I'm sick of items vanishing from my cart

[Wig Bang]

Very often, I'll place a few items in my cart to think about and then purchase later or near the end of their respective sales.

Today I added four items. I don't even remember the name of one of them. I went to look at my cart and only two items were in there.

Currently, when that happens, I go buy the items that were removed from my cart on the epic game store or Gog. Because if Steam removes them from my cart I assume there is some bug associated with that game and maybe they'll remove them from my library after buying them as well?

Or alternatively they just don't want me to buy that game. So no problem. They don't get my money and I buy it elsewhere.

Bottom line is Steam gets punished for doing this to me and I practice a zero tolerance policy in this matter.

Is this issue intended (on their active and fully intentional end) to continue? Or are they going to change their minds later on the whole "we don't want user X to buy game Y on our store" policy?

If I'm wrong about the motive behind this "feature" then is it that they think by removing it from my cart, I'll feel more pressure to buy the game? Because in reality, shrewd consumers such as myself have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to salesman trying to put on pressure.

For example, every time in my life I've ever been shopping/comparing services/prices/cars/apartment/house/carpets/window washer/tiler/fence/pool/etc./etc. if the person I'm meeting with gives me some line like "we have an offer that's good for the next 24 hours where if you-" I cut them off and thank them for their time and tell them that when any kind of pressure is put onto my plate, I regard it as a shrewd sales tactic and they have 100% lost my business and there is zero chance for recovery.

However, at this point, my game library is becoming rather split between the various game stores, which I'm not a fan of.

For the most part, Steam is the cause of this, due to them deciding (from what I can tell, arbitrarily) to put pressure on me or exclude me from buying certain games from time to time by removing them from my cart.

I'd like for this to stop but the issue persists. I'd love to know if this shady tactic will be stopped at any time in the near future.

Otherwise, my plan is to try to gradually transition completely over to other digital distribution sites.

[Mailer]

Does it say anything about the missing cart items here?
https://help.steampowered.com/en/accountdata/ShoppingCartHistory

Also, there would be no benefit to Steam manipulating your shopping cart by deliberately removing items from it, so I don't understand why you are accusing them of doing this.

This could however have been an issue caused by shopping on a browser, while also using the client, if you've found yourself doing both. Cookie-related issue perhaps. Try clearing your web-cache and see if the issue persists after that.

[Wig Bang]

Originally posted by Mailer:

Does it say anything about the missing cart items here?
https://help.steampowered.com/en/accountdata/ShoppingCartHistory

Also, there would be no benefit to Steam manipulating your shopping cart by deliberately removing items from it, so I don't understand why you are accusing them of doing this.

This could however have been an issue caused by shopping on a browser, while also using the client, if you've found yourself doing both. Cookie-related issue perhaps. Try clearing your web-cache and see if the issue persists after that.

Let me get this straight.

Your suggestion, to my problem with cart items vanishing (something that should be strictly maintained server-side) is to modify my end-user behavior and micromanage how I navigate the storefront via the browser and the client (both of which I am using simultaneously, obviously, as everyone does, as is essentially required)

If cookies are the issue, then why hasn't this years-old issue been resolved by managing carts on the server-side?

And what precisely do I need to do to avoid this happening in the future?

Because clearing my cookies every time I browse the store with a chance of adding things to my cart is far from reasonable. By any measure.

[Mailer]

Originally posted by Wig Bang:

Originally posted by Mailer:

Does it say anything about the missing cart items here?
https://help.steampowered.com/en/accountdata/ShoppingCartHistory

Also, there would be no benefit to Steam manipulating your shopping cart by deliberately removing items from it, so I don't understand why you are accusing them of doing this.

This could however have been an issue caused by shopping on a browser, while also using the client, if you've found yourself doing both. Cookie-related issue perhaps. Try clearing your web-cache and see if the issue persists after that.

Let me get this straight.

Your suggestion, to my problem with cart items vanishing (something that should be strictly maintained server-side) is to modify my end-user behavior and micromanage how I navigate the storefront via the browser and the client (both of which I am using simultaneously, obviously, as everyone does, as is essentially required)

If cookies are the issue, then why hasn't this years-old issue been resolved by managing carts on the server-side?

And what precisely do I need to do to avoid this happening in the future?

Because clearing my cookies every time I browse the store with a chance of adding things to my cart is far from reasonable. By any measure.

You still haven't told me if the shopping cart history has any mention of the items that disappeared. If it does find the missing items for you then using that would solve your problem outright if this happens again:
https://help.steampowered.com/en/accountdata/ShoppingCartHistory

It's completely rational to expect the shopping cart on Steam to remain consistent whether you are using the browser or the client, but issues about this have come up on the forums before and that's only why I am echoing the same web-related troubleshooting steps in case they help.

The only other suggestion I can give you is maybe consider using your wishlist to track any games that you are on the verge of buying, as a proper memory list, and then use that when you want to add everything together in the cart later for purchasing. The wishlist, to my knowledge, is a lot better synchronized across browsers, clients, phones, etc. than the shopping cart would be.

[Wig Bang]

The history didn't reflect any of the lost items. The most recent record was my current state (with the lost items restored) and the one before that was from ten days ago during a different purchase/research adventure.

Currently my wishlist is rather massive. I'm using it as an actual wishlist.

I sent an email to gabe newell about this issue. Maybe if I'm lucky, I worded it just right that it will get his attention and he can go layd own the law with some yes-men flunky web developers and get the issue resolved.

After all it 100% affects their bottom line.

I keep a tally of how much $ it has cost them.

To date, $1,387.66 has been spent on EGS/GOG that would have been spent on Steam. I'm aware this is a penny to them. Less than a penny. But I'm not the only one.

[Phénomènes Mystiques]

The wish list is used instead.

[Wig Bang]

Originally posted by Wynters:

The wish list is used instead. :csdsmile:

It has a different purpose and unfortunately it's difficult to impossible to use them for these two purposes simultaneously.

But again, you are suggesting an (imo) arbitrary modification of end user behavior rather than simply admitting that the site has a bug.