New Valve Game, and Valve critique

I did say, mainly, because all other companies are held to that kind of standard. I took great pains to say that the game itself is likely to be sound, and a solid business decision.

Also, probably not aimed at me, but: not enraged

There is no demand here. Simply an explanation of peoples' expectations, considering the general thread premise of confusion about the critique around Valve. I know better than most the issues with demanding things of developers. I'm often called anti-consumer for such arguments, haha.

Anyhow! About what could be improved about Steam. Or fixed. In no particular order of priority:

1. Seamless updates. Origin has this. The Epic Games platform has this. Heck, even Skype has this (slightly worse than the other two mentioned). Steam still has the same client update process it's had for years. You shouldn't have to hard-restart the client to even start downloading a client update.

2. Steam Inventory. The UI is trash, the UX is trash, and it frequently fails to load (or authenticate with Steam servers). Seems a bit more reliable through the web interface, which is paradoxical to a native, compiled solution.

3. Authentication "from a new PC" (particular on web, which I use a lot for moderation / if the client is updating). Still doesn't actually remember new PCs. Or old PCs. Not consistently, and seemingly not tied to hardware changes either.

4. Mobile app for Android. Incredibly subpar, doesn't have parity with iOS UI / UX or even features, last I checked. Doesn't seem to be compiled for the latest version(s) of Android (the SDK for which is backwards-compatible).

5. No deep linking for the actual application. All links, even apparently customised steam:// links, open in your default web browser (see why I end up going through 3. so often).

6. Fecking horrendous Discussion moderation UI / UX / options / everything. I haven't really had to use it before (until recently), but man. Archaic vBulletin solutions have a better user experience than this.

7. General non-Store UI. Hasn't been updated since the coloured everything with that blue gradient a year or three back. The Store UI reflects modern web / design paradigms, and is actually getting better to use. Nothing else has.

8. Settings / options UX. Pop-out panes everywhere. I'm a software and web developer, I've had to learn / re-learn a lot of modern design principles in the past couple of years. We have to, in order to remain competitive. Just to sell our product. Steam is coasting on this, in so many ways. And nobody calls them on it, as a company with the resources (and knowledge) to be at the forefront of this kind of client design.

9. General UX for links through to new aspects of the platform. Player > Profile > Badge > Card, etc. You have to know the flow; it isn't intuitive. Marketplace has one of the better flows, and hey, guess what? Valve get a percentage of each transaction there

10. The amount of games that suffer from depot-related issues and local file corruption is incredible. There are underlying technical issues with parts of the Steam process that seemingly haven't been updated in years.

And that's without touching Steamworks of the developer APIs. I have no direct experience with them, but I have enough firsthand developer accounts. Even trivial things like achievements are a backwards-*** pain (in the ***), mainly around localisation (a major expected thing in modern applications these days, with a ton of standardised support for it).

I guess I am not as much of a steam power user as you are

Haha, I certainly can't recommend Steam Community moderation. But I have to do it these days as a part of a related role. Certainly is one of the weaker areas.

I have a lot of time with the Dawn of War series, which semi-recently moved all their titles to the Steam Catalogue proper (integrated achievements, Steamworks backbone, etc). Had to use these connected systems a lot more than I have in the past, but I also have a long history of volunteering technical support. Even did it here a bit, back in the alpha days.

: D

well I can! : D https://forums.uberent.com/threads/...-and-i-never-even-noticed-what-do-i-do.71087/

I don't really agree that they were fucked at all, the game was announced at an exclusively Dota 2 event, the fact anyone could have "expected" half-life 3 is honestly rather silly.

I think the ooohhs were honestly just utter disappointment, it was pretty hilarious to me though, and I completely understand the disappointment.

I don't think you get it. noone expected half life three. that's not what's dissapointing

Yea since it was announced at the Dota event, I think it makes sense