Air Control, or, Steam's new easy listing rules have led to some changes in Steam...

Now you can buy amazing games such as this one straight from Valve!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnzN-3N_0xw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYArgbWVtGc

Yes, this is a real game. :daze: For those who don't know, this year Valve completely abandoned all previous attempts at quality control on Steam. Now you can pretty much publish anything there. The result is that there have already been more Steam releases this year than there were in all of last year, and the numbers keep increasing quickly. Valve also added a thing called "Early Access", which lets people sell games before they are finished, on the promise that, really, someday we will finish the thing! Paid alphas or betas of games which may never be finished, mountains of terrible games clogging up Steam... this is the new Steam store.

And I should note, the game in those two videos up there is not Early Access; even many Early Access games aren't that atrocious. But it is in no way finished or even remotely competent. Still though, based on that second video... man is that game hilarious! :lol: :lol: I laughed more than I have to a game in a while.


So what do I think? Well, allowing more games isn't all bad. There are lots of PC games, and Steam had probably been too restrictive in the past. But Valve now has probably gone too far in the opposite direction. And also, they need a better store! Of course I have never liked Steam's interface much, but with so many more game releases its problems show even more now. Steam's very basic game listing system in the store doesn't work well with so many releases! And they need to categorize stuff, too... there should be some way of sorting out awful garbage like Air Control there from actual decent games. So yeah, Steam has issues, and it's getting even worse. That people who used to defend Steam now have problems with it now shows that...

Steam is better than ever. Valve is not a bottleneck gatekeeper any more, and people should be buying games by making informed decisions. You can look at user reviews, and search through recommendations or the tag system to find games you want.


Why are we expecting Valve to control it? They are open. They are making everything open. The appropriate response to getting blindsided by shit software like this is to ask Valve to compete with Origin, and implement a short refund period, preferably one where the game locks out achievements & card drops.

It should really count for something that obnoxious assholes like Jim Sterling are the reason I even seen this game in the first place. I wouldn't buy it anyway, and I don't need some fat neckbeard journalist to whine about quality control, when there is no contest to the store's quality as it is in the market. Sure, there's room for improvement with Steam, Origin does some things better. Sure, they can redesign the store front page again, it does default to top sellers now though and provides a ton of information nobody else does.



So what is the point to this shitty and poorly thought out argument?

It just seems like a plea for Valve to limit the market and save us from shovelware, because we are too stupid and outraged to be responsible with our money.

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Originally Posted by Knuckle Duster

Steam is better than ever. Valve is not a bottleneck gatekeeper any more, and people should be buying games by making informed decisions. You can look at user reviews, and search through recommendations or the tag system to find games you want.

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Valve is still a gatekeeper, though -- they still ban some things from steam, such as sexual content. They've just decided to abandon all of the quality controls that Steam had before.

Remember, Steam is not the only way to play PC games. It's not like a console store where there's one store or nothing; on the PC there are many ways to buy games. Every game does not necessarily have to be on Steam. Yeah they get more attention on Steam than elsewhere, but does that mean Valve is obligated to sell all of them? And if they are going to sell all of them, allow anything legal and drop the remaining restrictions too.

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Why are we expecting Valve to control it? They are open. They are making everything open. The appropriate response to getting blindsided by shit software like this is to ask Valve to compete with Origin, and implement a short refund period, preferably one where the game locks out achievements & card drops.

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Well, at least you say one thing I agree with! I have a HUGE problem with the fact that there is no way to refund, return, or resell digital games. Basically people are abandoning important rights in favor of convenience, and that's a big problem. Yeah, I understand that all the stores don't want real digital resale because it'd hurt their profits, but I believe that once you buy a game you should own it and be able to do what you want with it, including selling \it again. The idea that now all these digital games can be removed from stores -- and often do when rights deals expire -- and only piracy can possibly save us from games vanishing forever is a HORRIBLE one! I'm not sure if I've ever said much about this on this forum, but I've said this quite often elsewhere.

But anyway, yeah, this is a huge, huge problem, and it's an important part of why this is so bad. If you bought a game that broken in a store, you might be able to return it, or at least you could sell it used for some money back at least. But digital... forget it, you're stuck. Origin and GOG have limited return/resale programs, but they're still very limited, and Steam has nothing and Valve seems pretty strongly opposed to the whole idea. It's pretty horrible.

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It should really count for something that obnoxious assholes like Jim Sterling are the reason I even seen this game in the first place.

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What? Jim Stirling is great! He's one of the few videogame journalists who actually cares about protecting game consumer rights.

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I wouldn't buy it anyway, and I don't need some fat neckbeard journalist to whine about quality control, when there is no contest to the store's quality as it is in the market. Sure, there's room for improvement with Steam, Origin does some things better. Sure, they can redesign the store front page again, it does default to top sellers now though and provides a ton of information nobody else does.

So what is the point to this shitty and poorly thought out argument?

It just seems like a plea for Valve to limit the market and save us from shovelware, because we are too stupid and outraged to be responsible with our money.

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If Steam had return and used-store programs, and a better interface which let you sort things more easily and didn't look so old, dated, and ugly (I've always disliked Steam's interface of course!), maybe you'd have a point, but it doesn't have those things. And so no. By abandoning any attempt at keeping games on Steam at some minimum level of quality I do think that Valve ultimately could hurt Steam, unless they work to improve the store and interface and, hopefully, add some kind of return program for all the people getting scammed by broken games. Because physical stores have that, and you can't expect all consumers to fully research games ahead of time -- that's not a reasonable expectation.

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

Remember, Steam is not the only way to play PC games.

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DRM-free Humble Bundles ftw!