Does Valve actually know how to make software anymore?

[Cream Tea]

I'm genuinely concerned.

[Crashed]

Describe your issue in detail (and give system specs as relevant) at https://steamcommunity.com/groups/SteamClientBeta/discussions/0/

[eram]

yes they do you are using it right now

[Tharon]

Apparently not.

I've been in IT for 30 years and I've never seen such poorly designed and poorly written stuff.
This isn't about fixing bugs, the whole idea about the new client was set up incorrectly and implemented worse.

The entire client took 5 years to retool piece by piece, and as it stands it's sort of a Frankenstein's monster badly taped together.
I wonder how much it cost to keep a team of programmers working for 5 years and then produce such a disaster.

After many years of criticizing EA, Ubisoft and of course EPIC for the bad state of their client, Valve has managed to do worse.

[Castyles]

Word. Seems they're way too worried about the nEw and MoDeRn, instead of actually fixing issues.

Or the coders just don't have ♥♥♥♥ to do, in their own opinion and then create stuff in order to just push them so the higher ups can see work being done.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

You complained more about the number of notifications being missing from the green bell icon. Going off that complaint alone, yes, Valve does know what they are doing.

[Doko]

I love how Steam discussion is coming up with threads heavily criticising Steam.

Can almost smell the terfing.

[RANGER]

Cry is free, I love Steam and they fix the issues if you post to the right place instead of whining.

[Tharon]

Originally posted by RANGER:

Cry is free, I love Steam and they fix the issues if you post to the right place instead of whining.

Those issue were reported in the beta. Some of them from the start of the beta.

[Crashed]

Originally posted by komarow:

it took me years to realize that most of my pc problems are from undisvered malware that causes issiues, it could be fake drivers, other bios hacks etc and even if you reinstall os it reinstalls via cmd line a day later so yeah, even if valve disd screw up its just top 1 percents of what is going on ith you rmachine that casuses lag/stutter/crashes etc.

Kind of like how a fresh Windows installation runs so good?

[Daikatan]

It was a huge mistake when they abandoned natively coded UI and pursued more cheap and unstable web-based UI route.

[RiO]

Originally posted by komarow:

it took me years to realize that most of my pc problems are from undisvered malware that causes issiues, it could be fake drivers, other bios hacks etc and even if you reinstall os it reinstalls via cmd line a day later so yeah, even if valve disd screw up its just top 1 percents of what is going on ith you rmachine that casuses lag/stutter/crashes etc.

Ah yes. The malware boogeyman. And I suppose all that malware on all those PCs owned by people that are complaining, suddenly became active the very moment Valve decided to push the desktop UI update live? Puh-lease...
You realize how absolutely ridiculous that sounds?

[J4MESOX4D]

They've basically updated the visual aspect of the client and ended up busting a lot of the core functionality in return. The client itself was pretty much hanging by a thread prior with even small updates breaking unrelated aspects and it also being updated needlessly regularly. Now this big update has been too much and the beta feedback process clearly isn't fit for purpose either.

Valve need to get themselves into a position where the client is fully operational and then just leave it be. Maybe two updates per year and that's it. Unless it's being held together by glue, there shouldn't be any need for it to be in such relentless development.

Half the time the only time I know its been updated is when there's new platform errors cropping up and not being on the beta, this means the issues always come into the final release build which is not good enough in itself.

[=Axton=]

You know what's ironic, about the time Gabe stepped down from running the company in his previous role is about the time the client started heading downhill.

[RiO]

Originally posted by J4MESOX4D:

They've basically updated the visual aspect of the client and ended up busting a lot of the core functionality in return. The client itself was pretty much hanging by a thread prior with even small updates breaking unrelated aspects and it also being updated needlessly regularly. Now this big update has been too much and the beta feedback process clearly isn't fit for purpose either.

Valve need to get themselves into a position where the client is fully operational and then just leave it be. Maybe two updates per year and that's it. Unless it's being held together by glue, there shouldn't be any need for it to be in such relentless development.

Agreed.
Except it'll never happen, because of Valve's corporate make-up.
They're a flat organization where everyone gets a say in what they're working on.
So the members of the Client's development team will want to have a reason to continue to be on that team; and quiet bug fixes for issues that have been in the Client for 10+ years, a glamorous and attractive career-path does not make.

Originally posted by =Axton=:

You know what's ironic, about the time Gabe stepped down from running the company in his previous role is about the time the client started heading downhill.

The time-frames align; yes.
But regadless of that Gabe is still the owner and has always remained close to Steam's goings-on. I don't for a moment believe that he wouldn't step in and intervene if these problems were big enough to warrant it. So it must be the case that he does not believe them to be big enough.

In other words: Gabe's attitude in all this would be as much a problem as all the rest.
He needs to step in and light a fire under a few rear ends to get things back into shape.

[Mad Scientist]

Originally posted by Tharon:

I've been in IT for 30 years and I've never seen such poorly designed and poorly written stuff.

I've seen way worse.

Originally posted by Tharon:

After many years of criticizing EA, Ubisoft and of course EPIC for the bad state of their client, Valve has managed to do worse.

Epic still takes a very unusual amount of time to load as their immediate issue, which for a client with basically no features seems like something that shouldn't be possible.

Though, they probably should've just focused on testing it and releasing all the updates when they axe win7/8 support to ensure it's properly polished.