It would be nice to see a more robust policy regarding unreleased TBA games.

[Gacha Pawn]

I'm going through all the "upcoming games" on my Wishlist, and with every passing year I find more games I initially wishlisted that months later still are nearly devoid of information. I am pretty flexible with TBA release dates, as I have personal experience with needing to push release dates; however, the amount of games that are still being advertised while seemingly dead-in-the-water is getting quite high. Some of the games should really still be on kickstarter, and not advertising in the Steam store.

More than once, I've seen developers add multiple games to the store at a time, all of which have no schedule or plan, and in some cases barely even any assets. Commonly, developers start developing a game and then there's radio silence on Steam -- sometimes for years. When the developer at least has a website attached to the game, it makes it a little easier to find additional sources of information. Unfortunately, it seems like there are zero requirements for the developer to have any attached information. Too often, games have no website, no twitter, no release date, no news articles, no pinned posts from the devs, etc. It's literally just a filler on the steam store. I honestly cannot wrap my head around how this benefits anyone.

It would be nice if steam could at least automate a check for developer activity on the games they are advertising. I go through my queue regularly and I'm tired of getting many suggestions that link to games that will probably never exist.

[Mikoto]

Steam doesn't advertise games. They are merely a store front.

Now it would be nice if there was a 'days since last update' for EA games but other than that, Steam is not responsible for you following unreleased games, nor are they responsible for devs not continuing work on their projects.

[Gacha Pawn]

I respectfully contest portions of that statement.

Steam does advertise games. That's a big draw of Steam. All of the games in my queue, that is Steam advertising directly to me based on the personal data they collect from my purchase and play history.

I agree that Steam is not responsible for a devs continuity or failure thereof. They could certainly pull, deactivate, or place warnings on pages that have reached a certain threshold for inactivity.

[nullable]

You can contest whatever you want. Developers are in charge of their games and their store pages. If you're a developer and you pay the fees to host the game Valve doesn't have any particular reason or opinion to start managing how long that takes. Sometimes projects get delayed or fail. Valve has decided a long time ago they're not gaming's Mom.

No one is harmed by a placeholder pages where you can't buy anything and the game is still labeled as TBD or Fall 20XX. Putting arbitrary time limits on that because that sounds good to you isn't going to happen, because people who know better have already implemented the system the way they want it.

You're allowed to have strong feelings the other way, but this isn't something Valve forgot about. Sometimes the current implementation of a thing tells you exactly how it should operate.

[Gacha Pawn]

Snakub Plissken님이 먼저 게시:

You can contest whatever you want. Developers are in charge of their games and their store pages. If you're a developer and you pay the fees to host the game Valve doesn't have any particular reason or opinion to start managing how long that takes. Sometimes projects get delayed or fail.

No one is harmed by a placeholder pages where you can't buy anything and the game is still labeled as TBD or Fall 20XX. Putting arbitrary time limits on that because that sounds good to you isn't going to happen, because people who know better have already implemented the system the way they want it.

This is a suggestion for Steam regarding quality control. It's a negative user experience. The goal of this forum is to suggest things we feel would improve the Steam user experience, and that's what I'm doing.

[Spawn of Totoro]

Gacha Pawn님이 먼저 게시:

This is a suggestion for Steam regarding quality control. It's a negative user experience. The goal of this forum is to suggest things we feel would improve the Steam user experience, and that's what I'm doing.

This is a user forum for discussing suggestions and ideas for Steam and it's services.

If one does not wish to discuss the suggestion/idea, then they can post and not come back to the thread, but others can still discuss the pros, cons and many other aspects of said idea.

[nullable]

Gacha Pawn님이 먼저 게시:

This is a suggestion for Steam regarding quality control. It's a negative user experience. The goal of this forum is to suggest things we feel would improve the Steam user experience, and that's what I'm doing.

Sure. But I will say your claims are subjective. And not everyone feels so negative about the things you describe.

I mean you can say quality control, but I would say it's an overused buzzword so users can nominally claim their opinions have more weight than just their personal opinions.

You can say it's a negative user experience. But I don't feel that put out by games that aren't released yet. There's plenty of other games to be deal with. Maybe I'm just much much more tolerant about software development than thou.

I don't think wanting Valve to fuss over unreleased titles will improve my user experience. So how do you address that? That not everyone agrees with your criticisms of unreleased games and store pages for them?

[Gacha Pawn]

Spawn of Totoro님이 먼저 게시:

Gacha Pawn님이 먼저 게시:

This is a suggestion for Steam regarding quality control. It's a negative user experience. The goal of this forum is to suggest things we feel would improve the Steam user experience, and that's what I'm doing.

This is a user forum for discussing suggestions and ideas for Steam and it's services.

If one does not wish to discuss the suggestion/idea, then they can post and not come back to the thread, but others can still discuss the pros, cons and many other aspects of said idea.

I agree? I am discussing it. The person I responded to indicated there was no reason to change the system because it didn't harm anyone, so I replied that it is a negative user experience.

I wasn't really looking to get into semantics as to the purpose of the forum; more, it seemed that the person I responded to didn't understand the reason for the suggestion and that was how I was best able to word it.

[Spawn of Totoro]

Gacha Pawn님이 먼저 게시:

I agree? I am discussing it. The person I responded to indicated there was no reason to change the system because it didn't harm anyone, so I replied that it is a negative user experience.

I wasn't really looking to get into semantics as to the purpose of the forum; more, it seemed that the person I responded to didn't understand the reason for the suggestion and that was how I was best able to word it.

As were they. They can suggest not changing the system and stating they don't see a reason why it should be.

Your previous statement read more as if you only wanted Steam/Valve to respond and suggested that only suggestion/idea be posted here, not discussed. At least that how I read it.

Gacha Pawn님이 먼저 게시:

It would be nice if steam could at least automate a check for developer activity on the games they are advertising. I go through my queue regularly and I'm tired of getting many suggestions that link to games that will probably never exist.

How would they check for activity? Development is done on the developer's end, using their own systems and programs. Valve can't see any activity.

Personally, I just don't wishlist games that are not out yet (with rare exception) as they will simply show on the main page when available.

Look at Duke Nukem Forever. That one was announce and pre-ordered 12 years before it was released. It is just something that happens in the industry.

[nullable]

Gacha Pawn님이 먼저 게시:

I wasn't really looking to get into semantics as to the purpose of the forum; more, it seemed that the person I responded to didn't understand the reason for the suggestion and that was how I was best able to word it.

I understand that lots of users have strong opinions and are very sure they're the most qualified to have them.

And not agreeing with the majority of your premises is not the same thing as not understanding.

[Gacha Pawn]

I can see the potential for confusion. I am open to strengthening the suggestion, which I recognize involves finding logical problems. I am disinclined to hold confrontations, which seemed to be where that was heading, so I took action to avoid an altercation.

Steam should be capable of checking activity in various ways. I'll try to expand on my thinking further.

I agree that delays do happen; that isn't the thing I'm actually discussing (or trying to). I'm talking about games that have failed or been delayed indefinitely, still show up in queues and searches. What's more, they can end up clogging wishlists for those of us who do wish to be notified, which puts the developers that are actually still in development at a disadvantage as well as can be frustrating to the user.

If a game has been TBD for a year or more, and there has been no news update for that time, it seems pretty reasonable to pull it from being an outward display. Considering this information is available on steamdb, it seems reasonble to believe that Steam has a way to track this information. I recognize the developers pay some server hosting upfront, though I find it hard to believe that in all cases they pay the amount consistently throughout the life of the steam pages, as some of the ones I'm actually referring to haven't been active in more than a years time in any capacity. I recognize there are a lot of games, and a project like this would take time to implement and catch up, but I think long term this could be very positive for everyone involved. I'm not talking about anything incredibly in-depth or harrowing... more like reaching out with a message like, "Hey your game has been TBA since 2017 and there has been no developer-side updates since 2019, do you want to update the status of your page? You have x months to respond." If there's no response in whatever time window is reasonable, deactivating the page until someone reclaims it seems viable.

Even more preemptive, it might make sense to require the developer to maintain one of the external links, like Twitter or a Website URL, in order to register the page. In that case, the curation could be left user-end with a "report out of date" option should those links expire. This would similarly allow Steam to reach out and determine the status.

It seems ultimately beneficial for Steam to take this time, especially if they are maintaining enough websites on their own hosting resources that are no longer paying a fee to the company, and it would also improve user experience at the same time. This was far less an issue in the days before Greenlight, and while I do like the concept of EA/GL, this can really affected the quality of browsing the store. Given that this is already becoming more commonplace, and there seems no stopper at this time, it stands to reason the situation will deteriorate in the future.

Edit: In reality, were Steam to consider such a change, they would ultimately decide on all the metrics and the approach to use. My hope is to see some sort of improvement in quality control for the platform, not really any specific way in which it's done. Clearly, everything on this forum is quite a shot in the dark. and while Steam may decide they prefer the excess, or don't want to invest resources in it, either action (implementing or disregarding) both have pros and cons. Simply because Steam might say no does not seem like a reason to not express the desire. As they say, "Let others say no to you before you say no to yourself." More relevant to me are concepts such as:
Would this hurt the developers that have games pulled if the right metrics are met?
Would this upset players more than the current system?
What's the easiest way to implement something like this?
Is there something that needs to change before this is a possibility?

Personally, I think the answers are "no", "no", "up to Steam", and "if there is I don't know about it".

[nullable]

Gacha Pawn님이 먼저 게시:

I agree that delays do happen; that isn't the thing I'm actually discussing (or trying to). I'm talking about games that have failed or been delayed indefinitely, still show up in queues and searches. What's more, they can end up clogging wishlists for those of us who do wish to be notified, which puts the developers that are actually still in development at a disadvantage as well as can be frustrating to the user.

Any games you feel are clogging up your wishlists you're free to remove from your wishlist. You have full control to manage that as you see fit already.

I don't see how one game on your wish list puts another game at a disadvantage under any circumstances. I'm not sure released games games are being negatively impacted or drowned out by unreleased games in queues and searches.

Gacha Pawn님이 먼저 게시:

It seems ultimately beneficial for Steam to take this time, especially if they are maintaining enough websites on their own hosting resources that are no longer paying a fee to the company, and it would also improve user experience at the same time.

I think you might be confused by how store pages and the game's hub are managed and the costs involved. It sounds like you believe Valve is paying a hosting company for each store page individually. The costs are really trivial. If they were any sort of burden Valve would have done something to address those issues long ago, especially with tens of thousands of games on Steam.

So scratch that off the list. All you've got is the user experience argument and I don't think it's a bad user experience. I also don't think arbitrary time limits have as much benefit as you believe. It's not like that would prevent any developers from going through the motions to meet the arbitrary requirements.

And invariably you'd want to move the goalposts so any updates or activity are "meaningful" and there's got to be some way that the developer have to prove they're making satisfactory process. In that case I'd say forget it, Valve isn't the publisher and if they wanted to be in that business they'd be doing it already.

Gacha Pawn님이 먼저 게시:

This was far less an issue in the days before Greenlight, and while I do like the concept of EA/GL, this can really affected the quality of browsing the store. Given that this is already becoming more commonplace, and there seems no stopper at this time, it stands to reason the situation will deteriorate with time.

Only if your original premise is objectively true, which it's not. I'm sure you can argue it will deteriorate for you.

It's deteriorating for all the people who hate anime games. And for the people who hate Early Access. Or aging games that can sometimes be fickle on new hardware. Lots of people have arguments that Valve needs to do X to improve quality control and do Y to improve user experience, and literally none of them are universal.

You want change. What about all the people who are happy with the status quo? They don't matter?

Gacha Pawn님이 먼저 게시:

More relevant to me are concepts such as:
Would this hurt the developers that have games pulled if the right metrics are met?
Would this upset players more than the current system?
What's the easiest way to implement something like this?
Is there something that needs to change before this is a possibility?

Personally, I think the answers are "no", "no", "up to Steam", and "if there is I don't know about it".

I think the answers are

1. Yes
   
2. Yes, users hate change, and they hate feeling like anything has been taken away from them no matter how insignificant or beneficial it might be. Sometimes the answer is "too bad, you'll get used to it."
   
3. Sure it's up to Steam. And they always have the option to implement nothing because they don't think anything needs changing.
   
4. There needs to be an issue outside of personal opinion. Like developers are complaining (too), in addition to a majority of users, and revenue is falling off.

[Spawn of Totoro]

If a game is TBD, then it is never listed, except during specific events or in the expanded "Upcoming" section.

Much of what you suggested was has also been discussed repeatedly in regards to Early Access Games.

Trivial metrics won't really do anything and are just that, trivial. Many would be really easy to fake or cause developers to turn away from Steam.

Users can't really be trusted with such decisions either. Take Starbound for example. The developer went dark for about a year as they had to rebuild the engine. Many kept saying the game was abandoned, yet it is now one of the more popular games. If users reporting it has having been too long since an update or activity, then it would have been pulled from Steam before it was even finished.

Valve is a game developer. They understand game development. They also understand that to find the diamond in the rough, you need let the other stuff through too, or risk missing it.

Snakub Plissken님이 먼저 게시:

Any games you feel are clogging up your wishlists you're free to remove from your wishlist. You have full control to manage that as you see fit already.

Exactly. The developer would also see that their numbers are declining if people do this and may become more active. to counter it.

[Gacha Pawn]

Spawn of Totoro님이 먼저 게시:

If a game is TBD, then it is never listed, except during specific events or in the expanded "Upcoming" section.

This is an interesting assertion to me, because I've had many TBD games advertised to me both through the front page during said festivals and also in my discovery queue. As such, I do not have the same user experience as you seem to.

A year was simply an example. Two years. Whatever. I still would rather not be seeing games from 2010 TBD. There's limits. Steam is welcome to determine whatever works for them.

[Mikoto]

Gacha Pawn님이 먼저 게시:

Spawn of Totoro님이 먼저 게시:

If a game is TBD, then it is never listed, except during specific events or in the expanded "Upcoming" section.

This is an interesting assertion to me, because I've had many TBD games advertised to me both through the front page during said festivals and also in my discovery queue. As such, I do not have the same user experience as you seem to.

A year was simply an example. Two years. Whatever. I still would rather not be seeing games from 2010 TBD. There's limits. Steam is welcome to determine whatever works for them.

You keep on saying you have "many TBD games advertised to me" but yet you have yet to actually identify any of them. How much of this problem is literally your own fault?

[nullable]

What game from 2010 TBD have you seen? I mean even if taking into account some of the worst offenders, we're likely taking about an insignificant fraction of titles that probably just isn't worth fussing over.