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Valve Explains How It Decides Who's a 'Straight Up Troll' Publishing Video Games On Steam (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Wednesday, Valve, the company that operates the huge online video game store Steam, shared more details about how it plans to control and moderate the ever-increasing number of games published on its platform. In the post published Wednesday, Valve shared more details about how it determines what it considers "outright trolling." "It is vague and we'll tell you why," Valve wrote. "You're a denizen of the internet so you know that trolls come in all forms. On Steam, some are simply trying to rile people up with something we call 'a game shaped object' (ie: a crudely made piece of software that technically and just barely passes our bar as a functioning video game but isn't what 99.9% of folks would say is "good.")
Valve goes on to explain that some trolls are trying to scam folks out of their Steam inventory items (digital items that can be traded for real money), while others are trying to generate a small amount of money through a variety of schemes that have to do with how developers use keys to unlock Steam games, while others are trying to "incite and sow discord." "Trolls are figuring out new ways to be loathsome as we write this," Valve said. "But the thing these folks have in common is that they aren't actually interested in good faith efforts to make and sell games to you or anyone. When a developer's motives aren't that, they're probably a troll." One interesting observation Valve shares in the blog post is that it rarely bans individual games from Steam, and more often bans developers and/or publishers entirely. [...] Valve said that its review process for determining that something may be a "troll game" is a "deep assessment" that involves investigating who the developer is, what they've done in the past, their behavior on Steam as a developer, as a customer, their banking information, developers they associate with, and more.
Valve goes on to explain that some trolls are trying to scam folks out of their Steam inventory items (digital items that can be traded for real money), while others are trying to generate a small amount of money through a variety of schemes that have to do with how developers use keys to unlock Steam games, while others are trying to "incite and sow discord." "Trolls are figuring out new ways to be loathsome as we write this," Valve said. "But the thing these folks have in common is that they aren't actually interested in good faith efforts to make and sell games to you or anyone. When a developer's motives aren't that, they're probably a troll." One interesting observation Valve shares in the blog post is that it rarely bans individual games from Steam, and more often bans developers and/or publishers entirely. [...] Valve said that its review process for determining that something may be a "troll game" is a "deep assessment" that involves investigating who the developer is, what they've done in the past, their behavior on Steam as a developer, as a customer, their banking information, developers they associate with, and more.
98% of the total garbage disappears (as well as a few percent of the good). Of course "not terribly good games" will still appear, but it gets rid of the absolute garbage.
Or if people are appalled at paying to appear on Steam, allow spending $10K for a Steam "check-mark of marketing", and allow users to filter to show only check-marked games.
A second set of changes was focused on improving how you can ignore things you're not interested in. In the past you've been able to ignore individual games or product types (like VR, or Early Access) you didn't want to see again. But now we've added ways for you to also easily ignore individual developers, publishers, and curators.
Imagine how much easier browsing Netflix would be if you could filter out whole franchises and showrunners. Of course, that might make it obvious how little on Netflix actually interests you.
How about if a developer starts a EA Project and walks away (takes forever with no progress) they are banned from further EA? How about if they are banned from the store entirely?
Already May well be the most overloaded operator in the English language. As it seems to mean anything anyone anywhere takes objection to, or otherwise makes them feel bad.
Better hope you're on the right side of history so your game-shaped-object is declared art. That's where we are now.
Furthermore, unlike console and mobile platforms, Steam has very little switching cost. An end user can always just up and switch to Itch or Origin or GOG or Humble or wherever else.
because there's no accounting for taste, and if you took away garbage there'd be no Goat Simulator. As the saying goes, one man's trash is another's treasure.
Plus, a lot of good devs get their start making trash.
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So Steam started as "shove it down their throats" Counter Strike 1.6 launcher. Evolved into highly curated game store over about a decade.
Then decided to suddenly drop all curation and allow anything and everything on the platform. Got flooded with garbage. Added weird "meta gaming" shit like trading cards. Got games that literally existed just to allow people to get cards. Allowed some trading and other meta gaming of the system. Even got pressured by some SJW types to drop politically controversial games like Hatred and even had their recent porn games brouhaha.
And now, they're doing this. I guess there's just too much pressure from all directions, and they really just decided that no, we're not bending to various pressure groups, and instead just making sure that asset flips and such are not on the store. If true, good on them.
Eh, all I really want from Valve is a filter that blocks all "Early Access" games from ever appearing, as I'm browsing for games on their web site.
Kudos for recognizing that hard and fast rules cannot be applied here. A strict set of rules are just vulnerable to gaming. People will constantly try to work around them, and raise hell when they force Valve's hand to either change the rules or apply them unfairly. This need to use the Pornography-definition of "I know it when I see it".
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Furthermore, unlike console and mobile platforms, Steam has very little switching cost. An end user can always just up and switch to Itch or Origin or GOG or Humble or wherever else.
An end user who does that will find that a percentage of their Steam games cease functioning.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Through what mechanism does purchasing a license to play a video game from a service other than Steam cause Steam games to cease to function? And is there any related documented policy?
Furthermore, unlike console and mobile platforms, Steam has very little switching cost. An end user can always just up and switch to Itch or Origin or GOG or Humble or wherever else.
An end user who does that will find that a percentage of their Steam games cease functioning.
Through what mechanism does purchasing a license to play a video game from a service other than Steam cause Steam games to cease to function?
That's not what you said. You said switching. That means you stop using one thing, and start using another. If you stop using Steam, then your Steam DRM games will stop working. If you meant that a user can easily use multiple services, you should have said so, but you didn't.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
> You forgot to mention it is no longer dropped- my guess would be to push your political perspective.
That's no thanks to the SJW types who pushed to take it down and therefore not even remotely exculpatory. The whole point of his post is that Steam is sick of this and is stopping the deplatforming and no longer listening to the SJW types.
What would those SJWs even argue? Something like: "Oh, yeah, we managed to pressure Steam into taking down this game until Gabe decided we were a bunch of whiny losers and put it back, that proves that everything is right and good with the world. Leaving out that Steam decided we were pathetic, whiny losers that they should never have listened to us in the first place is just an attempt to smear us by making us look more competent at deplatforming than we actually are!"
All they're doing here is proving that SJWs a bunch of whiny killjoys who no one wants to be around who should go back to mom's basement and cry themselves to sleep.
Perhaps I wasn't entirely clear that I meant switching for new purchases from Steam to the other markets, and continuing to use Steam only for those games already purchased through Steam. I thought it would have been implied in a comment on an article about which games are and aren't available for new purchases on Steam.
Goat Simulator started out as a broken mess and got that polish when it hit it big. It was just somebody playing around in the Unreal Editor and they posted the "game" as a joke. It took off with Streamers and the rest as they say is history.
The difference between Goat Simulator and most Asset Flips is that it had a clever angle on the assets it flipped. But Valve doesn't want to be the one to judge what's a clever angle and what's run of the mill garbage. Hell, there's a one man operation that made a competent Doom 3 clone out of asset flips.And I just spent a ton of time on an RPG Maker game that was 90% stock tiles and a well written story with good combat.
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