A PITA called "what's new" aka why does this thing not have an on/off switch [continued]

[CombatWombat]

Previous thread:

https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/10/3866958929508467023/

Counter of this thing reappearing since I started the OG thread: 14

So I will just continue here. This thread is quite new, no need to lock it down. There is no confusion, this thing sucks. I will not stop with this topic, This is a simple to fix. Heck they removed the fix to make it harder to avoid.




A PITA called "what's new" aka why does this thing not have an on/off switch
This thing is
[X] annoying as hell
[X] straight in my face
[X] always in the way
[X] unavoidable
[] loved by everybody

A quick history.
Once upon a time when everyone was happy with their steam library an evil cooperation took offense at that and put a gnarly space wasting useless thing on the library. Which on it's own wouldn't annoy the happy people but the fact that there was no on/off switch made many mad. But a solution was quickly found with styles.

NO! thought the evil cooperation, this cannot be! And removed the option to disable this "in your face, buy this ♥♥♥♥, banner".
Smart people, again, found a way around it and were able to permanently disable it. This cought the eye of the evil cooperation once again and they managed to enable this god forsaken useless piece of code with every little update they push onto the now much less happy people.


Moral of the story WHY the FRICK is there still no OPTION to disable that usability catastrophy?

[CombatWombat]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von eram:

enable small mode to remove it

Tried it, hated it, small mode is just a list. Why can't we have unobscured large mode?

[lukaself]

The "what's new" section has been heavily criticized ever since the early beta of the library. It is often abused, willingly or not, by publishers mislabeling their updates or wanting to advertise their products in a place you can't easily ignore.

It's annoying enough when you have only a few games but when you have a thousand or more, even games you're not playing anymore are all constantly nagging you to catch your attention and the "see less" setting does nothing as most publishers do not care much for properly labelling their announcements with the proper category. For ADHD users on the other hand, going to the library is simply hell and using small mode defeats the whole point we're using Steam in the first place.

Valve ignored the entirety of the feedback and made no changes at all when implementing it in the main build, which can only mean one thing: users may not like it but developers and publishers enjoy it a lot, as they could finally have the captive audience they dreamed of, even though the ad-wars showed one thing: that annoying people will make them buy your product less, not more.

One more little piece of evidence showing that this industry is getting crushed under its own weight.

*shrug*

[Tristin]

Well they want to make more money. Ads for money. It'd be best if you could turn it off as will, but it is better than Epic where they throw you billizions of popups to close. You only need to close one window in Steam.

[lukaself]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Tristin:

Well they want to make more money. Ads for money. It'd be best if you could turn it off as will, but it is better than Epic where they throw you billizions of popups to close. You only need to close one window in Steam.

You can't actually close the whole section on Steam either, that's the point of the criticism. You have to acknowledge every announcement individually by right-clicking to open a sub menu, click on every item to remove them manually. Which makes it quite the bother... I don't think bothering people is often associated with better revenue.

[Zefar]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Tristin:

Well they want to make more money. Ads for money. It'd be best if you could turn it off as will, but it is better than Epic where they throw you billizions of popups to close. You only need to close one window in Steam.

It's not ads for new games. It's updates on what happens with games you own.

No developer is paying money to advertise stuff in that "What's New" bar as it will only list news that the developer or publisher has posted on their Steam community page.

[CombatWombat]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Zefar:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Tristin:

Well they want to make more money. Ads for money. It'd be best if you could turn it off as will, but it is better than Epic where they throw you billizions of popups to close. You only need to close one window in Steam.

It's not ads for new games. It's updates on what happens with games you own.

No developer is paying money to advertise stuff in that "What's New" bar as it will only list news that the developer or publisher has posted on their Steam community page.

That is why I don't understand why they can't add a toggle to this thing.

[Zefar]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von CombatWombat:

That is why I don't understand why they can't add a toggle to this thing.

It's only shown on the "Home" Tab and you can click on any game in your list to avoid seeing it.

The home tab is only used to quickly launch the last game you played.

Valve have never been a fan of a toggle switch. Mainly because the amount of people who complain about this feature are just so few so it's not worth the effort.

[KalGimpa]

flippin hate it and want a toggle

removed two games from my library because of it and now go nowhere near home

[lukaself]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Zefar:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Tristin:

Well they want to make more money. Ads for money. It'd be best if you could turn it off as will, but it is better than Epic where they throw you billizions of popups to close. You only need to close one window in Steam.

It's not ads for new games. It's updates on what happens with games you own.

Notwithstanding that this area is receiving announcements, cross-promotional materials for Switch releases and other games you don't own, aka ads. Also, they do have the ability to advertise in the library using that section, as evidenced here: https://imgur.com/eXWxAzO

It's been a serious issue during the library beta prompting a megathread which got locked without cause after reaching several thousand comments, showing that it was in fact, a large amount of people complaining about it, Valve just didn't want to hear it.

Everyone then took the healthy decision to stop banging their heads against that wall that is this company's community management and took it upon themselves to simply create a CSS style to remove it and call it quits... until Valve decided to remove that possibility completely with an undocumented update.

It's not that people aren't complaining about it, it's just sheer resignation with how Valve bluntly does things sometimes.

[Zefar]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von lukaself:

Notwithstanding that this area is receiving announcements, cross-promotional materials for Switch releases and other games you don't own, aka ads. Also, they do have the ability to advertise in the library using that section, as evidenced here: https://imgur.com/eXWxAzO

Oh that one rare instance where it happened and hasn't really happened again.
You can change so it only shows product updates.

It didn't show up for me so I'm guessing people had it on wish list.

Ursprünglich geschrieben von lukaself:

It's been a serious issue during the library beta prompting a megathread which got locked without cause after reaching several thousand comments, showing that it was in fact, a large amount of people complaining about it, Valve just didn't want to hear it.

It's not a serious issue. People are just overreacting about those 0.01% times when it doesn't feature news/updates.

Several thousand comment long thread? I'm sure it only had about 20 or so people arguing in circles.
It's also not a large amount when you compare it to the 32 million active userbase.
Even if it was a thousand different people it wouldn't make much of a difference.

Ursprünglich geschrieben von lukaself:

Everyone then took the healthy decision to stop banging their heads against that wall that is this company's community management and took it upon themselves to simply create a CSS style to remove it and call it quits... until Valve decided to remove that possibility completely with an undocumented update.

It's not that people aren't complaining about it, it's just sheer resignation with how Valve bluntly does things sometimes.

If we followed people who hated things about Steam, Steam would be so barebone of features that it literally would just be a list of your games.

You know the features you love and cherish in the previous UI update? Well there where people who absolutely hated those things. Claimed it was made by the janitors, third schoolers, the intern and the list goes on and on.

[lukaself]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Zefar:

It didn't show up for me so I'm guessing people had it on wish list.

Better than that, I had it on "ignore" and yet it showed up anyway. Looks like all the people who played the Demo got that ad. As far as I know, they haven't used it again since, I'm just highlighting that occasional "blunt" side of Valve I mentioned earlier. I think some publishers just have an issue with understanding/respecting the concept of consent.

Anyway, you've been confusing hate and criticism. Some number of people have been criticizing the What's New section, raising valid objections - no-one has been crying bloody murder about it here. Yet rather than addressing those arguments by providing positive counterpoints, you decided to belittle their voice instead by misrepresenting them, using emotionally charged language. Also, thousands of comments in the Beta channels which are usually limited to only a few enthusiasts is quite an ususual surge of feedback especially as it's been sitting at the top of the forum for a long time, pointing out another misrepresentation.

If you're interested in discussing this further - productively - kindly address the points made, not the people.

[Zefar]

I see it as hate when it's labeled as PITA and "Serious" when describing the problem. The problem being that it only exist as a feature to display news about your games. In one section on Steam client.

Also I addressed both things.

[lukaself]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Zefar:

I see it as hate when it's labeled as PITA and "Serious" when describing the problem.

Seems like a you problem. I'm afraid I can't do much about that if you believe someone pointing out Steam's shortcomings means they hate it. Take care.

[CombatWombat]

Counter: 7

This time it came back fast.

Ursprünglich geschrieben von lukaself:

The "what's new" section has been heavily criticized ever since the early beta of the library. It is often abused, willingly or not, by publishers mislabeling their updates or wanting to advertise their products in a place you can't easily ignore.

It's annoying enough when you have only a few games but when you have a thousand or more, even games you're not playing anymore are all constantly nagging you to catch your attention and the "see less" setting does nothing as most publishers do not care much for properly labelling their announcements with the proper category. For ADHD users on the other hand, going to the library is simply hell and using small mode defeats the whole point we're using Steam in the first place.

Valve ignored the entirety of the feedback and made no changes at all when implementing it in the main build, which can only mean one thing: users may not like it but developers and publishers enjoy it a lot, as they could finally have the captive audience they dreamed of, even though the ad-wars showed one thing: that annoying people will make them buy your product less, not more.

One more little piece of evidence showing that this industry is getting crushed under its own weight.

*shrug*

Yep this seems to be the case. The help desk told me there is nothing they can do and I should make a post here, then the post gets ignored and closed.

I have a lot of spite for this stupid ♥♥♥♥, so I will continue.

[lukaself]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von CombatWombat:

Yep this seems to be the case. The help desk told me there is nothing they can do and I should make a post here, then the post gets ignored and closed.

I have a lot of spite for this stupid ♥♥♥♥, so I will continue.

There is still a way to disable the section but it's quite an involved process now.