… the ability to continually comment on other people’s Steam reviews.
I think by default the option is disabled, but it’s just excellent that it offers such a feature at all. You can’t even do this in Google Maps, Google Play, Walmart, Amazon, or Target, or almost any other platform. But on Steam, unlike GOG, Itch, or other platforms of which I know, you can have an entire conversation with the reviewer about the validity or details concerning their review, where you can flesh out, “Hey, this person actually has no idea of what they’re talking about,” or, “Hmm, this is actually a valid point that I hadn’t considered before,” and even defend the reviewer from other critics in the comments.
I still get concerned about Steam’s incredible dominion over digital games today, but it also blows my mind why other platforms don’t try to copy even just some of its elements more.
99% of the time it’s used for fans of the game insulting bad reviews or the dev being butthurt in a bad review. I don’t blame anyone for leaving comments disabled.
Why clickbait and not put the actual message as a headline? Such as “Despite Steams domination, I like the ability to comment on user reviews”. This is just a little bit short and contains the message. We are not on YouTube for engagements here… Sorry but I really dislike useless clickbait.
I still get concerned about Steam’s incredible dominion over digital games today, but it also blows my mind why other platforms don’t try to copy even just some of its elements more.
Because that is not enough. They have to provide more value than just a few of the Steam features. One of the reasons why consoles (and Epic on PC) tries to snag exclusives, because good games are the most driving factor to use a platform. The other could be features that really distinguish them with real value for the end user, such as GOG with DRM free downloads of the purchased (and free) games.
Copying some of the elements and features of Steam doesn’t cut it, that’s not a reason to switch or buy games on a platform (in my opinion at least). However having some important features such as user reviews will make it more likely not to block and ignore that platform.
I usually leave comments enabled on my reviews. But any negative review usually attracts a torrent of verbal abuse from fans of the game, and then I have to disable comments.
I review a bunch of Steam games, usually of the obscure sort. I always leave the comments on. I feel they can provide additional context that I didn’t give.
Although I must admit that I enjoy fighting with the people who call me mean names in the review comments.
Other platforms don’t copy features like that because community isn’t part of their value. Steam has chat, availability indicators, badges, forums, curator lists and in that lens comments on reviews make sense. I don’t use these features much but they’re there.
I don’t think Nintendo, Epic, Microsoft, Google, Apple trust their customers enough to let them talk to each other. It’s a lot of work to manage, too. They just want to be more like a b&m store, where they control the presentation as much as possible.
Anyone who’s looked at Steam forums lately might see a good argument for not having them, because the average person there sucks. It’s a shame, because it’s often one of the few places you can get a direct response from the developers, but you need to wade through people complaining about woke and demanding refunds because the online population died off like they all do.
Steam Forums is genuinely one of the worst social media platforms on the internet. It pains me how much Valve has allowed the alt-right to incubate and spread propaganda there.
Worse, they’re also quite prominent in Valve game communities (TF2/DOTA2) as well, so they’re poisoning in-game interactions, too.
It’s like the GoonSwarm of Eve Online. Fucking griefers and bullies, that or conservative/religious scum.
Only haters or apologists there. It’s a nut house of extremists.
I don’t understand why people can’t objectively complain or praise something without succumbing to “do you know how hard it is to make a game?”, or “this Dev sucks and I’m never buying another game from them”.
I agree. The last time i looked at the Steam forums it was pretty bad. Comically stupid posts which i only know as over the top satire from other places.
But tbh they always sucked. Sure, there werent constant “this game is woke because it contains women/poc” posts >10 years ago. But otherwise it was always a cesspit for really stupid and awful people. Maybe its really worse than before but the bar was already so fucking low.
I mean nintendo had flipnote… Which shut down because of child predators. They are fully aware of what happens when you have community chat.
It’s unfortunately very possible harmful orgs like tankies, the Taliban, and far-right incel groups got some of their start by recruiting on less-moderated forums like Steam. People who dive the depths find some terrible stuff.
I disable comments on my reviews because the comments are usually low effort shitposts
Much like most reviews.
Overall I love Steam and the policies. But some people treat it like it’s the store version of Jesus. They’re a company their kind of Monopoly they have a ton of issues with gambling mechanics. And they fight the law at every turn on …
Its not a force monopoly situation, just grew organically. Also it is an open platform where anyone can have their games or launcher and shop without Steam, and we have them: Epic Games, GOG, itchio in example. Then there are launchers for specific companies and even specific games. The biggest games on PC aren’t even on Steam, showing they don’t need Steam at all: Fortnite, Minecraft, Roblox, League of Legends and in the past it was more. Steam doesn’t even enforce or do deals to get exclusive contracts.
And that’s not all. You (and I mean by you as if you were the publisher or developer) can sell games on other shops in form of Steam keys, without relying on Steam shop and not even giving money to them (no price cut), but still use the Steam features, client and infrastructure at no cost.
All of these factors show that saying “its a monopoly” is a little bit disingenuous. Market dominance is the right term, not a true monopoly. It doesn’t even come preinstalled on Windows, the most used operating system on PC. Compare this to the monopoly of Play Store on Android, or worse, the Apple Store for iOS. Or any game console! Those are true monopolies.
You’re leaving out the gambling …
Yeah, because that point (my biggest gripe with Valve) isn’t really point of this discussion.
Idk, with steam i turn off comments. People get emotional with “their” game. Its outrageous devs can comment regardless. Ive seen devs being agressive towards the community that way. Needless to say, this particular game stopped service.
A lot of things would have to change before I found Steam concerning.
