Opinions
One interesting side-note: the other major publishers are all public companies. They have to do whatever they can to generate revenue to appease the stockholders. What's Valve's excuse?
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Good point, Valve entering the stock market soon? Gabe Newell is already a billionaire, maybe he's aspiring to be the next Bill Gates?
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I'd be curious to see who owns how much of Valve and what Valve's valuation is. Steam is a machine that just prints money, even if Valve doesn't bother doing much in the way of publishing anymore.
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Valve is pretty much a monopoly at this point. I'd love to see a pie-chart showing the turnover of the bigger digital distribution platform. I reckon it'd be something like: Valve 70%, Origin 20%, Uplay 5%, GOG 3%, Desura 2% or sth along those lines.
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Its hard to say. The biggest issue, when it comes to video game sales on PC, is the fact that Valve doesn't release sales information, and without shareholders, they don't have to. So, not only do we not know how digital PC game sales compare to consoles, we don't even know how the services compare to each other. The best anyone has done is adding together the PC sales information from the major publishers, but even that doesn't always delineate between digital and physical PC game sales, nor which service it was purchase through.
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Yep and due to the lack of information they cannot be held accountable. It's a win-win situation for them, unfortunately it seems like they are starting to abuse this situation for profits. It's legal (well, grey-area) but highly unethical.
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Steam is probably even more, especially when it would be money generated instead of copies sold.
Only data I know about is when Witcher 2 was being released and CD Red said they sold 70% of digital-copy of game on Steam.
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but look at all the shekels you will earn!
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It is. I was talking to a friend today, and he told me that he had earned u$s 1300 having only a few items accepted in TF2. But of course, he submitted a lot of items, and only a few made it to the game.
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Well, mass-selling of items could be a lot but it's not a good %. They(the modders)only get 1/4th of the cut that THEY are making.
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That 25% cut is not just for mods, it applies to items too. It's not that different, besides the fact that modders can set their own price for their product, if I get it right.
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25% is still horrific. I admit that since you sell to the masses(which is the expectation, of course) you get a lot more than it seems at first but 25% is HORRIFIC for the CREATOR to get.
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^and that 25% doesn't even include taxes taken out YET!
Valve updates the rules even further:
That 25% goes into your steamwallet. :evilgabeface:
You then get taxed 15% on that. :evilgabetwirlingmustache:
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Yeah, fuck this. I'm done. I'm not arguing with anyone anymore because it's pretty smooth-sailing to the location of 'fucking told you so'. Valve is just screwing people over with this 25% crap and I don't have the energy to even read someone trying to justify it.
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I agree with you completely.
btw. i was joking before.
steam could always screw the creators more, by having it go into steamwallet, like the money actually never leaves valves hands!
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Well, apparently the money does go to the steam wallet but... That's hearsay.
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Money doesn't go to the steam wallet. They send it to your bank account (which you have to correctly set up).
Also, 25% is for the creator of the content (to be taxed) BUT this doesn't mean 75% goes to Valve, most of the money (I'd say 50%) goes to the game original creators (Bethesda in the case of Skyrim), this makes sense because they created the "environment" where modders work.
That said I'd like to point out that (as a creator) I'm totally against this sht. I "may" understand monetizing of MMOs because accepted items become part of the game itself permanently, but for example I asked the developers of Guns of Icarus Online (the game I made a few hats for) to freely distribute my items because I think these things should be made for fun on spare time, not for (little) money to get Valve some.
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I see that valve is getting money for "fraud." Is that them taking money from you? (you being the mod creator)
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75% for host and bandwidth?? Da fuq hahhaaha all of this should cost them like a maximum of 10% of the game cost hahahaha
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I'm guessing most of that 75% goes to developer of game, not Valve.
And I guess guys who made product who is giving modder money do deserve something.
Question is, should they get more than new-content creator?
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Most people who praise Steam never needed to use its support section. I'll just say this.
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Most people who praise Steam are either ignorant or living in the past.
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Most people who praise Steam have never looked at the legal side of things. Valve has the WORST service agreement out of all digital distribution platforms. SSA quite literally has a section that says you waive ALL your rights when you click "Purchase". People are goddamn stupid, living with their blind Steam games hoarding and Half-Life 3, Lord GabeN memes, actually believing them.
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Good point, it's a mess but it is way beyond the limits of an average Steam user's comprehension.
Btw if anybody is interested https://tosdr.org/#steam is a simplified version of Steam's TOS.
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no one said I wasn't blind either... and most of my games are Steamworks anyway, I had to activate them on Steam regardless of where I got them
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You didn't "have to". You claimed that everyone who activated a game on STEAM after reading the license agreement is plain stupid. So how about you? You're not one of them? It's easy to call others names, but first let's look at ourselves. I agree that it's not perfect, but you always vote with your wallet. And yours say that STEAM is OK.
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Yes, I had to.... if I wanted to play those games. And every time I can choose a different platform, I do. I'd seriously rather buy on Origin and uPlay and especially GOG than on Steam, and when there's a choice, I do. So I AM voting with my wallet.
And FYI, I called people who DIDN'T read the SSA stupid ("never looked at the legal side of things"). Not the ones that did. l2read
PS: I'm an European. SSA means jack crap where I live.
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Legitimately curious as to how you could possibly need that many support tickets? In four years I've never needed to make a single one. People bitch at how bad their support is, but it's never bothered me because (generally) the kind of people that use it aren't worth the immediate attention. No personal shots fired, just 99% of people contacting support are morons who are wasting Valve's time which is why support is so bad in the first place.
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Quality of response isn't the only factor that can effect the quality of their service. Tickets taking weeks at a time to be answered is absolutely an indicator of a bad service, whether or not that's solely because of the amount of garbage they have to roll through every day because of the size of their userbase is irrelevant. It's their responsibility to increase the size or their support staff if they can't keep up with tickets in a timely manner.
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Actually, EA did and still do allow paid Sims 3 mods.
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That's not news, though. Everybody got past this. This is going to be across all games, not only Skyrim's modding community (which has the MOST files on the Nexus of ANY GAME, by the way)
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No, it's not going to be across all workshop games, just fyi. The developer chooses if they will allow paid mods. I just pray that lots of debs realize how horrible this is.
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This WILL go across all workshops because that what is being supported here, workshop modders. AFAIK, it is only for Skyrim ATM. Sure, developer can choose but it is all about money. Don't deny it. A lot of the developers WILL do this.
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Lol, a lot of the developers will do this, so it will go across ALL workshop games... No, I'm still willing to believe that some people make games for reasons other than purely money. You can believe whatever you want, but it seems like you're doubting yourself already, lol.
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I'm not doubting myself at all. There are people that will still do it because they enjoy it but that doesn't mean other games won't take advantage of this as Bethesda has so clear done so (they would need to give their approval for this to even happen).
Either way, it will spread one way or another. There will still be free mods, sure, but even good modders can suddenly change their minds due to greed or just simply desperation.
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I don't quite understand why you changed suddenly from being so emphatic about ALL workshop compatible games supporting the paid mods to what your saying now (basically lots of debs will probably do it?), and yet you say you aren't doubting yourself?
That's fine, but I assume that you realize that lots of debs wouldn't be to keen to ruin their modding scene and stuff just for a little extra profit. There are debs who know business rather than just money.
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What? I haven't changed my attitude at all. It's just a simple fact that business will always try to get more money, regardless of how 'respectable' people think they are. They're business first and it's unfortunate but if I were in a similar situation, I wouldn't be able to afford being the good guy. This whole situation is about the modders and not the business because of this. Not one single business is ever going to be 'the good guy'.
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I remember this shit too. Fuckin' Sims 2 content paysites.
Well, guess it's time to e-mail the guy to store an alternative for Steam stuff.
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remember when Gaben talked about how they need to offer a service more convenient than pirating?..
yep,..
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A new context: mod-pirating, this is what they encourage now!
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For me it looks like they want to come up with good things that community will like, but without much thinking.
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i actuly renemBerd the urls of those sites so yea, never again
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Hoped for new version of that Nvidia Engineer video :(
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Ask and you receive :P https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDyXIXyAZq0
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I don't have anything to do with Skyrim but when I saw that people can now sell and buy mods for games I found that to be kinda pathetic. With Trading Cards, Valve must have increased their profit by God knows how much and the servers still randomly crash like every day, even outside of big sales or events...
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They don't really have an incentive to make sure their servers are stable. That's the big downside of their lack of competition.
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Still, Steam is the best platform out there (unless GOG really makes Galaxy in this century… but with this speed gamers will really see a working legit Half-Life 3 sooner than we can try a full release of Galaxy). They have a few good ideas, but seriously, they need to have a proper support. Or heck, a support.
As for this new pay-for-mod, in Skyrim it will only work for those stupid people who never figured out Nexus is 1) free 2) has a larger number and more varied mods for Skyrim (and all GameBryo-engine games). And for other games… I don't know, I use one workshop mod, for Age of Empires II, and that's it. I never considered workshop more than some alternative small place to get a few texture/mesh mods, since their system can barely support anything other than a replacer.
Yeah, sure, a lot of kiddies will now think they can get rich with some lazy mod that has a cool screenshot and name, but give it 1-3 months and it will die soon.
(Although, I have to admit: I find the idea of "hey, you want me to make this overhyped game actually playable and entertaining since the devs couldn't do it in the past ten years… then yeah, pay up or enjoy you vast land of doing nothing but killing random stuff for boring people!" quite hilarious.)
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Nope
Look at Isoku's two super popular mods: Wet and Cold, iNeed, and Chesko's Arissa Companion mod. The ones on nexus are old versions (like 1.3a on Nexus, 2.0 on Workshop etc) so the mods found on Nexus won't get updated only the paid ones on the Workshop. So there is already a huge difference in quality.
Also unless Valve finds a way to somehow lock Skyrim files mods will be a breeze to "pirate" (as in Ctrl+C Ctrl+V) so they'll quickly be stolen and uploaded to PirateBay etc resulting in the modders getting even less recognition than before.
Modding is my hobby, I'd say I like modding games more than playing them. (I cannot think of a game I haven't modded seriously, think of Civ5, Age of Mythology, Total War Games etc). If modding is killed off or made unaffordable then this is a hobby I need to let go of, and I am not happy about it.
Also think about the impact on the devs. Bethesda is already known for releasing half-assed buggy mess of games and leaving it to the modders to fix it. Now they will care even less, as modders will flesh out/fix their game and they even get money out of it with no effort.
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Yeah, modding piracy will totally be a thing if this continues.
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To be actually honest with you, I don't see how would that be different from Bethesda Game Studio's current way of working. (In the past 7 or so years.)
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True, but games like the CoD series showed us that shallow gameplay will never prevent a series from earning tons of money. And despite what many of the fans say, Bethesda is not even the slightest better in this regard than, for example, EA or Capcom. The only thing they managed to do differently is that for some reason people think they are a game developer company, not just a publisher. (It's always funny to see people call Wolfenstein or Dishonored a Bethesda game…)
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I don't think they are a particularly good company either. Their engine is shitty and out of date, but surprisingly enough it is fairly open and easily moddable. They are not releasing good games, they are releasing good platforms for modding. Well the Fallout games are good but it's an adopted world/lore, the TES lore is amazing, the games are not so much (even Morrowind was more of a niche game.
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It's not their engine though: GameBryo was licensed, and Creation was just a rewrite of the bought source code. And apparently they did something with the engine that made it so damn unstable, because not many people know, that the same engine run under, for example, the Pirates! remake or Civ IV, and they didn't really suffer from crashes every five minutes.
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Finds a way? Simple, they can make mods encrypted DLCs and have Steam client check their validity before launching game. This model already works in some games - I see no reason why Skyrim devs lured by easy money can't implement this :(
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Valve is worse than EA. At least EA has an excellent user support service. Valve...DOES NOT...AT ALL!!!! Oh yeah, and you don't get shitty region locked games on Origin and UPlay...EVER So yeah, fuck Valve, Gaben and all the Valve fan-boys who still think if a game doesn't exist on Steam it's not worth playing.
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You can't even trade games on those Platforms, not even sure if you can gift games properly.
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It is when you mentioned region locked games as comparison. It doesn't matter which region you're buying game from when you can only buy it for yourself.
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Maybe not for you. But thank god you are not the center of the universe.
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You're clearly overlooking the reason Origin and uPlay have good Support: its their only advantage over Valve.
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A rather huge one, if you ask me. I'd trade all the stupid unnecessary Steam features, over which people seem to have lost their heads(trading cards, badges, market) in a heart beat for a half decent support and being able to play my games on my account if I travel to another continent. But that's just me...not a stupid indoctrinated Gaben zombie
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You have to consider the user base. It's clearly not comparable, and with it come the support issues. Not really defending Valve, but to be fair you have to consider it.
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LOL, dude, you can!!! Just go to Origin!
0% Steam features. Trust me, I'm a random guy on the Internet.
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Then why the heck are you here complaining instead of leaving Steam and SteamGifts completely and just switching over to one of them? Those things you're typing are called words, which mean nothing when you don't do anything to back them.
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Well look at the but-hurt Steam fan-boy getting offended on behalf of a company that doesn't give a flying fuck about him, run by a fat greedy a-hole who could basically bury you in money.You think I don't have an Origin and UPlay account? You think I gave up on awesome games such as Bulletstorm, Mass Effect 3, The Saboteur or even Dragon Age 2 just because they don't exist on Steam? Only an idiot wold do that. Or that I'm the kind of stupid twat that uses two clients at once to play games like Far Cry 3 or the Assassin's Creed series? Get the hell over yourself. I didn't say we should all necessarily stop using Steam. They do have the most extensive game collection to offer. All I said is that Valve is in no way a nicer company than EA or Ubi-shit, who are pretty terrible themselves, but AT LEAST have good user supports (well, Ea has, Ubi not so much either). To give an example of what I'm talking about, EA put me on the phone with one of their tech support operators in England in the very same hour I wrote the user support ticket. In Valve's case you have to wait 2 weeks to even get an e-mail response from their user support service. I think that pretty much says it all...
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Offended, no, but you said yourself that you'd gladly get rid of all Steams as for a good support, yet now you say "Umm, wait, there are good games on Steam, I wouldn't give it up, but f*** them, they arent worth my time!" Only an idiot would say that. And also spell 'would' wrong, lol.
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I said I'd get rid of all the useless Steam FEATURES( I even named them), not the entire platform or its games.... And I also said I want a good support FOR STEAM. Cause Origin already has one. You really have trouble reading things, don't you? And misspelling the word "would" was a fucking typo. I love it how a-holes get entitled over these things, just cause I missed one tiny mistake when giving my comment a second look.
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Valve/Steam is still far far far far better than EA cash cows, Steam is open to new things (especially things that make them good money) while EA is only EA-screw-the-rest.
Anyway I have to say, as a workshop creator, that I DON'T like this new thing, it will kill a lot of things we love.
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EA has excellent support services? What the fuck were you smoking? My Indian cable guy is more competent than them.
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I'm sorry, but after less than an hour of opening a support ticket at their service I was on the phone with an EA tech support chick from their offices in London. How much does it take for Valve to even respond to a complain in writing? Cause I've heard of people waiting more than 2 weeks...
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I confirm that.
2 times needed EA's support, 2 times i actually chatted with them!
With Steam? Still my ticket opened 4 months ago is not resolved!
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I still don't get why people are so pissy about Greenlight and Early Access. Yeah there are a bunch of bad apples in Early Access and it's a definite risk, and Greenlight is a haven for shovelware, but again that doesn't affect anyone provided they have any degree of impulse control.
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No one points a gun on your head to buy or even look at all that shit.
Anyway, Starbound, Overgrowth, Tabletop Simulator, Neo Scavenger, Project Zomboid...
Without early acces, I never would have played these incredible games. (Probably because never would have heard of them)
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This guy knows what he's talking about. :)
Green light is pretty awesome if you actually look at it. There have been a lot of amazing games that have come to Steam through it. And as for Early Access, you DO NOT have to buy games that are in early access. You can leave them alone and let those who want to play and help development do so, at their own risk, NOT YOURS. It's a really simple concept that I have no idea how people can fail to grasp...
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GOG.com, CD-Projekt. Please save PC gaming from greedy companies.
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I think a good way to discipline yourself is to buy those games which are on both platforms on GOG.com, yeah sure maybe you have to wait for a heavy discount a bit longer, but as the GOG.com catalogue is not as big, you should consider it an ethical choice ;)
Pro-market-diversity!
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+1. The euphoric feeling when these are mentioned is worth it.
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I think you meant CD Projekt. CDPR is a developer, while CDP is a distributor/company/whatever.
Still, you sir, should get a cookie.
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Is there a giveaway site that has GOG keys?
Id rather win GOG keys instead of Steam's...
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The one that throwing their One World, One Price ethic? OMG.
Next they'll throw their DRM free stance.
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They'll lose too many customers then, because their galaxy client is not ready and there would be nothing that separates them from Steam and they have a much smaller catalogue, I do not think they will settle for throwing their DRM free stance overboard any time soon.
What I dislike on Steam a lot is regionalised games, in some cases they are just too dumb or slow to react to changes from years ago, although I even called it to their attention in this particular case: Max Payne 1, was not sold in Germany for a long time, but was dropped from the index in 2012 or 2011 I think. All Steam/Valve would have to do is hit the switch and let the money from German buyers flow in, instead they completely ignore the change and people buy overpriced retail disc versions on German Ebay because they want the game so bad.
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trading is dead/dying, region locks are getting crazier
So funny, what did you expect? You literally scammed Valve, scammed developers, scammed publishers, killing the profits, breaking simple rules, you deserve it. Gabe did it all right to kill trading and regionlocking games, you established shameless black market and this is your punishment.
shitty, laggy slow client
Haven't seen any lags for years, client is comfortable and practical.
inconsistent download speeds
Downloaded GTA5 for 3 hours with 8mb speed, do we really need more?
Steam servers collapsing during bigger events/sales
For 3-5 minutes? You supposed to die about that?
whenever they feel like it
For works huh, once a month or two for couple of hours, stiil dying?
big profile Early Access scams and failures
<1% of all early access titles, AAA-games only from Ubisoft scam and fail more.
Complete lack of quality control
Quality control means censorship, one can't define "quality" and could only ban that one see as "not quality".Only QA we need is stolen content QA, everything else must be QA'd by customer, If you can't QA the game by yourself just looking at it you deserve to lose your money for shit. no more, no less.
The only real problem with Steam is support, but everybody knows that majoriry of problems users go with to the support are problems born of their own stupidity.
And actually. real problem with Steam are whiners, so many idiots on Steam just whine and whine and whine about everything, go buy yourself PS4 or XBone and whine there.
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I hope that one day you will become a conscious consumer and realize that you do have the right to criticize the service that is there to SERVE you and demand something in return for the hard-earned money you spend.
Expressing an opinion in a certain manner = whining? Hmmm so you do support censorship? You are being pretty inconsistent here.
Client problems, if something works for me then it must be working for the other 99.99999% of users right? As long as it's good on my end I don't care about the rest. (I was born and raised in Eastern Europe, I am familiar with this line of thought)
Servers down: hahaha nope it's not 3-5 minutes
I see you are from Russia, what's with all the pro-region lock sentiment then? It's hard to take you seriously at this point.
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Why should I criticize something that totally suits me? Steam is a great thing. it's like that game, The Pit, of game-related things, 40 floors of deadly dangers and shining diamonds, you are not just customer here, you are a warrioir, an adventurer, you constantly upgrade yourself and become a real sea wolf of gaming sea, this is pretty awesome for a gameshop.
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Well mate, I respect your sizeable contribution to SteamGifts and I also respect your opinion, but I guess we won't agree on this one.
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I guess we won't agree on this one
Not a problem, mate, everybody has his own opinion, let's not fight about it, we are, in Russia, do it too often, I'd always could fight like a game-dog somewhere else here for an opinion.
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It's hard to take you seriously at this point
You should, I don't care about these traders making money from nothing, violating maybe not written, but ethical rules, creating a situation like when there are 1000 russian copies for 5 dollars instead of 1000 copies for 15, defending it is shit, just think about if you work in production of something and all goods you made go for 1/3 of normal price. I,m not jealous for them because I've almost never traded like "hey lol they traded more than you fool haha" and when there were region locks made for everything I watched them burn with an appeasement of soul.
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I hope that one day you will become a conscious consumer and realize that you do have the right to criticize the service that is there to SERVE you and demand something in return for the hard-earned money you spend.
If it's okay for him why he has to blame or criticize?
Expressing an opinion in a certain manner = whining? Hmmm so you do support censorship? You are being pretty inconsistent here.
You've felt offended because you wanted to. He never talk about you.
Client problems, if something works for me then it must be working for the other 99.99999% of users right? As long as it's good on my end I don't care about the rest. (I was born and raised in Eastern Europe, I am familiar with this line of thought)
If something NOT works for me then it must be NOT working for the other 99.99999% of users, right?
Servers down: hahaha nope it's not 3-5 minutes
Well, even if were 3-5 hours.(didn't happen never to me) You supposed to die about that?
I see you are from Russia, what's with all the pro-region lock sentiment then? It's hard to take you seriously at this point.
If you didn't see the problem of non tegion locked games for the developers, you have a problem, here.
Gaining 0,25$ because you buy a game that is -75% on your country on a region with -50% difference is simply the shit.
Not much better than piracy. You are basically stealing money from one guy who want to live from what he likes, creating videogames.
20$ game
5$ because -75% discount
2,50$ because -50% money value on RUS
Now change another time to dollars because the game was purchased on rubles.
Pay the % to Steam.
Congratulation! You win a shit for a hard work.
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You're either trolling or barely if ever use steam.
Haven't seen any lags for years, client is comfortable and practical.
Steam is down/lagging on a daily base, almost always around the same time when the new deals go up so it can easily be fixed.
Trading is and was broken for years, I have NEVER had a trade offer working properly, errors, errors everywhere.
Downloaded GTA5 for 3 hours with 8mb speed, do we really need more?
Yet when I downloaded it it was all over the place only reaching max speed for a quarter of the time spent downloading.
Steam servers collapsing during bigger events/sales
For 3-5 minutes? You supposed to die about that?
I can't even take this serious, steam servers go down every fuckin time a sale starts and the problems tied into them can and do last for hours without any statement from valve, ever.
Quality control means censorship, one can't define "quality" and could only ban that one see as "not quality".Only QA we need is stolen content QA, everything else must be QA'd by customer, If you can't QA the game by yourself just looking at it you deserve to lose your money for shit. no more, no less.
The only real problem with Steam is support, but everybody knows that majoriry of problems users go with to the support are problems born of their own stupidity.
And actually. real problem with Steam are whiners, so many idiots on Steam just whine and whine and whine about everything, go buy yourself PS4 or XBone and whine there.
Valve just greenlit a game formerly called "hotline kavkaz" a game that shouldn't have even been allowed on greenlight since it's copyright infringement at it's finest.
But you go on cheering for valve, if you're lucky they just might find another awesome way too get that last bit of cash out of your pocket.
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I'm not a valve fanboy, and I'm aware that the service has some big issues (most partially to be expected from such a huge user base, but not excusable). However, I have to agree with Retrotox on some points. I've never had any noticeable lag with the client, and disconnections only last a few minutes, at least for me. No problem on sales over here.
Also, I agree that QA should be on the consumer side.
As with many services and/or products, Steam seems to be so bad because of a relatively few users like you that have trouble using it, and complain loudly about it (not that you shouldn't, it's your right). Users like me who have no problem with it usually keep it to ourselves, many because any post like this one will get us called fanboys (I'm expecting it, actually).
At the end, I'm just happy that it works for me, but I would be happier of course if it worked for everybody as well as it does for me, your case included.
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Steam seems to be so bad because of a relatively few users like you that have trouble using it, and complain loudly about it (not that you shouldn't, it's your right).
I haven't ever complained about this publicly unless discussing it when relevant, however within the steam trading community these things are so common people don't even get upset about anymore, we laugh about it just like we did when we heard valve would be taking a 75% cut from these user generated DLC's.
it seems to me that you seem to mistake people not caring about steam going to shit with people not having any problems.
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And it seems to me that you're mistaking a small percentage of people complaining, with steam going to shit. Seriously, Steam has over 120 million active users. Even if 1.2 million of them complain in threads like this one and in other sites, it's still just under 1% of the total user base (and I doubt it could even reach that number).
I'm not saying your complains aren't valid, they totally are, and you should make them known. But for the vast majority of users, Steam is certainly not going to shit, and we do not share your concerns.
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I prefer not to open my pocket with money, but one with the points, if you know what I mean ;)
hotline kavkaz
The only problem with this game is stolen content like copyrighted "masks", I'm not denying it, but everybody talk about "everything stolen from HM', but there nothing stolen from it, all this stylistics of HM "stolen" by Dagestan Technology are in demand cliches of a widespread :"neon 80's" setting/culture, how do you call it? BK is actually bad game mechanically, could be average if developer would work on it, but it's pretty amusing thing, it has awkward post-mortem-modernism vibe, amazingly bad taste galore, old idiotic memes from russian social shitholes rehashed with totally out-of-place visuals and atmosphere, one could actually be amused by this game if there was some good translation with clarifications and one could dig it. But evereybody in Russia and all the Westerners just seeing the surface.
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You need to skip a line with enter for the quoting to work properly FYI.
And about the game, have you looked at the gameplay video? copyrighted content everywhere especially the masks, granted there's some stuff in there that could be considered fair use/public domain but since this isn't a free game it'll be taken down the second one of the copyright holders files a claim.
If totalbiscuit's source is to be believed the game was made by a 15 year old that coerced (basically just begging and pestering) a composer into giving him the rights to use the music he created that was inspired by hotline miami.
That and other things all add up to the dev. being just a kid that's completely clueless as to what copyright, fair use and other legal terms mean which is even more obvious concidering he called the game "hotline" at first (no adult in their right mind would think that that would be ok to do), and since he's 15 you couldn't really blame him for that, what I can do however is blame steam for not knowing what they're selling, who's selling it and if that person even holds the rights to the content they're offering which is exactly what quality control is for when it comes to a retailer.
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Problems with copyright must be the thing copyright owners should deal with, not Valve. Valve should add a giant banner like "If you use copyright material you asking for a court' and if somebody still don't understand they should get product off the store until problems are solved, good way or bad for the develeoper - this all needs to be a case for copyright owners and dumb developer, not Valve, why everybody wants to blame Valve for everything and wish that Valve control everything? Valve is a small company still, we need to help them to make good business, we are all could be people that help them find stolen things and motivate Valve, developers and CP owners to work on the problems and solve it or stop the game from selling. Isnt's this the better way then insult Valve for everything? They just need to create conditions for this kind of things to work.
Also as for composer, he could block the naughty developer everywhere, but still he gave his music to him, looks shady like he anyway wanted to get his piece of fame (like music is the best part of the game) and money.
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this all needs to be a case for copyright owners and dumb developer, not Valve, why everybody wants to blame Valve for everything and wish that Valve control everything
The answer to this is really easy, because they're making money off of it.
There's really no way around it, the fact that you're calling this company with a supposed userbase of 120 million users a "small company" leads me to believe you have a completely wrong view of valve, of something it once was but hasn't been for a long time.
Valve is an incredibly rich and powerful leader of it's industry, it's the wallmart of gaming, if they decide they want to sell something it is their responsibility by law to make sure that what they are selling is something they are allowed to sell there's no discussion to be had there since that isn't up for debate, it's just how business works.
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a "small company" leads me to believe you have a completely wrong view of valve
So if even famous respectable people from industry, like Galyonkin here, who always in contact with Valve always complain about Valve's tiny personnel that physically couldn't control everything, this is not true or what? Valve is a big company with strange principles, if they change them and hire thousands of people their profit will drastically go down, nobody wants it, they try to control everything with what they have.
if they decide they want to sell something it is their responsibility by law to make sure that what they are selling is something they are allowed to sell
So why there are games, long time selling games, with copyright questions that are not off steam already? Maybe even copyright owners don't want copyright to be such an absurd construction crumbling under it's own weight with every single stolen byte of content?
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"Valve just greenlit a game formerly called "hotline kavkaz" a game that shouldn't have even been allowed on greenlight since it's copyright infringement at it's finest."
Valve only greenlit this game because people voted for it.
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That doesn't justify hosting copyright infringing materials whichever way you put it, that's why they're supposed to have QA.
I could put up a game called Cakeday 2, take payday 2 and mod it slightly so that instead of bags of money now you're throwing around cakes, it'll pass greenlight for sure, but is steam allowed to host it, I don't think so.
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As far i remember devs of Hotline Miami contacted the "devs" of "hotline kavkaz" ("Bloodbath Kavkaz") and only requested name change (i may be wrong on this),Besides, no one is force to buy it.
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You seem to be missing the point of the original post, it isn't about the game it's about steam constantly adding new features while refusing to deal with the problems that come with those.
Steam sells you games - refuses to abide EU laws by making users waive their rights upon purchasing something + refuses to upgrade their support lines despite being the one of the worst in the business.
steam sells you Alpha/Beta games - again they refuse to offer compensation/support when users get tricked into buying something that isn't what it claims to be, no they just add a note basically making you waive all expectations you can have for a game.
(note that i'm referring to actual lies, there's plenty of cases where devs have claimed a game had certain content whilst in reality it didn't have that content)
Steam allows you to post games and vote for games to be added to their store - Can't be bothered to have quality assurance to make sure the product is up to standards and doesn't contain stolen/copyrighted content.
steam adds a community market from which they take a disproportionate cut - Can't be bothered to reimburse users that fell victim to one of the many people that use the community market to launder money originating from stolen CC's
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Im not missing the point of the original post, i just responded to part of yours post. As for OP i only agree to this :
"...Outrageously bad support.... ....Complete lack of quality control and responsibility over Greenlight (and in turn store content)... "
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I will be honest.
Although i don't like you at all, i strongly agree with your sayings on this thread and up to this point (haven't read the rest of the thread yet).
As it seems to me, either you are being trolled by the replies you receive or the platform you describe and the platform the ones who replied to you describe are 2 completely different things. Cause i cannot explain in any other way the senseless replies your posts receive on the thread (i'd like to be specific that i talk only about this thread).
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Although i don't like you at all,
Well shit, and here I was thinking I'd never given anyone a legit reason to dislike me on SG, guess I was wrong.
Makes me wonder on how many blacklists I am really.
But regarding your reply, I think it's mostly because people don't use steam so actively as I & other traders do, since I trade I tend to browse the store/community/market a lot & run into a lot of bugs, most of which the average user will not run into (that often at least)
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Then don't buy them. It is the same as low quality games on Steam Store. It is really that simple.
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Yeah i think they will get a lot tickets for refunds i just see this as a big mess.
Just like Greenlight anyone can say what they want to describe what they are selling and turn out not to be what they said or promise,the real question is who will decide who gets a refund.
Mods are like games some people they work just fine for and some they just never play nice despite what they do,so does this mean they get a refund because it did not work,even know others say it works as stated.?
Yes you can say say do not buy,but what if it is a mod you already have and love and they decide to charge and it is only on Steam?
There are still plenty of games on steam that are buggy as hell and barely work that is still being sold,so how will this be any different then those games?
Luckily most good mods can be had on Nexus for free,and you can still support the publisher of the money by donating,and can give back to the site by donation but are not forced to pay to download mods.
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Valve acted a bit smart there, since they allow 24 hours self-refund ability no question asked. This should cut the number of tickets being sent into the system for mods refunds.
Now since it's Skyrim, if they want to charge.... get it from Nexusmod. If it's Steam exclusive, and it's popular mod, grab pirated installer of the said mods. Done.
There are many ways out there if you put some efforts into solving it.
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I already know about Nexus and Skyrim mods it is where i get my mods and only where i get them for Skyrim and Fallout games.
Still does not change how i feel about how they are charging it and how they handle greenlight to expect this to be much better.
I never liked the workshop much,i prefer nexus mod manager as i can choose what to update and when,instead of having mods auto update on steam like they do.
Either way like i said you can try and spin this any way you want but in the end it still going to be a web,and this is not one of there better moves imo
I prefer if i am going to pay for a mod that whoever created it get all of it,not what Valve thinks they deserve just so Gaben can keep his pockets full of cash and donuts and try and sell us on steam machines and such,he needs to quit trying to be Microsoft he wants control of the whole gaming market and he is slowly getting there.
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There were cases of modders who wanted to pull their game from the workshop, because they disliked the idea of monetized mods and just leave them on free sites and they actually had problems or still cannot remove it from the workshop, guess because Valve figured some of them are quite popular and they get a fat share if they are sold.
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I don't know if it's acceptable to me to say this in this site, but I think I'll switch back to pirating like good ol' days. Seriously, f*ck Steam. Also while I'm talking, Steam is like Facebook for gamers. People show off with their library and play times instead of posting picture of what they have eaten, or checking out which restaurants they had been. VALVe treats us like shit. And with each day, they become more money-grabbing. I'm glad they made games like Portal etc. but I'm going to step out of these for a while. I'll still play CS:GO and other multiplayer based games like Payday 2 and shit. But no, I'm not going to spend my (well, my family's) money to the biggest DRM in the gaming history, and i will try to step out of (maybe I'm a bit paranoid) this evil company. Like i did to Google, which is i think evil in very different reasons. And ofcourse, Facebook.
Hmm maybe I should delete this but I don't actually care anymore.
Oh also ofc i will still do giveaways. I'm not doing this because im a cheap mofo. So see you soon!
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Although piracy is a generally shunned activity, I don't think it is against SteamGift's rules to admit such activity so you don't need to worry about that.
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Will you lead this revolution? Or will you cower away when confronted by the mighty Gaben?
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Yeah, alpha tester here. I will do anything in my hands to support their new client.
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GOg Galaxy could only be a solution if they not only update their library for a "Steam of better times"condition refusing to add all the crap, but still continue to release old games working on modern systems, but they critically lowered the quantity of such games for the last year and I don't think they could achieve the first part too.
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There isn't anything to say. Modders have ALWAYS used lack of compensation as an excuse for unfinished or delayed mods. I'd love to type a huge paragraph about this but it's something I would have to recollect my thoughts about. Honestly, in the end, I feel like the modders are the ones that will be backing this, whether not they originally did it 'for the community'.
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The Nexus will STILL be a spot for free modding, though. Keep this in mind. Steam can't stop the Nexus Community.
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No, but Steam can create a monetary incentive for the Nexus Community to move on over to Steam.
I'm talkin' dolla dolla billz y'all $$$$.
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Yeah, I was grasping for straws. The Nexus is probably going to hell unless modders decide to be sensible.
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Not bloody likely. People would rather try and get a little bit of something than a whole lot of nothing.
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Well, I salute you all. I'm going down with the ship. Also, I have nothing better to do, so I'm just going to sit here and watch the flames burn.
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I'm going to put my faith in the free market economy on this one. When people aren't making anything selling weapon mods for $5, they'll keep lowering it until they're able to get something. Or it'll stay too high and never sell.
Its much easier to get 200 people to spend $0.10, then to get 10 people to spend $1, especially since increased volume doesn't require any additional labor.
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Don't forget the obvious 'shame' they will feel when they realize they 'fucked up' due to 'no sales'.
Oh, wait, I forgot. Some people actually are supposed enough to pay $5 for 5-minute expansion area.
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There are already mods on Nexus that are much older then their version on Steam Workshop.
So, I won't be surprised to when it turns out Nexus will only hold "demo mods" (aka version 1.0), while up-to-date version will be behind Steam's paywall...
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How is this more worse? You are not forced to pay for anything. There are still free mods in Steam Workshop. It's not like Valve bans free stuffs right here right now.
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Give them time and everything you do on Steam will cost something.
If they need more money,why not actually make some games not just try and use Steam to print money,
And if modders are only getting 25% anyone who supports giving them the shaft while Steam reaps in profits should punch themselves in the head.
I rather donate money to them using paypal so they get all the money,not what Valve and doughnut eating Gaben thinks they should get.
If Nexus can offer free downloads of any mods i do not see why Steam would need such a cut.
Either way i can see people getting there mods ripped off,stealing off assets and art work,and copyright issues being a issue,it already does with things like L4D with stuff like tellie tubbies and other mods with copyright music in them or sounds.
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What? Valve invest on their platform. Valve work on Steam infrastructure, work on Store updates, work on bandwith we all use.
And they make Dota 2. Remember? CS: GO? Please elaborate on your vague statement of 'not just try and use Steam to print money'?
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CS-GO market pays for that game and if it was not for the market and silly stickers and crap that people love to buy that game would not be what it is.
Dota i never did like never will play but still making a free games does not give them a pass for trying to find ways to make more money while not fixing the real issues at hand like support.
I still get spam/bots despite there great new 5.00 idea
My point about printing the money was simple,instead of making more ways to make money they need to work on better support,better yet make a decent TOS that does pretty much allow them to do whatever they want with your account.
Also they need to something with Greenlight i do not even bother with it anymore to much crap to dig through just to find a decent game.
There is also issues of still selling games that are online only and no players at the least they need to have some kind of stanard if a game is online that if it is dead at the least make them post about online may not be active. How about games that have lots of bugs and issues and damn near unplayable that they still sell on steam and offer no refunds for those who bought it thinking they where getting a working game.
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They are getting repulsive towards the costumers everyday, it's clear like water, just blind people can't see it
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Why rip skyrim modding???? Because you can finally pay a little bit for hard working modders?????
"Fear not we still have a shitty, laggy slow client, inconsistent download speeds " wat? stop using steam on a potato, runs fine on my pc, and i always download at fullspeed...
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Hmm paying £5 for a mod that is basically a slight cosmetic enhancement is a little bit? I am/have been already supporting modders on the Nexus modding network. The "prices" of mods are grossly disproportionate imo. You are one of those typical gamers who never modded in their life and just repeating mottos like "yay for finally paying modders". It is not only about money, there are many other possibly harmful effects of this new system, just read a few comments in this thread.
About the potato thing: If I can run games I should be able to run the client for them too right?
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There is no quality control in the Skyrim workshop. There will be tons of crappy mods drawing the attention away from the few great mods.
I think modding is a fun thing and not a business. Get a job and make modding a hobby...
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The community itself will draw the attention to the great mods and away from the crappy ones. That's the way it should be. The same with Greenlight.
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Yep works so well on greenlight. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=276683987 etc.
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I wouldn't have known about it if you had not specifically used as an example of a bad greenlighted game. That's a perfect example of the way it should be. It's a crappy game maybe, but it didn't distract me from other great greenlighted games.
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Unfortunately there are multiple hundreds of this "example of a bad greentlighted game". Many many of these games are given away for free by the developers. They buy their way into steam. There is no real quality control since the biggest part of the community is not even qualified to judge any quality. They are promised free keys - they will vote. That's the dirty truth, mate
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But you never gonna see those games on home page and never gonna buy one of them.
So... if you didn't search those shitty games, they never gonna disturb you.
It's not Steam fault, it's the bundle xploit of the system fault.
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There's a difference. It costs nothing to upvote a greenlight game, but to rate mods you have to buy them first, and I don't think people will buy them and then troll with a high or low rating.
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It was deemed as abusive by Valve. Now freebies like that won't be able to buy their way onto Steam platform.
Grass Simulator made it before Valve enforced harsh rule.
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So if someone has a different opinion = twelve year old? LOL.... Not sure if retard or troll....
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There were donations before this bullshit.
Before you try spewing bullshit, at least -attempt- to know what subject you're getting into, moron.
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Because people who say RIP modding are idiots. Never argue with idiots, they'll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
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We are not supporting modders, that's the front side, the beatiful model who distract us from the trick, we are making Valve richer day by day... (Only 25% for modders, and that money stays in the wallet)
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We already are making Valve richer day by day. Now the modders get a tiny piece too. Really don't see the big deal. Don't want to sell your mods? Don't. Don't want to buy paid mods? Don't.
Problem solved. That was easy.
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Want to support modders? Yes, there are donations for that. Want to get good mods? Yeah. Why don't you get them? Because now I HAVE to pay for them. I do see the big deal, "modders get a tiny piece too", they should get at least 90% of profit, not a "tiny" piece. Another thief strategy from Valve...
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lul what? Paying for mods? I just checked the Skyrim workshop and you are telling the truth. No april fools day.
This is the most stupid shit I've ever seen. Every second wannabe modder will come up with some bullshit mod trying to sell it, quality mods will get lost in the flood of pure shit.
Also today I discovered the "StatTrak™ Swap Tool" in CSGO which lets you transfer your kills with one gun to another gun. Valve charging 0.92€ for this pile of digital crap. Whoever buys this must be a special kind of person.
I used to be very loyal to Steam and Valve but there definitely is a red line. Companies have to make money but companies should not get so greedy that they forget the attitudes which made them become so huge on the market...
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You know, you can easily filter that shit out with just a few clicks. There are checkboxes to show only paid or only free mods.
And you seriously don't have to buy all that crap.
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This is also very relevant:
This is going to remove every single reason I replay games in general. This will probably ruin my experience with most games since I have a trend of never being able to afford anything expensive (I'm implying me upgrading my setup = NO GO).
Now, don't get me wrong. This is great for modders because up until this point, it's been a god damn hobby done 'on-the-side' for most modders and this is why most mods don't get perfected or completed. If modders had some kind of compensation, they would probably focus on the modding more but I take part in modding because it is free. It's fan-made, community-based. It's not a marketed object or a business. I'm trying to say that this will bring in every kind of negativity that marketing something does and I include the elitist 'THIS IS A GREAT MOD THAT I MADE IN 5 MINUTES, FUCK YOU, I'M AWESOME' bullshit that these children sprout as dramatic 'news' on the internet.
The modders need support, this is true of course but look at the Nexus community. They have 'endorsements' which is pretty much a donation and it helps to give the modders the support they need when they spend countless hours on a single mod.
This may effectively destroy the whole connected experience of the modding-community but from what I have read so far on the page, you don't HAVE to pay for the mods and it is set by the modder I would assume. I can still see people trying to make a damn business out of this and that just isn't what the modding community is about.
If I'm paying for mods, they better damn well create some automatic mod-order set-up program and installations for the mods. Otherwise, fuck that. I go through enough shit for a free mod.
This too:
As for whether not I will support this myself? Well, I recall another thread talking about this and there has been some 'preview' news recently about this so I suppose I already made my decision. I will NOT buy mods. They aren't worth buying because even if you consider 1 dollar per mod, for a total of 20 dollars... Is 20 dollars going to be worth it? Probably not. 20 dollars is the average price of a game, I'd say. Is 20 dollars going to expand the gaming experience to the point where you are playing a whole game's worth of content plus the original game?
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Paying for 'mods' will be as bad as paying for DLCs are now. They're generally overpriced and not worth the price-tag.
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I won't buy it. That's what I just said. I also had said that it is completely the modder's choice. I'm just supporting the idea that this is going to effectively put a target on modders that decide to overprice their mods. Guess what? There's a $2.50 armour mod up already and everybody knows that the armour mods are god damn cosmetics since they suck in terms of stats for 'balancing'. Yeah. Great. Die very easily but don't worry! You're dying in style!
What do you expect? No one will be happy from modding become a business. Modding being a business is literally making a fucking game.
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That is an interesting point. Selling mods is that nebulous middle ground between creating mods and making a game. Too lazy to make a game from scratch, even though there are a number of cheap/free engines available, and yet industrious enough to try and put enough time and effort into something that you hope it will make you money.
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I think I could go bigger on what I'm trying to say but the 25% cut that the modders get is... Well, it's bullshit. The modders are going to get used and I would rather they get regular donations for their tremendous work on expansive mods than get shit all over by greedy fucking corporations while also encouraging people to get a quick buck with shitty, disgusting quickly made mods.
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It was a hell of a ride.
...now what is this GOG Galaxy people are talking about?
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Something about being the gate to paradise or something. I 'unno. GOG doesn't afraid of anything apparently.
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Its a new client for the GOG platform. It will not be a new DRM, they say you will be able to play your games without the client.
This is just to compete against another game clients.
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companies want a cut from mods (modders only get 25%)..thats why there is no "donation"
companies are to lazy to create new stuff by themselfs, so they want to encourage modders
So before they invest ressources to create new game content..they found a better way: Let others do the work and even get money from it...
TL;TR lazy and greedy gaming companies
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The 25% should be a sure sign. It's probably just 'hype' that modders get FINALLY be paid! Oh boy!
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Discuss.
[UPDATE]
Seems like the mod authors themselves are really enjoying the new system. This is all so good for modders/players alike huh? Nuff said.
[IMPORTANT PART]
So yeah RIP Skyrim modding pretty much, trading is dead/dying, region locks are getting crazier every day and heck even the TF2 economy is pretty much gone (I just throw it in the pile). Fear not we still have a shitty, laggy slow client, inconsistent download speeds and Steam servers collapsing during bigger events/sales or just whenever they feel like it. Outrageously bad support, big profile Early Access scams and failures (Spacebase df-9, WarZ, Stomping Land). Complete lack of quality control and responsibility over Greenlight (and in turn store content).
[TL;DR PART]
To tell the truth, I'd be fine with the rest of the issues, I could live with region restrictions, Early Access, Greenlight etc as they do not directly affect my personal gaming experience (although I do disapprove of them and I happily express my opinion)
Introducing paid modding is the last straw and it is way over the line. It directly kills off the most loved aspect of gaming for me. I am one of those special people who prefer modding games to playing them. I am already supporting modders over at the Nexus, but I will not pay £400-500/game to get all the 100+ mods I love to configure, test and use. I don't think it is unreasonable. If you don't have a clue about modding in general, or you are not a mod user then I'd recommend that you refrain from repeating popular comments like "finally modders get paid for their hard work" etc. it'll just make you look silly, you obviously have no clue.
More on modding (Skyrim Specific)
Thank you for expressing your opinion in a civil manner. I understand that this is a controversial area and might be grounds for heated debate but please refrain from insulting each other.
Also the poll is just a joke.
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