Updates And Additions to Group Invites

[Tito Shivan]

http://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1446071197008661976

Joining a group

We’re adding a new group type that will allow users to request to join the group. Requests are then put into a list for one of the group moderators to approve or deny. There are now three types of community groups:

• Public group – Users can join on their own or via an invite from a friend.
  
• Restricted group – Users can join by requesting membership. They can also receive an invite from a user that has permission to add members.
  
• Closed group – This is the most restricted group. Users can only join via invites by members who have permission to send invites. Users cannot request to join these groups.

To join a restricted group, you can now request entry into the group. This will put you into a list for the group admins to review and decide whether to approve or deny your request.

Limits to group invites

Over time, we have seen the use of group invites shift from helpful to spammy - to the point where they can become annoying and disruptive to players. As we looked close at what these invites are being used for, we found some interesting and troubling trends.

First off, we see that more and more organized spammers are using bots to create groups on a huge scale. At some times, the number of new groups created explicitly for spamming outweigh the legitimate groups. Once a spammer has created a bunch of new groups, they then use bots to invite random players into the group. Even if only a small percentage of players that were invited end up joining any one of these groups, the spammer still can end up with a significant audience. The spammers then use these groups to advertise various websites or offers by posting frequent announcements to the members.

Players are understandably annoyed by these spam invites from random users.

To address this, you can now only be invited into a group by your friends. This still maintains the common uses of forming a closed group to hang out with your friends, or creating a restricted group for people of similar interests or achievements.

[Pawnstar]

Originally posted by Tito Shivan:

To address this, you can now only be invited into a group by your friends.

YOU GUYS TOOK YEARS! FINALLY! THANKS!



edit: Steam took years, not you
edit 2: WHY IS THIS FIRST POST NOW?!?!

[imelman]

And now skin sites are less revelant now, but we'll see how it turns out.

I hope it'll work as intended.

[BloodMalice]

Have you pleased the vast majority of Steam users with this change? Sure. Because most could care less for Steam groups and less so for spam invites.

But now Steam groups are essentially useless, as the best and most widely successful means to grow them has been removed. This was a terrible way to go about solving the issue of spam and has now upset community organizers everywhere.

Group growth will now be stunted across Steam and people will hardly become aware of the existence of many groups. And no, don't someone dare to suggest the search feature because 1) It's a mess 2) Search results are often irrelevant and 3) Most importantly, people will not think to use it.

A better solution would have simply been to give people the option to turn off invites instead of forcing it upon everyone. RIP Steam community groups.

[Rainwatcher]

Originally posted by BloodMalice:

Have you pleased the vast majority of Steam users with this change? Sure. Because most could care less for Steam groups and less so for spam invites.

But now Steam groups are essentially useless, as the best and most widely successful means to grow them has been removed. This was a terrible way to go about solving the issue of spam and has now upset community organizers everywhere.

Group growth will now be stunted across Steam and people will hardly become aware of the existence of many groups. And no, don't someone dare to suggest the search feature because 1) It's a mess 2) Search results are often irrelevant and 3) Most importantly, people will not think to use it.

A better solution would have simply been to give people the option to turn off invites instead of forcing it upon everyone. RIP Steam community groups.

Sure, I'll bite. The most optimal solution, in this case, seems to be both. The spamming had gotten so out of hand, that if you're part of any group, ever trade, or have a significant friends list that includes anyone not from meatspace, then you were getting enough spam to make steam unusable outside of Offline Mode. Turning off public invites is a drastic measure, and smacks of a quick and dirty kludge to fix an immediate problem.

What I expect is in a patch or two exactly what you've suggested will happen, a simple invites toggle with options for public, friends only, and none. For existing users, it'll probably default to none, to curtail any remaining bots, for new users, probably on by default to allow groups to grow as they have.

An even more elegant solution may have, or perhaps will be, reporting. A simple 'report this invite as spam' button right on the invite. A little automation and tie in the ability to disable a group from sending public invites, and bam, problem solved, without having to turn off public invites by default.

But that kind of elegant implementation takes time and coder-hours to get working, so as a quick fix kludge of a solution, this'll do.

[BloodMalice]

Originally posted by Rainwatcher:

What I expect is in a patch or two exactly what you've suggested will happen.

If this was indicated int he announcement then I would have held my breath to see how it plays. But since there is none I assume that this is it, just like how changes to gift inventory were. So I will speak my mind and let them know that there could have been better ways to go about this.

Originally posted by Rainwatcher:

An even more elegant solution may have, or perhaps will be, reporting. A simple 'report this invite as spam' button right on the invite. A little automation and tie in the ability to disable a group from sending public invites, and bam, problem solved, without having to turn off public invites by default.

Again, another good idea. It's just a pity they didn't put more thoguht into it.

Originally posted by Rainwatcher:

But that kind of elegant implementation takes time and coder-hours to get working, so as a quick fix kludge of a solution, this'll do.

Sorry, but that's not an excuse for me. They've allowed this problem to fester for years and had more than enough time to code a solution, let alone hire the necessary staff that they could most likely easily afford.

Again, if there was indication that this will continue to evolve then I'd be satisfied with that. But I'm going to assume there isn't otherwise, especially based on their past behavior in content updates.

[Ninja Bunn3h]

This change really screws over my group. I send out invites to a massive community of my player base for ease of access. Now I'd have to friend them all first?!

There should be a way to limit bot account and new accounts not punish the entire system.

Really bummed. My community is very serious and I only reach out to people from my server or looking for a server like mine.

[Rainwatcher]

Originally posted by BloodMalice:

Originally posted by Rainwatcher:

What I expect is in a patch or two exactly what you've suggested will happen.

If this was indicated int he announcement then I would have held my breath to see how it plays. But since there is none I assume that this is it, just like how changes to gift inventory were. So I will speak my mind and let them know that there could have been better ways to go about this.

Ok, I'm gonna appologise now. I legit laughed loud enough at that to wake up my roommate. This is Valve we're talking about here. They don't discuss untill it's implemented. I mean, "Valve Time" and "Half-Life 3 confirmed" are memes for a reason.

Case in point. There was no mention that any change to groups was in the works untill this dropped, to the point that there's a post in suggestion/Ideas about this very same option. From less than an hour before this announcement was posted.

Valve does a lot of things right. Steam gets a lot of things right or at least usable. But customer communication and support is definitely not one of them.

[BloodMalice]

Originally posted by Ninja Bunn3h:

This change really screws over my group. I send out invites to a massive community of my player base for ease of access. Now I'd have to friend them all first?!

There should be a way to limit bot account and new accounts not punish the entire system.

Really bummed. My community is very serious and I only reach out to people from my server or looking for a server like mine.

This exactly the sentiment of group organizers everywhere.

[BloodMalice]

Originally posted by SomeGuy:

To address this, you can now only be invited into a group by your friends.

So, now spammers gotta spam friend requests instead and then invite to group after you add them.

Instead of pressing 1 button to decline you will now have press more buttons to decline group request and unfriend user.

Truth, lol. Someone mentioned this on the Steam Reddit too. They may have just exacerbated the problem here.

[僕の名前 (仮)]

Can I have option "do not accept group requests from anyone"? If friend would want me join group, he'd say me that in chat and I would temporarily enable inviting (or say nope, i dont want join)

I wouldnt want random group invites even from people from friendlist. I dont think I ever joined a single group that was sent by someone. I only join groups that I want.

[Rainwatcher]

Originally posted by BloodMalice:

Originally posted by SomeGuy:

So, now spammers gotta spam friend requests instead and then invite to group after you add them.

Instead of pressing 1 button to decline you will now have press more buttons to decline group request and unfriend user.

Truth, lol. Someone mentioned this on the Steam Reddit too. They may have just exacerbated the problem here.

Originally posted by SomeGuy:

Can I have option "do not accept group requests from anyone"? If friend would want me join group, he'd say me that in chat and I would temporarily enable inviting (or say nope, i dont want join)

I wouldnt want random group invites even from people from friendlist. I dont think I ever joined a single group that was sent by someone. I only join groups that I want.

Huh, now that I think of it. This may be a more endimic problem to how Steam users use the friendlist. I've seen some friendlists that are several hundred people long, that smacks of people just friending anyone that vaguely interests them in whatever game they're playing, or whoever they're trading with, with no actual care taken when it comes to friending people at all.

Maybe something like the G+ circles system would work here. Categories for friends based on what game you friended them from, or IRL people, or friends from groups, that sort of thing. Then have permissions for your groups, kinda like permissions in Discord or a guild, one of which would be show or decline group invites, allow trades, that sort of thing.

[Tito Shivan]

Originally posted by Rainwatcher:

An even more elegant solution may have, or perhaps will be, reporting. A simple 'report this invite as spam' button right on the invite.

You've always had the ability to report users spamming invites. And action has been taken against these accounts. The problem is that by the time you're reporting someone for Spam invites you've already been spammed.

The target is to avoid the spam invite from even reaching your inbox. That causes:

-Less motivation to spammers to even start sending invites.
-Less annoyance to users no longer receiving spam.
-Removing the burden and responsibility from the user of tagging and reporting the spam.

[[FOR] Reason]

Please re-enable group owners to send group invites to non-friends [BUT] require a steam user level of 50 to create a group in the first place [AND] give users an option in user settings to auto-ignore group invites! ^This would please EVERYONE & cut down on the number of reported users for group spam since the total number of users who can create groups would be decreased.
...Instead, you've currently just aliented every honest group owner across the entire steam community. This change was absolutely disrespectful to users who have worked earnestly to build communities. I agree with everything the user beneath me typed about "good idea but poor execution". Steam community is the life blood of networking and server hosting groups. Words cannot describe how infuriating this is and inconsiderate it is on Valves part merely because of bots. Implement those two suggestions above & everyone will be happy.

[Rainwatcher]

Originally posted by Tito Shivan:

Originally posted by Rainwatcher:

An even more elegant solution may have, or perhaps will be, reporting. A simple 'report this invite as spam' button right on the invite.

You've always had the ability to report users spamming invites. And action has been taken against these accounts. The problem is that by the time you're reporting someone for Spam invites you've already been spammed.

The target is to avoid the spam invite from even reaching your inbox. That causes:

-Less motivation to spammers to even start sending invites.
-Less annoyance to users no longer receiving spam.
-Removing the burden and responsibility from the user of tagging and reporting the spam.

Point, and most users don't take the time to actually file reports, especially not while in the middle of a game.

Point I was trying to make, regardless of my mistake, is that solutions take time to code, and quick fixes take less. Which is why (I'm assuming) this was done this way. I'm defending y'all here, this is a fix to solve the immediate problem of group invite spam, presumibally while implementing a solution.

The bigger, overall point, that has has been indirectly made but seems obvious to me, is that you've really just moved the spam from group invites, to friend invites. Give it a week, it'll be a thing. And have broken a chunk of the usability of groups in the process, which while it hurts the spammers more, it also hurts the most loyal of gamers, streamers, and others that actually make a community, a community.

Like most fixes, in most software, it's a temporary solution, to a large, insanely complex problem. I don't envy y'all in the slightest for having to tackle it. I tossed out one idea a couple posts back that may be one part of the larger puzzle, or maybe it'll just make things more complex for no benefit.

The biggest point though, was this one I made as an off handed joke.

"Valve does a lot of things right. Steam gets a lot of things right or at least usable. But customer communication and support is definitely not one of them."

You have a massive comunity that wants Steam to be better. There's no way you'll ever get 'em all to agree on anything. But, for every ten-thousand that'll throw a fit at every change, you'll find one that will look at a design and say, that'll solve issue X, but won't it cause issue Y?

Take advantige of that community, and you might find that solving complex issues gets a bit easier. The hive-mind isn't always right, but it's really good at picking out flaws by taking advantage of the multitude of perspectives and experiences that exist.

[Pyromaniax]

I must say this is a really disappointing decision, it's like the authenticator and trade hold-ups issue all over again. You are providing something that is supposed to solve an issue but not analyzing it deep enough to address how it will affect honest people that use that feature a lot. It will make spammers less active on the group invite section but now they will spam friend requests and the managers of the legitimate steam groups will have a hard time inviting people to their groups. All of this could have been avoided if we had the previously mentioned option to block invites from strangers, but completely blocking the invites will make the information flow a lot slower and mostly useless. The thing that is most upsetting is that this wasn't even announced before it landed, we couldn't prepare for it in any way, suddenly boom it's here, if the feature was announced beforehand we could have addressed these issues before it was implemented and avoid all this bad feedback. And now just like the authenticator it will probably take a eternity of Valve time to fix all these problems.