Curators? You mean those intoxicated individuals on Steam who offer troll reviews for games by blending together memes, crude humor, and inane commentary? Why would anyone want to reach out to them and have to deal with them more than they have to? ;P
"Top" Rise of the Tomb Raider curator reviews:
GodLucifer: 666!
Is It Shit?: Yes.
reviews for men: this gets a ridse out of me woo have you seen those uh mountains
Krunchy Naut Krew: I'd raid her tomb
No Curation: ...
SDGT Ent: Expect a review of this game at the link below!
Teasing aside, as far as review groups go, didn't they kinda start dying out already once Steam started shunning reviews from keys?
Well, this development isn't a terrible way to progress if Valve provides standards, oversight, and management to support the change.
...oh, right. Whelp, this is going to be another hot mess, then.
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Just like they did for Steam Greenlight, yet we continue to get trash games. lol
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Teasing aside, as far as review groups go, didn't they kinda start dying out already once Steam started shunning reviews from keys?
Didn't gifts not count towards rating either, if so neither should these.
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pity they didn't get rid of one of the most useless and exploited "features" on steam, curators. instead, they encourage them...
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The community can change things by being involved and giving honest opinions about the quality of the good games or the shite games on Steam ;)
I play them and I try when I can to complete them...Helping others to know when you might want to explore or might want to skip...
If we all try to be honest about what we think about the games we play!
Curation should not always be about promotion, but also to help people avoid "pitfalls"
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Ah, so that's why I got this email about an offer to review a game. My curator has only 22 followers and 13 reviews and isn't very active (more like mostly dead) so I thought that someone was pretty crazy to offer me a free game to review. Now I see that Steam probably recommended my curator to the devs and they were like "Ah, what the hell, let's try this new thing" :)
Now I have to spend hours and hours of my life to seriously consider their offer!
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So, the "Original" curators and similar key extortionists won. They can now get the keys outside the Steam key limitation system.
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The best thing that happened since Valve introduced curators was the setting to disable curators.
By now I've pretty much forgotten that's even a thing.
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The best thing that happened since Valve introduced curators was the setting to disable curators.
So very true.
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Game review groups no longer get a bunch of keys to provide reviews that they don't actually use but re-sell instead, as Steam handle adding the game to the curator's account. Probably won't make a difference for G2A though as I doubt there were that many reviewer's keys on there to begin with.
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99% of the keys sold on g2a are not from reviews so yeah it doesn't make a difference at all
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yep just like that claim the majority of the keys on g2a are bought with stolen credit cards
looking at the top few sellers with more than 1 million sales each, the actual proportion of dev keys vs real keys is probably even lower than 1%
but ofc what do i know these just random numbers that don't mean anything ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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I was just pointing out that you are wrong, as it's an almost certainty that less than 99% of the keys are legitimate (but nowhere near the majority as some claim). Moreover, there was no way for you to confirm such a baseless stat.
Anyway, the issue with G2A isn't just the possibility of reselling stolen keys. It's that they have consistently and systematically crafted their business on shady legal grounds and use parasitic (and in some countries, illegal) tactics to fleece their customers. They have never shown remorse for their grey market foundations and they continue to facilitate a marketplace where it's possible to resell illegitimate keys, all while washing their hands of the entire process. They're just another garbage middleman company in a transient industry.
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Always on the side of bullshit. You should work for scum institutions like police or tax department, or maybe just journalist, it would suit you.
What you just spewed is completely, factually and legally, false.
G2A and co. are nothing but traditional second-hand markets as they've fortunately ALWAYS existed. They are not illegal in anyway since there is absolutely no way to fake/copy a steam key or to steal a physical shipment of keys. This actually is an incredibly good thing that it exists both traditionally and digitally, both for the reason that it obeys the law of offer & demand as nobody would buy on G2A if Steam or official platform had better offer/reasonable prices, but also the consumer laws as it enables people to get their hand on legal products that have been produced or paid-for (because again otherwise they wouldn't exist as they can't be faked) via other platforms, resellers and thus varying offers.
If digital platform actually RESPECTED the centuries old laws of mercantilism and ownership (ie. when you invest your own work to get money, not only does this money belong to you, but everything your exchange your money with becomes your propriety, specifically a licence of access and use to a copy of a product), and had implement second-hand licence reselling, they would not only ensure the control on the licence circulation but also get additional fee money from the reselling. But they don't and that's why piracy thrived and now there are many of those platforms.
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Always on the side of bullshit. You should work for scum institutions like police or tax department, or maybe just journalist, it would suit you.
Wow, that was incredibly rude.
G2A and co. are nothing but traditional second-hand markets as they've fortunately ALWAYS existed.
Yes, a middleman. As I said.
They are not illegal in anyway since there is absolutely no way to fake/copy a steam key or to steal a physical shipment of keys.
Cool. I never said otherwise. I said they established their business on shady grounds, and have used consequent profits to quash any litigation involving their previous practices. It's akin to the Kennedy's making a fortune off of prohibition rum-running, in turn funneling said cash into legitimate enterprises.
If digital platform actually RESPECTED the centuries old laws of mercantilism and ownership (ie. when you invest your own work to get money, not only does this money belong to you, but everything your exchange your money with becomes your propriety, specifically a licence of access and use to a copy of a product), and had implement second-hand licence reselling, they would not only ensure the control on the licence circulation but also get additional fee money from the reselling. But they don't and that's why piracy thrived and now there are many of those platforms.
License. I do agree on the ownership thing, but that doesn't give companies like G2A laissez faire rights especially on international grounds. I'd actually prefer people pirate instead of supporting grey markets, as their continued use only codifies said legitimacy.
G2A today is not G2A as it once was, yet everything today was built on yesterday's foundations. Their failure to hold themselves accountable, at the expense of customers and devs alike, is crappy business practice at best and scum-sucking middleman insertion at its worst.
Not to mention, it's completely relevant to dislike a company for their poor customer service, and this forum alone is filled with countless horror stories.
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Fuck me man, curators already were annoying af and had an inflated self ego.
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Steam review system and curator is getting worse every time they try to make something new
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I really don't get all the curator hate in this thread. Of course there are scam groups or unfocused popular youtuber stuff but I discovered lots of interesting games thanks to some of the lesser-known curators I follow.
Anyway, this update seems terrible. From what I know it just seems like another way for shovelware to, at best bother curators, at worst bother everyone.
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I imagine for most of us it's less an issue with the concept of curators, but instead a matter of having issues with Valve's poor management of it and the limited UI features we have to self-manage it. Think of it like level 0 public SG giveaways- we've nothing against any individuals that are level 0, but we still mostly want to avoid the stress associated with that level and style of presentation. We'd love the ability to better manage interaction with that level, and failing that, the ability to ignore that level except when we ourselves decide to take interest in it. And finally, we most definitely do not want that level shoved in our faces, unable to avoid negative behaviors that are inexplicably site-condoned (if only by virtue of being ignored by site management).
All that aside, Steam reviews in general have a lot of negative elements to them due both to how Valve has mismanaged them and the toxic elements that too often represent Steam's community. For a lot of us, we're just exhausted with having to wade through that mire to get to actual gaming and gaming-related elements.
But no, I don't "hate" curators- I just have issue with how Valve presents them to us, and the fact that Valve mismanages everything they're in charge of. ..Well, I don't have issue with curators other than Doge group, anyway. The inane, crude, high-quantity spam those guys drop makes it hard not to get frustrated with them (and with the inability to block their reviews en masse).
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I've never had any curator content "shoved in my face", apart from the curators I chose to follow who appear on my activity feed (which is good, since I follow them for that specific reason) :x What are you referring to exactly?
(I also don't really get the comparison with level 0 - you can definitely ignore them, just make all your GAs requiring level 1+?)
Reviews are another thing but IMO, despite the stupid meme reviews and Valve's recurrent interference to make them worse and worse, they're still a good way to get information about a game. Just ignore the one-liners, select reviews which look detailed and read both positives and negatives.
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Well, this should be interesting. I've already sent review requests to almost a dozen curators. I'd send more but I only follow joke curators and don't know any decent ones.
Anyways, this is all part of the 'Kill Greenlight' plan they started a long while back, so anybody who follows their blog posts knew this was coming. The hopeful goal is to have Steam user content (reviews and curators) make the Steam Store Algorithm not pick up the bottom-of-the-barrel trash that comes out every day.
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so if you want free games you just create a curator.
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Everytime i open new-game store page, i see reviews from same paid reviewers (with 50-100 friends "likes") and i cant block this trash - there's no button "i don't want to see reviews from this guy". All this curators system and all new volvo changes ducks ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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"Curator Connect is designed to make it easy for you to send review copies to the Steam Curators with the right voice, personality, and audience for your game. Within Curator Connect, you will find the tools to search and filter the list of Curators to find the best fit for your game. Then you can craft a personalized message and send a review copy of your game directly and immediately through Steam. No need to mess with e-mails or keys.
We've opened the feature up to all game developers on Steam now. We'd like your feedback and suggestions.
You can learn more about Steam Curators and Curator Connect in our new documentation on the topic here:
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/curators"
RIP G2A and various Steam review groups
EDIT
Article link: http://www.capsulecomputers.com.au/2017/12/valve-launches-curator-connect-tool-for-steamworks-devs/
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