Valve have detailed some changes coming to Steam in an overview post

Surprising, no mention of their OpenXR efforts. I guess they decided to push its completion to 2020?


Last edited by Shmerl on 15 Jan 2019 at 2:38 am UTC

One thing I've wanted for years is to be able to group achievements by DLC. I wonder if that ever occurred to them. TrueSteamAchievements does it, why won't Steam?


Last edited by Pinguino on 15 Jan 2019 at 2:45 am UTC

1. Epic Store
Why do you get so crazy about it? It's basically a launcher that allows you to buy games. Nothing more, nothing less. Many publishers do have stores. Many of them have exclusives.

2. Valve exclusives
All of their titles are exclusives, aren't they? Why do you never complain about that?

Epic is paying other devs for exclusivity. That's a lot more outwardly aggressive than just making their own games exclusive. That'd be obnoxious enough on its own, but add onto that the fact that Epic has no plans to support Linux, and that means they're also effectively paying devs to not support Linux.

2. Valve exclusives
All of their titles are exclusives, aren't they? Why do you never complain about that?

Not all of their titles are exclusive to PC or Steam. But even if some titles are: They are the developer. They decide where to release. An exclusive game is a game, where the developer was payed to intentionally not release on other platforms or launchers. That's a big difference. Valve never payed anyone to artificially restrict the release of a software.

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.

Oh man... really? The new chat is still bugging out for me, sadly especially on Linux. Regularly a hover popup doesn't disappear and I have to manually hover over it again and then move the mouse away. Regularly hover popups appear with a part of them outside of my display region. The toolkit used for it sometimes just bugs out and wants the windows maxed out, sometimes it just leaves the buttons where they are and you need to close and reopen the window to get rid of the problem. Sometimes the chat overview window has a size, so that I can not move it with the title bar, because the game name wraps and the upper line moves upwards. I have to manually widen the window in order to be able to move it.

These are, at least for me, all things that would have prevented a release into the public. Maybe it's getting more and more normal to release buggy software, but... this is just too much for a company like Valve. They should be able to do it better. On top of that, it feels sluggy and not complete overall.

Man, I really like what Valve is doing as a company. But they should really up their quality levels at store and library development. They should have the resources to do that. I'm not sure why they are so lazy at that front.

As a developer I can understand that every little feature has implications somewhere. It's not easy to just come out with new stuff that works perfectly and satisfies the majority. But then there are old issues with the Steam client and its platform that I can't understand why are still unsolved to this day.

Here, just two examples:

- During this winter sale I tried to buy 2 controllers, but I could only order one at a time. That's stupid and after I contacted their support I got some fruitless "bla bla" and I gave up. It made no sense to waste money on two shipping fees due to the basic missing feature of allowing the customer to get 2 items in one purchase. They could've also prepared the store before their hardware was released, so we can buy more than one per order, but either they don't care that people have to pay extra shipping fees or they get something out of it. They can't be that stupid to completely miss a detail like this, right?

- For a while now, I have plenty of downloads/updates with 0 bytes. Now I can understand that someone messed up, but a few simple features would make this issue much easier to ignore: "Start/Queue All" and "Remove All (Completed)". Why isn't this issue addressed? Who knows...

Huge amounts of money flow into the Steam store, so I hope the other stores will motivate Valve to step up. Obviously, I have plenty of reasons to like Steam or I wouldn't have a lot of games and use their platform, but I dislike seeing them dragging their asses not fixing simple things that keep getting in our way.

Also, there seems to be a big problem with the feature "Watch a game stream of a friend". It was a nice feature for a long time, not always working really stable, sometimes the sound is missing and nobody knows why, sometimes the stream just stopped working, sometimes it was stuttering every few seconds. But sometimes it worked, and then it was nice. But honestly quite shitty quality for a company with that much resources. Far away from the quality they should be able to pull off.

And now, it doesn't work at all - if you start to watch using UI features that were introduced with the new chat. If you are using other UI elements in order to start a stream, a different kind of window appears and it works (still buggy like I said above, but it does). So there are right now 2 versions of the stream watching window, with two different toolkit and visual design, and one of them doesn't work at all.

I had to read a fucking guide in order to know how to start a stream so that it works. For those who are interested: One of the three ways to do it is to start a watching a stream through Big Picture.

Man, I have to be honest... they really suck at the Steam client updates lately. Big time. Horribly and extremely big time.

Looking forward to Steam Trust for Dota 2 and hope we will get broadcasting on Linux next year.

re: reorganizing steam library: I've only recently discovered that steam has a pretty robust game filter based on tags, they should use tags similarly for your library.

Hey. I love your avatar picture! L'Avventura is one of my favorite films.

As a gamer, all changes that help me playing more and better (and spending less) are welcome.

But right now the first thing I want from Valve is to ease the taxes to smaller companies and indie devs. And I’m not a dev myself.

An exclusive game is a game, where the developer was payed to intentionally not release on other platforms or launchers. That's a big difference. Valve never payed anyone to artificially restrict the release of a software.

Yes they did. Every games that have a Windows version available DRMFREE on GOG or Humble, but with a Linux version available exclusively on Steam is because Valve payed for that exclusivity.
Linux versions of Metro Redux and Dying Light are an example of that... Obviously, Valve and the publishers will not recognize it.

Yes they did. Every games that have a Windows version available DRMFREE on GOG or Humble, but with a Linux version available exclusively on Steam is because Valve payed for that exclusivity.
Linux versions of Metro Redux and Dying Light are an example of that... Obviously, Valve and the publishers will not recognize it.

What you say makes it impossible for you to give a source for your claim, because you also state that everyone involved is lying about it.

But you could give an example where the original developer also made the Linux port and decided to not put the Linux version on GOG themselves, despite GOG not having a problem with it. Is there such a game?

But you could give an example where the original developer also made the Linux port and decided to not put the Linux version on GOG themselves, despite GOG not having a problem with it. Is there such a game?

Actually, most cases are like that. GOG only reject games if they have serious technical problems that developers don't want to address (Metro case is like that if I remember correctly).

In the vast majority of cases however, when Linux version is missing, developers simply don't want to bother to work on releasing in the smaller store for the smaller platform. So GOG Linux users get the short end of the stick.

See Age of Wonders III developers saying it very explicitly.


Last edited by Shmerl on 15 Jan 2019 at 6:32 pm UTC

Actually, most cases are like that.

I'm not sure what you mean with that. Do you mean that most games where the original dev makes a Linux version, the Windows version is both on Steam and GOG, but the Linux version is only on Steam?

Do you mean that most games where the original dev makes a Linux version, the Windows version is both on Steam and GOG, but the Linux version is only on Steam?

Yes. In most cases when Linux version is missing on GOG, it's an issue with developers, not with GOG.

Steam should NOT be a censored / regulated store.
Many people wanted this, including myself in the past, but it is actually a really bad idea.
Steam is a store and a platform for everyone. Good and bad games should be welcomed both.

IMO the discovery algorithms combined with a non-regulated store is the best approach.
If you don't care about cheap / joke games, then just mark them as not interested and let the algorithm hide them for you in the future (not hide, but more like not recommend / advertise)

Sure, the algorithms aren't perfect, but the answer is to improve them, not bring regulation. If you want regulation, go to Epic Store, where they don't even have user reviews.

It's not just about "cheap or joke" games. It is about potentially fraudulent games. It is about games that are seriously objectionable, that can cause a lot of harm - like a nazi propaganda game. And on the other side, about blocking things that should be allowed. And yes, people will disagree about what is acceptable or not, which is why the company has to take a stance instead of trying to please everyone.

And the fact that it is so hard is precisely the reason why it can't be done algorithmically. Yes, they need real people to make the hard decisions - is this too gruesome, is this really satire, is this too charged, whatever.

They are not forced to sell or refuse any games; they could always choose. This means they are responsible for what is sold on the store. They can't choose not to pay attention as an excuse for selling (and profiting from) something objectionable.

You have to be realistic here. (and a certain dose of cynism also doesn't hurt)
Even if it would be fair and would work wonders in the beginning, it will certainly get corrupted eventually. Especially since, Valve is at the end of the day just another company. And the sole goal of a company is to make profit (otherwise it dies) - and being fair/equalitarian is pretty much always unprofitable. (you can make a case that in the long-term it's beneficial to be so, but companies almost exclusively care about short-term. They are businesses, not governments)

I very much disagree. The fact they want to make money is not our problem as consumers and we don't have to be understanding of it. Quite the opposite, we have to be harsher on them because by this logic they don't have incentive to be ethical otherwise.

It's not just about "cheap or joke" games. It is about potentially fraudulent games. It is about games that are seriously objectionable, that can cause a lot of harm - like a nazi propaganda game.

Well, I'd prefer laws to regulate such things, rather then private companies.
Do you have an example for a nazi propaganda game on Steam? I'd be shocked, if it would be available here in germany.

It's not just about "cheap or joke" games. It is about potentially fraudulent games. It is about games that are seriously objectionable, that can cause a lot of harm - like a nazi propaganda game.

Well, I'd prefer laws to regulate such things, rather then private companies.
Do you have an example for a nazi propaganda game on Steam? I'd be shocked, if it would be available here in germany.

Well, yes, ideally the laws created by democratic governments would deal with everything unethical. But in practice, it isn't enough: laws can be unethical, wrong, outdated, incomplete, hard to interpret... or, when you operate in a lot of countries, inconsistent. There are countries where homosexuality is illegal, there are countries where the age of consent is different, there are countries with no fair use laws, etc. Navigating all those laws is a big task, and neither extreme (applying the most restrictive laws to everywhere or doing just the minimum required by local laws) is a good solution.

Even if they went with a "we allow anything that is legal", I think they should at least check for compliance instead of relying on notifications and terms signed by developers taking all responsibility. They are selling the game, they should be responsible for checking.

I really hope there is no actual nazi propaganda game on Steam. It is an exaggerated example of something that clearly shouldn't be there. Though I'm not sure if the laws of most countries would make such a game straight up "illegal", for example.

Valve has its many flaws (their hands-off approach to curation or their subpar treatment of indies for example). But they are still so far ahead of the competition it's just hard not to support Steam.

Yep! And when you read the complete post... It's quite shocking (unfair? Surprising?) when people say that Valve takes a 30% cut without doing anything... I don't see Epic offering an equivalent infrastructure now and not before a long, long time...

Edit: I hoped we would get news about new hardware, but Valve being Valve, we still may have surprises. :)

The sad part is that they take the "we want to add all those features" part as an excuse to not support linux.

And the really sad part is that remove that excuse and they would find some other reason for not supporting Linux.