Community MetaSteam | November 2019 - You Can't Spell Steam Without EA
- Thread starter lashman
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Valve need to be very careful about baby/bathwater situations with their faceless algorithms and banwaves. The last thing they want is to end up in a Youtube-like situation where completely innocent indie developers are placed in incredibly stressful situations through no fault of their own. Of course, this is partially a consequence of Steam being such a huge platform, but I think what Valve needs is a human face(s) that developers who have had their games wrongly removed from Steam can reach out to get their issues resolved ASAP.
For example, if you have a bone to pick with Epic, you can send a tweet to Tim Sweeney, who apparently has enough time to run a company and be smug on social media at every possible opportunity. You have an issue with Sony, and there are people you can talk to. Same with Microsoft. But with Valve, who do you talk to? Until fairly recently, most active Valve developers had basically zero presence on social media (this was mandated, I think), and getting an answer to a simple question can take weeks, using the intestinal PR systems Valve provides to people. I'm not saying that Valve should force employees to endure the cesspit that is social media, but they really need a public face of some kind that makes Valve feel like a partner for small developers instead of a faceless monolith like Apple. They've automated too much, I think. If humans had inspected the recent ban wave, they would have immediately noticed that they were flagging games from successful kickstarters, and games with clearly legitimate positive user reviews.
For example, if you have a bone to pick with Epic, you can send a tweet to Tim Sweeney, who apparently has enough time to run a company and be smug on social media at every possible opportunity. You have an issue with Sony, and there are people you can talk to. Same with Microsoft. But with Valve, who do you talk to? Until fairly recently, most active Valve developers had basically zero presence on social media (this was mandated, I think), and getting an answer to a simple question can take weeks, using the intestinal PR systems Valve provides to people. I'm not saying that Valve should force employees to endure the cesspit that is social media, but they really need a public face of some kind that makes Valve feel like a partner for small developers instead of a faceless monolith like Apple. They've automated too much, I think. If humans had inspected the recent ban wave, they would have immediately noticed that they were flagging games from successful kickstarters, and games with clearly legitimate positive user reviews.
Don't these games usually stay exclusive to GOG for a while because they're the one patching them up in order to make them work on modern computers and then they're also released on Steam at a later time?
I always wanted to play Stranglehold, btw, I'll be getting this for sure.
I always wanted to play Stranglehold, btw, I'll be getting this for sure.
Some do, some don't, some never come to Steam. SWAT4 being an example.
Banner of the Maid will be getting a 25% discount in the Autumn sale.
Wait, the banwave comes from publishers not respecting the steamworks rules, right ? Nothing to do with quality or coming from successful KS.
If your publisher is stupid enough to violate the rules so many times Valve had to react, you're collateral damage and it's not your fault, but still, they can't make exceptions for particular game.
Which games are you thinking about when you say "from successful KS" ?
OP
This is an example of the kind of games being banned from Steam due to their publisher being blanket banned. It's a great game. Got great reviews on Steam, too.
Failed State early access review
Failed State is a cool pixelart game that's a bit survivaly, a bit shooty, and a bit good. And currently about 45 minutes long.
www.rockpapershotgun.com
This is an example of a game that got banned because at some point in the past it was published by a publisher that has been blanket banned even though the game has been self published for the past several years, as the dev/publisher field shows here.
OutDrive on Steam
Put the pedal to the metal or your girl will die! Experience the atmosphere of the world inspired by 80s with their neon lights, VHS tapes and synth pop. Buckle up! Gaming experiment in genre of music runner - not a game, aesthetic concept.
Indie developers on Steam have learned very quickly that you shouldn't self-publish unless you really know what you're doing. So indie developers have been working with indie publishers en-masse. Blanket banning these publishers has an absolutely ridiculous level of collateral damage due to the sheer number of completely legitimate developers signing on with companies like Siberian Digital to help them with marketing and such. Marketing is a huge one. Doesn't matter how good your game is. It'll die on Steam without marketing.
A company with proper PR would have announced that due to disagreements or abuses with a particular publisher they were going to cut ties on a certain date. And everyone who had a game published by that publisher, or publishers, which is potentially thousands of games, would be given forewarning. A mechanism to transition their game to being official self-published.
I was looking through a list games earlier on Reddit, and there's a whole bunch of clear cut cases of these being legitimate games. I think there's this mentality that Valve is cleaning up shovelware, but that's not exactly true. They're booting publishers who have broken the rules, which is fair enough, but in the process they're hurting the indie developers who signed on with said publishers. And the reason why people signed on with these publishers is because Steam is incredibly crowded and people need publishers as a result. So really, Valve needs to fix this problem they created in the first place. Starting by warning people of what's coming instead of unpleasantly springing a mass purge on them. Just because a publisher's name is on a game on Steam doesn't mean that publisher made the game. A lot of the time the listed publisher is the company that handled marketing.
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If it's that simple, why is Deep Silver, and their titles, including the ones they created pages to (and made use of Steamworks tools), with no intention of launching, still not banned?
Why aren't all of them banned (including older titles, since this is what was done to these publishers), considering they haven't respected the rules, time and time again, since the EGS crap started?
Valve is acting on some offences, and on smaller developers/publishers, while not acting on others.
OP
Well, if you are a company partnered with Steam then you use Steamworks to contact a Valve employee. That usually works well, though of course it's not as public and hip as using twitter. (I don't know what would happen in case of a ban with Steamworks access -- I've never been banned and never worked with a publisher that was banned, luckily
)This might be rather hard to avoid though, legally. Ultimately, in these cases, Valve only has a contract with publishers, not developers. I highly doubt that legally they can do something like changing who gets the money for game sales once they boot a publisher that has violated the rules.
I really don't agree with this line of argument. The reason Steam is crowded is because a ton of people are making games, and if Valve didn't "create the problem" by allowing them to sell their games then the developers of these tiny indie games would have much larger issues than a small chance of being caught up in a publisher ban wave: they would never have been on Steam in the first place.
All that said, some more game-specific (rather than just publisher-specific) oversight would be nice, but I still think it's a big legal challenge they open themselves up to when they do anything other than fully stopping their business relationship with a given publisher. At the very least, developers would need to self-publish the game as a new application, and then the question becomes if their contract with their publisher even allows for that.
It's just a bad situation all around, and honestly, I really don't think publishers that aren't at least moderately well established are worth signing up with in terms of marketing impact in the first place.
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It'll launch full price and you know it and so does T2/Rockstar, because people like those in that screencap above prove there are people who will pay whatever, if it's on steam
I assume that you vote during the November sales, and you get the results during the December sales.
Or are there January sales? Maybe for Chinese New Year?
What’s the likelihood of older EA titles coming to Steam? Titanfall 2 is on super sale right now but I’d feel like a damn fool if I got it and it just wound up on Steam later.
Seeing Digimon in the top 20 releases pleases me.
Really digging Mistovers artstyle as well. checks storepage: Mostly Negative.
Really digging Mistovers artstyle as well. checks storepage: Mostly Negative.
Managed to finish NFS Payback via Origin Premier. It was okay, but nothing more. NFS Heat however has these grindy level based shit that I really hate. Not until you have leveled up your rep and upgraded your car till a certain point are you allowed to continue playing story missions. You actually have to replay races to be able to continue playing. Fuck that shit.
Im fine with grinding in most games, just not racing games, Or maybe racing games too, it's that NFS Heat is overall super mediocre imo.
Im fine with grinding in most games, just not racing games, Or maybe racing games too, it's that NFS Heat is overall super mediocre imo.
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Why am I sitting behind my PC waiting for the sale to start? You'd think I'd have learned by now that the store is gonna be broken as hell for the first 2-3 hours. And yet...
Neither ME2's nor ME3's DLC bundles are on sale. This must be a calculated move as a part of the pro-Anthem agenda.
Just do what I'm doing and watch a movie or TV series.
Dota 2 getting a new update right now. Announced heroes releasing today.
Thank you very much for the write-up. It sounds like it's not the game for me, at least not in my current circumstances. Time is a super rare commodity nowadays and I can't believe I'll manage to play a game with such a large amount of "babysitting" or with such a slow development speed (judging by your words).
I've read around and it seems like the sequel improved some of the cons of the original game, including the ones I'm most afraid of, so I guess I'll check it out eventually.
I don't know. I'm looking at a bunch of potential Humble and Gamepass titles. It's tough.
Haven't the Humble Choices already leaked? I also pretty much only use game pass to "demo" games. Subscription services are stressing me out.
"Best game you suck at Award"
You all know what to choose. And don't even try to deny it.
You all know what to choose. And don't even try to deny it.
I can't nominate Disco Elysium for both the GotY and Story-Rich awards...
Bomberman R is 80% off on a few websites like GMG and GameBillet right now if you want a bigger discount.
"Best game you suck at Award"
You all know what to choose. And don't even try to deny it.
Sorry, the correct choice for that category is
Last Chance to get Steam Controller. $5 / 5.5€ + shipping.
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