Do you agree?
Still no alternative for a minimal level of manual curation. And still no word on these "devs" (which even Valve now openly admit are fucking up the storefront) or their asset flips getting booted off of Steam.
And it's another metric-driven thing, so it's again just a matter of time until someone finds a way to game the metric. And that won't take long, because there's still enough review-boosting etc. groups active that Valve also doesn't make any moves on.
By typical Valve logic, it's another soft-touch approach that's open to abuse and doesn't address the root of the issue.
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I guess the problem is their company structure where every employee can do what they feel like doing and nobody cares about such boring curation stuff, so they need some sort of automation or let the steam users do their work (for free) :/
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people don't care about fake games, they just want to farm from cards
Most people*
Yes, and that doesn't help to fight the problem. Just as most people also don't care about gray market, they just want cheap games, what matters if they are stolen from the devs. Or we can also talk about piracy. Most people don't care about things they think don't affect them. Then they are upset when bad things happen, like intrusive drms, stores closing and developers disappearing.
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I really hope this confidence metric™ includes at least a few achievements just to be sure people have played their games, so we can get rid of all idlers for once and for all. I know someone will say that people will just use SAM, but at least using SAM is VAC'able, therefore it won't be such a problem as idlers. (I've been told that it's not true. sry) Another option is to get cards when you buy the game. Idk The way it is unsustainable imo.
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What "problem" exactly are idlers creating?
As long If you don't use SAM when running games like CS:GO or TF2 then nothing will happen to you.
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A bunch. idlers completely disrupt the steam enviroment and economy. It disrupts sites like sg because people start entering GAs they don't want just to get a game to farm, stealing some else's chance to try a game they want, It helps terrible devs stay aflot because of trading cards money. I can go on and on about the problems of idlers. They are as part of the problem as bad devs and terrible greenlight rules. One could not survive without the others.
About SAM, I'm not an expert because I never used it, so I didn't know about that. I thought all games were included. :/
Achievements may not be the best, I hope this metric includes more than that. It's just an idea.
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People winning games just for cards, are more card farmers then idlers. If someone just want there cards a bit quicker (thus real idlers) and without having to install each and every game (doesn't mean they won't ever play them just maybe not now) and if someone sells a card now or weeks later it doesn't influence an environment or economy whatsoever.
If you again mean card farmers, that's a different story.
No if you unlock achievements for whatever game and aren't in a vac game (CS:GO, TF2), nothing can ever happen.
Only thing is when it gets too noticeable you will get a mark on Astats.
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Idlers makes card farming posible. Kill the idlers and we won't have as many card farmers as we have now. Might not be the best solution, but I seriously don't see any other. I don't like that we have to keep a game running to drop cards for fast games for instance and idlers are very useful for that, but that's probably not 1% of the reasons people use it. 99% just want to farm cards, if they had to do it manually, I'm sure a good number of them would give up.
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The biggest problems were companies like Digital Homicide and they were already taken care of, with greenlight being gone alot less crap will hit steam (or atleast ones specifically made for cards) despite what the metrics would be.
Like noone ever stopped piracy either, many will always find ways to scam, exploit, people will probably still find ways to easily get cards (install, run, uninstall script).
If steam deems it to be a problem all of the sudden, and with the recent changes, i am not suprised at one point they will remove them all together at one point.
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I agree that DH and similars were problems and they are gone, but even with less crap hitting steam store, there's a bunch of crap already there. Unless they get rid of that too, I still think that getting rid of idlers is the best solution. idk, I'm open to other suggestions, but haven't heard any others.
I'm sure the ex-idlers will just find another exploit, if we take that away from them, it's human nature. I guess, we will have to deal with one problem at a time xD
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What is your issue with idlers?
If I pay money for the game, why would you suggest that I am not entitled to the cards that my purchase afforded me? Maybe I don't want to play the game because I personally thought it sucked after the first hour... so now I should be excluded from owning half of the cards that my ownership allotted me?
If I own the game, then I own the rights to half of the cards that drop through playing and/or any booster packs that I win. You have no right to suggest that your ownership has any more or less value than mine.
I think you need to re-evaluate your position because it is quite ridiculous. Whether or not I won the game for free on steamgifts or purchased the game myself has no bearing on ownership value when compared to any other owner. You either own it, or you don't. You either have the rights to 100% of the value of the purchase (regardless of who purchased it), or you don't.
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That's my point. I hope that with the new metric they get rid of time as a metric to drop cards, so we won't need more idlers. Maybe a few achievements and then you get all cards at once. Idk as I said I'm open to suggestions. I just hate that I have to idle fast or bad games just to drop some cards. Wouldn't it be better if we just get all of them when you buy or when you get 1 achievement?
I think you need to re-read my posts.
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You said you wanted to get rid of all idlers once and for all because they disrupt the economy and sites like SG. Your posts did not indicate you were in favor of owners receiving their cards - but rather quite the opposite.
Personally, I think you should just get the cards at purchase... I don't see any reason how an arbitrary number of playable hours is a reason to gate cards behind. It's almost as if valve is purposely ensuring the average steam user does not receive cards or use the marketplace.
I am idling Empire Total War - a fantastic game I played outside of steam many years ago that I bought on a sale a while back. Truthfully, I didn't even know anything about steam cards or idling or badges until earlier this week lol.
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I offered the option to get cards with achievements as a suggestion, but as I've said a bunch of times here. I'm open to better options. I never said that my opnion is the best, just an ordinary one.
I don't like that we have to idle games. It's stupid that you have to idle your games to get something that you should be awarded for buying and/or trying it. It's counter-productive and it reward bad actors: bad devs like DH, card farmers, etc. All of them disrupt our environment here and on steam.
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I hope the confidence metric will be much more sophisticated than just monitoring achievements. What I'm more afraid of is these fake games adding many easy achievements -- which devalues achievement leaderboards kept by third parties like AStats -- for thinking they can game this new system that way.
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Sure. I agree. I just wish the metric will be more than just copies sold and time played. Maybe achievements is not the best solution, but I haven't found any other yet ;)
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I'm wondering if the metric will look at an account's overall gametime patterns and simply choose not to include that account as a legitimate user. In other words, if the monitor sees an account that plays every game for 2-3 hours, no more, no less, it could mark it as an idling account, and no longer recognize that account as somebody actually playing games.
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Well, bad actor devs can still put in unusually easy cheevos to game the metric.
"Launch the game for the first time" -type of cheevos.
Oh, most fake games do not have VAC in them. So SAM wouldn't be a problem for idlers.
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Yeah, one guy corrected me about VAC, I'll edit my post. As I said to the other guy, bad actors will find another way, for sure, but we gotta try something. As I also said, I'm not sure it's the best idea, it's just another idea.
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Some games have 1 achievement right as you start the game and that's it. You've 100%ed the game.
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Why can't they just live and let live? Why that urge to police everything?
If devs want to sell crappy games with cards and players want to buy said crappy games with cards, where is the harm?
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Read the linked blog post. It screws up the way the store determines what games to show visitors. Many, many people have complained that this has led them to stop visiting the Steam store.
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Come on, it can't be that hard to detect which games are actually played and appreciated and which are not. Maybe they should hire some machine learning guys to process the reviews and playing data if they can't figure this out, instead of complaining about their last-century algorithms getting outsmarted...
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They're not hiring anybody for this. They only use algorithms. That's a given.
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I meant, hiring people to improve the algorithms using machine learning ;)
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Well, sure, goes without saying they should use the best algorithm development methods. But they're only just now implementing a solution to account for the fake games, that's why your "it's not that hard" statement did not make sense to me. There's nothing to evaluate yet.
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By their own admission, they already have their "confidence metric". Seems like a pretty good starting point: instead of preventing games with a low "confidence metric" from dropping cards, they could just bury them in the suggestions list.
By preventing those games from dropping cards, they can obtain 2 results: either devs will stop making those (I guess that's what they want, but this is unnecessarily mean), or devs and farmers will adapt make make "fake" games look more like "real" ones (ie by idling longer, unlocking achievements, posting fake reviews that look real instead of just saying "drop cards, thumbs up", etc). And then it will become a lot tougher to automatically tell the "fake" from the "real" games...
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i make 600 bucks a year with this stupid cards and that means welcome to my blacklist. Its basicly the only customer bonus and i like customer bonus.
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its not an simple opinion its more like no money for me = no giveaways for him :) make sense or?
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if you pay attention to my giveaway list you would understand that i giveaway to a big part non bundlet games .And sure the chance that it affect Voidy is minimal but the system allows me to make 100% sure that he dont profit anymore from my evil trading cards money thats all.
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Right. I wrote that on that blog's comments and many people there agree. Cards hurt games, because bad games get money if they have cards. Valve should get rid of cards, or at least of the money aspect of them, so that devs will concentrate on making good games and customers would buy games to play them, not idle them.
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I really hope they don't apply that to existing games .
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I will have like 50-100 noncompleted games sets lol
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So, for SG this basically means:
- More people will actually play the games they win on SG.
- Fewer people willing to enter giveaways for cheap / poorly reviewed bundle games.
- Some people wont be able to give away as many games because they wont have as much income from cards.
Is that about right?
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Not really.
Aside from. No3 people will still hoard games for the sake of +1 in their library.
There will be those who may stop hoarding every single game that has cards tho
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This is already been discussed here, no need to make a second topic
https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/lGyP9/changes-to-trading-cards
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I wonder what that "confidence metric" is exactly and if they include big publishers like EA, Bethesda and so on, hehe ;>... although they could simply get rid of any monetization of any merchandise whatsoever, to destroy this sub-economy in a heartbeat, but that also would nullify their share, hmm... well, well <:. At least they're doing something, eh :o.
I vaguely remember a game where I gained an achievement simply for opening the options menu, so... let's see how Greenlight Direct adapts ;D.
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Interesting. Hopefully this + Greenlight going away means less of an influx of shovelware and more games with at least some merit.
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So... Imagine gleam or similar site that asks you for making steam status about x game or posting a screenshot xD
This ain't gonna work.
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I would suggest Valve to just cut off ALL market transaction incentive to devs (ie. selling cards on the market give 0% to the devs).
Cards will become cheaper in the market, traders and badge crafters will be happier.
Fake games can no longer make a profit out of card farming.
One might say this will make devs lose interest in making cards available for their games. Cards can still be a purely fan-service thing, devs can still make cards for their fans if they want to, and it might boost a little sales by doing so because of card traders or badge crafters.
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Steam do some changes in the drop cards system, the complete new you can read at the steam site, but I think the important part is here:
Here's what we're doing:
Instead of starting to drop Trading Cards the moment they arrive on Steam, we're going to move to a system where games don't start to drop cards until the game has reached a confidence metric that makes it clear it's actually being bought and played by genuine users. Once a game reaches that metric, cards will drop to all users, including all the users who've played the game prior to that point. So going forward, even if you play a game before it has Trading Cards, you'll receive cards for your playtime when the developer adds cards and reaches the confidence metric.
The confidence metric is built from a variety of pieces of data, all aimed at separating legitimate games and players from fake games and bots. You might wonder why the confidence metric will succeed at identifying fake games, when we weren't being successful at using data to prevent them getting through Greenlight. The reason is that Greenlight is used by a tiny subsection of Steam's total playerbase, producing far less data overall, which makes it more easily gamed. In addition, Greenlight only allows players to vote and comment, so that data is narrow. Steam at large allows players to interact with games in many different ways, generating a broad set of data for each game, and that makes identifying fake ones an easier task.
With this change, we hope to significantly reduce the economic incentive for the bad actors to release fake games on Steam. We're hopeful that this will have little negative impact on other developers and players, with a small number of games having a delay before their Trading Cards start to drop. On the positive side, it should significantly improve the quality of the data being fed into the Store algorithms, which is a good thing for everyone.
http://steamcommunity.com/ogg/593110/announcements/detail/1954971077935370845
Ok, maybe it will be harder to get free cards and make the game you want cheaper, but I think it's a good solution to prevent this kind of games with this purpose.
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