Game hubs should have an owners-only subforum by default.

[Zoopy]

Every new game that comes out has dozens of people who make it their life's mission to render the forum unusable by complaining about non-game related stuff like "wokeness" and the like. In the overwhelming majority of cases, these people do not own the games. These topics are very often off-topic and drown out any real discussion on the games in question.

Steam clearly does not have the capacity to bring these discussions under control. A very easy solution for this that would make it easy for owners of the game to discuss the games they bought would be to have an owners-only subforum in every game hub. Let only owners post in that forum and people who don't own the game can post in the genera subforum.

It's quite bad that forums for new games are rendered pretty much unusable for the first few weeks after release. It's a situation that needs to be solved.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Zoopy lähetti viestin:

Game hubs should have an owners-only subforum by default.

Every new game that comes out has dozens of people who make it their life's mission to render the forum unusable by complaining about non-game related stuff like "wokeness" and the like. In the overwhelming majority of cases, these people do not own the games. These topics are very often off-topic and drown out any real discussion on the games in question.

Steam clearly does not have the capacity to bring these discussions under control. A very easy solution for this that would make it easy for owners of the game to discuss the games they bought would be to have an owners-only subforum in every game hub. Let only owners post in that forum and people who don't own the game can post in the genera subforum.

It's quite bad that forums for new games are rendered pretty much unusable for the first few weeks after release. It's a situation that needs to be solved.

Ask the game developer to lock down their game hub to owners only, aside from the 1 mandatory sub-forum required to be open to everyone, with an unlimited account.

Valve is not in charge of doing this for them.

[Crazy Tiger]

Game devs can lock all but one subforum to owners only. Most don't actually do so.

[Zoopy]

cSg|mc-Hotsauce lähetti viestin:

Ask the game developer to lock down their game hub to owners only, aside from the 1 mandatory sub-forum required to be open to everyone, with an unlimited account.

Valve is not in charge of doing this for them.

:summercat2023:

Valve can set it up to do so by default and then game devs can change as they see fit.

Most game devs don't touch their forums at all. In large part precisely because the Steam forums have a reputation for being so volatile.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Zoopy lähetti viestin:

cSg|mc-Hotsauce lähetti viestin:

Ask the game developer to lock down their game hub to owners only, aside from the 1 mandatory sub-forum required to be open to everyone, with an unlimited account.

Valve is not in charge of doing this for them.

Valve can set it up to do so by default and then game devs can change as they see fit.

Most game devs don't touch their forums at all. In large part precisely because the Steam forums have a reputation for being so volatile.

The default isn't changing from open to all to open to owners only, especially with thousands of upcoming games not purchasable yet, locking everyone out.

[Zoopy]

cSg|mc-Hotsauce lähetti viestin:

The default isn't changing from open to all to open to owners only, especially with thousands of upcoming games not purchasable yet, locking everyone out.

:summercat2023:

Please read my post again. I'm not asking for the default to be owners only, I'm asking for the default to be two forums:

1 open to all
1 open only to owners of the game.

[Crazy Tiger]

Zoopy lähetti viestin:

cSg|mc-Hotsauce lähetti viestin:

The default isn't changing from open to all to open to owners only, especially with thousands of upcoming games not purchasable yet, locking everyone out.

Please read my post again. I'm not asking for the default to be owners only, I'm asking for the default to be two forums:

1 open to all
1 open only to owners of the game.

I doubt Valve will ever do that. They prefer to let such freedoms and choices with the game devs/publishers.

[Zoopy]

Crazy Tiger lähetti viestin:

I doubt Valve will ever do that. They prefer to let such freedoms and choices with the game devs/publishers.

Why would it rob gave devs of their freedom? They'd still have the freedom to change it if they want.

As it is now, when a new game page goes live on Steam, a forum is automatically created with default subforums. My suggestion would merely be about changing the automatically generated defaults, which devs could then change however they wish if they want.

[Sol4rSky]

You realize most steam games are released on Gog, Epic, and other platforms right? They don't really have a centralized "forum" for people to talk, so people come to the game hub, so the "arrow" by someone's name doesn't mean much most of the time because others can play via other platforms.

[76561198407601200]

Zoopy lähetti viestin:

Crazy Tiger lähetti viestin:

I doubt Valve will ever do that. They prefer to let such freedoms and choices with the game devs/publishers.

Why would it rob gave devs of their freedom? They'd still have the freedom to change it if they want.

As it is now, when a new game page goes live on Steam, a forum is automatically created with default subforums. My suggestion would merely be about changing the automatically generated defaults, which devs could then change however they wish if they want.

It isn't robbing devs of freedom but certainly is not a needed change as devs can have particular portions of the forum be available to non-owners. As stated speak with the devs of the game's forum for this.

[Keter]

I still remember horror stories were devs would banish any "Hey your game is actual trash / doesnt work!" warning post into a subforum no one would look at while the main forum is all shiny and clean. It already bad enough Most people cant format their Discussions about what they really want to talk about but then make a Forum where most people probably wouldnt even notice?

Also I think if you open the Steam Forums you are atleast going to read it to see if the actual people who play say that is a true thing or not.

[Zoopy]

Cl3arSky lähetti viestin:

You realize most steam games are released on Gog, Epic, and other platforms right? They don't really have a centralized "forum" for people to talk, so people come to the game hub, so the "arrow" by someone's name doesn't mean much most of the time because others can play via other platforms.

GOG does have game-specific forums, btw. And Steam doesn't have an obligation to cater to customers from other platforms, especially not from Epic, who wants nothing more than to destroy Steam.

The Living Tribunal lähetti viestin:

It isn't robbing devs of freedom but certainly is not a needed change as devs can have particular portions of the forum be available to non-owners. As stated speak with the devs of the game's forum for this.

The overwhelming majority of game devs don't bother with their Steam forums or barely even know that they're there. If you contact them about it, they'll just tell you "we don't moderate those forums ourselves". This is party because the Steam forums are notorious for how toxic they are and the situation has gotten 10 times worse since Steam dropped the rules against discussing religion and politics.

[Satoru]

This is more a solution looking for a problem

This is simply unnecessary for most forums which is why most forums, even super popular ones, work fine with open as the default. Even CSGO and DOTA2 aren’t locked off

There’s simply no need to make that a default state when the existing default state works fine. And your solution simply isn’t necessary for anything but severe edge cases. It simply doesn’t actually solve anything

[Tito Shivan]

Satoru lähetti viestin:

This is simply unnecessary for most forums which is why most forums, even super popular ones, work fine with open as the default. Even CSGO and DOTA2 aren’t locked off

I wouldn't mind personally temporarily locking game forums for owners only, to keep away all the pests that love to paint the walls with their own crap on release week with whatever made up controversy the trendy alt-righter screeching youtuber of the month decides to make money off views.

Still it's something that can be dealt with actual moderation.

[IFIYGD]

One thing to keep in mind- many games sold on Steam are also available on other PC platforms and on consoles. Most of which have absolutely horrible forums, if they have any at all for gamers to use to discuss specific games. Not every game has an official Discord server, an official subreddit, or their own dedicated online forums website.

So- where do those people go to post questions about the game? General Discussions, usually, but if the game hub forum has dedicated subforums for bug reporting, different languages, or different game modes- the General Discussions subforum gets hammered if the game is even remotely popular on Steam *and* other platforms.I have a few games that have things locked down to owners-only with all other subfroums for Stem owners only- which leaves out legit owners from other platforms(PC and console) out of many discussions.

Tito Shivan lähetti viestin:

I wouldn't mind personally temporarily locking game forums for owners only, to keep away all the pests that love to paint the walls with their own crap on release week with whatever made up controversy the trendy alt-righter screeching youtuber of the month decides to make money off views.

Still it's something that can be dealt with actual moderation.

And if they did lock it off to owners only, where would the troll posters and edgelords come to scream into the void about whatever game they have political or ideological issues with or just want to bash their least favorite developers and publishers over?

Here.

And IMHO, there's too much of that going on here already.
I do miss having you and the other volunteer mods here to deal with things quickly and efficiently, even if there were a few "oopsies" every now and then.

[Satoru]

Tito Shivan lähetti viestin:

Satoru lähetti viestin:

This is simply unnecessary for most forums which is why most forums, even super popular ones, work fine with open as the default. Even CSGO and DOTA2 aren’t locked off

I wouldn't mind personally temporarily locking game forums for owners only, to keep away all the pests that love to paint the walls with their own crap on release week with whatever made up controversy the trendy alt-righter screeching youtuber of the month decides to make money off views.

Still it's something that can be dealt with actual moderation.

I guess to be clear. I don’t have an issue with that tool being a thing that can be used if necessary . My issue is more in making that the default state of all forums. Making it default means that this is a problem all the time, when in reality it’s not. I mean giant games like Starfield aren’t set up that way and heck most of the trolls already own the game