what kind of publisher practices do you hope steam cracks down on in the future?

[Nexus]

seeing as theyre going after season pass's and the like, I hope steam continues to crack down on more scummy anti-consumer business practices in the future.

Personally i'd love to see them go after time gated content in games as personally i find it goes against preserving games as an art along with the unnecessary gating of content from players simply because they werent there at the time. be it pre-order bonuses or just simple season pass exclusive items, there should be no reason for virtual items to have scarcity. (not to mention the ethical ramifications of pulling players in with pre-order bonuses only to under deliver on the game itself upon release) instead simply making it so all games are required to add said content as available for purchase individually as dlc if not outright provided options to be gained after a certain period of time.

but what about you? what kind of problems/plagues to gaming culture do you hope our lord and saviour deliver us from?

[RPG Gamer Man]

Game being permanently in Early Access. You know the developers who say there going to update a game, then go silent for years and never do anything. It is kinda like they pretend there working on a game, then abadon it for some reason. Then they make a excuse, either they ran out of money, are sick, or some other issue, or none at all. I mean, there are logical reasons, but if the developer every tries to upload another game on steam while their previous one is still in EA, they should have some kind of penalty system for doing that. Ive seen many developers that do this. For example, steam could take 50% of their profit instead of 30% as a penalty for leaving their previous game in EA on steam.

Developer should learn to remove EA unplayable game off steam, and remove it and delist it, or not make it if they do not have the skills or money to do so.

[Nexus]

Originally posted by RPG Gamer Man:

Game being permanently in Early Access. You know the developers who say there going to update a game, then go silent for years and never do anything. It is kinda like they pretend there working on a game, then abadon it for some reason. Then they make a excuse, either they ran out of money, are sick, or some other issue, or none at all. I mean, there are logical reasons, but if the developer every tries to upload another game on steam while their previous one is still in EA, they should have some kind of penalty for doing that. Ive seen many developers that do this.

id rather them crack down on games that launch clearly unfinished, especially after early access.

like... Project Zomboid for example has been in EA for years, but its also been getting worked on and updated still, even if slow. the game has more depth then every AAA game combined but its still considered EA cause the devs want to make it perfect. I love that game.

then you have other games that are supposedly "fully complete" but just have the depth of a puddle and not nearly as much as it was building up to be.

[Yzal]

Ubisoft. Just all of it

[xBCxRangers]

Well, they shouldn't have these shady developers running their game hubs and forums. A lot of the heat Steam is getting right now, are due to inefficiencies in moderation, most of what i can tell on the Hubs, Workshops, Groups, Profiles, Artworks etc.

If it were me, i'd scrap the current moderation team, and being an American Company, i'd hire American moderators, en masse, and totally take over the Hubs and Workshops.

People who spend money, do not want to be treated like second class citizens, maybe not by Steam, but those they entrust who may not be very nice people or stewards of the consumers that buy products here.

Another issue, is DRM. They have to create a Legacy Launcher of some sort, in so that whenever MS gets an itch to fleece us with yet another redundant OS, we do not lose our games or ability to get access too them.

As well as what can happen if Steam goes away, or sold etc. We need to assure we will have our games. Very important matters. Much more important in what they did here imo.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

You're basically telling Valve that they can't do this in their own MP games, which they do and have been for over a decade.

[Mythical]

Originally posted by Nexus:

seeing as theyre going after season pass's and the like, I hope steam continues to crack down on more scummy anti-consumer business practices in the future.

Personally i'd love to see them go after time gated content in games as personally i find it goes against preserving games as an art along with the unnecessary gating of content from players simply because they werent there at the time. be it pre-order bonuses or just simple season pass exclusive items, there should be no reason for virtual items to have scarcity. (not to mention the ethical ramifications of pulling players in with pre-order bonuses only to under deliver on the game itself upon release) instead simply making it so all games are required to add said content as available for purchase individually as dlc if not outright provided options to be gained after a certain period of time.

but what about you? what kind of problems/plagues to gaming culture do you hope our lord and saviour deliver us from?

Someone else already said it, games being forever Early Access. AKA The developers selling an idea instead of a product, and using Steam as kickstarter funding. There should be a hard limit on how long your game is allowed to be in early access. Early Access implies you should be close to finishing, it never should have been allowed to be used as crowd funding. If you look at 7 days to die (A game I quite enjoy) and say "Yeah, there's over a decade of work there." then you're lying or have no idea what should be possible to accomplish in over 10 years. I've gotten married, divorced, bought a car, a house gotten remarried and had a child since then.

That I enjoy the game is irrelevant, it never should have been allowed to be in early access for over 10 years. To me at least, that's the absolute biggest problem on Steam right now.

[miakisfan]

Originally posted by Nexus:

seeing as theyre going after season pass's and the like, I hope steam continues to crack down on more scummy anti-consumer business practices in the future.

Personally i'd love to see them go after time gated content in games as personally i find it goes against preserving games as an art along with the unnecessary gating of content from players simply because they werent there at the time. be it pre-order bonuses or just simple season pass exclusive items, there should be no reason for virtual items to have scarcity. (not to mention the ethical ramifications of pulling players in with pre-order bonuses only to under deliver on the game itself upon release) instead simply making it so all games are required to add said content as available for purchase individually as dlc if not outright provided options to be gained after a certain period of time.

but what about you? what kind of problems/plagues to gaming culture do you hope our lord and saviour deliver us from?

I won't pick directly on games because they should all be judged on an individual-by-individual basis.

I do have an issue with games in early access because that tells me there is a reason they can't or won't deliver the full product. Sadly that usually is a monetary issue.

If you don't have the funds to create a full game and can't afford to you probably shouldn't be making it in the first place no matter how great the idea is.

I also can't complain about DLC that actually adds content to a game after it is finished as long as it is relevant to the game. There were games i played before DLC and patching added content to games and earning costumes and items were built into the game. Now some of that is added as DLC as added content at an added cost to the consumer. That is a damn shame.

I usually don't say anything bad about EA because there are other developers and publishers are just as guilty as them at poor business practices BUT I point at games like The Sims 4 and the constant glut of DLC that just adds cosmetic items to the games that could easily just be added to the game to keep people playing instead of it being a cash cow.

Look, in fairness to all my previous points I am not a developer or publisher so I haven't walked a mile in their shoes. I don't know but can only guess as to how much the cost of making a game has gone up and they are still charging less than it did to buy a Nintendo 64 game back in the day. I paid 99 dollars for Killer Instinct Gold back in the late 90's.

I think another big problem that some people have is that they themselves are part of the problem. Complaining gets you nowhere in many cases and I don't see them going out and showing the publishers and developers how it should be done. Until you have been criticized yourself for being a bad developer/publisher you might want to learn some humility.

[Lady of the Lake]

I wish they could do something about fighting games which have like 10 characters and every other one is a separate DLC, or if you wanna some of them(up to current one but not including future ones), you have to buy super ultra deluxe version for price that is bs even on sale.

[Pheex]

Forcing live service games with a single player component to be playable after discontinuation of the game's authentication server.

Most of those games are on the EA / Ubi launchers but a bunch are still purchasable on Steam regardless. (For example Need for Speed 2015)

[Tito Shivan]

A dream of mine is all mutliplayer games having 'vs bots' modes to play offline or alone. Once upon a time was the norm, but not anymore.

Fat chance of that happening (Still some game franchises are adding them back in after a long time)

[Vamp]

Originally posted by Yzal:

Ubisoft. Just all of it

This, death to extra launchers.

[Ben Lubar]

I want Valve to stop accepting this as a valid description of mature content:

The developers describe the content like this:

This Game may contain content not appropriate for all ages, or may not be appropriate for viewing at work: General Mature Content

[SLG]

How are they going after season passes?

[AustrAlien2010]

Originally posted by Tito Shivan:

A dream of mine is all mutliplayer games having 'vs bots' modes to play offline or alone. Once upon a time was the norm, but not anymore.

Fat chance of that happening (Still some game franchises are adding them back in after a long time)

They should've.
I bet they've been cutting costs by not developing A.I.

It's probably just difficult to make money off. Because people, they play the game longer, because it adds replayability. Something that companies may not want because then people never buy something new. But they could for example sell people A.I. packages as downloadable content, and make money from it that way. There are all sort of ways to develop that, and still be able to make profit from it.

[Knee]

Originally posted by Tito Shivan:

A dream of mine is all mutliplayer games having 'vs bots' modes to play offline or alone. Once upon a time was the norm, but not anymore.

Fat chance of that happening (Still some game franchises are adding them back in after a long time)

And built in level editors that also play well with bots, TimeSplitters I miss you.