Animated Profile Pictures & The Eradication of The Epileptic User

[Adam Over]

So, I was just scrolling through a forum. Looking for some threads pertaining to an issue I (was) having with a game.

Almost immediately, I was assaulted by all manner of flashing / spinning / pulsing / strobe-like images.

As someone else posted. I don't think Valve have thought this through.

Will Steam/Valve have to start putting epileptic warnings through-out; perhaps 'dimming' the images by default ?

I am not affected by these; however obnoxious they look, but have a relative who is.

This change makes the forum pages look like a website from the early 2000's, animated gifs and banners all over the place; Horrific.

I posit there are many thousands of users whom do suffer from such effects the noise these images cause; and it won't be long until some are unable to visit the forums without trepidation, or at all.

Can someone from Valve/Steam answer if these animated profile images will be Toggle-able in the future.

Certainly those whom this will affect would appreciate the ability to disable them.

[Wolverine]

It would be nice from Steam to offer a filter for any kind of "animated" crap, just let the user decide what they want to see and what not.

[Chika Ogiue]

At least when using the website, you can add plugins to browsers that automatically take care of this. I currently use one called Animation Policy which can be set to only allow a loop once, or never. I used to use a better one, but it seems to have stopped being supported where you could click on a gif to play it and have it set to non-playing by default.

[Magillanica Lou Mayvin]

Note to self: I need to read twice before replying in the future.

[Adam Over]

^ Obviously did not read the whole post. So I will respond in kind.
It is not I that suffer from this condition. But many do.

[Flava Clown]

Originally posted by Aegis Blade:

...

Why not just an option for user to disable animated stuff in the client? "Wolverine" pretty much suggested that. No one wants to take your flashy things away from you. It would just be nice if people could disable it, if they desire to do so. That could also help with the overall performance of the respective sites.
In other words, you want to see it, you see it, someone else doesn't want to see it, they change their settings and don't see it anymore. Win - Win?

[Chika Ogiue]

Originally posted by Flava Clown:

Why not just an option for user to disable animated stuff in the client?

People like Aegis Blade have selective sight. They are unable to see the word "option" or any of its variants. They always immediately think you are going to force a change of them because they don't grasp the concept of user settings.

[Kiddiec͕̤̱͋̿͑͠at 🃏]

Originally posted by Adam Over:

Animated Profile Pictures & The Eradication of The Epileptic User

Originally posted by Aegis Blade:

No.
I'm sick and tired of clicking on things and agreeing to never ending popups that show up on my screen.
...

What does that have to do with any of this? OP is simply asking for an opt-out feature in the settings that is not turned on by default. That wouldn't inconvenience people like you who don't want to turn the animations off for themselves.

Simply -reading- things (and then thinking about their meaning) does a lot / goes a long way to helping prevent potential conflicts you may face in the future from your own presumptuous responses.

[[bin]zwieda]

Originally posted by Aegis Blade:

You folks fight for everyone that suffers from any condition yet you forget you're hurting the majority of normal people without conditions at all. You want a safe space? I agree. You can have it. But don't force it upon me.

First of all, noone wants to stop you looking at flashy, blinky, shiny, toony stuff at all. Enjoy it, as long as you can, till you maybe one day will be in an age or condition, where you are getting some issues with that kind of "beauty" yourselfes. You never can tell, if it comes over you one day, too.

Second of that, there are millions of people worldwide, having more or less health issues which can be triggered more or less with such flashy, blinky, shiny, toony stuff. So, making it possible to enjoy the steam platform for them too is no "forcing the needs of a minotity into everybody elses lives" but a smart way to keep existing customers.

Third, if you wanna lock out those people, having more or less issues with the flashy, blinky, shiny, toony stuff, you would have needed to start with it about 20 years ago. Now, millions of people have had paid purchases via steam. Steam is needed to use their purchases. Locking out those people from steam would mean the need to fully refund all those people, which you won´t be able nor willing to do in any way.

So steam MUST be able to be used by ALL their customers without any possible health hazards, due to the existing customer base. You could start locking them out of purchasing new items, but you´ll loose enormous amounts of sales, which you´re also not be willing to risk.

So, you NEED to take care of all your existing customers and possibly attract new ones more and more, too.

Sounds easy, right? Well... not at all...

But back to the roots: it´s all about OPTIONS! We need optional "switches" to disable some elements onscreen, which may trigger existing health issues for some people.

Let us have OPTIONS, to turn off blinking icons, flashing game-covers and other things, if we have a reason or a need to do so. Anybody else may enjoy the full "beauty" of all those animated elements, till their eyes fall out, no problem.

But you need to realize the fact, that existing customers, who invested a lot of cash over years into steam already, still need to be supported with the platform in a way, not causing health related issues.

[Adam Over]

@Kiddicate.

Thank you for that concise breakdown of that; I was going to respond, but could not have said it any better than you.

An OPTION is all that is needed, for those whom may be inflicted by this condition.

Not much to ask I would have thought.

[Dadpool]

There could be a script running inside a steam client that detects flashing images for example by calculating the intensity and difference and speed of difference between colors. After that would be applied to client, everyone would see right after start of steam application that "There are setting that you need to see for your own safety" or something like that.

[Magillanica Lou Mayvin]

It was late and I had 4 hours left to sleep until I had to get ready for work (worked 27 hours in the past 2 days since I made the post lol). I completely missed the "option" or "toggle" requests and proceeded to reply to what seemed to be a demand instead.

I see now that what he was requesting was a toggle option for the animations, I apologize. That is not only a green light from me, but it is also understandable and I'm all up for it.

I genuinely thought he was requesting all animations to be turned off for everyone.

I am sympathetic to folks with a condition tho. I too suffer from first person / close FOV motion sickness and I can never play the new Cyberpunk game because I get nausea and feel like throwing up when in front of my monitor and playing in first person with low FOV. The game can not be made third person or have it's FOV increased (to my knowledge). Upon posting on twitter and CDPR forums and youtube as well as other places, I was outright told it ain't ever gonna happen. Therefore I can never play that game. In the words of the many people replying: "Go back to playing your crap JRPGs , RTSs and fighting games". There are too few of us with this condition and not worth it for them to add third person like in the witcher or mass effect.

Anyway, wall of text, I'm all up for toggle option just like I'm all up for colorblind mode. Apologies for any inconvenience.

[Kiddiec͕̤̱͋̿͑͠at 🃏]

Originally posted by Aegis Blade:

...

Yeah, I had a feeling that was the case.
In all honesty, I wouldn't blame you if you wanted us both to just delete our posts with your writing in them.

Just, make sure you read things more carefully in the future.


Anyways,
I think these animations -probably- aren't changing fast enough to trigger an epileptic attack - BUT I'm not a medical professional, nor do I have epilepsy.

In any regard, there's a lot of other people that are annoyed with them too, and for that reason, giving us the option to turn them off would be appreciated by more than just a minority of people:

https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/10/2577696996222867598/
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/10/2577696996223481715/
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/10/2577696996223437382/
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/10/2577696996230698194/
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/10/2577696996230035953/
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/10/2527030866863413023/

(These are just a few of the topics that I know of on this subject)

[wuddih]

car, black hole and ink can be PSE triggers and the entering VR avatar too.

i have a userscript to block this stuff, but i dont wanna publish it because Valve mostly uses the existence of 3rd party stuff as an excuse to do nothing .. and it wont work in client anyway.

[Kiddiec͕̤̱͋̿͑͠at 🃏]

Originally posted by wuddih:

car, black hole and ink can be PSE triggers and the entering VR avatar too.

i have a userscript to block this stuff, but i dont wanna publish it because Valve mostly uses the existence of 3rd party stuff as an excuse to do nothing .. and it wont work in client anyway.

Oh. I forgot about the "entering VR" one.
Yeah, no question about that one - that's... too much for light sensitive eyes.

It flashes all over between those bright colors of differing hues quickly.

[Magillanica Lou Mayvin]

Originally posted by Kiddiec͕̤̱͋̿͑͠at:

Originally posted by Aegis Blade:

...

Yeah, I had a feeling that was the case.
In all honesty, I wouldn't blame you if you wanted us both to just delete our posts with your writing in them.

Just, make sure you read things more carefully in the future.


Anyways,
I think these animations -probably- aren't changing fast enough to trigger an epileptic attack - BUT I'm not a medical professional, nor do I have epilepsy.

In any regard, there's a lot of other people that are annoyed with them too, and for that reason, giving us the option to turn them off would be appreciated by more than just a minority of people:

https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/10/2577696996222867598/
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/10/2577696996223481715/
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/10/2577696996223437382/
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/10/2577696996230698194/
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/10/2577696996230035953/
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/10/2527030866863413023/

(These are just a few of the topics that I know of on this subject)


:seewhatyoudid:

I went back and edited my post. It's thanks to your post that I was able to find my mistake.

Thank you. Have a nice night.