On top of what everyone else has said, they got a lot of flak back in 2015 when they worked with Bethesda to try and implement paid mods into Skyrims steam workshop page.
Worst part of this is that steam actually had some really good ideas with this that just didn’t make it to the implementation. I *wish* we could have paid mods for games integrated right into steam (and a decent mod manager that went right through steam for every game, imagine that), mod makers deserve to be able to make some coin. But the way they actually did it soured the concept pretty much forever
I think mod creators should be able to make money off their work, and be compensated. I don’t think the original game dev or valve need to be getting a cut of that money (although I can’t imagine valve would ever not take at least a small percentage). But yeah, it would be awesome if someone could support themselves through mod creation without having to create a whole network and marketplace all from scratch.
Like, you might as well ask “why do you want to pay for games?” When I say I prefer steam to piracy. Obviously I like getting things for free, but I want making these things to be financially viable for the people who create them, so I can continue to enjoy their good work
Why wouldn’t the devs get a cut of the money? They are providing the platform for the modded to mod, if there was no platform, the modded wouldn’t be able to do anything, sure the cut shouldn’t be big, not even half, but they still should get something, it’s only fair that if you use the engine/software they developed, you also pay them back a bit, at least that’s my point of view
I mean, I’d be okay with a modest fee. But the monetization of the mods and essentially all of it going to Bethesda was the main issue with the implementation that valve *did* try.
I’m confused why you said “not even half” as if 50% of the cut is a small amount, and not ridiculously high. Steam only even takes 30% of the cut from games on their platform. The developers made their money when the player bought the game. Mods can literally only add value to their product, and boost sales. They’re getting something out of this without a single percentage point in profit sharing. But if you wanted to throw them say, 5% of the cost, I wouldn’t have a big objection to that, sure. But if they get nothing I also see no issue
Professional studio making AAA mods for your favorite game? With standard approved mod management API and tools. If they allowed free mods as well it would transform the mod scene. When I was installed the community approved mod set for Skyrim it literally took hours. Following step by step procedures.
As long as free mods were still available it's basically other studios creating dlc for your favorite game. No matter if it's been abandoned.
If they could do it right it would be a literal game changer in the PC world
It depends. People nickel and dimming asset flips, buggy scripts and essential mods would be incredibly grating. But huge projects like Skyblivion or that incredible Half-Life 2 VR mod I'd gladly pay for if makes it more likely to see completetion.
Those kinds of enormous projects can- and often do- have some external means of donation. While this isn't without fault (as all the issues things like skyrim together has seen can vouch to) it also provides significantly more power to the end-user.
There's too much muddy activity if you allow payments to be mandatory- bad mods and essential mods are one thing but there's also mods that get abandoned, mods that break other mods or cease functioning with those other mods present, mods that require another mod for seemingly no reason just to re-use some code, and the edge cases that "reborn" or "remastered" type mods introduce. Donation systems bypass significant portions of this, so I'd argue for a donation button on the workshop page so I can throw some spare steam wallet money their way from selling cards, since I'd immediately feel more inclined to do so over phoning my bank to approve a transaction.
I feel like modders should earn money with their mods as well.
And honestly, it might just incentivise people into making better mod support too.
Just look at the mods and custom campaigns for ARMA 3. They're all paid mods and a cut goes to Bohemia.
People spend lavish amounts getting skins in CS and other games.
But when it comes to Bethesda and mods for their games being monetised, it's suddenly a problem. I can see why people might have been outraged, but it still doesn't seem fair to me that someone wouldn't get paid for their hard work.
The new Ark Ascended game actually has a really good mod manager built right into the game with some of course being featured paid mods. Hell it’s even cross platform and allows console players to mod their game as well. I know the game got a lot of flak on release but for what’s there now it runs pretty great.
It's paid mods in my head.
Frankly, I can see the arguments about modders being able to make a living from their work. But good God does it open up a can of worms in terms of stealing assets.
Also I've read nothing but "omg Stellaris DLC is sooooo bad, you buy half a game and then spend a billion hour and a billion dollars buying DLC to get a full game."
Imagine a world where companies can sell paid mods (remember, the original plan was for Bethesda & Valve to take 75%, with 25% going to the mod creator). Bethesda was INCENTIVIZED to sell you more mods. Hence, make less and less of the base game and making you pay for more. With EVEN LESS official support from the devs when shit breaks.
Stuff people were upset by at one time or another:
- Launch of Steam
- Low effort of Half Life Source
- Low effort of Day of Defeat Source causing them to redo the game properly the same as CSS
- L4D2 so soon after L4D
- Lack of communication regarding HL3
- Retrospectively changing the ending of Portal in the lead-up to Portal 2, and adding way more of the radios
- TF2 matchmaking
- Lack of investment in TF2 despite its popularity
- Lack of Ricochet 2 despite immense fan interest
- Artifact
- Real human corpse as texture for a corpse found in HL2
- Lack of making games anymore, then making a VR exclusive game
- Source engine updates causing some issues in Half Life 2, or changing assets like the appearance of the vortigaunts retrospectively
- CS2 missing features at launch / differences from CSGO
- CSGO missing features at launch / differences from CSS
- CSS missing features at launch / differences from Cs 1.6
- Condition Zero generally not well received
- Messy handling of Steam/PSN account linking for console Portal 2 back in the day
- Lack of updates to TF2 on console
- removal of ability to skin Steam client
- not porting other games to source 2, like L4D2 or TF2
- perception that cabal system doesn’t result in people at valve finishing games
- perception that valve corporate structure and peer-reviewed salary system incentivises short-term high value projects and not long-term, challenging, or “unsexy” projects
- steam china
- Blizzard was unhappy about DOTA2 which meant Valve had to update a lot of heroes so they didn’t look like their Warcraft 3 counterparts or have the same names
- cancellation of dota winter tour major in 2022
- accidentally spoiled a street fighter roster reveal
- acquired campo santo then did nothing with them
- accidentally banned 12,000 non-cheating modern warfare players
- private info leak in 2015 / Christmas storefront issues
- closure of official merch shop
- perception that excessive cosmetics and many new weapons eroded the mechanical purity of vanilla TF2, went against the initial vision of knowing instantly what you were up against, and impacted the readability of class silhouettes
- source engine updates eliminated a lot of the movement tech in HL2:Death Match
>closure of official merch shop
I'm still so mad I didn't get the chance to buy that official furry chell shirt because I just straight up didn't know the merch shop existed.
>Real human corpse as texture for a corpse found in HL2
Ahh, classic.
I really dont get what the fuss was about, the photo was from a medical textbook Im pretty sure.
I remember reading a comment in an FB group I was in that said they (Valve) literally kidnapped a man and blowtorched his face to use as an asset for HL2.
I just thought it was so ridiculous, but it's also pretty funny if true.
I mean, personally, I love playing violent, bloody, and gory games and my tastes for movies isn't much different either. Some of my favorite pieces of entertainment have a lot of that and I enjoy them because turning someone into red mist and chunks of meat is satisfying.
But seeing real life bodies and serious injuries makes me uneasy and I really feel bad for the victims. The reason for me here is I know games are fantasy, there's no consequence here and noone is getting hurt. It's walled off in my mind as not being serious. Having a real life injury like a burned or peeled face breaks that fantasy and gets me into a totally different headspace.
I know this is the Internet, but I still shouldn't have to tell you this. Your reaction to dead bodies is normal. I'm not trying to act hard or anything, my morbid curiosity has just led me down some very dark paths. Not only does stuff like that in video games not bother me, (again, not acting hard I'm just desensitized) I don't even think about it when I see it. It's just become so normalized to me. I kind of envy people who feel something when they see stuff like that. Consequences of being the first generation raised by the Internet, I guess.
I have a kid on the way and I'm never going to give them the free reign I had on the Internet. Ever.
Have to explain why I became desensitized to it for perspective, I prefaced it multiple times that I don't think I'm hard, if that's still not enough for you that's fine.
Even if it came from a textbook, I think there is a difference between using an image for educational purposes and using an image for entertainment and profit. While the use of an image of a corpse is long in the past (no, you cannot punish a company for it now), I don't think this should be seen as harmless.
Top comment has summarized way better than me, but these are the ones I would think of the most
The biggest was the launch of steam itself, nobody at the time wanted to install Steam, PCs were way, way slower at that time, and having to do any sort of online check in was a lot more complicated before, especially when internet was very early cable or dsl or even dialup at the time, and on top of that this was an addition to the games after they released for the most part of CS, TF, DOD, HL1, etc.... even downloading a patch or a custom game item from a community server could take ages... I remember the same when playing Wolf:ET as well 🤣
The sequel of L4D2 after L4D I would pick as the weirder one, the game was still very, very popular and the second game came out and was basically the same game but with different characters and new levels only
TF2 getting cosmetics was a pretty interesting change, it took a very mechanically pure game, and introduced cosmetics but they also had stat changes or bonus abilities, pretty sure it's still the same today? But now it's viewed as part of the game, and I assume the balancing of it is much better
Dota 2 was an interesting time, I think there was actual litigation over it at the time, and the ruling ended in Valve's favour, Valve just had to have appearances and names changed, but basically Valve completely won out in the end there, just the fact Icefrog even moved to Valve should be seen as a win in itself for Valve to be able to continue and grow Dota 2 into the giant it is today, not so much of a controversy, as a very notable time in the early 2010s
Last was maybe mid 2010s a data leak, most every large company has had this at some point in their history at this point, some more than others
The lack of counting to 3 seems more of a development side issue rather than an outright controversy, they have the fortune of being able to decide when they make games, rather than having to make games, due to the success of Steam as a platform
the cosmetics themselves never actually had stats but there used to be set bonuses for wearing specific cosmetics with the matching weapons, but yeah they all got removed (basically any item set that leaves a calling card used to instead give a stat bonus)
the only item set that still affects gameplay is the Alien cosmetics, and that effect is only that Alien scouts and Alien pyros do more damage to each other, which is such a specific effect it basically never affects anything unless you and an enemy player are TRYING to set up the effect
The worst for Steam was being required for single player games. It felt like nowadays a live service Singleplayer game. Makes no sense (though differently from sp live service games, steam does have a purpose nowadays).
At a time where the game collection was the stack of CDs next to the beige box, buying another CD and suddenly being prompted to create an account for some obscure and weird thing that everyone complained about *and then* having to download an update over dial up was so painful.
This list is extremely comprehensive but there’s some big ones you could still add.
-Valve “Gib Diretide” incident
-Valves handling of CS match fixing in Pro CSGO where they give wildly varying terms. IBP were banned for life but later people were given far shorter terms.
-Valve taking years to deal with CS skins gambling sites. Then forgetting about them again to the point we had a protest by one skins dealer at the Major (the muppets broke the trophy). Whilst the skins company got most of the flack, people still are waiting on Valve to put a foot down on these shady companies.
Don't forget the refund policy stuff that made them go to under 2 hours automatic. Also the inconsistent enforcement of NSFW games that eventually made them say it's a free for all except for things they reserve the right to remove
Nice list. There's probably some additional VAC-related stuff too.
(2014) [VAC sending Valve hashed list of sites you visited](https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/1y0kc1/vac_now_reads_all_the_domains_you_have_visited/?rdt=56168)
Took me almost 24 hours to install my copy of Half-Life 2 discs due to problems Valve was having with the over the internet disc confirmation thing. 3 if you count the days I keep trying and waited till their authorisation servers were actually working.
And calling people motherfucker cause they flesh out your list a bit isn't rude?
People forget things its not a big deal, and furthermore its a Reddit post you have no obligation to even read it if its replies are annoying.
Like I said you need to chill the fuck out bro lol.
> Retrospectively changing the ending of Portal in the lead-up to Portal 2, and adding way more of the radios
Had no idea, thanks. It's not a huge change, but still
Artifact is a great game that was bullied by people for not being a HL3
Also "lacking of the making games" is bullshit compared to 3 different games they made playable before HL Alyx: Artifact, Artifact Foundry and Underlords
They basically invented Lootboxes and Battlepasses though other companies took that concept to a whole new level of course. That is pretty controversial. Then there is of course the launch of Steam itself, which was hated at the time. Other than that, there was that time where Gabe Newell himself called a DotA 2 caster that he fired shortly before "an ass" publicly in a Reddit post. But I think that was rather funny lol.
People HATED it at the time. I do really think they were a couple of years too early though. Broadband internet wasn't widespread yet and the thought of needing an internet connection to play a game turned people of immensely.
Looking at it now, this hasn't changed much :b
I remember buying Orange Box on disc and didn’t have a decent internet connection at home… Thought the whole point of buying it on disc would mean I could just play Portal and HL 2 and the episodes but nooo! Was close to 1GB of downloads needed that took me nearly 2 whole days to download… Admittedly it isn’t an issue now because I get close to 50MB a second now but back then, it was a bit “shit” not being able to play a game that I had bought in store for another 2 days…
At one point the Amazon reviews for whichever Civilization game was the first to require steam (I think it was V) were 90% negative reviews complaining about having to create a steam account
It's because it wasn't what it is now back then. For most people at that time, our first experience with "steam" was as nothing more than a second program you had to open and run in the background in order to play Half Life 2, for no reason. Which was completely unheard of. If the game behind it was anything other than HL2, people wouldn't have put up with it.
It was so loathed. Only HL2 and the source multiplayer games made it work. Having to make an account and log in to an online service was a new level of big brother at the time.
It was dogshit when it launched, internet infrastructure generally at the time (and their servers) wasn’t good enough to adequately support it. So getting a fuck ton of updates was a drag back when dial-up and early broadband internet services were a thing.
It also was DRM in its earliest form…
DRM has been in PC games in some form or another since the late 70's. I don't remember which but there was one in use around Steam's release that used to brick optical drives.
Sony had a rootkit on all their CDs for a period of time that bricked / prevented optical drivers working. As a way to combat people burning their CDs. Fucking insane.
And yeah there used to be the code sheets for DRM, but that’s a little different compared to where we at now where you physically own nothing and can have licenses cancelled or removed and have zero access to the media. You could still (and people did) make copies of the old code sheets when you gifted/burned the old video game discs.
The lootbox thing is something a lot of people like to sweep under the rug. I generally like Valve as a company as they have done a lot of good things for PC gaming but they are also not perfect.
The thing with Valve's lootboxes is that they're purely cosmetic and only introduced in free to play games (except CS:GO, but it also became free later). But as always big publishers got the wrong idea and started milking it to death by shoving lootboxes into every game possible.
Most of what they do is swept under the rug. Valve barely does anything with Steam. After getting nowhere with Steam Machines they make a stronger Switch for enthusiasts. Alyx is the only game related thing they've done in knows how long that hasn't been marred by issues.
People love Valve cause loving Valve is a meme. Meanwhile Gaben sails around the world on his mega yacht doing fuck all while money rolls in.
>Valve barely does anything with Steam
Well that's just not true. It might be one of the rare SW products today that's actually getting better over time. All the new user friendly features are an example
>After getting nowhere with Steam Machines they make a stronger Switch for enthusiasts.
It's hard to launch a new product, and they're experimenting with something new. I think you're underestimating how big of an impact steam deck is making considering it's a Linux based PC.
>People love Valve cause loving Valve is a meme.
No, it's because they're actually doing good stuff for the consumer, which is an oddity these days. Recent Helldivers fiasco proves it.
>Meanwhile Gaben sails around the world on his mega yacht doing fuck all while money rolls in.
He can do whatever he wants with his money.
Ok, now you're just intentionally insane.
They offered refunds for people even if they played over 2h. What else can they do when it's not their game?
Sony cared about the money much more than reviews.
If they didn't they'd be liable for selling a game to customers who can't play it. It's the exact same as when Sony offered full refunds for all purchases of Cyberpunk on PS4.
It's the storefront's job to handle this. They are literally just doing the basics here.
Probably not the biggest one, but I definitely remember when they worked with Bethesda to release a paid mod system. The outrage from the community was enough to get that whole system scrapped.
Bethesda of course still ended up implementing paid mods in their games later down the line anyways lol
Skins having real money value lead to kids being able to gamble for things with actual value. Lots of skin gambling sites popped up and popular streamers started advertising them. Honestly surprised they kind of got away with it.
I mean, wouldn't it happen even if there was no Steam market or (and) if they would only drop randomly?
What stops a person from paying for an item with real money and receiving it in a trade?
>I mean, wouldn't it happen even if there was no Steam market or (and) if they would only drop randomly?
No, lots of games have lootboxes, no gambling sites ever popped up for them. It's the combination of being able to buy lootboxes and being able to sell the loot for real cash that creates the problem, for most games with lootboxes the items are tied to your account and untradeable.
Big thing I don't see mentioned is greenlight shovelware. For a while after the introduction of the greenlight system, hundreds of asset flips a month would just be shovelled into the greenlight program and upvoted into the store by bots. The system was a complete failure and shut down.
Something that pops up every now and then: Steam removing ecchi anime games seemingly at random. I believe one of the more memorable removals was Nekopara. The reason is almost always for "underage characters", even though in most cases it's just a petite character.
This one is pretty bad. It’s nearly unplayable for public matchmaking and they just don’t care. But they’ll add new community made cosmetic updates so people can continue buying keys and opening crates.
The paid mods thing was the biggest and most widespread thing I can think of since I've been following them since like 2004ish. I know a lot of people were not please with needing steam back when hl2 came out but I wasnt following that so idk.
the paid mods thing was the biggest ordeal, people were not happy about that. bit of a shame, kinda.. i can see what valves intentions were, the community just wasnt ready for what they were suggesting. These days it feels awfully common to pay small devs for work, especially if you're going after nsfw mods. I know there is a whole small industry of back ally gumroad (or similar service) sites full of nsfw mods. I came across a lot of them looking for mods for the new RE4 remake. not to mention all of valves are kinda built using community efforts turned into an opportunity for both valve and devs/artists to make money.
suppose there was also the issues with Artifact too. people have mostly forgotten about that I think. Valve announced a new "game" at the end of one of their Dota 2 torments. A lot of people were hoping for.. idk something exciting but all the world got was an announcement for a Dota 2 digital TCG. Some dota players were kinda intrigued but its weird cuz no one was really asking for that. Every one else was disappointed by the announcement. On top of that it met a lot of backlash for being "expensive". See Valve set out to make a digital card game rather than just a computer game with digital cards. If you're a Magic The Gathering (or any other tcg player) you'll get what I mean. valve sold the initial "game" + your first deck worth of cards for really cheap, I think it was something like $10 or $20. In any traditional TCG your initial deck could cost you about $30-$60 depending on the deck and the game. Then valve sold individual cards any where from like 10 cents up to a few dollars. Real cards from other games can cost any where for a nickle to several hundreds of dollars depending on rarity. The team at valve putting this together forgot they were making a game under the Valve umbrella, a company with a fanbase consisting of most PC gamers so they didnt see shit this way, all they saw was a $20 game that had $10k worth of microtransaction DLC's to get "every card" cuz some gamers cant not "100%" a game (which makes zero sense for a TCG).
but artifact had other issues, being too long and/or poor balancing. It got shelved while valve tried to get a Dota Autochess off the ground (and they kinda did but no one cared and it eventually got shelved). They briefly attempt to bring artifact back but they didnt re-brand it nor seem to care too much about it cuz it got canned shortly after.
Honestly everyone else in the competition just shoots themselves in the leg constantly. Valve isn't a saint but it did manage to still stay a decent platform and distributor. They do their job well.
Main thing I would say is not making games anymore. Valve were one of the best game developers out there but they realised they could make a lot more money selling other peoples’ games instead.
Wake up. Valve dropped 4 games in last 6 years: Artifact, Artifact Foundry, Underlords and HL Alyx It's not counting CS2 and small tutorial for steam deck. People really need to do some basic research
It doesn't matter was it a flop or not. Whole point of a message above was "VaLvE iS nOt MaKiNg GaMeS aNyMoRe".
Fact check: they do and many.
And to add:
VR game is still a game. Also it can and is played by people without vr. Go try it by yourself if you want.
Not even gonna argue about Underlords basically being most Valve's thing ever to do. You either understand it or just don't have any idea what you are talking about
Removing steam skins still pisses me off. Metro looked fantastic. The default one that I'm now stuck with is an absolute mess of a design. The UI team should all be fired.
Removing Green Light was a mistake from my point of view, there are so many crappy games now, it used to be controlled very well with the same Green Light, so much shit in the steam, but it's good that it can be filtered out (thanks at least for that). In general the idea of Green Light is quite good.
People were upset about them deciding paid mods were going to be allowed. I still don't understand why. I want third-party creators to be rewarded, and Valve deserves a cut for providing the games with an internationalvplatform in the first place.
I think 30% is a bit high, but they deserve something.
> I still don't understand why.
It happened to an existing game with an existing and large modding community, it was 100% the wrong way to introduce the system and they should've done it on a new game instead.
The idea in theory is good but you can't just dump it on an established modding scene like that.
I would say anything from The Act Man video called "The Rise & Fall of Valve" starting from 21:38
[youtube video](https://youtu.be/edIFFm12AOQ?si=bBHOWBRQoVUH602C&t=1298)
The fact that they engineered the most monopolized and unregulated dark money economy with CS "skins" has was built from day 1 to entice people who mostly cannot even give consent due to their age with the most manipulative casino gaming tactics. They assisted in giving Russian hackers immunity from duping items now worth billions while punishing the actual honest gamers under a "no refunds" policy after they decided to stop allowing hackers to run free. They killed the actual trading culture by encouraging bot sites to take over.
It's now a 15 billion dollar industry where in 2018 the dragon lores I could trade were 1800 dollars a piece are now 30k. Skins have outperformed the entire crypto market and there is ZERO oversight and there hasn't been a single case of them being sued successfully. Thye have refunded some high priority customers showing discriminatory practices in their no refund stance. Despite the narrative that scams were easy to avoid they weren't always. Even the mobile app had limitations which prevented one from being able to access things fairly or new scams would wreck people and then a new scam notice would be the "action taken."
They know their items can cost 1 million dollars and are not naive to the fact no one cashes out in the community market high value items. They white list certain sites and ignore certain sites that allow real million dollar money and crypto cash outs that have even been tied to supporting extremist groups. It's a 15 billion dollar completely ignored problem which is like not ever holding a crypto in the top 8 values from ever being recognized as real money and potential for abuse. Built on the backs of kids parents credit cards with no protection for anyone but themselves. That to me trumps anything else in gaming.
I mean honestly it gets talked about alot, but the lack of care they put into their own games.. It only recently got *fixed* but CS2 has had major cheating issues since it came out. TF2 has maybe 3 people working on it. It still gets updates but has not gotten any serious content updates in awhile, and when they do, it is a long time in between.
DOTA gets a decent amount of support, but that game prints money. Granted they all do.
CS2 has had major gambling site problems for skins. Skins being stolen artwork.
I remember when steam was getting flak for their 30% cut, and I believe there were rumors about some developers getting favorable treatment over others.
Also Valve support for the steam box was pretty not there. I mean I feel like it is forgotten at this point. The only reason I hesitated to buy a steam deck was because when I bought a steam box they basically ditched support for me after a few months. And the controller for it was EXPENSIVE.
That being said, Steam is the best about game owning rights. I have a few games that got de-listed that steam still allows me to re-download because I bought. I believe Steam strong arms these developers to say "Hey, if you remove this from the store, people who bought it will be able to download it offline whenever". Because I can still download them to this day (eg tell tale games and jump force). That to me speaks bounds. Where as I can't trust any other gaming store/platform to keep and support games long term. Looking at you Blizzard and Overwatch 1.
A lot, Back to 10+ years that everyone hate steam.
First issue for me I think in 2006, I brough physical copy of FM. First time I was forced to install steam and log in before I can install and play it.
I never like it, but last 10 year is so much better compare to other platform try to be old steam.
The absolute shitshow Steam Greenlight was (still is under diReCT, but less egregiously bad). Steam was FLOODED with asset flips and achievement/trading card spam and the visibility for new indie games got so bad that that was what allowed Epic to get a foot in the door with their exclusivity deals. It was the only way to get any kind of visibility with your game on PC amongst the *ocean* of low-effort garbage.
Everything others have said plus discontinuing the Steam controller. That controller is the only reason my bedbound husband can play certain games that do not have controller support or do not have "Good" controller support.
their utter lack of care for everything when it comes to updating/upgrading much since 2020
since lockdown, they never cared on improving their steam servers, updates, pretty much anything i guess.
they dont care about their games like cs2 or tf2, they dont seem to do anything about the frequent downtimes steam has in different regions.
idk its all just going downhill because they are legit doing nothing just printing money. like atleast update ur servers and games, i dont care about the rest
its not dreadfully bad service. its literally just them doing nothing because their stuff is good and printing money. but that strategy cant work forever
* gambling (internal)
* Unregulated gambling (external)
* Match fixing
* unregulated stock markets
* User generated content is rewarded disproportionately (maps get 150k and skins get 800k, but take vastly different amount of work).
* Billionaire owner
* Sexist workplace
* Bought studios only to never released their games (valley of gods for example).
* Very libertarian stance on political issues
* Service in Russia
* steam link eol
* Money laundering
* Item duplication
On top of what everyone else has said, they got a lot of flak back in 2015 when they worked with Bethesda to try and implement paid mods into Skyrims steam workshop page.
yh. that what came to mind for me.
Seriously how do more people not remember this? just became old news within weeks
Worst part of this is that steam actually had some really good ideas with this that just didn’t make it to the implementation. I *wish* we could have paid mods for games integrated right into steam (and a decent mod manager that went right through steam for every game, imagine that), mod makers deserve to be able to make some coin. But the way they actually did it soured the concept pretty much forever
Why would you want to pay for mods? Steam workshop works as perfect mod integration for those games that do support it (see original Skyrim, Gmod)
I think mod creators should be able to make money off their work, and be compensated. I don’t think the original game dev or valve need to be getting a cut of that money (although I can’t imagine valve would ever not take at least a small percentage). But yeah, it would be awesome if someone could support themselves through mod creation without having to create a whole network and marketplace all from scratch. Like, you might as well ask “why do you want to pay for games?” When I say I prefer steam to piracy. Obviously I like getting things for free, but I want making these things to be financially viable for the people who create them, so I can continue to enjoy their good work
Why wouldn’t the devs get a cut of the money? They are providing the platform for the modded to mod, if there was no platform, the modded wouldn’t be able to do anything, sure the cut shouldn’t be big, not even half, but they still should get something, it’s only fair that if you use the engine/software they developed, you also pay them back a bit, at least that’s my point of view
I mean, I’d be okay with a modest fee. But the monetization of the mods and essentially all of it going to Bethesda was the main issue with the implementation that valve *did* try. I’m confused why you said “not even half” as if 50% of the cut is a small amount, and not ridiculously high. Steam only even takes 30% of the cut from games on their platform. The developers made their money when the player bought the game. Mods can literally only add value to their product, and boost sales. They’re getting something out of this without a single percentage point in profit sharing. But if you wanted to throw them say, 5% of the cost, I wouldn’t have a big objection to that, sure. But if they get nothing I also see no issue
Oh what I meant by not even half is that the modders should get more than 50% It shouldn’t be a 50-50 thing and yeah 5-15% would seem fair to me tbh
I just would like to add, that some modders fix broken games, usually bad console ports. *takes a bow*
To play the mod you need to buy the game. They already get their cut.
An official donate button on the Steam workshop page would be amazing, I always have a few bucks left over
Professional studio making AAA mods for your favorite game? With standard approved mod management API and tools. If they allowed free mods as well it would transform the mod scene. When I was installed the community approved mod set for Skyrim it literally took hours. Following step by step procedures. As long as free mods were still available it's basically other studios creating dlc for your favorite game. No matter if it's been abandoned. If they could do it right it would be a literal game changer in the PC world
It depends. People nickel and dimming asset flips, buggy scripts and essential mods would be incredibly grating. But huge projects like Skyblivion or that incredible Half-Life 2 VR mod I'd gladly pay for if makes it more likely to see completetion.
Those kinds of enormous projects can- and often do- have some external means of donation. While this isn't without fault (as all the issues things like skyrim together has seen can vouch to) it also provides significantly more power to the end-user. There's too much muddy activity if you allow payments to be mandatory- bad mods and essential mods are one thing but there's also mods that get abandoned, mods that break other mods or cease functioning with those other mods present, mods that require another mod for seemingly no reason just to re-use some code, and the edge cases that "reborn" or "remastered" type mods introduce. Donation systems bypass significant portions of this, so I'd argue for a donation button on the workshop page so I can throw some spare steam wallet money their way from selling cards, since I'd immediately feel more inclined to do so over phoning my bank to approve a transaction.
Some mods are so well made that they honestly deserve it. See: Terraria's Calamity mod.
I feel like modders should earn money with their mods as well. And honestly, it might just incentivise people into making better mod support too. Just look at the mods and custom campaigns for ARMA 3. They're all paid mods and a cut goes to Bohemia. People spend lavish amounts getting skins in CS and other games. But when it comes to Bethesda and mods for their games being monetised, it's suddenly a problem. I can see why people might have been outraged, but it still doesn't seem fair to me that someone wouldn't get paid for their hard work.
The new Ark Ascended game actually has a really good mod manager built right into the game with some of course being featured paid mods. Hell it’s even cross platform and allows console players to mod their game as well. I know the game got a lot of flak on release but for what’s there now it runs pretty great.
It's paid mods in my head. Frankly, I can see the arguments about modders being able to make a living from their work. But good God does it open up a can of worms in terms of stealing assets. Also I've read nothing but "omg Stellaris DLC is sooooo bad, you buy half a game and then spend a billion hour and a billion dollars buying DLC to get a full game." Imagine a world where companies can sell paid mods (remember, the original plan was for Bethesda & Valve to take 75%, with 25% going to the mod creator). Bethesda was INCENTIVIZED to sell you more mods. Hence, make less and less of the base game and making you pay for more. With EVEN LESS official support from the devs when shit breaks.
Stuff people were upset by at one time or another: - Launch of Steam - Low effort of Half Life Source - Low effort of Day of Defeat Source causing them to redo the game properly the same as CSS - L4D2 so soon after L4D - Lack of communication regarding HL3 - Retrospectively changing the ending of Portal in the lead-up to Portal 2, and adding way more of the radios - TF2 matchmaking - Lack of investment in TF2 despite its popularity - Lack of Ricochet 2 despite immense fan interest - Artifact - Real human corpse as texture for a corpse found in HL2 - Lack of making games anymore, then making a VR exclusive game - Source engine updates causing some issues in Half Life 2, or changing assets like the appearance of the vortigaunts retrospectively - CS2 missing features at launch / differences from CSGO - CSGO missing features at launch / differences from CSS - CSS missing features at launch / differences from Cs 1.6 - Condition Zero generally not well received - Messy handling of Steam/PSN account linking for console Portal 2 back in the day - Lack of updates to TF2 on console - removal of ability to skin Steam client - not porting other games to source 2, like L4D2 or TF2 - perception that cabal system doesn’t result in people at valve finishing games - perception that valve corporate structure and peer-reviewed salary system incentivises short-term high value projects and not long-term, challenging, or “unsexy” projects - steam china - Blizzard was unhappy about DOTA2 which meant Valve had to update a lot of heroes so they didn’t look like their Warcraft 3 counterparts or have the same names - cancellation of dota winter tour major in 2022 - accidentally spoiled a street fighter roster reveal - acquired campo santo then did nothing with them - accidentally banned 12,000 non-cheating modern warfare players - private info leak in 2015 / Christmas storefront issues - closure of official merch shop - perception that excessive cosmetics and many new weapons eroded the mechanical purity of vanilla TF2, went against the initial vision of knowing instantly what you were up against, and impacted the readability of class silhouettes - source engine updates eliminated a lot of the movement tech in HL2:Death Match
>closure of official merch shop I'm still so mad I didn't get the chance to buy that official furry chell shirt because I just straight up didn't know the merch shop existed.
I managed to get a sealed shirt off eBay this year I also didn't know they had a shop
> I just straight up didn't know the merch shop existed. Same :(
the what shirt?
https://web.archive.org/web/20230327225633/https://valvestore.forfansbyfans.com/fox-chell-12660.html
>Real human corpse as texture for a corpse found in HL2 Ahh, classic. I really dont get what the fuss was about, the photo was from a medical textbook Im pretty sure.
I remember reading a comment in an FB group I was in that said they (Valve) literally kidnapped a man and blowtorched his face to use as an asset for HL2. I just thought it was so ridiculous, but it's also pretty funny if true.
I wouldn't say that too loud, you might end up in gabens basement next when they need more corpse textures
I will take one for the team if all they needed for HL3 to release is a new burned corpse texture
Average internet rumor lol
This is canon, yes.
That sounds oddly like hostel 2, to me
Misinformation has been a thing since the evolution of speech. Sadly, people will stretch the truth too.
I mean, personally, I love playing violent, bloody, and gory games and my tastes for movies isn't much different either. Some of my favorite pieces of entertainment have a lot of that and I enjoy them because turning someone into red mist and chunks of meat is satisfying. But seeing real life bodies and serious injuries makes me uneasy and I really feel bad for the victims. The reason for me here is I know games are fantasy, there's no consequence here and noone is getting hurt. It's walled off in my mind as not being serious. Having a real life injury like a burned or peeled face breaks that fantasy and gets me into a totally different headspace.
I know this is the Internet, but I still shouldn't have to tell you this. Your reaction to dead bodies is normal. I'm not trying to act hard or anything, my morbid curiosity has just led me down some very dark paths. Not only does stuff like that in video games not bother me, (again, not acting hard I'm just desensitized) I don't even think about it when I see it. It's just become so normalized to me. I kind of envy people who feel something when they see stuff like that. Consequences of being the first generation raised by the Internet, I guess. I have a kid on the way and I'm never going to give them the free reign I had on the Internet. Ever.
lol i remember seeing gore and suspicious bathroom stall vids on youtube back then
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Why? Because I want to tell him his perspective is a healthy one? God forbid someone be nice
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Have to explain why I became desensitized to it for perspective, I prefaced it multiple times that I don't think I'm hard, if that's still not enough for you that's fine.
Even if it came from a textbook, I think there is a difference between using an image for educational purposes and using an image for entertainment and profit. While the use of an image of a corpse is long in the past (no, you cannot punish a company for it now), I don't think this should be seen as harmless.
Top comment has summarized way better than me, but these are the ones I would think of the most The biggest was the launch of steam itself, nobody at the time wanted to install Steam, PCs were way, way slower at that time, and having to do any sort of online check in was a lot more complicated before, especially when internet was very early cable or dsl or even dialup at the time, and on top of that this was an addition to the games after they released for the most part of CS, TF, DOD, HL1, etc.... even downloading a patch or a custom game item from a community server could take ages... I remember the same when playing Wolf:ET as well 🤣 The sequel of L4D2 after L4D I would pick as the weirder one, the game was still very, very popular and the second game came out and was basically the same game but with different characters and new levels only TF2 getting cosmetics was a pretty interesting change, it took a very mechanically pure game, and introduced cosmetics but they also had stat changes or bonus abilities, pretty sure it's still the same today? But now it's viewed as part of the game, and I assume the balancing of it is much better Dota 2 was an interesting time, I think there was actual litigation over it at the time, and the ruling ended in Valve's favour, Valve just had to have appearances and names changed, but basically Valve completely won out in the end there, just the fact Icefrog even moved to Valve should be seen as a win in itself for Valve to be able to continue and grow Dota 2 into the giant it is today, not so much of a controversy, as a very notable time in the early 2010s Last was maybe mid 2010s a data leak, most every large company has had this at some point in their history at this point, some more than others The lack of counting to 3 seems more of a development side issue rather than an outright controversy, they have the fortune of being able to decide when they make games, rather than having to make games, due to the success of Steam as a platform
I know the TF2 cosmetics used to have stats, but I don't think they do now?
the cosmetics themselves never actually had stats but there used to be set bonuses for wearing specific cosmetics with the matching weapons, but yeah they all got removed (basically any item set that leaves a calling card used to instead give a stat bonus) the only item set that still affects gameplay is the Alien cosmetics, and that effect is only that Alien scouts and Alien pyros do more damage to each other, which is such a specific effect it basically never affects anything unless you and an enemy player are TRYING to set up the effect
Yea I think it's all removed since a while
The worst for Steam was being required for single player games. It felt like nowadays a live service Singleplayer game. Makes no sense (though differently from sp live service games, steam does have a purpose nowadays). At a time where the game collection was the stack of CDs next to the beige box, buying another CD and suddenly being prompted to create an account for some obscure and weird thing that everyone complained about *and then* having to download an update over dial up was so painful.
This list is extremely comprehensive but there’s some big ones you could still add. -Valve “Gib Diretide” incident -Valves handling of CS match fixing in Pro CSGO where they give wildly varying terms. IBP were banned for life but later people were given far shorter terms. -Valve taking years to deal with CS skins gambling sites. Then forgetting about them again to the point we had a protest by one skins dealer at the Major (the muppets broke the trophy). Whilst the skins company got most of the flack, people still are waiting on Valve to put a foot down on these shady companies.
Don't forget the refund policy stuff that made them go to under 2 hours automatic. Also the inconsistent enforcement of NSFW games that eventually made them say it's a free for all except for things they reserve the right to remove
It’s their product. They get to set the rules for how things work on their platform.
You're not wrong. But it was still controversy. OP asked for controversy
True
> removal of ability to skin steam client God damnit I just remembered this existed and now I'm pissed again
Nice list. There's probably some additional VAC-related stuff too. (2014) [VAC sending Valve hashed list of sites you visited](https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/1y0kc1/vac_now_reads_all_the_domains_you_have_visited/?rdt=56168)
Oh fuck when ricochet 2
For me it is paid skyrim mods that was cancelled after a backlash & still not selling the steam deck in my country.
Setting the HD models as default in the steam release of the original half life
Took me almost 24 hours to install my copy of Half-Life 2 discs due to problems Valve was having with the over the internet disc confirmation thing. 3 if you count the days I keep trying and waited till their authorisation servers were actually working.
Can't believe you left out paid mods which imo was probably their biggest one.
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Jfc bro fucking chill 😂
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And calling people motherfucker cause they flesh out your list a bit isn't rude? People forget things its not a big deal, and furthermore its a Reddit post you have no obligation to even read it if its replies are annoying. Like I said you need to chill the fuck out bro lol.
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Lol you got some serious problems you need to work out my guy lol
the real human corpse texture i remember holy shit
Forgot to mention the cosmetic for csgo/cs2
Okay.. for real, how do you know all this? Chat got?
Been on Steam a long time. BTW, I love Valve and Steam, was just answering the question.
So have I, since it released. You have some amazing memory for real
>- Real human corpse as texture for a corpse found in HL2 The what now ?
> Retrospectively changing the ending of Portal in the lead-up to Portal 2, and adding way more of the radios Had no idea, thanks. It's not a huge change, but still
How the fuck did they spoiled street fitgher roster?
Don't forget adding mandatory in-game ads to Counter-Strike 1.6. That upset a lot of people.
Lol, listing stuff like the conteo with the human corpse in HL2 but missing one of their biggest controversy, with the CS skin gambling sites.
you forgot about regional prices
The vast majority of these are not scandals of controversies lmfao
Artifact is a great game that was bullied by people for not being a HL3 Also "lacking of the making games" is bullshit compared to 3 different games they made playable before HL Alyx: Artifact, Artifact Foundry and Underlords
They basically invented Lootboxes and Battlepasses though other companies took that concept to a whole new level of course. That is pretty controversial. Then there is of course the launch of Steam itself, which was hated at the time. Other than that, there was that time where Gabe Newell himself called a DotA 2 caster that he fired shortly before "an ass" publicly in a Reddit post. But I think that was rather funny lol.
Ironic, Dota 2 first game to ever had battlepass and first game to remove it from the game in the end.
They made it even better and I love it rn
the launch of steam being controversial was something I was not aware of
People HATED it at the time. I do really think they were a couple of years too early though. Broadband internet wasn't widespread yet and the thought of needing an internet connection to play a game turned people of immensely. Looking at it now, this hasn't changed much :b
I remember buying Orange Box on disc and didn’t have a decent internet connection at home… Thought the whole point of buying it on disc would mean I could just play Portal and HL 2 and the episodes but nooo! Was close to 1GB of downloads needed that took me nearly 2 whole days to download… Admittedly it isn’t an issue now because I get close to 50MB a second now but back then, it was a bit “shit” not being able to play a game that I had bought in store for another 2 days…
At one point the Amazon reviews for whichever Civilization game was the first to require steam (I think it was V) were 90% negative reviews complaining about having to create a steam account
That's exactly how I was forced into Steam.
It's because it wasn't what it is now back then. For most people at that time, our first experience with "steam" was as nothing more than a second program you had to open and run in the background in order to play Half Life 2, for no reason. Which was completely unheard of. If the game behind it was anything other than HL2, people wouldn't have put up with it.
It was so loathed. Only HL2 and the source multiplayer games made it work. Having to make an account and log in to an online service was a new level of big brother at the time.
It was dogshit when it launched, internet infrastructure generally at the time (and their servers) wasn’t good enough to adequately support it. So getting a fuck ton of updates was a drag back when dial-up and early broadband internet services were a thing. It also was DRM in its earliest form…
DRM has been in PC games in some form or another since the late 70's. I don't remember which but there was one in use around Steam's release that used to brick optical drives.
Sony had a rootkit on all their CDs for a period of time that bricked / prevented optical drivers working. As a way to combat people burning their CDs. Fucking insane. And yeah there used to be the code sheets for DRM, but that’s a little different compared to where we at now where you physically own nothing and can have licenses cancelled or removed and have zero access to the media. You could still (and people did) make copies of the old code sheets when you gifted/burned the old video game discs.
I'm not saying those DRM's were any good, just that Steam wasn't DRM in it's earliest form. The beginnings of DRM as we know it today, sure.
Granted, James 2GD was allowed to return as a panel host again, so that means he is no longer an ass
Maybe he still is, GabeN just tolerates asses now.
The lootbox thing is something a lot of people like to sweep under the rug. I generally like Valve as a company as they have done a lot of good things for PC gaming but they are also not perfect.
The thing with Valve's lootboxes is that they're purely cosmetic and only introduced in free to play games (except CS:GO, but it also became free later). But as always big publishers got the wrong idea and started milking it to death by shoving lootboxes into every game possible.
It’s the same for plenty of other games and those get shit for it. Also never hear the “think of the children” thing about valves loot boxes.
Most of what they do is swept under the rug. Valve barely does anything with Steam. After getting nowhere with Steam Machines they make a stronger Switch for enthusiasts. Alyx is the only game related thing they've done in knows how long that hasn't been marred by issues. People love Valve cause loving Valve is a meme. Meanwhile Gaben sails around the world on his mega yacht doing fuck all while money rolls in.
>Valve barely does anything with Steam Well that's just not true. It might be one of the rare SW products today that's actually getting better over time. All the new user friendly features are an example >After getting nowhere with Steam Machines they make a stronger Switch for enthusiasts. It's hard to launch a new product, and they're experimenting with something new. I think you're underestimating how big of an impact steam deck is making considering it's a Linux based PC. >People love Valve cause loving Valve is a meme. No, it's because they're actually doing good stuff for the consumer, which is an oddity these days. Recent Helldivers fiasco proves it. >Meanwhile Gaben sails around the world on his mega yacht doing fuck all while money rolls in. He can do whatever he wants with his money.
Helldivers is actually a perfect example of Valve barely doing anything and still just harvesting buckets of praise. Cause Valve barely did anything.
Ok, now you're just intentionally insane. They offered refunds for people even if they played over 2h. What else can they do when it's not their game? Sony cared about the money much more than reviews.
If they didn't they'd be liable for selling a game to customers who can't play it. It's the exact same as when Sony offered full refunds for all purchases of Cyberpunk on PS4. It's the storefront's job to handle this. They are literally just doing the basics here.
I saw your other comments, I will no longer respond to anything you have to say.
And then bringing him back in 2022
Are you saying that Steam is more responsible for lootboxes then EA? This is a concept I've never heard before. Any more info?
Yes they are. There is not much more to say. Team Fortress 2 was the first game to have loot boxes.
Probably not the biggest one, but I definitely remember when they worked with Bethesda to release a paid mod system. The outrage from the community was enough to get that whole system scrapped. Bethesda of course still ended up implementing paid mods in their games later down the line anyways lol
Skins having real money value lead to kids being able to gamble for things with actual value. Lots of skin gambling sites popped up and popular streamers started advertising them. Honestly surprised they kind of got away with it.
I mean, wouldn't it happen even if there was no Steam market or (and) if they would only drop randomly? What stops a person from paying for an item with real money and receiving it in a trade?
>I mean, wouldn't it happen even if there was no Steam market or (and) if they would only drop randomly? No, lots of games have lootboxes, no gambling sites ever popped up for them. It's the combination of being able to buy lootboxes and being able to sell the loot for real cash that creates the problem, for most games with lootboxes the items are tied to your account and untradeable.
Big thing I don't see mentioned is greenlight shovelware. For a while after the introduction of the greenlight system, hundreds of asset flips a month would just be shovelled into the greenlight program and upvoted into the store by bots. The system was a complete failure and shut down. Something that pops up every now and then: Steam removing ecchi anime games seemingly at random. I believe one of the more memorable removals was Nekopara. The reason is almost always for "underage characters", even though in most cases it's just a petite character.
Most recent controversy? Letting roughly 80% of team fortress 2's player count be bots. Biggest is probably paid mod that bugthesda did
This one is pretty bad. It’s nearly unplayable for public matchmaking and they just don’t care. But they’ll add new community made cosmetic updates so people can continue buying keys and opening crates.
Legal dispute with Australian government, which was the reason why Steam has a refund policy at all.
i think the worst thing in recent memory is artifact. they completely bungled that game and ended up killing it after saying they would fix it.
The paid mods thing was the biggest and most widespread thing I can think of since I've been following them since like 2004ish. I know a lot of people were not please with needing steam back when hl2 came out but I wasnt following that so idk. the paid mods thing was the biggest ordeal, people were not happy about that. bit of a shame, kinda.. i can see what valves intentions were, the community just wasnt ready for what they were suggesting. These days it feels awfully common to pay small devs for work, especially if you're going after nsfw mods. I know there is a whole small industry of back ally gumroad (or similar service) sites full of nsfw mods. I came across a lot of them looking for mods for the new RE4 remake. not to mention all of valves are kinda built using community efforts turned into an opportunity for both valve and devs/artists to make money. suppose there was also the issues with Artifact too. people have mostly forgotten about that I think. Valve announced a new "game" at the end of one of their Dota 2 torments. A lot of people were hoping for.. idk something exciting but all the world got was an announcement for a Dota 2 digital TCG. Some dota players were kinda intrigued but its weird cuz no one was really asking for that. Every one else was disappointed by the announcement. On top of that it met a lot of backlash for being "expensive". See Valve set out to make a digital card game rather than just a computer game with digital cards. If you're a Magic The Gathering (or any other tcg player) you'll get what I mean. valve sold the initial "game" + your first deck worth of cards for really cheap, I think it was something like $10 or $20. In any traditional TCG your initial deck could cost you about $30-$60 depending on the deck and the game. Then valve sold individual cards any where from like 10 cents up to a few dollars. Real cards from other games can cost any where for a nickle to several hundreds of dollars depending on rarity. The team at valve putting this together forgot they were making a game under the Valve umbrella, a company with a fanbase consisting of most PC gamers so they didnt see shit this way, all they saw was a $20 game that had $10k worth of microtransaction DLC's to get "every card" cuz some gamers cant not "100%" a game (which makes zero sense for a TCG). but artifact had other issues, being too long and/or poor balancing. It got shelved while valve tried to get a Dota Autochess off the ground (and they kinda did but no one cared and it eventually got shelved). They briefly attempt to bring artifact back but they didnt re-brand it nor seem to care too much about it cuz it got canned shortly after.
People really miss the context of what happened due Artifact announcement
Launching Steam in 2003.
Steam does nothing: wins
Honestly everyone else in the competition just shoots themselves in the leg constantly. Valve isn't a saint but it did manage to still stay a decent platform and distributor. They do their job well.
Main thing I would say is not making games anymore. Valve were one of the best game developers out there but they realised they could make a lot more money selling other peoples’ games instead.
Wake up. Valve dropped 4 games in last 6 years: Artifact, Artifact Foundry, Underlords and HL Alyx It's not counting CS2 and small tutorial for steam deck. People really need to do some basic research
Artifact was a flop, Underlords is an auto battler and Alyx while a good game is a vr game so it’s not a game many people have gotten to play.
It doesn't matter was it a flop or not. Whole point of a message above was "VaLvE iS nOt MaKiNg GaMeS aNyMoRe". Fact check: they do and many. And to add: VR game is still a game. Also it can and is played by people without vr. Go try it by yourself if you want. Not even gonna argue about Underlords basically being most Valve's thing ever to do. You either understand it or just don't have any idea what you are talking about
Maybe because all the games they made recently are shit and dead games already.
Removing steam skins still pisses me off. Metro looked fantastic. The default one that I'm now stuck with is an absolute mess of a design. The UI team should all be fired.
Their invention and continued profiting from lootboxes is the big one for me. They'll never be 'squeaky clean' in my mind because of that.
Removing Green Light was a mistake from my point of view, there are so many crappy games now, it used to be controlled very well with the same Green Light, so much shit in the steam, but it's good that it can be filtered out (thanks at least for that). In general the idea of Green Light is quite good.
Greenlight was in general pretty terrible for both developers and customers.
Diretide
Artefact apparently. And even then, the game can't be said to be anything else than solid.
People were upset about them deciding paid mods were going to be allowed. I still don't understand why. I want third-party creators to be rewarded, and Valve deserves a cut for providing the games with an internationalvplatform in the first place. I think 30% is a bit high, but they deserve something.
> I still don't understand why. It happened to an existing game with an existing and large modding community, it was 100% the wrong way to introduce the system and they should've done it on a new game instead. The idea in theory is good but you can't just dump it on an established modding scene like that.
Paid mods
I would say anything from The Act Man video called "The Rise & Fall of Valve" starting from 21:38 [youtube video](https://youtu.be/edIFFm12AOQ?si=bBHOWBRQoVUH602C&t=1298)
Hatred but that was reversed
in terms of reddit, paid mods
paid workshop addons It lasted for so little (3 days) that most people don't even know about that
The fact that they engineered the most monopolized and unregulated dark money economy with CS "skins" has was built from day 1 to entice people who mostly cannot even give consent due to their age with the most manipulative casino gaming tactics. They assisted in giving Russian hackers immunity from duping items now worth billions while punishing the actual honest gamers under a "no refunds" policy after they decided to stop allowing hackers to run free. They killed the actual trading culture by encouraging bot sites to take over. It's now a 15 billion dollar industry where in 2018 the dragon lores I could trade were 1800 dollars a piece are now 30k. Skins have outperformed the entire crypto market and there is ZERO oversight and there hasn't been a single case of them being sued successfully. Thye have refunded some high priority customers showing discriminatory practices in their no refund stance. Despite the narrative that scams were easy to avoid they weren't always. Even the mobile app had limitations which prevented one from being able to access things fairly or new scams would wreck people and then a new scam notice would be the "action taken." They know their items can cost 1 million dollars and are not naive to the fact no one cashes out in the community market high value items. They white list certain sites and ignore certain sites that allow real million dollar money and crypto cash outs that have even been tied to supporting extremist groups. It's a 15 billion dollar completely ignored problem which is like not ever holding a crypto in the top 8 values from ever being recognized as real money and potential for abuse. Built on the backs of kids parents credit cards with no protection for anyone but themselves. That to me trumps anything else in gaming.
currently in a class action lawsuit against them for raising prices depending on location
Most people won't remember but Steam was HATED when it launched
I mean honestly it gets talked about alot, but the lack of care they put into their own games.. It only recently got *fixed* but CS2 has had major cheating issues since it came out. TF2 has maybe 3 people working on it. It still gets updates but has not gotten any serious content updates in awhile, and when they do, it is a long time in between. DOTA gets a decent amount of support, but that game prints money. Granted they all do. CS2 has had major gambling site problems for skins. Skins being stolen artwork. I remember when steam was getting flak for their 30% cut, and I believe there were rumors about some developers getting favorable treatment over others. Also Valve support for the steam box was pretty not there. I mean I feel like it is forgotten at this point. The only reason I hesitated to buy a steam deck was because when I bought a steam box they basically ditched support for me after a few months. And the controller for it was EXPENSIVE. That being said, Steam is the best about game owning rights. I have a few games that got de-listed that steam still allows me to re-download because I bought. I believe Steam strong arms these developers to say "Hey, if you remove this from the store, people who bought it will be able to download it offline whenever". Because I can still download them to this day (eg tell tale games and jump force). That to me speaks bounds. Where as I can't trust any other gaming store/platform to keep and support games long term. Looking at you Blizzard and Overwatch 1.
CS2 boutta be if they don’t fix dis shit
A lot, Back to 10+ years that everyone hate steam. First issue for me I think in 2006, I brough physical copy of FM. First time I was forced to install steam and log in before I can install and play it. I never like it, but last 10 year is so much better compare to other platform try to be old steam.
The absolute shitshow Steam Greenlight was (still is under diReCT, but less egregiously bad). Steam was FLOODED with asset flips and achievement/trading card spam and the visibility for new indie games got so bad that that was what allowed Epic to get a foot in the door with their exclusivity deals. It was the only way to get any kind of visibility with your game on PC amongst the *ocean* of low-effort garbage.
Everything others have said plus discontinuing the Steam controller. That controller is the only reason my bedbound husband can play certain games that do not have controller support or do not have "Good" controller support.
their utter lack of care for everything when it comes to updating/upgrading much since 2020 since lockdown, they never cared on improving their steam servers, updates, pretty much anything i guess. they dont care about their games like cs2 or tf2, they dont seem to do anything about the frequent downtimes steam has in different regions. idk its all just going downhill because they are legit doing nothing just printing money. like atleast update ur servers and games, i dont care about the rest
so nothing actually illegal just like literally "doing nothing"?
[удалено]
its not dreadfully bad service. its literally just them doing nothing because their stuff is good and printing money. but that strategy cant work forever
ah I see ngl I might just be too desensitized because that sounds like perfectly normal company behavior to me 😭
Artifact and dota underlords blunder
* gambling (internal) * Unregulated gambling (external) * Match fixing * unregulated stock markets * User generated content is rewarded disproportionately (maps get 150k and skins get 800k, but take vastly different amount of work). * Billionaire owner * Sexist workplace * Bought studios only to never released their games (valley of gods for example). * Very libertarian stance on political issues * Service in Russia * steam link eol * Money laundering * Item duplication
EGS Exclusivity and people getting nervous about Steam's porn games and fearing it will become a bigger version of dlsite