Future of Steam Store

like i said in its comments section..

a whole lot of detail went into stating "we added reasons you might like this game feature". yet no details at all on why gifting was heavily restricted.

Well, let's see what their other two posts will say.

I expected something much worse with a title like that

And for those who haven't seen it yet Reddit Thread about people asking Steam to bring back gifting

It's a pretty good read. The Blog post is completely worthless. I'm not sure who their PR person is but they need to be fired.

I left a hate comment there. xD Also, wtf is that Steam Direct, I wonder. Another way for them to get more money? o.O They're a joke, a f@cking joke.

Following that, we'll talk about Steam Direct's publishing fee, and how we're approaching that decision.

I'm guessing the future is to restrict everything except steam store.

We should do some basic checks to make sure the game works, and we now do that on every title - but not insert our own tastes as a filter between what developers want to make and what players want to play.

Translation: we now at least check if the supplied EXE even starts up, but beyond that, we don't give a shit even if it is a copyright-infringing asset flip.

As much as the online conversation is dominated by indie titles, there's a huge audience of players who just want to buy AAA titles.

Translation: shit, we don't have that many exclusives any more because we are getting known as the store with the thousands of indie shit.

The problem with black box algorithms like this is that it's hard to know when they aren't working as intended. Did we not show a game to a player because the algorithm correctly guessed that the player wouldn't be interested in it? Or because there were other games it thought the player would be more interested in? Or just because of a bug?

Translation: we actually always showed the newest and most expensive games and hoped you can come up with a made-up excuse from the listed ones to convince yourself it actually had some real reason behind it.

We had similar problems in the Dota 2 matchmaking system, which was also a black box algorithm. We found that when we better exposed the data around the black box (in that case, the matchmaking ranks of the players), our players understood the black box better, and as a result, were able to better identify cases where it wasn't working correctly.

Translation: yes, we know Dota 2 matchmaking is shit, but we made up nice explanations on why we never really did anything about it.

So we're going to do the same with the Steam Store.

Translation: errr… they will do the same to the Steam store.

We want to show you more of what it's doing and why - and we have some features planned to help with this, starting with one we're launching today: an algorithm section on game pages that states why the Store thinks this game will (or will not) be interesting to you.

Translation: we made up even more vaguely-sounding bullshit excuses to push expensive games on you, and now they have nice and colourful badges around them!

For instance, knowing that a particular friend or curator likes or dislikes a game might make it clearer whether you'd like it.

Translation: gods, we really hope the Y generation is really as much of a flock of sheep who follow the opinion of some internet celebrity persona instead of making their own choices as the latest US elections indicate…

Hopefully this post gives you a better understanding of what we're trying to do with the Steam Store.

translation: I have written 1500 words so far without any actual meaningful content or telling you anything solid. As you can see, I work either on the marketing or the HR department.

In our next post, we'll be covering the ways that bad actors have been gaming the Store algorithms to create revenue for themselves, which confuses our algorithms enough that it starts serving customers less effectively. We'll cover some changes that we believe should tackle the problem.

Translation: We were kinda struck with a few money-laundering and other assorted charges, so I guess after 3 or so years we might as well start pretending we actually care. By the way, did you know that you can sell CS:GO items for 1800 USD on the Steam market now?

Following that, we'll talk about Steam Direct's publishing fee, and how we're approaching that decision.

Translation: Yes, we know that this is what everyone talks about, considering this is where Direct will fall or not. But we don't tell, because the average mental age of the financial and marketing department is 3. We are sure that not telling the core financial aspect of our new venture will make it especially alluring to our future partners, who just love being kept in the absolute dark.

This wall of text about how user-friendly steam wants to be only to cover that part where they completely wiped steam gifts as a thing.

Jesus, What a bunch of nothing. What a boring and mostly useless read.

I can't wait what they cooked up for Steam Direct, Instead incredibly high prices, they should invest more time into publishing quality products and checking every game that gets uploaded.

In what world do customers compete for digital goods? And there is absolutely no conflict in two customers wanting different products. Bleh

pathetic

TL;DR: we want to sound friendly, so we will add a wall of text here...

This guy needs to learn how to do TLDR

Gifts disabled, i dont care about steam store anymore.. do anything u want steam :D

Was nice to easily see if a friend in your list had a game or not by it's avatar, guess that's removed too with a big flashy do you want to buy this game for your friends crap.

35 of your friends want this game. If you enjoyed it, consider buying it for them!

If only I could Valve ... if only I could -.-.