What does steam itself as a company do?

[PhoenixAscended]

We have this platform for buying games and playing them, it works fine, everyone and their mom uses it, I feel like we hardly get any like actual updates that are meaningful to steam, the last one I remember was the UI changing which was I fee like a year ago now?

Is all their money going straight to just running the platform and not adding new features or fixing old ones? there are underlying issues to steam in certain areas and others that should really be changed, and there are always improvements that can be made in areas like the storepage, review system, discussions, moderation, etc, but I feel like I hear nothing about this stuff

Obviously yes for a platform of this magnitude it probably takes a large workforce and its also not really needed to get new content or updates very often, its just a marketplace, but I still wonder

[potato]

steam isn't a company, it's a distribution platform

[Chompman]

If it works don't fix it is the best method.

They do a lot of updates as you can see here:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/collection/steam

[DarkCrystalMethod]

They make shoes for orphans and get into fights.

[William Shakesman]

Originally posted by Chompman:

If it works don't fix it is the best method.

They do a lot of updates as you can see here:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/collection/steam

Sometimes they also use "If it doesn't work, don't fix it either." See, the back button languishing for nine months.

[PhoenixAscended]

Originally posted by William Shakesman:

Originally posted by Chompman:

If it works don't fix it is the best method.

They do a lot of updates as you can see here:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/collection/steam

Sometimes they also use "If it doesn't work, don't fix it either." See, the back button languishing for nine months.

Also it takes a journey just to change something simple as mic input for steam vc and find other settings related t o that

[Piston Smashed™]

Steam just being a market place is wrong and it is something which people who haven't been around since the start of Steam always seem to say.

Steam was created as a place where you download and keep your games up to date. Before Steam downloading and especially updating games was a complete nightmare. You could have spent all afternoon downloading and updating to get the latest patches installed then go to your favourite servers only to find they hadn't updated and sometimes it could be weeks before they did. Steam took over the hassle of keeping games (Valve games to begin with) up to date, insuring that everyone had the same versions.

Steam has a store but it is not primarily one, it never had a store until three years after it was created in 2005.

[PhoenixAscended]

Originally posted by Piston Smashed™:

Steam just being a market place is wrong and it is something which people who haven't been around since the start of Steam always seem to say.

Steam was created as a place where you download and keep your games up to date. Before Steam downloading and especially updating games was a complete nightmare. You could have spent all afternoon downloading and updating to get the latest patches installed then go to your favourite servers only to find they hadn't updated and sometimes it could be weeks before they did. Steam took over the hassle of keeping games (Valve games to begin with) up to date, insuring that everyone had the same versions.

Steam has a store but it is not primarily one, it never had a store until three years after it was created in 2005.

Valves games, like team fortress 2 or half life 2 just to name a few rarely receive anything, aside from what is needed, steam deck is a good product that receives updates, and steam VR gets what it needs, but for such a large platform I feel like there would be more going on

also, it sounds like you are just talking about your nostalgia? I've only been on steam since 2017 but look at it in modern day, its a place to buy games, download games, update games, play games, have a game library, distribute games if you look at it from a development standpoint, and a couple other things mixed in there that aren't too major.

Heck, even wikipedia considers it a "video game digital distribution service and storefront"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_%28service%29

[Low Standards]

Hire the people in this forum.

[cinedine]

According to themselves: whatever the ♥♥♥♥ they want as long as they find enough people within the company to do it with them.

Many moons ago they also said they had three games in the pipeline. That was before Alyx and Steam Deck's Aperture Desk Job. So either Valve still has one in the works, they canned it or they really cannot count to three. ;) There was also a project that Campo Santo was working on before being gobbled and put to work to the all-time classic Underlords and the Steam platform. Maybe it's still floating around somewhere.

[strandd505]

Originally posted by potato:

steam isn't a company, it's a distribution platform

potato potato

[PhoenixAscended]

Originally posted by cinedine:

or they really cannot count to three. ;)

lmao at this point yeah

[Mailer]

Originally posted by PhoenixAscended:

Is all their money going straight to just running the platform and not adding new features or fixing old ones? there are underlying issues to steam in certain areas and others that should really be changed, and there are always improvements that can be made in areas like the storepage, review system, discussions, moderation, etc, but I feel like I hear nothing about this stuff.

Non-store specific investments as of right now most likely include the Valve "Deckard", the recent Steam Deck OLED, and whatever other hardware/software projects are currently in development until Valve either decides to shelve them or announce a new product out of the blue. This is all speculative stuff because Valve does not say.

If you are talking platform-specific changes, you can join and follow the Steam Beta group and actively participate in current threads (sometimes even created by Valve Devs themselves for feedback), but otherwise you are not likely to get much insider info into what is being planned for the Steam client. https://steamcommunity.com/groups/SteamClientBeta/discussions/
That is, again, just a byproduct of Valve being quiet until they have something important to share.

if you are talking store-specific changes, you can always take a look at their current "experiments" going on for various store-related things: https://store.steampowered.com/labs
Addressing the elephant in the room however, there hasn't been a whole lot of development here since early 2023, so it's possible that no one at Valve are currently looking into it as of right now. Or it may have just been migrated into the Steam Beta instead. No one can really say any more for sure, because Valve doesn't say until it is ready.

-

The short answer to "what is Valve currently doing?" is probably just "innovating" because that's just what you should continuously try to do as a market leader.

[PhoenixAscended]

Originally posted by Mailer:

Originally posted by PhoenixAscended:

Is all their money going straight to just running the platform and not adding new features or fixing old ones? there are underlying issues to steam in certain areas and others that should really be changed, and there are always improvements that can be made in areas like the storepage, review system, discussions, moderation, etc, but I feel like I hear nothing about this stuff.

Non-store specific investments as of right now most likely include the Valve "Deckard", the recent Steam Deck OLED, and whatever other hardware/software projects are currently in development until Valve either decides to shelve them or announce a new product out of the blue. This is all speculative stuff because Valve does not say.

If you are talking platform-specific changes, you can join and follow the Steam Beta group and actively participate in current threads (sometimes even created by Valve Devs themselves for feedback), but otherwise you are not likely to get much insider info into what is being planned for the Steam client. https://steamcommunity.com/groups/SteamClientBeta/discussions/
That is, again, just a byproduct of Valve being quiet until they have something important to share.

if you are talking store-specific changes, you can always take a look at their current "experiments" going on for various store-related things: https://store.steampowered.com/labs
Addressing the elephant in the room however, there hasn't been a whole lot of development here since early 2023, so it's possible that no one at Valve are currently looking into it as of right now. Or it may have just been migrated into the Steam Beta instead. No one can really say any more for sure, because Valve doesn't say until it is ready.

-

The short answer to "what is Valve currently doing?" is probably just "innovating" because that's just what you should continuously try to do as a market leader.

Thanks for all the information, I had no idea the steam beta group even existed, also, I would hope that steam would be "innovating", I just wasn't completely sure, the only thing that stood out to me was the steam deck honestly.

[Mailer]

Originally posted by PhoenixAscended:

Originally posted by Mailer:

Non-store specific investments as of right now most likely include the Valve "Deckard", the recent Steam Deck OLED, and whatever other hardware/software projects are currently in development until Valve either decides to shelve them or announce a new product out of the blue. This is all speculative stuff because Valve does not say.

If you are talking platform-specific changes, you can join and follow the Steam Beta group and actively participate in current threads (sometimes even created by Valve Devs themselves for feedback), but otherwise you are not likely to get much insider info into what is being planned for the Steam client. https://steamcommunity.com/groups/SteamClientBeta/discussions/
That is, again, just a byproduct of Valve being quiet until they have something important to share.

if you are talking store-specific changes, you can always take a look at their current "experiments" going on for various store-related things: https://store.steampowered.com/labs
Addressing the elephant in the room however, there hasn't been a whole lot of development here since early 2023, so it's possible that no one at Valve are currently looking into it as of right now. Or it may have just been migrated into the Steam Beta instead. No one can really say any more for sure, because Valve doesn't say until it is ready.

-

The short answer to "what is Valve currently doing?" is probably just "innovating" because that's just what you should continuously try to do as a market leader.

Thanks for all the information, I had no idea the steam beta group even existed, also, I would hope that steam would be "innovating", I just wasn't completely sure, the only thing that stood out to me was the steam deck honestly.

This actually just came out today on the latest Beta:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/593110/view/4149575031735702628

They are revising the Family Sharing feature by merging it with other family features, in case this is interesting for you to know about.

[Brian9824]

Originally posted by Mailer:

Originally posted by PhoenixAscended:

Thanks for all the information, I had no idea the steam beta group even existed, also, I would hope that steam would be "innovating", I just wasn't completely sure, the only thing that stood out to me was the steam deck honestly.

This actually just came out today on the latest Beta:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/593110/view/4149575031735702628

They are revising the Family Sharing feature by merging it with other family features, in case this is interesting for you to know about.

Yeah I made a seprate thread for it as its a pretty MASSIVE change and most people don't view the beta features and have no clue it even exists