Tuesday Maintenance warnings/opt-in warnings

[AkiraJkr]

Title. Not asking for myself since I'm pretty used to it but...

Every. Single. Tuesday. With no failure.

Someone complains about disconnecting from their game at the exact same time as always. Without any fail. There is always someone.
And it gets tiring to repeat this to someone new every time.

Or speak to the creators of games that suffer from this(like Call of Duty for example, which has been dealing with this for almost 2 years now).

[Mad Scientist]

Originally posted by AkiraJkr:

Title. Not asking for myself since I'm pretty used to it but...

Every. Single. Tuesday. With no failure.

Someone complains about disconnecting from their game at the exact same time as always. Without any fail. There is always someone.
And it gets tiring to repeat this to someone new every time.

Or speak to the creators of games that suffer from this(like Call of Duty for example).

If you know Activision doesn't use their own service that every tuesday around the same time it happens, why not wait to play? Also, contacting activision telling them to make their own service rather than relying on steams would be a good idea, though they would likely have specific downtimes as well.

[AkiraJkr]

I...literally stated in my post this has nothing to do with me.

[Mad Scientist]

Originally posted by AkiraJkr:

I...literally stated in my post this has nothing to do with me.

People usually make the threads when it affects their gameplay, and we see it nearly;

Originally posted by AkiraJkr:

Every. Single. Tuesday. With no failure.

People can contact Activision as-is, it has always been an option to suggest to the Developer/Publisher on suggestions for their games to use services/systems that don't rely on Steam.

[Draconic NEO]

Why does Valve take their services down every Tuesday anyway? Like seriously Xbox live doesn't go down every tuesday, neither does PSN. Why is Steam so unreliable that it needs weekly "maintenance" periods, when the other comparable platforms don't?

[Spawn of Totoro]

Originally posted by Draconic NEO:

Why does Valve take their services down every Tuesday anyway? Like seriously Xbox live doesn't go down every tuesday, neither does PSN. Why is Steam so unreliable that it needs weekly "maintenance" periods, when the other comparable platforms don't?

https://downdetector.com/status/playstation-network/
https://downdetector.com/status/xbox-live/

They do go down, just not at a time where you are effected.

Where as steam:
https://downdetector.com/status/steam/

[AkiraJkr]

Originally posted by Mad Scientist:

People usually make the threads when it affects their gameplay[....]

And every tuesday it's affecting someone losing all of their progress in another game. And I'm one of the few that avoid that time.

[HikariLight]

The time when the maintenance hits is the point we're the average fewest users are online.
There is never a point we're no one is online, so someone is going to be affected.
The maintenance has always happened on Tuesday afternoons (West Coast USA time).
It's not a secret.

[AkiraJkr]

Originally posted by HikariLight:

The time when the maintenance hits is the point we're the average fewest users are online.
There is never a point we're no one is online, so someone is going to be affected.
The maintenance has always happened on Tuesday afternoons (West Coast USA time).
It's not a secret.

Yeah, I'm very well aware of that, but it's been 2 years and seemingly no one will learn, and I'm sure Steam does not like that, but they're bleeding users from this because "other platforms never go down".
Not my problem, I am just doing a sensible suggestion that only comes with benefits to those it affects.

[Mensis]

So can anyone who's posted so far on this thread provide an argument as to why this feature shouldn't be added, especially if it's optional? After all, if it's as you say,

Originally posted by Mad Scientist:

People usually make the threads when it affects their gameplay, and we see it nearly;

Originally posted by AkiraJkr:

Every. Single. Tuesday. With no failure.

Then maybe you would stop seeing so many of these threads if Steam made it more obvious to people that there is a routine weekly maintenance at a specific time. Not everyone is constantly on these forums and is aware it's a thing. Moreover, even on Steam's official FAQ page doesn't actually specify the day of week it occurs on. Sure, if you're around here enough you know it's on Tuesdays, but that page does not mention it anywhere. The only way you'd know is by checking here.

I think it's pretty safe to assume there are many users who are not on every day or every week and paying attention enough to notice there's a pattern or have heard about what day it happens every week. Especially if these threads are as common as mentioned.

Nothing is lost by adding this feature, I suppose besides your ability to passive aggressively remark on suggestion threads asking for it.

[Piston Smashed™]

Originally posted by AkiraJkr:

Originally posted by HikariLight:

The time when the maintenance hits is the point we're the average fewest users are online.
There is never a point we're no one is online, so someone is going to be affected.
The maintenance has always happened on Tuesday afternoons (West Coast USA time).
It's not a secret.

Yeah, I'm very well aware of that, but it's been 2 years and seemingly no one will learn, and I'm sure Steam does not like that, but they're bleeding users from this because "other platforms never go down".
Not my problem, I am just doing a sensible suggestion that only comes with benefits to those it affects.

Bleeding users? I keep hearing how Steam is losing users because of a small downtime on a regular basis however, the downtime has been around the same time for over 20 years (I've experienced every single one of those downtime's) and yet Steam has in all that time grown bigger and bigger and has regularly been breaking its own users records, so please explain how they are bleeding users...

[BJWyler]

Originally posted by Mensis:

So can anyone who's posted so far on this thread provide an argument as to why this feature shouldn't be added, especially if it's optional? After all, if it's as you say,

Originally posted by BJWyler:

Originally posted by cinedine:

Again:
World of Warcraft. Twenty years old soon. Regular maintenance on Wednesday morning.
There is a notification in the Battle.net launcher, one during character selection, and you get a 15 minutes warning with a 5 minute countdown before server shut down in game.
The number of new users coming to the game is close to zero, it's mostly old farts that have been around for ten years or more.

Right. It's all specific to Blizzard and WoW, so when I'm not playing WoW I don't get bothered by the messages. Like I said, if Devs of the affected games want to put notices on their launchers and/or in game. I'm all for that. I don't need to be bothered with yet more messages that don't pertain to me.

Originally posted by cinedine:

On default settings you get bombarded with marketing pop-ups upon starting Steam. On your library pages there is no way to turn off the broadcasting widget. The Steam store is often times a giant SALE banner or some other big notification a lot of people are not particularly interested in. We get unavoidable notifications during our games from achievements or card drops.

Yup, a bunch of annoying clutter already on Steam, which (as I already mentioned) people complain about. So adding yet more clutter to the clutter will do nothing to help the situation, and will only cause an increase in clutter that people will ignore.

Originally posted by cinedine:

Exactly why is it that among all this stuff that is already happening we can't have a maintenance notification as well? Because you feel that people ignore it?

Yup. If this is such a dire need that it needs to be added, then it needs to be optional with OFF as it's default state, so those who really need it can turn it on for themselves, and the rest of us can't be bothered. It's not like those that want it can't simply put a weekly reminder on their device, to do the exact same thing, right?

Originally posted by cinedine:

What amazes me the most is that the same people who are arguing against it are largely the same that complain about people spamming with alt-accounts, trolling and award farming in the forums. But we absolutely cannot have something that
a) would reduce forum clutter and
b) would help people.
Because according to your arse-timates it's at most 40 % of people.

Damn, where I can get that stuff you are taking.

a) It won't
b) Aren't people capable of helping themselves any more?

Just look at the forums for proof positive. Just in the last hour, we have someone who posted suggestions for a game in the Suggestions subforum, and don't even name the game for which they are submitting their suggestions (in the entirely wrong forum, naturally). So clearly this person ignored every single bit of information available for them that would allow them to actually post their suggestion in the appropriate place. And this is just par for the course.

[Piston Smashed™]

Those who tend to learn things... Oh look Steam is down, I'll check Google and the Steam forums for an answer. Oh!! It's Tuesday, it's maintenance day and it happens every week around the same time. That explains why I lost connection the last few times on a Tuesday that's good to know, I'll remember that in future.

Those who don't... Oh look Steam is down again, every week its the same thing. I'll just go and scream in the forums about how this is not acceptable for a company with billions in their bank account. Comes back the following week to complain again...

[AkiraJkr]

Originally posted by Piston Smashed™:

Bleeding users? I keep hearing how Steam is losing users because of a small downtime on a regular basis however, the downtime has been around the same time for over 20 years

NEW users.
And...COD and alot of new games are new to Steam, so users haven't had those 20 or so years to listen.


I really don't understand why people are coming here to argument against the suggestion or say "well people will just learn" like @Mensis said. I don't get what's the big deal in having this dealt with.
I already did mention in the OP they don't need to simply add a warning, and just be more hands-on with the devs, if they wanna avoid clutter.

[Piston Smashed™]

Originally posted by AkiraJkr:

Originally posted by Piston Smashed™:

Bleeding users? I keep hearing how Steam is losing users because of a small downtime on a regular basis however, the downtime has been around the same time for over 20 years (I've experienced every single one of those downtime's) and yet Steam has in all that time grown bigger and bigger and has regularly been breaking its own users records, so please explain how they are bleeding users...

And...COD and alot of new games are new to Steam, so users haven't had those 20 or so years to listen.


I really don't understand why people are coming here to argument against the suggestion or say "well people will just learn" like @Mensis said. I don't get what's the big deal in having this added.

I've been playing games for 20 years on Steam and have been kicked out of games because of maintenance in the past.

Even if there was a notification people would have to actually see there was one for them to do anything about it. If they are in game playing there's more than a good chance they won't see such a notification and will still complain about how they got kicked from a game because of the regular maintenance.

[HikariLight]

Originally posted by AkiraJkr:

Originally posted by Piston Smashed™:

Bleeding users? I keep hearing how Steam is losing users because of a small downtime on a regular basis however, the downtime has been around the same time for over 20 years

NEW users.
And...COD and alot of new games are new to Steam, so users haven't had those 20 or so years to listen.


I really don't understand why people are coming here to argument against the suggestion or say "well people will just learn" like @Mensis said. I don't get what's the big deal in having this dealt with.
I already did mention in the OP they don't need to simply add a warning, and just be more hands-on with the devs, if they wanna avoid clutter.

Quick Google search is all they need to do to know why their connection got dropped on a Tuesday.

But they prefer the Twitter approach and just yell and scream about it.