Developers and Publishers to get their own special pages on Steam this month

I'm surprised it took this long.

I often click the developer/publisher links on game pages to see the list of games they were involved in. Either to see if there is something else interesting or to see what they're about and how their Linux support is. I'm not too sure this will change much for me in that regard.

I'm surprised it took this long.

I often click the developer/publisher links on game pages to see the list of games they were involved in. Either to see if there is something else interesting or to see what they're about and how their Linux support is. I'm not too sure this will change much for me in that regard.

I end up doing that a lot too, this seems like a natural step really.

A lot of things about the Steam store are ridiculously sub-par.

Take the review functionality.
You still have to write BBCode there, FFS! No WYSIWYG, no shortcuts...

Speaking about reviews, I seriously hope they will remove that thumbs down/up nonsense, since many games simply aren't that clearly good or bad. A simple 5 star system would be much better.

hop there well be a easy way to bookmark the side man wanna follow, not as it is now.
I like the thumbs down/up but it cud be follow whed a +/- star system.

Speaking about reviews, I seriously hope they will remove that thumbs down/up nonsense, since many games simply aren't that clearly good or bad. A simple 5 star system would be much better.

Agreed. The thumbs up/down system is even objectively silly. Technically, any game that is "decent" should get a 100% thumbs up rating because it's not bad enough to vote it down entirely. It's only because people start choosing because of specific things that these ratings don't become entirely polarised.

Also if we trust the leaks valve is planning a massive steam UI overhole.

Also if we trust the leaks valve is planning a massive steam UI overhole.

Not really a leak when they've said it themselves that they're working on it :)

I'm fine with it as long the page NOT being myspace-fied.

itch.io -style game page is most perfect IMO.

Speaking about reviews, I seriously hope they will remove that thumbs down/up nonsense, since many games simply aren't that clearly good or bad. A simple 5 star system would be much better.

Agreed. The thumbs up/down system is even objectively silly. Technically, any game that is "decent" should get a 100% thumbs up rating because it's not bad enough to vote it down entirely. It's only because people start choosing because of specific things that these ratings don't become entirely polarised.

Personally I really enjoy assigning specific ratings to things, it comes naturally to me to "precisely" quantify various merits I see in things into numbers and I enjoy doing so. However, this made me realize that to a lot of people it is not so, and a such thumbs up / down system is much more natural as they simply divide things between stuff they like and enjoy and stuff they do not. I'd suspect they're the majority so this decision seems to be quite rational on Valve's part. Maybe they're not, it's hard to say if there are more people who enjoy rating things or people who just like the simple dichotomy of like / dislike.

Also the way the system works now the users reviews on Steam provide at least one pretty specific metric: the % of user satisfaction within the audience of a given game, within its niche. Sort games on Steam by user reviews. You get a pretty interesting, somewhat surprising list I think.

Just my two cents.

So it's not just me that uses the developer/publisher link to find out what other games they've got on offer. Now I won't have to. :D

I like the news, but I'm now pretty tired of how bad the Steam UI is. I think the supposed overhaul needs to be priority 1.

I'm cool with this so long as we can get a "Not Interested" button on developer/publisher pages, so that I no longer have to do it for every individual game released by a company I'm boycotting.

Can't wait for that UI overhaul, either. Hopefully they'll add the ability to ZOOM THE FUCK IN which would bring it slightly closer to being up to date with the features found in 20-year-old web browsers.


Last edited by Ryblade on 8 June 2018 at 3:23 pm UTC

Finally I will be able to just click "Follow Feral" and "Follow Aspyr", and be informed about their new releases. :-)

Finally!

itch.io -style game page is most perfect IMO.

Itch.io really is excellent to use for my purposes. The only feature they need to copy from Steam that I would like would be the ability to permanently delete games from your library.

I wish they would start curating more and kick the asset flippers off the store for good.
Too much garbage started infesting steam.

Speaking about reviews, I seriously hope they will remove that thumbs down/up nonsense, since many games simply aren't that clearly good or bad. A simple 5 star system would be much better.

I'm not sure about this. A while ago, I've read about rating systems, and that many professionals are saying that the 5 star system has failed. Looking at Amazon, almost anything has 4 and a half star. Most people give it 5 stars if they like it, some give 4, and people who didn't like it are giving 2 or 1 stars. Additionally to this, no one really knows where the "baseline" is. How do you rate a product you find to be neither good or bad, but sufficient? 3 stars? Or rather 4? Or 5, because you had no "problem"?

If I remember correctly, those professionals said that Thumbs Up/Down systems work better, because the emotion behind both options are stronger, and people wouldn't vote up if they didn't really like it, and people wouldn't vote down if they didn't have a substantial problem with the product or service. In the end, statistically, the result should be more fitting and useful.

Speaking about reviews, I seriously hope they will remove that thumbs down/up nonsense, since many games simply aren't that clearly good or bad. A simple 5 star system would be much better.

I'm not sure about this. A while ago, I've read about rating systems, and that many professionals are saying that the 5 star system has failed. Looking at Amazon, almost anything has 4 and a half star. Most people give it 5 stars if they like it, some give 4, and people who didn't like it are giving 2 or 1 stars. Additionally to this, no one really knows where the "baseline" is. How do you rate a product you find to be neither good or bad, but sufficient? 3 stars? Or rather 4? Or 5, because you had no "problem"?

If I remember correctly, those professionals said that Thumbs Up/Down systems work better, because the emotion behind both options are stronger, and people wouldn't vote up if they didn't really like it, and people wouldn't vote down if they didn't have a substantial problem with the product or service. In the end, statistically, the result should be more fitting and useful.

Ah... "professionals".
There is no problem in most people giving something 5 stars and 4 if they like the game. What else would they vote?
Someone who likes a game, but thinks it isn't perfect will give 4 stars. If it is a close thing, 3.

Strong emotions are the very last thing you want when you are looking for traceable ratings.
Those "this game sucks" or "best game ever" reviews are a plague. Speaking about that, I'd also simply forbid rating shorter than 500 characters or so. There's no need for and no use in low effort reviews.

You also cannot compare wordless Amazon ratings that are done after using something once (for the most part) with a review written after hours of playing and analyzing something.

Only two review possibilities have the incredible downside that something can only either be very good or very bad. For many games, that just doesn't work out.
The result is that you almost only get reviews that are super positive or super negative or leave the reviewer with a very bad feeling because the rating doesn't reflect the actual situation.

Just look at GOG (or any other service, because I think it is pretty much only Steam doing the "only good or bad" rating system) to see how well it works.
You get far more variety in reviews and a much better glance at what people think.


Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 8 June 2018 at 10:30 pm UTC

Speaking about reviews, I seriously hope they will remove that thumbs down/up nonsense, since many games simply aren't that clearly good or bad. A simple 5 star system would be much better.

Yeah . . . although a lot of people use 5 or 10 star systems a little oddly. Like first, if the average rating isn't as high as the person's individual rating, they will tend to rate it 5/10 even if they think it's actually somewhat lower than that in an attempt to pull up the average; or contrariwise if they don't like it they'll rate it 1 to pull down the average. Second, there is sometimes an odd compression . . . I guess you notice it more on 10-star systems, where I've seen a tendency that 10 means excellent, 8 means mediocre, and 5 means horrible piece of shit I wouldn't pollute my precious saliva by spitting on.

Only two review possibilities have the incredible downside that something can only either be very good or very bad. For many games, that just doesn't work out.
The result is that you almost only get reviews that are super positive or super negative or leave the reviewer with a very bad feeling because the rating doesn't reflect the actual situation.

Just look at GOG (or any other service, because I think it is pretty much only Steam doing the "only good or bad" rating system) to see how well it works.
You get far more variety in reviews and a much better glance at what people think.

If you would be allowed to read only one single review, a 5 star system would be better, because this reviewer has more range of expression. But the overall rating statistic of all reviews consisting of "recommend" and "don't recommend" has the same effect, while supposedly being more correct and helpful.

I just checked the game list on GOG. Roughly 100 Games have 5 stars. roughly 1500 games have 4,5 or 4 stars (ca. 750 each). There are 2500 entries on GOG. The more you get into the lower territory, the more you get DLCs, digital goodies or sound tracks in there. So it doesn't look like there are 2500 actual games on there, but a lot of the lower rated entries is just bonus stuff.

That means the majority of the games on GOG have either 4 or 4,5 stars. For me, that's not really helpful.


Last edited by Doc Angelo on 8 June 2018 at 11:25 pm UTC