A comprehensive guide to help Steam remain competitive in the modern gaming landscape.

[FOXDUDE69]

Hello, everyone!

Like many of you, I love Steam and I want to see it remain successful in the future.
There are many wonderful guides on Steam but they are typically meant to help players, so I think it's about time someone makes a guide to help Valve.

Let's Start!



𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐎𝐖 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐂𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝐎𝐅 𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐄𝐍𝐓-𝐒𝐔𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐕𝐈𝐒𝐄𝐃 𝐂𝐇𝐈𝐋𝐃 𝐀𝐂𝐂𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐓𝐒

You can't technically make an account for a child under 13 on Steam.

Meanwhile all of Steam's biggest competitors allow you to create a parent-supervised child account for your offspring.

This includes the Epic Games Store, where my offspring are already building a significantly large library of free games and enjoying matches of FORTNITE with their dad, while at the same time not being allowed to play RAFT on Steam with their dad because they haven't reached the arbitrary age of 13 despite the fact that they've been gaming since they were toddlers.

Since they aren't allowed to have an account, the only games they can play with me on Steam are shared screen or split screen games, both types of games that, let's be frank here, are more comfortably enjoyed though Playstation/Xbox on our 75" TV (Steam link introduces lag and visual artifacts so that's not a real solution).

What all of this is guaranteeing is that the vast majority of their childhood gaming memories will be dominated by consoles and the Epic Games Store.

The Epic Games Store already has the future advantage here, due to the fact that they've captured the attention of the next generation of gamers with the insane popularity of FORTNITE, a generation of gamers without an ounce of loyalty towards Valve like the Counter Strike generation had, and this backwards policy of only allowing children over 13 to create accounts is further increasing the advantage they'll have in the future.

When a child can have an Epic account stacked with hundreds of good free games and making countless, priceless childhood memories on their platform long before they are even allowed to make a Steam account (6 more years until my oldest is allowed to have an account), Valve is just letting Epic race by them while they are stuck in reverse.

Lastly, developers that lock their games to Steam are leaving money on the table because of this nonsense, too. The aforementioned RAFT has no ESRB or PEGI rating, but Subnautica is very similar in the type of content it features and it has a ESRB of 10+ and PEGi 7.

So if RAFT was on Epic or Playstation these developers would have made additional sales from parents of children 7 and up. Instead, and because RAFT is locked to Steam, these children are not technically allowed to own a game that's appropriate for their age. It's an absurd situation.



𝐑𝐄𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐊 𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐀𝐌 𝐏𝐎𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐒 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐎𝐅𝐅𝐄𝐑 𝐀 𝐂𝐎𝐌𝐏𝐄𝐓𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐕𝐄 𝐋𝐎𝐘𝐀𝐋𝐓𝐘 𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐆𝐑𝐀𝐌

Another thing that Valve is sorely lagging behind is with their laughably inferior loyalty program.

Yes, it's fun to customize your profile with some silly stuff but it doesn't hold a candle to using points to redeem actual games like you can on Playstation, Nintendo and even the Epic Games Store now.

The Steam points system should be reworked to give users the ability to redeem their steam points for full games or partially pay for the purchase.

This would also naturally make Steam points far more valuable, meaning Steam Awards would become more meaningful, which is a good thing in my opinion, and the "Jester problem" would basically take care of itself.

The items currently on the Points Shop would then also have to be greatly reduced in cost as their value relative to the value of a partial or full purchase of a new game is remarkably inferior.

But what we would be left with would be a loyalty program that actually encourages users to spend directly on Steam instead of third party key selling sites like Humble Bundle.

Additionally, every purchase on the Steam store should heavily contribute towards your Steam level. It just makes perfect sense.



𝐅𝐈𝐗 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐀𝐁𝐘𝐒𝐌𝐀𝐋 𝐂𝐔𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐌𝐄𝐑 𝐒𝐔𝐏𝐏𝐎𝐑𝐓 𝐄𝐗𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄

Steam customer support is infamous for how terrible it is.

From personal experience and from what I've read online through the years, the average customer support experience on Steam seems to go a lil' something like this:

You write in your problem and wait multiple days for a generic answer from someone who didn't even bother reading your ticket.

Sounds familiar?

Compare this to other videogame services which allow you to livechat or even call... Services where you communicate to people who are actually trying to solve your issue instead of stonewalling you in hopes you give up and close the ticket.

This behavior reduces trust in the platform.

Valve's customer service is one of the worst I've experienced in my life and it's the main reason I've started significantly reducing the amount of money I spend of Steam and no longer recommend the service to friends and co-workers like I used to.

Trust is very important, and in the age of digital gaming, where you don't physically own the product you are purchasing, trust is paramount. So if you can't trust the entity selling it to you... Money will go elsewhere.



𝐃𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐋𝐎𝐏 𝐆𝐎𝐎𝐃 𝐆𝐀𝐌𝐄𝐒 𝐀𝐆𝐀𝐈𝐍

Let's face it, the Valve we fondly remember does not exist anymore, that's why you don't have a Half-Life 3 or a Left 4 Dead 3 or a Portal 3.

Yeah, yeah, Valve can't count to 3, very funny, I know.

But the underlying issue causing this "inability to count to 3" is not funny at all, it's ugly and downright disgusting.

Instead of continuing to work on their beloved franchises and innovate and develop new ones, Valve elected the way of easy greasy money.

They elected to focus on esports and played a significant and pivotal role in the normalization of lootboxes and gambling. Vast amounts of money for relatively little work.

And I do mean little work because even by esports/live service standards, CSGO and DOTA2 are quite pathetic. Fresh content is extremely rare... But lootboxes for young teens to gamble with... That's always rolling out.

Valve should turn back and try to live up to the reputation of being "the good guy", a reputation they've long stopped deserving but could deserve once again through hard work and a decision to start once again contributing to videogame history in a much more positive way.

Valve should apologize to their fans for abandoning their beloved franchises for lootbox money and promise to do better in the future. They should cut off API access to all the gambling websites that they like to pretend they can do nothing about. Make a clean break from the sleazy stuff, and then they should take the vast amounts of money they have and make good single player and co-op experiences.

Take a page out of Sony's Playbook and buy up smaller but promising studios with talented and passionate developers and with time and money, turn them into your own Insomniac, your own Santa Monica, your own Naughty Dog.



𝐈𝐌𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐕𝐄 𝐐𝐔𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐓𝐑𝐎𝐋

Quality control on Steam or the lack-there-of is an ever-present issue that we've just "learned" to accept. The Steam Store is filled with trash that couldn't even be described as shovelware and we've gotten used to seeing it so much that we "trained" ourselves to ignore it.

At least that's what we think, until we start browsing other stores and immediately notice that, while there some junk titles here and there, it's a much more pleasant experience to browse through content.

In my experience, the significantly reduced amount of trash on a store greatly helps in discoverability of smaller, low profile but legit indie titles which would otherwise be swimming at the bottom of a pool of trash. It's remarkably refreshing browsing through other stores compared to browsing on Steam.

Yes, we know those games sell because of Steam Cards, but is this worth your reputation, user experience and discoverability for smaller legit devs? The only sane answer is no.

If you care about your reputation and user experience, you have to curate your store.
You got away with ignoring this issue throughout the years, but as competition stiffens and other platforms offer a more curated experience, continuing to ignore this issue is foolish.


Thank you for reading!

[Brian9824]

10 pages of the same argument being repeated over and over and the correct answer is still - If you feel Valve is breaking the law then feel free to report them.

All the google lawyering accomplishes nothing

[Start_Running]

Publicado originalmente por BlueCanine:

Publicado originalmente por Start_Running:

That is actually the recommended approach by Valve themselves. It why Family View is a thing.
That's also a standard boiler plate clause that you will find in literally every webservice Sign up. I.e fgoogle, youtube, yahoo, etc, etc. And surprise you have plenty of kids using gmail accounts.do you not?

Yes, but only for either the parent puts family view on their own account, or for putting family view on their 13-17 year old child's account. Since anyone can't have an account who is under 13, that isn't a legitimate solution because them having an account breaks the SSA.

Valve certainly doesn't think so. Neither does Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Twitch, Yahoo, etc.

But lets play your game. Why would Valve want to accomodate the accounts of people who legally cannot purchase, or install games by the same measure?

[Squirrel With Acorn]

Publicado originalmente por Start_Running:

Publicado originalmente por BlueCanine:

Yes, but only for either the parent puts family view on their own account, or for putting family view on their 13-17 year old child's account. Since anyone can't have an account who is under 13, that isn't a legitimate solution because them having an account breaks the SSA.

Valve certainly doesn't think so. Neither does Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Twitch, Yahoo, etc.

But lets play your game. Why would Valve want to accomodate the accounts of people who legally cannot purchase, or install games by the same measure?

Google and Amazon have child account systems.

Valve has no such system, and Valve says only 13+ can have an account, anyone below 13 cannot have an account without breaching the SSA.

With child accounts, children can legally buy and install games with parent permission. This means more sales, more parents willing to have their children to have an account in which the kids could buy games or the parent buys the games specifically for them.

[Squirrel With Acorn]

Publicado originalmente por brian9824:

10 pages of the same argument being repeated over and over and the correct answer is still - If you feel Valve is breaking the law then feel free to report them.

All the google lawyering accomplishes nothing

Valve answered my support question. You are wrong about what Valve meant in the Family View FAQ, it only means 13-17 year olds, and not under 13 like you claimed. So since Valve meant 13-17 in that statement they aren't breaking the law.

[Brian9824]

Publicado originalmente por BlueCanine:

Publicado originalmente por brian9824:

10 pages of the same argument being repeated over and over and the correct answer is still - If you feel Valve is breaking the law then feel free to report them.

All the google lawyering accomplishes nothing

Valve answered my support question. You are wrong about what Valve meant in the Family View FAQ, it only means 13-17 year olds, and not under 13 like you claimed. So since Valve meant 13-17 in that statement they aren't breaking the law.

You can ask the same question from support and get multiple answers sadly. Interesting enough if you note they did not say you can't create an account and let them use it. Nor do they say that users under 13 are not allowed to use steam which were the key points.

They correctly said they cannot CREATE an account under 13 years of age which we already knew and everyone agreed on. So either your question to them wasn't worded well, or they didn't answer the only parts the mattered.

[Start_Running]

Publicado originalmente por BlueCanine:

Publicado originalmente por Start_Running:

Valve certainly doesn't think so. Neither does Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Twitch, Yahoo, etc.

But lets play your game. Why would Valve want to accomodate the accounts of people who legally cannot purchase, or install games by the same measure?

Google and Amazon have child account systems.

But they have nothing that stops a child from creating a non-child account. Funny how that works. THose child account systems more or less equate to a steam account with family view.

Publicado originalmente por BlueCanine:

This means more sales, more parents willing to have their children to have an account in which the kids could buy games or the parent buys the games specifically for them.

You mean like what parents already do now?

[FOXDUDE69]

Publicado originalmente por BlueCanine:

Publicado originalmente por Start_Running:

Valve certainly doesn't think so. Neither does Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Twitch, Yahoo, etc.

But lets play your game. Why would Valve want to accomodate the accounts of people who legally cannot purchase, or install games by the same measure?

Google and Amazon have child account systems.

Valve has no such system, and Valve says only 13+ can have an account, anyone below 13 cannot have an account without breaching the SSA.

With child accounts, children can legally buy and install games with parent permission. This means more sales, more parents willing to have their children to have an account in which the kids could buy games or the parent buys the games specifically for them.

Also doing things by the book is kinda nice.

Sure beats doing things the sleazy way till they get sued by the EU again.

[Xhoas]

Publicado originalmente por SlowMango:

Publicado originalmente por BlueCanine:

and I just got my answer from Valve Support

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2992844502

Accounts are only for people 13 years and older, and they have to wait until they are of the age of 13 before they can have an account.

This make what Brian said on page 1 absolutely wrong. This means that Foxdude's suggestion is a good suggestion and nobody has any reason to fight against that part of his suggestion.

It would be good for Valve to come to 2023 and be like the other services that all have ways to create child accounts for those under the age of 13, all COPPA compliant. So that parents can create child accounts for their kids so those kids can play the many games on Steam that are targeted towards children, so the child can play their games and the parent can play their games at the same time, since Valve's current method means that a child can only use a parents account and that means 2 people for 1 account which cannot play more than 1 game at a time. with a child account system, then the parent and each child account can all play games at the same time.

No, there's a perfectly valid reason to be against it.

Not wanting kids on the platform.

That's a good reason.

[FOXDUDE69]

Publicado originalmente por Start_Running:

But lets play your game. Why would Valve want to accomodate the accounts of people who legally cannot purchase, or install games by the same measure?

Who told you kids can't buy games on child accounts?

The Epic Games Store has child accounts and my kids already have purchased games and other content on their accounts.

[Brian9824]

Publicado originalmente por FOXDUDE69:

Publicado originalmente por BlueCanine:

Google and Amazon have child account systems.

Valve has no such system, and Valve says only 13+ can have an account, anyone below 13 cannot have an account without breaching the SSA.

With child accounts, children can legally buy and install games with parent permission. This means more sales, more parents willing to have their children to have an account in which the kids could buy games or the parent buys the games specifically for them.

Also doing things by the book is kinda nice.

Sure beats doing things the sleazy way till they get sued by the EU again.

Yeah, sucks that steam got sued by the EU and had to stop offering games at cheaper prices in poorer regions. Sure showed all those poorer regions who the boss was. Now they are complaining because the poorest countries in the EU have to pay the same price as the richest countries.

Bad steam, how dare you offer the dev's the ability to assign realistic prices that people in poorer regions can afford. If they can't afford to pay a months salary for a game well then they shouldn't be gaming

[Squirrel With Acorn]

Publicado originalmente por brian9824:

Publicado originalmente por BlueCanine:

Valve answered my support question. You are wrong about what Valve meant in the Family View FAQ, it only means 13-17 year olds, and not under 13 like you claimed. So since Valve meant 13-17 in that statement they aren't breaking the law.

You can ask the same question from support and get multiple answers sadly. Interesting enough if you note they did not say you can't create an account and let them use it. Nor do they say that users under 13 are not allowed to use steam which were the key points.

They correctly said they cannot CREATE an account under 13 years of age which we already knew and everyone agreed on. So either your question to them wasn't worded well, or they didn't answer the only parts the mattered.

Nope, I literally stated I would be the one to create the account for my 9 year old. This means an under 13 cannot have their own account without breaching the SSA, so your argument against Foxdudes suggestion is null and void.

[Start_Running]

Publicado originalmente por BlueCanine:

Publicado originalmente por brian9824:

You can ask the same question from support and get multiple answers sadly. Interesting enough if you note they did not say you can't create an account and let them use it. Nor do they say that users under 13 are not allowed to use steam which were the key points.

They correctly said they cannot CREATE an account under 13 years of age which we already knew and everyone agreed on. So either your question to them wasn't worded well, or they didn't answer the only parts the mattered.

Nope, I literally stated I would be the one to create the account for my 9 year old. This means an under 13 cannot have their own account without breaching the SSA, so your argument against Foxdudes suggestion is null and void.

But they didn't actually say you couldn't do that could you?

[Sasori Kigaru]

Publicado originalmente por Start_Running:

Publicado originalmente por BlueCanine:

Nope, I literally stated I would be the one to create the account for my 9 year old. This means an under 13 cannot have their own account without breaching the SSA, so your argument against Foxdudes suggestion is null and void.

But they didn't actually say you couldn't do that could you?

They said in the answer that once the child turns 13 you can assist them in creating the account and then the child can keep using it if they choose to.

[Squirrel With Acorn]

Publicado originalmente por Start_Running:

Publicado originalmente por BlueCanine:

Google and Amazon have child account systems.

But they have nothing that stops a child from creating a non-child account. Funny how that works. THose child account systems more or less equate to a steam account with family view.

Publicado originalmente por BlueCanine:

This means more sales, more parents willing to have their children to have an account in which the kids could buy games or the parent buys the games specifically for them.

You mean like what parents already do now?

Those child accounts are compliant with the COPPA, Steams isn't hence why it's family view is for activation on accounts that are 13+. It's makes a difference.

I know a ton of parents who won't let their below 13 have an account due to the lack of child accounts, SSA saying only 13+, and/or lack of COPPA compliance. So yes there is some money left there on the table.

[Brian9824]

Publicado originalmente por BlueCanine:

Publicado originalmente por brian9824:

You can ask the same question from support and get multiple answers sadly. Interesting enough if you note they did not say you can't create an account and let them use it. Nor do they say that users under 13 are not allowed to use steam which were the key points.

They correctly said they cannot CREATE an account under 13 years of age which we already knew and everyone agreed on. So either your question to them wasn't worded well, or they didn't answer the only parts the mattered.

Nope, I literally stated I would be the one to create the account for my 9 year old. This means an under 13 cannot have their own account without breaching the SSA, so your argument against Foxdudes suggestion is null and void.

You can't make up stuff. Again, this is FACT - It does not state that kids under 13 cannot have their own account. It ONLY states kinds under 13 cannot MAKE their account.

The exact same way if I tell you that a 13 year old cannot buy a rated R movie does not mean that the 13 year old cannot SEE the rated R movie without parental consent.

I've literally seen support confirm that, so feel free to clarify with them the differences between CREATING and USING accounts. Otherwise as you proved, support did NOT say someone under 13 can't use steam, or use an account you made for them.

I mean they'd HAVE to use an account an adult made to play all the KIDS games sold on steam afterall....