned games, I wholly agree with you. You can access all your owned game's store pages through the library, so this wouldn't be an issue overall. So, yeah, I agree with the owned games.
And regarding these - how do I hide uninteresting assetflip mediocre platformers? Platformer, indie, retro, adventure, what tag do I use for that?
Why do you insist on using the most broken feature on the storefront? Look, I don't know how FNord has the most irrelevant games displayed for him. It literally makes no sense. I would understand if it was a once in a while weird instance where the algorithm just veers off the line a bit and tries to steer itself. But literally going completely nuts like that? That sounds more like a mistake than anything. If Youtube started showing you beauty tips videos with beauty vlogger #30980529 in your recommended feed after watching heavy metal lyrics videos, then it'd be extremely screwed up. What you're describing to me sounds very exaggerated or it's a perfect example of something breaking so amazingly perfectly that its almost impossible. Could be either or. But I don't believe this to be the norm. I just flat out don't. There has to be some other force changing it. Either the user's not using the not recommended button, playing those games, looking those games up on the store or something else like it.
Popular new releases only works with ... popular, and new releases.
Well yeah and if you want not popular, not new releases then use the discovery queue. There are so many choices.
Look, overall, I guess the system has completely shit the bucket for you. I don't know how it could get so screwed up that you see tags that other people don't see and people getting recommendations are 100% separate from everything the user has previously done. The system has obviously not just failed you but as if intentionally made everything as awful and wrong as possible.
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I understand that we have the tools, but please, understand that the tools are broken.
How on earth can we compare the new releases LIST to the discovery queue where it lags, and loads 13 games at a time with full storefront. It's like forcing your to read the half page of each summary instead of going by the genre + title to see what catches your eye.
And really, importantly:
'll be honest, I don't know what you are expecting here. You want there to be one button that can basically just restrict any access to that game? Steam won't recommend the game and no matter what you do, you can't access the game?
I want this, in the client, because I'm a pleb noob who likes to use the client because I don't like the browser border and neither the fullscreen mode of my browser (but I wrote that part, so the " I don't know what you want" part is really uncalled for.)
It's unnatural that a script can do something quality of life that Valve can't and refuses to even address the issue, and people are still accepting the fact that this is normal.
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Again, they need to improve and add more options. I'm never against that.
But just to see, whether I'm genuinely wrong about how slow and cumbersome the discovery queue is, I'll run through 2 queue lists. One to see how long it took me to go through it normally (that includes looking through the screenshots and descriptions and reviews if the game looks interesting at a glance. Second one to see how many games I was interested in, not interested in and how many games were in line with what I've shown the algorithm as games that I like:
First run: (Includes the first loading time up until run out of games and complete the queue)
2 minutes 20 seconds. I looked through 3 pages in total, skipped 2 because they were F2P (The Darwin Project) and the other one I was unsure of overall and wanted the discovery queue to bring it up to me later. I added 5 games to my wishlist from there. Granted, haven't gone through the queue for a few months now. Might've gotten some easy wishlists there or something.
Second run:
Games that I was interested in based on the genre and added to wishlist: 3
Games that I was interested in based on the genre and didn't add to the wishlist: 1
Games that the queue's algorithm might think I was interested in, but being broad enough that it actually isn't: 3
Games that the queue's algorithm might think I was interested in, but I still wishlisted: 2
Games that I would never be interested in: 3
And the result is most definitely mixed. I think the presentation is fine. Going through the 12 games and looking through some of them in detail in 2 minutes and 20 seconds isn't bad. Pretty quick, in fact.
But the algorithm is definitely a bit weak. Only 4/12 were actually on point with the recommendations, with 5/12 being understandable for being on the list (though still not desired) and 3/12 being completely off.
Again, they should fix the filters and add more options. But what we currently have, I personally can't fault too much. Hopefully the situation gets better for you too though. The experiences you described me would literally make me stop using Steam altogether. Literally playing along the rules, using what Steam lets me use and still fucking you over like that just shows that while my experience might be overall fine, someone else's might be a total travesty.
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Steam is for me place to check games based on name and store them. Nothing more.
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Steam is a big company right? A revenue of Millions maybe Billions? Well how hard can it be to verify the games before you sell them, check them on quality, while you're at it stop with the early access crap or make developers sign a contract that their game should be finished within a certain amount of time or they're off the store. Perfect example DayZ.
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How can people already have opinions on something that hasn't even happened yet? Shouldn't we see how they handle this before judging if they're doing a good thing or otherwise?
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Because it's not really changing anything from how Valve has been acting since around 2012, just officially re-confirmed.
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It's called reputation.
Valve's being one of giving zero fucks and letting algorithms do everything.
Remember Greenlight > Direct and most of us expecting it to make things worse. Well, that happened. No need to wait on that.
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so allowing all kind of trash games not the adult games ?? will played steam well played
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I do understand curation on Steam could make room for arbitrary decisions and I get what kind of discourse Valve is trying to make underneath the dismissive/vague post. Their only fault was not fully admitting they won't do anything whatsoever (they still said they would ban "illegal content" or "trolling", but that doesn't mean much)
We can't censor stuff without a clear set of rules, solid criteria, constant enforcement - that's not something Valve is willing to do, and TBH I don't even believe it could ever work. Implies WAY too much discussion, and even objective definitions could be trouble enough. If Valve, let's say, decides to ban hate speech, maybe soon some oversized toddler will whine about how feminism is also hate speech (lmao) so we should ban Tomb Raider (?) or something. Maybe if they ban "fake games" someone could start a discussion about "what's a game" and maybe "Elite Hardcore Gamers" could ask for the removal of "walking simulators", etc.
Asset flipping exists because it is simply easy profit, a very successful business tactic. There are people selling garbage because a lot of users are buying garbage. Shouldn't we just... I don't know, understand why users would want to spend their money on those?
Per example, a very loud minority on Steam is made from 2edgy4u kids who will gladly support any silly cash grab if anyone implies it could eventually offend someone somewhere. There's a LOT of stuff on Steam that are just lazy ways of taking money from stupid people, but we can't ban it unless we want to have a very boring debate about freedom of choice.
TL;DR: I used to be really frustrated about Steam policies, but now I really think the gaming community could get some sort of "wake up call" from this mess, getting the chance to criticize itself. Steam has the potential to be the right place to any and every kind of gamer - we just have to get it just right so it won't implode or whatever.
And I don't have any opinion on "adult games". I don't get why people are THAT much into porn and why someone would get so triggered about any obstacles to their fapping like it's their religion or something, but do I get that Steam policies are way too vague to deal with this kind of thing and no one is really willing to discuss how much porn is too much. Maybe an "Adults Only" storefront could be an easy solution for chronic masturbators and christian moms alike. Do you want some anime tiddies? Just go to Anime Tiddies Paradise and enjoy yourself, etc.
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https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1666776116200553082
So all the trash will be on Steam! Good days right?
I agree on principle with this. I just hope they will get around to fully allow adult titles also.
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