[QUOTE=Sam Za Nemesis;50111686]Valve changed a lot in half a decade (Just after Portal 2 was released) from an benevolent business to both developers and customers to a business as usual corporation[/QUOTE]
To be fair part of me is glad that it could be a lot worse given valve is as close as it can get to having a monopoly, but there's no denying they've done their fair share of awful shit in the past years
Also steam sales aren't as "powerful" as they were. I miss flash sales.
I got all GTA games(except 5) for 7,5 € 2 years ago. I never saw that deal again.
[QUOTE=Sam Za Nemesis;50111686]Valve changed a lot in half a decade (Just after Portal 2 was released) from an benevolent business to both developers and customers to a business as usual corporation[/QUOTE]
this dumb contrarian opinion that tries to paint valve as some cash-grabbing corporation that shits on the customer is so retarded
they're still the best service out there despite being an arguable monopoly, stop complaining
compared to other shit services like origin, GFWL and a few others, steam is objectively the best all around service provider and you have to be delusional or extremely clouded in your judgement to think otherwise
I've had better experiences with Origin support than I've ever had with Steam's.
[QUOTE=Melnek;50111756]this dumb contrarian opinion that tries to paint valve as some cash-grabbing corporation that shits on the customer is so retarded
they're still the best service out there despite being an arguable monopoly, stop complaining
compared to other shit services like origin, GFWL and a few others, steam is objectively the best all around service provider and you have to be delusional or extremely clouded in your judgement to think otherwise[/QUOTE]
Valve/Steam does a good job with offering a ton of features that GFWL, Uplay and Origin don't offer (implementation of streams, community hubs, workshop, greenlight, etc.), but Valve really needs to start cooperating with a seperate company when it comes to support tickets. They have over 120 mio users, but they are not increasing their support numbers. For many people it still takes a very long time to get their problems answered. Also Valve's secrecy about certain aspects, like that one CSGO community server thing and their zero-communication towards customers is very, very annoying.
[QUOTE=Skyward;50111774]I've had better experiences with Origin support than I've ever had with Steam's.[/QUOTE]
Origin support definitely beats Steam at existing-ness
[QUOTE=Melnek;50111756]this dumb contrarian opinion[/QUOTE]
Naw, the contrarians on this forum are people who still like steam, not the ones who use it because it has all of their previously purchased games hostage.
Steam is a combination of too powerful and too incompetent that really pisses me off.
First of all: despite being the largest game store online they don't have bounties for bugs, all you get is a tf2 hat.
It's disgraceful.
Zemnmez is a friend of mine who was hired at twitch.tv because he broke into twitch.tv so many times they just had to notice. He has hacked steam over 80 times, gaining access to developer accounts, free store purchases, free items, others' items, personal information. All he got for it was a couple of hats.
Zemnmez is now one of the names on valve's "listen to these people" list and even he can't talk them into fixing the giant exploit in source that [b]allows people to put viruses into your startup folder[/b]. If it's not a 2 minute fix don't bother.
In addition, and more in general, they've got the greenlight system and the problems that came with it, namely that over 50% of the population is retarded, they wouldn't let you return broken games for the longest time until forced to and they have a client that combines high memory usage with slow speeds.
Every single thing they make is broken on release. They think they know better than the rest of the world how things should work "oh a link filter? That's easy" (The steam link filter breaks any url that doesn't follow strict arbitrary rules). "Oh a currency converter? $ = € right?". "Oh a trading system? That takes 1 server right?"
Their chromium thing they use in the overlay has a black background by default which means you can't view text files on it because they don't have css that makes the background colour white. It can't handle youtube and you can be stuck watching an entire video you didn't want to see or else lose your game. The store can't load half the time during sales- Their servers are so bad even at the best of times the community API is laughably awful you can't count on it loading at all.
What I'm getting at is that they didn't actually deserve to get that big and the fact that they did through sheer fucking forcing it down everyone's throat via exclusives and deals is so bad.
[QUOTE=Antimuffin;50111776]Valve/Steam does a good job with offering a ton of features that GFWL, Uplay and Origin don't offer (implementation of streams, community hubs, workshop, greenlight, etc.), but Valve really needs to start cooperating with a seperate company when it comes to support tickets. They have over 120 mio users, but they are not increasing their support numbers. For many people it still takes a very long time to get their problems answered. Also Valve's secrecy about certain aspects, like that one CSGO community server thing and their zero-communication towards customers is very, very annoying.[/QUOTE]
They've had terrible experiences with outsourcing in the past, which is why they decided to train people themselves last year:
[quote]“We’ve hired a couple different companies [to help with support],” said Johnson. “The thing that’s interesting is, you go out to third-party support providers, and—at least in our experience—most of them wanted to sell you ways to reduce the number of people currently waiting in support, but they weren’t very good at selling you ways to solve customer support issues. I think we’ve all had that experience of, ‘I get it. You’re trying to get me off the line.’ We’re not super interested in providing crappy support in volume.”
So Valve’s taken to training people, but training takes time.
“It’s meant that training people in third-party has taken longer than we expected,” explained Johnson. “It bugs us, but it is what it is. We think we’ll have the support wait time down to an acceptable point by Christmas time. That’s our goal. It’s a function of training up more and more people answer customer issues. We’re not there yet. It’s getting better internally; it’s just that it hasn’t yet translated to great support for users. We’re gonna get there, though.”[/quote]
[url="http://steamed.kotaku.com/valve-explains-why-steam-customer-service-is-still-terr-1736988223"]Source[/url]
Additionally they've tried to cut down on generating support tickets in first place by implementing stuff like the Refund system, 2 factor authentication, and various Steam Market restrictions. So I'd say they're working on it, but whatever magic EA is massaging their support team with doesn't seem to have trickled down to them yet.
Or at least I largely assume so based on anecdotal evidence by people reminiscing about their support troubles (that may or may not be really old experiences) and Erik Johnson's own comments on ticket numbers in the opening paragraphs of that interview, I haven't seen any cold, hard stats after those implementations.
Personally I have the feeling that Valve's biggest problem is being too spread out and not being able to easily hire people that fit into their corporate structure, not that they've somehow turned evil/arrogant. Tho you can definitely argue for both perspectives when updates/fixes arrive so late it borders on downright negligence (depending on the severity of the problem). Additionally, Valve don't seem to trust third parties to do a decent job for them in many cases, as many of their recent problems seem to have followed a "fuck it, we'll do it ourselves then" mentality (W8 seemed worrying -> SteamOS and Vulkan. No big console or controller innovations -> Steam Universe. Oculus bought by Facebook -> Vive. Etc)
[QUOTE=Melnek;50111756]
they're still the best service out there despite being an arguable monopoly, stop complaining
compared to other shit services like origin, GFWL and a few others, steam is objectively the best all around service provider and you have to be delusional or extremely clouded in your judgement to think otherwise[/QUOTE]
Origin has a fantastic support.
They have live chat, phone hotlines and much more.
Steam doesn't have any of this.
Especially not a "fantastic support".
Steam mostly got to where it is today due to timing IMO. They were the first major service that offered an integrated client for friends/chat automatic game updates, and generally download only ownership right before the game industry began a major shift away from physical ownership. This is especially true for PC games, and they remained pretty much the only service that did these things for many years until EA and Ubisoft decided to roll their own services. They are far from the best service, just the most convenient for most people since they command control of a large number of games and have exclusive PC distribution of a number of high profile franchises (fallout 4, skyrim, rocket league, csgo, dota 2 etc). Not only is origin service better, but so is the client itself from a software standpoint.
[QUOTE=Skyward;50111774]I've had better experiences with Origin support than I've ever had with Steam's.[/QUOTE]
steam support is absolute garbage
[QUOTE=Sam Za Nemesis;50111747]Sales aren't even my complaint, they have completely cut ties with the community, it's been over two years since Gabe announced Source 2 and even more since hints of it were publicly available, and there is no public SDK yet, Alien Swarm and has awful code execution exploits that dampen development as well if you do dare to do development on their engines[/QUOTE]
at this point if no word as of any news about Half Life 3 EP/3 by this year E3 I will just wright the game off as canceled
[QUOTE=Melnek;50111756]this dumb contrarian opinion that tries to paint valve as some cash-grabbing corporation that shits on the customer is so retarded
they're still the best service out there despite being an arguable monopoly, stop complaining
compared to other shit services like origin, GFWL and a few others, steam is objectively the best all around service provider and you have to be delusional or extremely clouded in your judgement to think otherwise[/QUOTE]
Yes and no.
I can only speak for Origin, but in terms of customer support, Origin is BY FAR A WHOLE LOT BETTER than Steam. Period.
Whoever thought of giving Origin's customer support that much attention really deserves an award, because its absolutely astoundingly great.
The only thing Steam really does better, is having more games(and the games I want), a bigger community, and more sales, and thats because it beat the race.
I think anyone that calls steam a monopoly have no idea what they're actually saying, at all
not that anyones doing it here, but people sure as fuck try
EA tried to buy out Steam once. Imagine if Steam just purchased GmG and Humble Bundle and GoG and a fuckload of other small competitions, and tried to drive EA out. Now THAT would be a monopoly. Anti-competitive market that 100% dominates everyone else.
[editline]11th April 2016[/editline]
[QUOTE=Sam Za Nemesis;50111686]Valve changed a lot in half a decade (Just after Portal 2 was released) from an benevolent business to both developers and customers to a business as usual corporation[/QUOTE]
I'm still content with Steam and Valve in the sense that old Valve still lives very much within current Valve.
[QUOTE=theevilldeadII;50112504]at this point if no word as of any news about Half Life 3 EP/3 by this year E3 I will just wright the game off as canceled[/QUOTE]
IMO, the game is in deep sleep.
Imagine it being a messed up skeleton that was found decomposing in the soil, and then was put inside a regeneration chamber, but with a very very slow process.
[QUOTE=01271;50111824]
What I'm getting at is that they didn't actually deserve to get that big and the fact that they did through sheer fucking forcing it down everyone's throat via exclusives and deals is so bad.[/QUOTE]
To be fair, we let it get that big, because back then we sincerely beleived that "Valve could do no wrong".
Now we're over 10 years later, and dealing with it. I would love to leave steam, but I've put alot of money into steam, and all my friends are there, so I'm outta luck.
Origin is still not a valid alternative because it only offers mainly EA games and a small selection of non-EA games, it will never be a threat to Steam at this rate.
Uplay is a joke.
For better or for worst, Steam is still the best of them and will be for years to come unless something happens.
[editline]11th April 2016[/editline]
Besides I rather have Valve in a dominant position than EA, stay in the pan instead of jumping into the fire.
[QUOTE=Electrocuter;50113384]Origin is still not a valid alternative because it only offers mainly EA games and a small selection of non-EA games, it will never be a threat to Steam at this rate.
Uplay is a joke.
For better or for worst, Steam is still the best of them and will be for years to come unless something happens.
[editline]11th April 2016[/editline]
Besides I rather have Valve in a dominant position than EA, stay in the pan instead of jumping into the fire.[/QUOTE]
to add
EA games are something I avoid at all costs because usually they're fucked over big time. I think most people do the same for the sake of not funding games that are split into parts.
Ubisoft is the biggest joke in the industry right now outside of Konami / etc
GoG/GmG I should use more tbh but steam is just, 'the' platform I use just cause I've always used it and all my stuffs there so why change
[QUOTE=Skyward;50111774]I've had better experiences with Origin support than I've ever had with Steam's.[/QUOTE]
This.
I had an account which held Battlefield 4, Titanfall, Spore, and a whole host of other games I had purchased from Origin. However, I didn't know the password. It turns out that the e-mail used for it went to insightbb.com, back when I first bought Spore. Because of that, any recovery email would go to an inbox that no longer exists.
I sent in a ticket, and literally less than a minute after sending it in, I get a phone call from EA support. After about 20 minutes, I have all of my games merged to a new, alternate account that I have complete control over.
I fucking love Origin support compared to Valve's. At least something gets done.
[QUOTE=J!NX;50113486]EA games are something I avoid at all costs because usually they're fucked over big time. I think [B]most people[/B] do the same for the sake of not funding games that are split into parts.
Ubisoft is the [B]biggest joke in the industry[/B] right now outside of Konami / etc
GoG/GmG I should use more tbh but steam is just, 'the' platform I use just cause I've always used it and all my stuffs there so why change[/QUOTE]
C'mon, what most people ? Even if you would count all 100 million Steam users it is still not most people. EA can keep Origin on float just with Sims and FIFA alone.
Ubisoft being a joke ? Name me a few unsuccessful Ubisoft games. There were some launch issues with a few games, but nothing recent AFAIK.
Steam is lucky enough greed keeps the big players from a big merger of their stores which would seriously shake things up for Steam.
[QUOTE=Electrocuter;50113384]Origin is still not a valid alternative because it only offers mainly EA games and a small selection of non-EA games, it will never be a threat to Steam at this rate.[/QUOTE]
I don't think Origin is really even trying to compete with Steam. Origin exists mostly because EA doesn't want Valve getting a cut of each sale.
[QUOTE=AntonioR;50114209]
Ubisoft being a joke ? Name me a few unsuccessful Ubisoft games. There were some launch issues with a few games, but nothing recent AFAIK[/QUOTE]
Bit hyperbolic, but I don't like them because they take ideas and fuck them up quite a bit
AC could be a dark souls tier quality game but because they would rather make quick cash they rush it out, and their PR department and DRM department all deserve to be fired.
As a note I think the publisher and PR side of ubisoft is a joke, and they are. They ruin ubisoft the gf and studio so much that it's painful. The devs are talented dudes who do amazing work but don't have the time to make it right. The corporate side is worse than anything valve or EA has done
Also, success =\= quality. Aliens was considered a failure, one of the best games of that year
[editline]11th April 2016[/editline]
As for EA, anyone will agree that their dlc practices are pretty slimey and many will avoid them for it, others ignore it and somenwill buy into it. Tons of people will praise them for caring through support though and they do deserve more games on just that alone
I wish valve stopped pretending to care about support and made it not bad
[QUOTE=Greendead;50111729]Also steam sales aren't as "powerful" as they were. I miss flash sales.
I got all GTA games(except 5) for 7,5 € 2 years ago. I never saw that deal again.[/QUOTE]
The worst part is after gta v (which was the last steam game I bought for half its price from a chinese reseller) they put region locks on all games so you can't get them cheap anymore its a damn shame, there's quite a handful of people who use vpn's and other magic shit to activate those games so its even worse in that case legit users end up having to pay full price.
[QUOTE=Greendead;50111729]Also steam sales aren't as "powerful" as they were. I miss flash sales.
I got all GTA games(except 5) for 7,5 € 2 years ago. I never saw that deal again.[/QUOTE]
I got GTAIV for $2.
It's never hit that since.
[QUOTE=KillerJaguar;50114530]I don't think Origin is really even trying to compete with Steam. Origin exists mostly because EA doesn't want Valve getting a cut of each sale.[/QUOTE]
which I am fine with since it is an okay service uplay on the other hand
Blizzard support is better than Steam support. While getting my account back, I was getting help from an awesome support person, and we had a nice conversation too about Fallout 4 and DLC.
When can I seriously say that I had a awesome time talking to Support?!
Same thing happened when I had to refund my character, got another awesome person.
[QUOTE=Greendead;50111729]Also steam sales aren't as "powerful" as they were. I miss flash sales.
I got all GTA games(except 5) for 7,5 € 2 years ago. I never saw that deal again.[/QUOTE]
You can still get Steam games very cheap, but you have to look at bundles for that (and usually it won't be AAA titles, but that does happen once in a while).
People are so funny.
GoG is a pretty fantastic place to get games. I hear Origin has good customer service, but it has a small selection of games. I wanna see some bigger games on GoG (and something else) so Steam shits it's pants and has to get it's shit together.
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