The Valve and Steam Platform Discussion Thread

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Kinda funny how a company with a few hundred employees whose worth is around $10 billion is still run like a small studio.

The priority is to keep Steam, the client, running. It's a real triumph that it works as well as it does, and it's as flexible as it is. People take it for granted but it's great.

 

[cvv]

That flat structure of theirs sounds fun on paper and the employees must have the fucking time of their lives lounging around in beanbags, sipping artisan latte. But I have this insistent feeling if all companies worked like that civilization would've fallen apart decades ago.

 

[anvi]

Sounds nice for pro experts who deserve the quality of life but for everyone else they are breeding these people:

 

[Caim]

It would be frustrating to work at tbh.

Yeah, that's why it's kinda funny that they're making so much money essentially doing nothing.

The priority is to keep Steam, the client, running. It's a real triumph that it works as well as it does, and it's as flexible as it is. People take it for granted but it's great.

I wonder what percentage of employees is actually involved with keeping Steam running, how many are actually updating the games (you could probably fit the people who do actual work on TF2 in a pair of sedans with room to spare).

That flat structure of theirs sounds fun on paper and the employees must have the fucking time of their lives lounging around in beanbags, sipping artisan latte. But I have this insistent feeling if all companies worked like that civilization would've fallen apart decades ago.

They're located in Bellevue, Washington, so that should tell you what kind of people work there.

Though it would be monumental to watch Valve collapse under its own dead weight, without it being a Gaben joke.

 

[Infinitron]

A complete walkthrough of Valve's forgotten text-based adventure game based in the Half-Life 2 universe, Half-Life 2: PHP, easily both the most forgotten and hardest Half-Life game around!

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

It would be frustrating to work at tbh.

Yeah, that's why it's kinda funny that they're making so much money essentially doing nothing.

The priority is to keep Steam, the client, running. It's a real triumph that it works as well as it does, and it's as flexible as it is. People take it for granted but it's great.

I wonder what percentage of employees is actually involved with keeping Steam running, how many are actually updating the games (you could probably fit the people who do actual work on TF2 in a pair of sedans with room to spare).

That flat structure of theirs sounds fun on paper and the employees must have the fucking time of their lives lounging around in beanbags, sipping artisan latte. But I have this insistent feeling if all companies worked like that civilization would've fallen apart decades ago.

They're located in Bellevue, Washington, so that should tell you what kind of people work there.

Though it would be monumental to watch Valve collapse under its own dead weight, without it being a Gaben joke.

Being the guy who is in charge of looking after the app and having it up all the time is like being the vampire killer in your town.
Have you seen any vampires around? No? that's it.

 

[Caim]

The priority is to keep Steam, the client, running. It's a real triumph that it works as well as it does, and it's as flexible as it is. People take it for granted but it's great.

I wonder what percentage of employees is actually involved with keeping Steam running, how many are actually updating the games (you could probably fit the people who do actual work on TF2 in a pair of sedans with room to spare).

Being the guy who is in charge of looking after the app and having it up all the time is like being the vampire killer in your town.
Have you seen any vampires around? No? that's it.

I reckon that there's a bit more to the job than to just check if Steam is still up, since they do all sorts of promotions and there's the occasional update, but I doubt that they need all of Valve for that.

 

[Infinitron]

You can pin windows on top of the game now, useful for reading notes and such: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/593110/view/3686801719529689367

Steam Desktop Update
Steam Client Beta has just been updated with new features and improvements

Hello! We’ve just updated the
Steam Client Beta
with new features and improvements to the Steam Desktop experience. We’re excited to get these features into your hands for testing, so please check it out and let us know what you think. Here's a quick overview of what's new:

Big changes under the hood...
Some of the biggest changes in this update aren’t immediately visible; much of the work went into changing how we share code across the Steam Desktop Client, Big Picture mode, and Steam Deck. These changes also mean a quicker implementation and iteration of new features. One example of this is the new Local Network Transfer update, which shipped simultaneously in the Steam Client and Steam Deck.

And small changes everywhere else
This update also brings targeted visual and usability improvements across Steam - we've gone through and updated dialogs, menus, fonts, and colors. The main Steam header, Settings, and the game server browser are just a few examples of spots with refreshed UI.

In-Game Overlay
We’ve overhauled the In-Game Overlay completely. Originally created to be a quick way to chat with friends or check on game-related questions or content, we’ve built a brand-new user interface, adding new utility and allowing for more customizability.

The new
toolbar
gives you access to anything you may need in the middle of a game – friends chat, achievements progress, guides, discussions, a browser, and more. We've picked a couple windows by default, and you can pick and personalize the pieces of content you’d like to see in your overlay - settings are saved between games. This toolbar can be switched between an icon view and a list view in Settings.

The
Game Overview
is your one-stop shop to see what’s going on with the game since you last played it. For example, it shows what achievements you have in progress, which friends are playing the same game, top guides, news, and more.

The new
Notes app
lets you jot down... notes about the game that you’re currently playing. It comes with rich text formatting, the ability to have multiple notes per game, and can even be used in offline mode. These notes are saved per game and are synced across to any other PCs you are logged into, and are also accessible outside the in-game overlay, on the game details page.

We've also added the ability to
pin windows
from the overlay, so that they can appear on top of the game while in-game. Opacity level is adjustable, and only the contents of the window will be pinned - excluding the title bar and other extraneous UI. This new functionality is available for Notes, Guides, Discussions, and the web browser (yes, you can watch movies while you play games if you really want to).

Notifications
Steam Client notifications are now richer and more useful. The green button only lights up when there's truly something new for you. The tray view is limited to new notifications, and there's a "View all" page with a historical view.

Screenshot Manager
The screenshot manager has been completely refreshed - it's responsive, you can choose from large or small thumbnails, view recent screenshots rather than by game, and you can manage online screenshots as well as local screenshots.

Mac & Linux:
The technical work in this update also makes it possible to enable hardware acceleration for the Mac & Linux versions of Steam, bringing them up to par with Windows. You should see snappier animations, scrolling and more responsive UI. Linux users can try the new client out today! For Mac users, you will have to wait a couple weeks as we are hard at work getting the client ready for public testing.

Feedback
These features are all now available in the Steam Client Beta, which you can opt into by following these instructions. Work on these features is ongoing, and we would love to hear what you think. Any feedback and bug reports are appreciated – please share them in the forums.

 

[Bad Sector]

The notes feature is useful, at the past i used to run a server in localhost with wiki i was opening in the overlay's browser to take notes in games.

 

[Gerrard]

The notes feature is useful, at the past i used to run a server in localhost with wiki i was opening in the overlay's browser to take notes in games.

May I interest you in this handy tool
https://github.com/LorenzCK/OnTopReplica

 

[Alienman]

Well, this is a new one for me. I got warned for responding with the word "yawn" to a topic that was posted like 10 times already.

 

[ciox]

WE

 

[oldbonebrown]

I've been locked out of my account and the captcha you have to go through to get any support only gives me error messages
very funni haha

 

[Melcar]

Robot detected.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Robot detected.

 

[oldbonebrown]

Robot detected.

I think that they should have a way to get support for those of us who are as dumb as robots. This should not be a barrier to me getting to play Bannerlord.

 

[Bad Sector]

May I interest you in this handy tool
https://github.com/LorenzCK/OnTopReplica

I'm on Linux so it isn't that useful anymore since i can easily and instantly switch between virtual desktops with notes and whatever with Win+Tab. It was mainly useful on Windows where the majority of games freaked out by alt+tabbing.

 

[Infinitron]

https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/3695810094442050670

Updated Online Conduct and Rules and Guidelines for Steam
Beginning today, you’ll see we’ve made some updates to Steam's Rules and Guidelines and Steam's Online Conduct Rules.

These updates are intended to add context and specificity to how we already apply these in practice to all behaviors and content across Steam.

You can read both in their entirety here:

• Online Conduct Rules
• Rules and Guidelines for Steam

 

[Caim]

They should've had a before/after segment to show what changed.

 

[Konjad]

Steam Now Offers 90-Minute Game Trials, Starting With Dead Space​

The Dead Space remake is playable for 90 minutes for free.

By Joseph Yaden on May 15, 2023 at 11:37AM PDT
4 Comments


Valve now offers Steam game trials, starting with 2023's Dead Space remake. Previously, players could buy a game on the platform and then return it within a two-hour window, but this new trial feature makes things a bit easier for consumers.
It seems only Dead Space has a trial available on Steam right now, but the feature may come to other games later on. With Dead Space, you don't need to purchase the game to play during the 90-minute trial period. The Dead Space trial isn't restricted to a certain point in the game, allowing players to explore as much as they want within the 90-minute period.



Now Playing: Valve Talks The Next Steam Deck | GameSpot News
Valve and other publishers are likely watching this new feature closely to see if it's worth implementing across other games. The Dead Space remake is currently available for $48 on Steam. Game trials on Steam are noteworthy since recent PC ports of popular games such as The Last of Us Part I and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor have been poorly received, mainly due to performance issues.
Giving players a chance to try games first could alleviate some of the frustrations of poorly optimized PC games, though it's unclear if Steam trials will become more ubiquitous.

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/s...trials-starting-with-dead-space/1100-6514177/

 

[deuxhero]

90 min time limit really makes me suspect this is inspired by people trying and refunding games. Hour and a half is way too short for anything more than making sure it runs on a machine, especially with most intros being slow.

 

[Konjad]

90 min time limit really makes me suspect this is inspired by people trying and refunding games. Hour and a half is way too short for anything more than making sure it runs on a machine, especially with most intros being slow.

It's still a huge incline. We rarely get demos nowadays, and this is close enough. If it gets traction you can easily check if the game is good without going through the hassle of returning it if it's complete garbage. 1h30m is enough to play an online match or get the idea how the game plays. Sure, you won't know yet if it's a great game or not, but you will certainly notice if it's trash.

 

[Modron]

There are 10,058 demos on steam available to try right now plus who knows how many hundreds (thousands?) more standalone demos designed to be added to your library so developers have a direct news feed to the top of your library. Let us also discount games which had demos months and months before release and removed after launch or the tons of games with limited festival demos.

 

[Dexter]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/group/4145017/view/3719453992486109638

The future of traffic reporting on Steam
New Steamworks tools coming to help understand your store traffic and to protect player privacy
Today we are announcing a set of upcoming changes to the traffic data reporting provided to game developers by Steam. This reporting provides aggregated data on overall traffic to store pages, as well as measuring the effectiveness of external sourced traffic, while continuing to protect player privacy and preferences.

There are three major parts to this update, which will be rolling out over the next few months:

• Adding new data and features to the Store & Steam Platform Traffic reporting.
• Updates to our built-in UTM integration to improve measurement of conversions to wishlist/purchase/activation.
• Ending support for Google Analytics.

Lets dig into some details:

Player Privacy First
All the tools and features that we discuss here are built with player privacy in mind; Steam will continue to not share personally identifiable information. This approach to privacy means that some trade-offs have been made along the way that limits how specific some reporting can be. In most cases, it simply means that any traffic sources that are below a threshold of volume will get reported as "other". We intentionally don't collect or store demographic information about users such as age, gender, or race.

If you're interested in more about our privacy policies, please see our Privacy Policy Agreement.

Updates to Store & Steam Platform Traffic Reporting
The Steamworks back-end already provides detailed reports on traffic within Steam as well as from external sources so you can tell a good deal about how players are finding their way to your store page. For more on the existing traffic reports, please see Store and Platform Traffic Reporting Documentation.

But, through feedback we’ve gathered from game developers, we know these reports don’t include all the information that would be useful in understanding the whole picture of traffic to your store page.

Here are a few of the key planned updates based on the most-requested additions:

• Geographic breakdown
  - Traffic reporting will soon include regional breakdowns for the visitors to your store page. This can be most useful when considering the languages you might support in your game or where you might need to locate servers for a multi-player game.
• Better Identification of external sources
  - Developers have asked to know more about which websites are sending traffic to their store pages. So we'll be expanding the presentation of external traffic sources to detail more common domains.

Updates to Steam's UTM System
UTM helps developers measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns by providing aggregated data on user conversion. Learn more about UTM by checking out the UTM Documentation.

Here are the key updates coming to the UTM system:

• Increased tracking percentage
  - We've been working on better tracking the cases when a player has followed a UTM link from a website and then subsequently hopped to their Steam desktop client to complete the transaction. This conversion data will be reported in aggregate without disclosing any further personal information.
• One-Day Conversion Tracking
  - We're working through some technical issues that were previously limiting our conversion tracking to update on a slower cadence. Soon you'll be able to see UTM campaigns start reporting conversions within 24 hours. Our conversion window then lasts for 3 days, so you may see the traffic and number of conversions increase when looking at stats from previous days.
• Geographic breakdown
  - Traffic reporting will soon include regional breakdowns for the visitors to your store page. This can be most useful when considering the languages you might support in your game or where you might need to locate servers for a multi-player game.
• Visitor device category
  - We'll be reporting the split of device types (just "mobile" vs "desktop") for each campaign so you can generally tell how your audience is learning about your game.
• New vs Returning users
  - We'll be breaking out stats so you can tell what percentage of visits are from new players just learning about your game versus returning players that already know about your game.

Ending Steam Support For Google Analytics
As of this coming July, Google will no longer operate Universal Analytics (UA), which is a third-party traffic reporting system that we've had available for measuring traffic sources to Steam store pages. Their announced replacement will be a system called Google Analytics 4 (GA4). You can read Google's help article about the topic.

As time has gone on we’ve come to realize that Google’s tracking solutions don't align well with our approach to customer privacy, and so with the migration to GA4 we’ve made the decision to end our support of Google's analytics systems on Steam. Instead, we're focused on building the most useful parts of aggregated reporting into Steam itself, as described above.

If you are currently making use of UA, you will find that as of July 1st, your Google Analytics reporting will no longer be getting data from Steam.

 

[ScarredBushido]

Some fuckery has gone down