Steam; committing to the dumpster fire?

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rip primewire :see_no_evil:

funny thing is that was sorta how the featured functioned back before greenlight went and floored the pedal (even if not “as” perfect, and still had certain flaws)
nowadays, if signed in (at least me), the “featured” is just an incongruous 8 letter random “placeholder” word without meaning that just translates into “list of x games” :man_shrugging:
-and most of those (usually) fall in the “recommended by X” category anyway (stupidest thing was combining the “featured”+“recommended” tabs imo) :man_facepalming:

but you’re right that would be nice, tho also not super good with the massive amount of releases
(since that would mean “some” for of curation -which valve ofc couldn’t possible be arsed to, given how they just changed the system on a dime when turned out new “releases” happened so fast they just pushed each other off the spot in an instant)
i do think it’s slightly funny tho, because gog and humble +other stores at least manage to somewhat/in some small fashion “highlight” some new smaller/indie releases they get, -tho might be because to even just reach their store the indie already needs to be of some form of caliber and then gets featured ? :thinking: donno

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:cry:

Although I have found other means, none are as good, I’ll always miss you

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I don’t know exactly why you’re having such an issue with everything steam shows you, @Gnuffi, maybe the algorithm shit the bed with your data and could do with a reset feature. I find the Featured & recommended carousel almost completely relevant to me. Every odd and even one being either new that steam thinks I’d like to buy or old and fitting my profile in some way or recommended by a friend… A friend, @YQMaoski almost exlusively at this point. I don’t think I ever see anything up there that I would never want to touch.

I’m fairly certain that none of these games are ‘hidden gems’ you dug up out of the unknown pits of the steam dungeons. They all have had significant marketing behind them some in terms of actual ads but most gaining a lot of visibility through streamers and to some extent even game news outlets. These things wont change.

Is that not pretty much what the “new and trending” list a third down the page is? There you also have the upcoming list so you can see what’ll be coming, though not curated by anyone.

After that comes the Under 10-5 section which is another curated list of games that you can find a lot of nice good/cheap stuff in.

I have personally not had a lot to complain about regarding the steam store front. Especially not this most recent iteration of it, I really quite like it. But then I’ve never bought any card farm titles or claimed any of the indiegala assetflip giveaways. Maybe the algorithms making all the picks could use a reset feature to not forever punish those who did.

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unrivaled “library” for sure?, dang one could find surprisingly old or obscure stuff there :thinking:

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those are not curated tho, even remotely, that’s just a regular “filtered” search by price (strange how “we” never was allowed to determine the price beyond that search ourselves i think)
since the addition of steam “ratings”, all that is changed to make it “appear” curated is it pops up with the high rated/popular games first combined with the discount parameter, if you switch the drop down from “relevance” to anything other, that “discount page” (because of the sheer size) becomes very muddled together
-i think a great thing would have been, (like other places have done, years ago already), to allow users to define+combine search parameters
combining stuff like “relevance”+rating+Xprice, then with the secondary tags on the right would sort things out somewhat neatly
as it is now, because you can only chose “1” major search parameter, even just by going under something like new releases (on a big “day”/week) you get a multi page list that’s jumbled together: Because new - not enough ratings to make it into the system yet, price, well that can be up and down+worse because of the new releases that gets put in but aren’t actually released and don’t have price, so on
-never quite understood why steam wouldn’t make multi parameters an option like that, since it could help tremendously. I mean ffs we can do it halfway on our wishlist now: but that means ofc the games would have to on our wishlist to apply in the first place :man_facepalming:

edit:
ps

mine is 99.9% pure “recommended” ie just the same as tabs i would have otherwise had, the “featured” aspect is totally gone for me (-whenever it doesn’t display some borked function of either “your friend “has this in library”. You played X once so here take a look at this 10 yo old game, or this game already in your library -or card game”)
tho after adding Yoshi, and Mao getting his mad review mode on, most are from them if not other’s recommended -which we already had a tab for so no need for valve to cock up and blend it with the featured imo :roll_eyes:
(srs why the fck bother with my “curators” tab -if they are just gonna show in my featured anyway too, sometimes i’ve got the same game plastered 3-4-5 times on a steam page) :man_facepalming:

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I hope you don’t mind the clutter… :sweat_smile::blush:

By the way, this topic exploded after I went to bed last night, apparently… Took me a while to read through all of that. Once again, we have a really nice discussion here, with significantly divided opinions, without knives being thrown around.

There are some seriously good points here both ways, and while I do not agree with the new policy, because I already thought Steam was well under-moderated, I do agree that this could potentially open the door to some great ideas that have been buried under lots of doubt from say individual developers who may have thought that the hurdle too great or Steam would have thrown their games/ideas out the window. Perhaps they will be able to jump in and create something fantastic, or even develop a new genre.

Likewise, I also rarely get to see games that I truly don’t want to see on the main page front. This constant exposure to games liked by my Steam friends has opened a lot of doors to me, and has created opportunities for me to play games I would have not otherwise. I am thankful for that as well.

I just read a BBC article this morning on this new steam policy as well:

A lot of what we are discussing is also showing up there, with points and counter points. I thought it was a good read, as unbiased as these articles can get nowadays. This does mean that Steam is potentially going to be filled with a ton of adult materials/content. I might have to stop being able to browse the Steam store at work due to NSFW materials. Though perhaps not, since they have that age-checker for almost every game nowadays it seems.

@Gnuffi, sounds like your game recommendations on the page front is a bit problematic, perhaps there is something that can be done. I am not sure what though.

Nonetheless, my worry is still for a not-safe/not-suitable environment/content, inappropriate, and Steam is deciding to turn the other way, telling everyone: If you are not comfortable with something, don’t look at it.

I realize this is the internet, and that content can be found anywhere else. I still think that Valve is making this announcement and decision in order to ramp up revenue. They are already a conglomerate giant, a mover and shaker in electronics/gaming.

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@YQMaoski Yeah, that’s my worry as well. I’ve never scrolled into that kind of content, and never intend to do so… and this means the Steam store could become unsafe if it all goes wrong.

Not to mention, the indie scene has been amazing on VR so far! It’d really suck if that suddenly turned into a minefield of edgy NSFW content.

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I have just been complaining on and off to my friend who does all of the VR games for our curator group that I am looking at the VR titles being offered to us, and I really wished that I had a VR setup. My opinions upon seeing some of these games involving VR is rapidly changing from I don’t want VR to when can I get enough money to upgrade my computer and fit a VR set. I think it’s going to be sooner than later.

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definitely gotten better since adding you chronies and then getting “reminded” of your games (even if it’s the same over and over at time) :wink:
was so bad before, i contacted steam support to ask how the heck i disabled “whatever” feature it was, since the only box i had ticked left was “prepurchases”
image
mind you new releases, was still rare for me to get featured then, but there was nothing “i” could do (because we literally didn’t have any options other than those to choose from)
and would just have to wait until the system adapted

i nearly lost my sht when it started “recommending” me fidget spinner, way after it’s release… :man_facepalming:

-had to untick “movies” because, much like vr, it just would have these weird spouts of “only” suggesting me videos/“x” for a while, -if it hadn’t been for my curators/personal recommended"s" my store was utterly useless then when signed -shifted my clients default page to library, visiting site on browser without being signed in to get a “neutral” glance which was 75% better than my “personalized” bs
-pretty sure if i had kept my friendlist the same trim size, and not had you folks “libraries”+recommended; my front page experience would remain worse off still
infact the only remotely new or close to something “featured” i get, are your direct recommendations -which then also usually/luckily happen to be neat little indies :+1:

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@YQMaoski I wouldn’t worry about it too much. There’s bound to be massive pricecuts on the Oculus and Vive soon with Project Half-Dome coming up. You just got to miss the days when the software wasn’t nearly as stable.

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and to the people who don’t watch streamers/read news outlets?

I just enjoy playing games in my spare time so these were awesome finds for me.

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on the “politics” aspect

this is my main concern to come from all this

that whatever, majority/minority, raises enough “awareness” about X, that it simply gets taken out of “our” or even Valve’s hands… the ESRB and alike didn’t just sprout up out of some fairy-godmother goodwill for “magic’s sake to mankind”,
and if something “more” controversial appears (i’m really dreading something like “actual rape simulator”-meme or whatnot) then some knee-jerk reaction is almost sure to follow
ffs supposedly Agony was threatened with lawsuit, that’s the waters we are already in, i’m thinking maybe it wouldn’t take much to light this powder keg, so that’s my biggest actual “worry” -that this would be what actually “kills” valve and take “muh library” away :grimacing:

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That was my exact thoughts behind my original analogy up above with the Titanic metaphor, not just money and cash flow, but this could be a potentially sinking ship… (only the iceberg is remote controlled by the supposed drivers of the ship)

Time to pay more attention to GOG and making sure my Humble purchases have DRM-Free options…

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VR 3.0 "gon be good"AngryJoe voice :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: (unless it’s that 5000$ full scale human trackpad/whatever it was, which didn’t turn out so well) :smile:

if they can make vive “2.5” quality but around psVr pricemark (+not having to get a $500+ gpu on the side to run it) to truly make it mainstream “accessible” i think it could be really really grand
right now “price” is probably what puts most people off… few are probably keen to spend 1000-1500bucks(incl gpu) on a helmet that makes them dizzy… if they could make it cheap enough, i’m betting most people wouldn’t mind to endure some intermittent motion-sickness for the experience. (since “just” removing it, price is probably still gonna be a main factor also since the avg pc gamer probably aren’t running high end cards anyway)

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Motion sickness is a little overblown. In most cases, the more calm games have ZERO motion sickness issues so long as you can maintain 90 FPS. The tracking is actually just that good.

The only games that ever made me feel nausea were Lucky’s Tale and Stand Out, and in both cases it was just a matter of getting used to the movement. This feeling is 100% nonexistent in KTANE, Psychonauts: Rhombus of Ruin, and any other game that serves as a simple seated experience.

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Finally! I really hope they go through with it. Steam was already a wild west, deciding to allow whatever they please while randomly banning other games. In my eyes it can only be an improvement.
And if I finally get to see hentai on steam without having to find some patch I will be very happy.

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I have things…I need to do today…Just going to put this out there.

I think it’s going to be a Fahrenheit 451 Dumpster fire…

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:thinking: do i foresee a Curator: “The Lollies -only the lewdest games on steam” :face_with_monocle: :smile: and would it be Truly that “sets it up”? :hushed: :shushing_face::face_with_hand_over_mouth:

:rofl:

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mm :neutral_face:, the problem with “no stance” is sometimes it can be worse than “a stance” :grimacing: while “censorship” sucks and can be “bad”, it can get far far worse if “someone” in/with power decides “we” should live in 1600’s puritan state and burns everything to the ground because “pictures with pixels”
sometimes when kids can’t agree which toys to play with/keep, someone just takes all their toys away from them instead… :confused:

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Aye that’s a fine plan but I was already going to quit my job and become a full time jiggle physics reviewer.:ok_hand:t4:

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