Sort by release date became erratic

[Anamon]

I used to check out what's been released on Steam since my last visit, by looking at the full product list sorted by release date, like so:
https://store.steampowered.com/search/?sort_by=Released_DESC&ignore_preferences=1

This used to work fine, but for a few days now, the release date sorting has become very erratic. If you look at the list and keep scrolling down, you'll see that the release dates of the titles are not strictly descending, but keep jumping back and forth every time another page of games is loaded.

If I load a few pages, and then search the page for the title of one of the games, I often can find 2 or more entries for it because the ordering isn't reliable. In turn, that also means that I'm likely to miss some titles that don't show up in the list at all.

It happens in both infinite scroll and paged mode. It's even easier to see in paged mode: just go a few pages in, wait a few seconds and reload the page. You'll get an entirely different set of results, sometimes almost a week apart. This makes sorting the results broken and almost useless.

I'd like to report this as a bug to Valve, but the Support section seems to cover every aspect of Steam except for the storefront and search…? In the meantime, is there a more reliable way to get a list of releases sorted by date?

[The Majestic Hobo]

I second this, searching games by tag is useless. And why can't I just send a generic support ticket? WTF steam, I refused to change over to Epic because I thought you were more user friendly. Guess I was wrong...

[76561198407601200]

Escrito originalmente por The Majestic Hobo:

I second this, searching games by tag is useless. And why can't I just send a generic support ticket? WTF steam, I refused to change over to Epic because I thought you were more user friendly. Guess I was wrong...

Support deals with account issues, not what tags you want to search for with games. Nobody is forcing you to stay with steam.

[Crazy Tiger]

Agreed OP, I've noticed the not correctly sorting on date before.

Escrito originalmente por The Majestic Hobo:

I refused to change over to Epic

Cause apparently one can't use both stores and launchers side by side?

[Anamon]

Figured out a detail: it might not be the sorting that's broken, but that the list of results isn't always complete.

With infinite scrolling turned off, and refreshing the same page, I noticed that every time the results change, so does the number of total results shown in the table header. Refreshing a few times until I get the previous number again, the results also will be the same again.

It only flips between two numbers. The numbers change as releases get added, but it always seems to be a difference of exactly 73 titles that sometimes get returned, sometimes not. It seems like some of the database servers returning search results are in an inconsistent state.

@Steam: sync your database instances!

[The Majestic Hobo]

Escrito originalmente por The Living Tribunal:

Escrito originalmente por The Majestic Hobo:

I second this, searching games by tag is useless. And why can't I just send a generic support ticket? WTF steam, I refused to change over to Epic because I thought you were more user friendly. Guess I was wrong...

Support deals with account issues, not what tags you want to search for with games. Nobody is forcing you to stay with steam.

"My narrow definition of what something means is automatically what everything is supposed to adhere to!" Grow up...

[76561198407601200]

Escrito originalmente por The Majestic Hobo:

Escrito originalmente por The Living Tribunal:

Support deals with account issues, not what tags you want to search for with games. Nobody is forcing you to stay with steam.

"My narrow definition of what something means is automatically what everything is supposed to adhere to!" Grow up...

You don't have to take my word for it, there are plenty of other examples that show this, hell you could even ask support. Better yet, visit the support link showing what sort of issues they deal with. Let me know if you find one that deals with tags.

[The Majestic Hobo]

Escrito originalmente por The Living Tribunal:

Escrito originalmente por The Majestic Hobo:

"My narrow definition of what something means is automatically what everything is supposed to adhere to!" Grow up...

You don't have to take my word for it, there are plenty of other examples that show this, hell you could even ask support. Better yet, visit the support link showing what sort of issues they deal with. Let me know if you find one that deals with tags.

Support is to help, steam support is to help with steam issues. Just because they don't have a category for the store specifically, doesn't mean I don't want help with it. A lot of categories for something like this aren't made until people have a bunch of problems in said category. And the only way to fix something is to complain/inform on the matter.

[Anamon]

Re: original topic; it seems like the servers are synced up again. Lots of refreshing, the results count doesn't change anymore and the sorting seems fine again

[crunchyfrog]

I rejioned Steam in March this year, and it's been going on about as long as that.

I guess it's related to how it searches the servers somehow.

In the past, viewing a load of games was a pain because every time you clicked on a game to check then backed out, it took you back to the top of the search list and you had to scroll down to where you were. Was a real pain if the list was long.

Now, you can opt to "show more", and I think that's the root of the problem. As you rightly say, it's in chunks. You get the same result with other search criteria.

Go and alter the slider for filtering by price. You'll get the same sort of thing.

What makes this worse is that it does seem to be somewhat erratic.

[76561198407601200]

Escrito originalmente por The Majestic Hobo:

Escrito originalmente por The Living Tribunal:

You don't have to take my word for it, there are plenty of other examples that show this, hell you could even ask support. Better yet, visit the support link showing what sort of issues they deal with. Let me know if you find one that deals with tags.

Support is to help, steam support is to help with steam issues. Just because they don't have a category for the store specifically, doesn't mean I don't want help with it. A lot of categories for something like this aren't made until people have a bunch of problems in said category. And the only way to fix something is to complain/inform on the matter.

So in other words no, there is no option for it. Thanks.

[The Majestic Hobo]

Escrito originalmente por The Living Tribunal:

Escrito originalmente por The Majestic Hobo:

Support is to help, steam support is to help with steam issues. Just because they don't have a category for the store specifically, doesn't mean I don't want help with it. A lot of categories for something like this aren't made until people have a bunch of problems in said category. And the only way to fix something is to complain/inform on the matter.

So in other words no, there is no option for it. Thanks.

Your the kind of person that is watching someone drown and asks if they need a hand, when they say yes, you throw in your prosthetic aren't you? congrats, you've proved you have nothing to add to the conversation... or any other for that matter. Go back under your bridge and bother some billy goats.