A sea of indie trash and Early Access games.

[phosTR]

This is what Steam has become. I want AA games back.

[Paratech2008]

BTW the title was Indie Trash and Early Access games, what does old games have to do with this? And the store pages are maintained by the publisher, not Valve. The o.p. expects Valve to verify over 10 THOUSAND game pages?

[Pierce Dalton]

Paratech2008 původně napsal:

BTW the title was Indie Trash and Early Access games, what does old games have to do with this? And the store pages are maintained by the publisher, not Valve. The o.p. expects Valve to verify over 10 THOUSAND game pages?

The OP seems to wish for some degree of quality control to avoid trash games on Steam. Quality control should also eliminate games that won't work without fan patches... even though they're not necessarily trash, one could argue they are because they don't work. In fact, some people do that in reviews.

Interestingly, some of these games have better versions on GOG, they'll work out of the box without touching anything. GOG fixes old games, Steam doesn't...

[Paratech2008]

Steam can't fix games anymore than GOG can without consent of the IP holder.

[Bee🐝]

Pierce Dalton původně napsal:

Bee původně napsal:

You mean they don't run natively for you specifically.

Loads of people either can't afford newer machines or are hardware collectors who do play those games as they were intended. Not every product on Steam caters to everyone, and that's why it has a diverse lineup of products. Brick and mortars cycle old stock because they need to make space for newer stuff - Steam doesn't have those issues.

Why would an older game requiring something like SCUMMVM be considered a scam?

Edit: This is like saying, a music shop can't sell LPs because things like CDs exist and you personally don't own a turn table.

Terrible comparison... it's just OBVIOUS that you need a turn table to listen to LPs. No one will expect them to work in CD players lol.

No, it's pretty perfect. System requirements are listed on all Steam pages. Games, like Tomb Raider, lists exactly what they will play on.

Are we now expecting Valve to bear the blame for people's inability to read as well?

[Crazy Tiger]

Pierce Dalton původně napsal:

Crazy Tiger původně napsal:

Odd that people manage to play them if they don't work at all. I rebought them on Steam because a friend played them 2 years ago.

I said they don't work at all without patching, obviously. Unless you have Windows XP or something. And how many people use old OS's these days?

I don't see the issue. Personally I much rather have the option to be able to purchase games that might need a tweak than not be able to purchase them at all. People who don't want to do so, can choose not to purchase them. But let us have that choice.

Pierce Dalton původně napsal:

Interestingly, some of these games have better versions on GOG, they'll work out of the box without touching anything. GOG fixes old games, Steam doesn't...

Not interestingly at all. Different business model, GoG has it's own niche. One they slowly let go over the years, unfortunately. No doubt it's related to such games not being the moneymakers they were back when they released originally. And it won't necessarily always be cheap to get the rights to modify the game files.

Funnily enough some publishers are rather clever and upload the GoG modified version to Steam.

[Tito Shivan]

Pierce Dalton původně napsal:

The OP seems to wish for some degree of quality control to avoid trash games on Steam.

Shame it doesn't work that way.

[Paratech2008]

It's a shame people can't read system requirements, visit game forums, and not make rash decisions about game purchases.

You know there's no difference in a game requiring older or newer equipment that what users have.

So how is not taking a minute to look at the store page and read the game requirements, another to look at recent reviews of the game(s) in question and maybe 5 minutes reading the forums too hard to do?

How are impulse game purchases Valve's fault?

Plus if you you don't abuse it you can ask for a less than 2 hour and 2 week refund....just don't abuse it.

[aka]

phosTR původně napsal:

This is what Steam has become. I want AA games back.

Consoles killed gaming ... wait 10 years for vr stuff to get good.

[Skrat]

Pierce Dalton původně napsal:

Aachen původně napsal:

What example non-games are you referencing?

I like visual novels, it's a fun genre to chill. If a visual novel doesn't has any choices, though, you can't really call it a game. You could call it a virtual book or something like that.

"It's not a visual novel, it's a visual book"

What

[Crazyeyes]

phosTR původně napsal:

This is what Steam has become. I want AA games back.

Very true.

[Sazzouu]

A sea of folks unaware of what "AA" or "AAA" actually means...
This is what Steam Forums have become. I want the good old times back where gamers were actually aware of what they were talking about.

aka původně napsal:

Consoles killed gaming...

Console gaming exists longer than PC gaming

Pierce Dalton původně napsal:

I like visual novels, it's a fun genre to chill. If a visual novel doesn't has any choices, though, you can't really call it a game. You could call it a virtual book or something like that.

By definition every game is finite in what they can do based on "users decisions". Therefore a visual novel with "decisions" is nothing but a "Virtual Book series" going by your logic.

kitt původně napsal:

In the end devs just release a "prologue" and call it a day if early access gets removed.

Early Access gets removed by the developers. If they decide that their game is finished then that's their decision; Period. Same argument as people try to enforce some sort of "Abandoned"-state for older games: how would you know?

kitt původně napsal:

Steam also offers a playtest option devs could use to let people play and test but there is no money to make.

Early Access is nowhere comparable to playtests. Early Access is a tool to additionally fund your game on the last few miles to get a clean release - or at least that is how it was initially planned to be.

Playtests usually are a tool to save money even though you don't earn any. A product usually gets tested before the actual release. Either you do it inhouse with your own QA-teams which would cost top dollar in salaries or you need to outsource it to external QA-teams like Ubisoft usually does which again costs a lot but in services rather than salaries. And the third method is to use the community as volunteer testers which first and foremost does not cost a single penny and secondly usually is the better method as QA-teams are a grey soup of casual gamers while the people that are actively playtesting are folks actually interested in the product.

TL;DR
The purposes are completely different in both methods

[Polaczek]

Ciekawe bardzzo interesujące te wiadomości

[Pierce Dalton]

Paratech2008 původně napsal:

Steam can't fix games anymore than GOG can without consent of the IP holder.

Certain games are fixed on GOG but not on Steam, so you're implying the IP holder allowed GOG to do that but is not allowing Steam? Sorry, that makes no sense at all.

Also, this has nothing to do with system requirements, I don't know why you keep mentioning them. You can read the system requirements of all games on Steam, probably none of them will warn you: this game does not work on Windows 10/8.

As I said, this is common knowledge for experienced PC gamers: old games will require some tweaking to work. Still, not everyone knows that, that's why you easily find reviews complaining about this point. Installing a mod or patch is something easy and simple for me, I've done that many times. A lot of people never did this, though, so this may look difficult and complex for them. You know, some people can't even install new drivers which is a simple process...

Let's not forget certain people purchase a lot of games on sales, you simply cannot expect them to carefully examine each game if they're purchasing like 30, 40 games. The only thing they'll do is read the system requirements, but once again: the system requirements don't tell you the game won't work on modern systems.

Anyway, this ain't really the point here. The point is:

"A sea of indie trash and Early Access games - this is what Steam has become."

While not all indies/ea games are trash, there's some truth in such statement. Let's be honest here, it's difficult to find good games on Itch (even though they are there, somewhere).

With the avalanche of indie games, Steam became something like the fancy version of Itch: thousands and thousands of indie games plus the AAA stuff.

For those unfamiliar with it, Itch is an online game store just like Steam, dedicated to indie games: https://itch.io/

It seems to me they also don't have any quality control, thus making it difficult to find good games among the sea of low quality ones. This issue is not exclusive to Steam, it will happen in any business that sells anything.

To hide indie games on Steam is definitely not the solution: you'll also ignore the good ones, there are indie gems like "Forgive Me Father" that can put certain AAA games to shame. I'm not against indie games at all, but most of them lack in quality because no one is pushing them to make a better product.

The good thing is, some devs don't need that, they'll push themselves because themselves have standards.

[Pierce Dalton]

Skrat původně napsal:

Pierce Dalton původně napsal:

I like visual novels, it's a fun genre to chill. If a visual novel doesn't has any choices, though, you can't really call it a game. You could call it a virtual book or something like that.

"It's not a visual novel, it's a visual book"

What

If you don't have any choices, then where is the game? This is what I meant...

[Pierce Dalton]

Bee původně napsal:

Pierce Dalton původně napsal:

Terrible comparison... it's just OBVIOUS that you need a turn table to listen to LPs. No one will expect them to work in CD players lol.

No, it's pretty perfect. System requirements are listed on all Steam pages. Games, like Tomb Raider, lists exactly what they will play on.

Are we now expecting Valve to bear the blame for people's inability to read as well?

Usually system requirements won't tell you about incompatibility with newer systems. I guess you can't read, my friend.