Steam sales art sucks

[ThatRussian]

What the hell is this, Steam? This autumn sale UI looks like it's been drawn by a child, and badly. It looks like the artist just completely forgot about their assignment, and phoned it in at the last moment. And of course there's the godawful whiff of CalArts with the bean mouths and noodlearms.
It's been going on for a while now. The last xmas and summer one was crap, too, it's just this one takes the lazy cake. Fire whoever is responsible, and hire some actually decent artists, like you did before, with cool pixel art/actual effort put in.

[Under there]

Seretti님이 먼저 게시:

ThatRussian님이 먼저 게시:

What the hell is this, Steam? This autumn sale UI looks like it's been drawn by a child, and badly.

Is your art any better? If so, offer your services to Valve

just make ur own sale

[nullable]

Every sale has different art. I think trying something new every time is risky, but I also think variety is the spice of life. Maybe this time around doesn't do it for you, that's OK. Being mindlessly negative isn't constructive at all. Being a malcontent doesn't give your opinions more punch.

Art you don't like doesn't mean the artist was lazy.

Art you don't like doesn't mean the artists aren't decent.

Having a particular taste or preference for a style is fine. Expecting that it's the only thing that's acceptable is foolish.

[ThatRussian]

Snakub Plissken님이 먼저 게시:

Art you don't like doesn't mean the artist was lazy.

Art you don't like doesn't mean the artists aren't decent.

Oh, so, as long as it's Art (which can be pretty much anything, really), that means it's okay, because beauty is in the eye of the beholder? You do realize that if I spin it like that, then nothing can ever be lazy or badly done, simply because there's bound to be at least one person to say otherwise. And every single artist, from a toddler doodling to a photorealistic painter are all, at the very least, decent.

I disagree with the whole subjectivity over objectivity argument. While art does change value depending on the one observing, I still stand by my point that the artist phoned it in, and that there's a deeper trend of this happening over time at Steam. Simply going "it's all subjective" is just as stupid as going "it's all objective". There's parts of both involved, and I believe that the artwork at this sale is repulsive to many more.

What I think happened, is that there's a downright incompetent person working at Valve as a Steam art director, that commissions the artists not for their merit, but rather for being friends/being in the crowd of wankers and money launderers that is the modern art scene. You can't fire an artist you never had on payroll, but you certainly can fire incompetent management that lead to this happening in the first place.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

ThatRussian님이 먼저 게시:

Yeah, it was mostly hit or miss, but never did it miss this badly in recent years, and it's getting worse.
Even though the old mascots were literally differently colored blobs with eyes and limbs, they were less offensive to the eyes than this crap. And this can be felt through animated stickers, too, with most of the Valve-made ones being badly made "cutesy" or "quirky" crap. Feels like Steam's art department is entirely staffed by 50+ childless aunts that subsist on pictures of kittens and awful minion memes.
I'm not asking for high art here, just for some effort to be put in.

Mr. Gentlebot님이 먼저 게시:

I'd rather a minion meme over this modern-community-college-art garbage to be honest.
Definitely could've been actually themed for Autumn, certainly they took a swing, and missed.

Makes me wonder how the "Winter" one is going to look.

ThatRussian님이 먼저 게시:

I'm not asking for high art here, just for some effort to be put in.

Seriously. Have you seen the points shop items as well? Just, No. Something with more effort and related, this stuff is.... awful. :cozycastondeath:

Honestly I don't see how it's any worse than what came before.

The overall main stylistic difference now is that it's a bit more plainly-cutesier than than it was before, whereas before it was a bit more on the gronky, ugly-cute side of things.

I surmise that that's what some people are having a backlash against.

[Tito Shivan]

Snakub Plissken님이 먼저 게시:

Every sale has different art. I think trying something new every time is risky, but I also think variety is the spice of life.

I've been kind of wanting Steam doing a "♥♥♥♥ it, since you always complain about everything here's a 'no-sale sale"... No sale themed artwork, no event, no badge, no freebies, no cards, no frontpage deals display... Just the store working as every other tuesday.

ThatRussian님이 먼저 게시:

What I think happened, is that there's a downright incompetent person working at Valve as a Steam art director, that commissions the artists not for their merit, but rather for being friends/being in the crowd of wankers and money launderers that is the modern art scene.

And that's a whole truckload full of assumptions and prejudices if I've ever seen one...

ツ님이 먼저 게시:

Seretti님이 먼저 게시:

Is your art any better? If so, offer your services to Valve

just make ur own sale :hypnospacecool:

I feel like we something lose from focus we're at a videogame store.

I mean others stores aren't precisely throwing it out of the park either in the art department.
Just look at Humble: https://imgur.com/a/hnHAkVj
Epic: https://imgur.com/a/X0MiBeL
Origin: https://imgur.com/a/Dhi8IUQ

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Tito Shivan님이 먼저 게시:

ツ님이 먼저 게시:

just make ur own sale :hypnospacecool:

I feel like we something lose from focus we're at a videogame store.

I mean others stores aren't precisely throwing it out of the park either in the art department.
Just look at Humble: https://imgur.com/a/hnHAkVj
Epic: https://imgur.com/a/X0MiBeL
Origin: https://imgur.com/a/Dhi8IUQ

Ironically those are less visually prominent and thus less likely to attract haters, heh.

[Tito Shivan]

Quint the Alligator Snapper님이 먼저 게시:

Ironically those are less visually prominent and thus less likely to attract haters, heh.

No Epic forums to hate their artwork either, huh.

[Mad Scientist]

Tito Shivan님이 먼저 게시:

Mr. Gentlebot님이 먼저 게시:

I'd rather a minion meme over this modern-community-college-art garbage to be honest.

Funny, to me it it seems it's inspired in neo-art-noveau than 'modern-community-college art style'. The artwork is more alike Beatle's 'Yellow Submarine' (With a accordingly auttum colour set)

I couldn't find the proper words to convey in the moment, so I just chose what I felt was more accurate at the time. Still looks awful.

Tito Shivan님이 먼저 게시:

Mr. Gentlebot님이 먼저 게시:

Something with more effort and related, this stuff is.... awful.

When talking about art, complexity doesn't always equates to artistic quality. That's kind of falling into the 'My 5 year old kid could have drawn this' which is a fallacy that biases the debate on.

I mean lots of people loved the Saliens Sale artwork (Which fell flat to me, personally)... Artwork is something you can't please everyone with.

It's best to stick with the generalized theme of it, than to essentially go off the rails to more interpretive than matter-of-fact. Deviation of such usually causes more dislike than likes, which we see demonstrated in numerous forms of media to the point many advocate for removing the ability to see disliking of pushed material.

[AustrAlien2010]

At first I thought the tree on the right side was the continent of Africa. Shows how well I am at geography.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Mr. Gentlebot님이 먼저 게시:

Tito Shivan님이 먼저 게시:

When talking about art, complexity doesn't always equates to artistic quality. That's kind of falling into the 'My 5 year old kid could have drawn this' which is a fallacy that biases the debate on.

I mean lots of people loved the Saliens Sale artwork (Which fell flat to me, personally)... Artwork is something you can't please everyone with.

It's best to stick with the generalized theme of it, than to essentially go off the rails to more interpretive than matter-of-fact. Deviation of such usually causes more dislike than likes, which we see demonstrated in numerous forms of media to the point many advocate for removing the ability to see disliking of pushed material.

Honestly, while I don't see a problem with people having opinions per se, I also dislike pressuring artists to do things the same way, and those people who go the point of wanting to rescind the existence of art they don't like are being very inappropriate.

[Tito Shivan]

Mr. Gentlebot님이 먼저 게시:

It's best to stick with the generalized theme of it, than to essentially go off the rails to more interpretive than matter-of-fact.

In reality is a 'dammed of you do, damned if you don't' situation.

Had them gone with an 'autumm theme' with falling leaves and such we'd still have someone making a thread about the artwork being dull, unoriginal and Steam just phoning in with a 'regular autumm artwork'.

You can't please all the 27 million of Steam Users at the same time. Someone is got to complain about everything you do.

And considering this sale just brought one single thread complaining about it (2019 Winter sale comparatively got loads more complaints in the art department) I'd say it's not being that much of an issue.

[jlds]

The Steam award artworks don't even look like they are for an awards ceremony and look like a CalArts student trying to draw in the style of Takashi Murakami.

[ThatRussian]

Tito Shivan님이 먼저 게시:

And considering this sale just brought one single thread complaining about it (2019 Winter sale comparatively got loads more complaints in the art department) I'd say it's not being that much of an issue.

Yeah, because Steam actually noticed the horrid art, and hid it somewhat. You can't see it front and center at the store page anymore, there's just an inoffensive text banner. At least I can't, maybe Steam did it just for me. That's admitting failure, no doubt about it.

Tito Shivan님이 먼저 게시:

Had them gone with an 'autumm theme' with falling leaves and such we'd still have someone making a thread about the artwork being dull, unoriginal and Steam just phoning in with a 'regular autumm artwork'.

It's better to have dull artwork than to have bad artwork. Especially in the mundane thing as a store sale. It's not an art gallery for experimentation and expression, it's just a store. I'll take a by-the-books unimaginative generic painting of buildings/people than a modern "art piece" any day.

Tito Shivan님이 먼저 게시:

I mean others stores aren't precisely throwing it out of the park either in the art department.
Just look at Humble: https://imgur.com/a/hnHAkVj
Epic: https://imgur.com/a/X0MiBeL
Origin: https://imgur.com/a/Dhi8IUQ

Well, other stores are not as old, popular, prominent or spyware-free. Just because the general bar is mediocrity, does not excuse being bad yourself.

[s p a c e j a n i t o r]

@ThatRussian - amazing thread

I find the badge completely disturbing.
I don't know why.
What are the spots?
Why do they disappear?
Why is it swirling then going solid then stripes?
Why is it growing lumps?
It's negative weird.

I will get 1 earlump, and not do any more of the badge levels, which means not completing the voting. Also not a loss, but disappointing in that it's the first year I'm not interested.

[Paratech2008]

Here I thought sales were about getting great games cheap. Why does the artwork matter more than games you want to buy?