My issue with Steam

In my opinion Steam has done a lot of great things for PC. But for me personally it hasn't done a lot. I've bought one game from Steam in 5 years. I built a pc to game in 2011. But after quitting Star Wars The Old Republic, i haven't really felt anything that has kept me gaming in PC. A lot of the games on Steam are shovelware in my opinion. The sales are also overrated as there isn't a lot of games that appeal to me during the sales that i haven't got already.

The biggest issue i have with Steam is the quality control. There is barely any of it. Now don't get me wrong, there are glitchy and half assed games on the consoles aswell. But in my opinion there are way more broken games on Steam than there are on any console. When Steam let's games like War Z, Air Control, Earth: Year 2066, etc. Those type of games do not make it to the consoles and it's becoming bad.

Even though i hate EA as a publisher, i like Origin more than i do Steam. Because i know what games i get( yeah, yeah Battlefield 4 was broken as hell). But you get my point. Steam has too much broken games for someone like me. That's a reason i switched to consoles entirely a few years ago after playing mostly on pc.

The biggest problem with Steam is the community whose mass delusion has convinced them buying hundreds of five dollar games they're literally never going to play is somehow a fantastic deal, when in reality, they're being robbed five dollars at a time.

Now, if you use Steam correctly, it's a great platform, but I challenge every Steam user to look at your library and see how much money you've wasted on games you've never played. You might be shocked.

Hey man, I can't stop myself from a good sale. It's just too hard to avoid.

I would rather challenge them to how many good/great games they have in their library

What a crazy thread... There is a lot of junk on Steam, but that effects me (and most people on video game forums) not at all. I know what games I'm looking for on Steam.. I don't use store fronts to discover games, I use them to buy games I already know I want.

And the sales are overrated? Uhh.... no.

But Steam can do quality control, can they not?

That's just my opinion. The sales might do it for a lot of people, but not for me

Ride i think the problem is more that you are a console gamer and buy most titles you want to play on consoles and then at the same time expect PC to be full of exclusives. That will never be the case, so expecting it is kinda crazy,

So Its not steam, its not origin, its not uplay or PC thats the problem, its yourself thats the problem and you need to figure out what you want to be? either a console gamer or a pc gamer.

Because if you look at it reverse most titles come out on pc so why would you even buy a console? because of the very few exclusives? nah not really but in the end its all a matter of who you are.

@The_Last_Ride: QC for now has been largely relegated to greenlight, which is steam community run (pretty much). Though I think the larger plan is to remove greenlight and let anyone post a game for sale. Greenlight and Early Access have created a vast marketplace that has its fair share of crap, but tons of awesome stuff.. I dunno, I just don't see it as a problem at all to people like us.. People talk about what games are good. Every game has it's own Steam forum, so if you see a random game you seem interested in, just check its forums to see if it is full of bugs or whatever...

What kind of PC do you have? Once I got a decently powerful PC I pretty much stopped buying PS3 games all together.. The games are cheaper, look better, you can mod them, etc...

I've probably wasted more money on unplayed PS2, Wii and 360 games that I paid $30+ over. When I go to my local EB Games, I see equal amounts of shovelware that actually costs alot of money and with one or two employees to help someone out.

Plenty. I played Gunpoint, State of Decay, Guacamelee, Papers Please, Crusader Kings 2, Dark Souls, CoJ: Gunslinger, Tomb Raider, Transistor, Fez, Age of Wonders 3 as my recent games played.

And purchased a number of games during the current sale which have high metacritic scores and great reviews from publications and critics alike and there are more I am waiting on for the last day purchases.

Spotify has a lot of crappy music, but you don't have to listen to it all. If you allow people to decide what to support and pay for then you are going to get a lot of buggy messes. But it also allows for a lot of good games. Some of them are utter crap, some of them are amazing, most of them are decent (or just above mediocre if you're feeling pessimistic). It's like that in all entertainment sectors. Besides, how do you define quality control...? At what point is a game too 'glitchy and half assed' to be allowed on Steam? I don't think really bad games like the ones you mentioned come along that often. They might come along more regularly on pc (I don't know; I don't play on consoles), but that's because there are tons of games being made. I can easily ignore a few turds if I get some gems in return...

@loafofgame: But the music isn't broken

lol, what are you talking about? In addition to all the endless multiplats, there's a huge amount of good/great PC exclusives on Steam. You said you bought ONE game on Steam in five years, so obviously you're just not interested in PC gaming at all.

@harry_james_pot: What i meant by the first comment was that people buy games that are on sale, that aren't necessarily good. They bought it because it was cheap. I go where i feel the best games and the best place for me as a gamer. I've gone from consoles to pc several times and vice versa. I've bought games for PC, just because i haven't bought them on Steam doesn't mean i haven't bought games for pc. I think that's what people think of Steam. Steam = PC games. I've bought them either physcially or somewhere else. You don't have to buy PC games just on Steam you know

@The_Last_Ride: Yeah that is the same for me. I do still play the odd game on PC but I am out of date hardware wise so I can only play older games now. But it is exactly the sort of thing you have just said why I would never buy a top end PC and play exclusively PC.

That being said just because we don't like it doesn't make it bad for everyone. If people like it I wish them the best of luck, but for the foreseeable future I will be gaming on consoles personally.

Hell the graphics are about the only benefit I can see anyway. I prefer a controller, the exclusive games e.g. Real Time Strategy are not my thing, I can't be bothered to stay up to date with hardware just for some extra eye candy and the amount of times I've had a game not work for some indeterminable reason is enough to get tedious.

Whether Steam is or isn't PC gaming is not the point here.. >_>

Yes, people tend to buy games that they won't play just because they're on sale, but that does not mean they're bad games. You're making it sound as if Steam is a pile of garbage, which is completely untrue.

A lot of the games on Steam are shovelware in my opinion

No. There are indeed some crap games on Steam, but so what? They don't really get the spotlight. And on all game's store pages there's a review section and a link to the community forum.. So it's incredibly easy to check if a game is good or not.

The sales are also overrated as there isn't a lot of games that appeal to me during the sales that i haven't got already

Just because you already have all the games you need doesn't make the sales overrated.

But in my opinion there are way more broken games on Steam than there are on any console

There are more PC games than what's available on all consoles combined, so..

@harry_james_pot: I didn't say it was garbage, i just feel there is a lot of games that don't appeal to me personally or aren't that good. PC may have more games, but that doesn't mean better either. PS3 got Last of US and has the most GOTY awards ever. I would rather want something like that, than Train Simulator. But that's just me

- There's also much better performance, all ways of controlling (KB/M, Controller, Wheel, Joystick), more games, cheaper games, and mods.

- Why do people always assume that the only PC exclusives are strategy? There's also Shooters, racing, action, and platformers. Not to mention adventure and city building, which don't even exist on consoles.

lol, so out of all the PC exclusives you pick Train Simulator as an example against The last of Us.. I can't really take this discussion seriously anymore.

Being broken doesn't stop a game from being good. The problem is determining how broken is too broken. Steam can't both allow consumers to decide what they back and then move in and remove what they deem crappy. They have to be careful. And again, the ridiculously bad games like Air Control really don't happen that often.

That was just an example. I am sure there are many great pc exclusives, but none of them really appeal to me.

Then your issue is with PC gaming and not Steam.

No it's not, it's with Steam. I don't have any problem playing games on pc. I have a problem with the quality control on Steam

@harry_james_pot: Playing games on a keyboard makes me want to stop playing games. I admit a mouse is fine but the keyboard which was technology created on similar designs to the typewriter and hasn't changed since is a crock of shit. People always moan about controllers and yet I'm better with a controller than I've ever been with mouse and keyboard. Doesn't mean I can't use a mouse and keyboard I just hate doing so. PC gamers who say controllers are unplayable or whatever sound like sorry ass fools who can't even learn how to use a simple gaming input so go off about how much superior their our of date keyboards are. I've played games online with controller and I was still competitive. I think some PC gamers just need to learn some skill.

Yeah you are right there probably are some exclusives that aren't RTS and they are so awesome I can't recall one from memory, well unless you consider Counter Strike a worthy game which I sure don't. RTS is the most abundant one because PC is the only place they can be played properly. I also hate them with every fibre of my being. Just some more reasons I won't ever go exclusively PC. PC has more games but they are also not that good in my own opinion. I have plenty more I want to play on consoles. Like this Steam sale I've bought Rogue Legacy (not a bad game), Dishonoured and the Bioshock DLC. Not even tempted with anything else.

PCs have higher performance sure and they are cheaper overall but 60fps and being cheap isn't enough to counter the many other things I hate about PC gaming to make me go build a new PC. I've been playing consoles for years at below 1080p and 30fps and never once felt it wasn't good enough.

Are you really trying to make console joypad gameplay superior to Keyboard&Mouse? by using an argument that there hasn't been any development or evolution....... have you tried taking a look at consoles and the gamepad? try to google Playstation 1 gamepad and then on the Playstation 4 or from Xbox to Xbox one.

The small differences you see are pretty much what the keyboard have so its fine that you don't like Keyboard&Mouse pc gaming but at least just admit its all down to your own preferences and not because there is a real issue.

Ride please dont try to pull a fast one and try to blame your own console bias to that Steam (which btw have around 90% of all released games available) has a problem with its games selection.

The only place Steam lacks some QC is on its greenlight program and on its indie scene, but in reality you can just stop buying games there.

@Jacanuk: No I actually think fundamentally keyboards are straight bad. The layout of everything just isn't efficient enough for quick responses. The amounts of times I've died in a game because I've missed a key is beyond a joke. Most of the time in a game I spend god knows how much time remapping all of the keys just to make it bearable to play.

I tend to plug my controller in whenever I can but if the game doesn't have controller support from the start even programs like Xpadder don't offer a seamless transition to controller. Keyboard is one of the biggest reasons I hate playing games on PC. I love games like Civilisation where most of the game can be done with just the mouse.

I'm not saying either one is superior I just think keyboards are out of date. I'm sure people who use them use them well but I personally hate them for gaming for the reasons above.

If you don't like the layout there are plenty of gaming keyboards where you can place most of the keys like you want or suits you the best.

But i have it opposite you, the gamepad is simply to slow and clunky and not nearly fast enough in its response compared to a 6000+dpi mouse or a mechanical keyboard.

So its all down to preference and what we all like individually. But if you have a problem with the normal layout check out the gaming keyboards out there where you have a segmented keyboard and rearrange it like you want.

STEAM can't do quality control in the same way as a console, because the open-system is not limited to one type of CPU, RAM, motherboard chipset, graphics chip, etc. You have to know your own system and to want this is unrealistic.

With great power comes great responsibility.

Oh yes it is! You literally just said none of the PC exclusives appeal to you, how are you gonna like a platform that's full of them?

And as many people have already said in this thread and the one over at SW, those said "quality control issue" does not affect anyone's experience with Steam. I never even heard of that Air Control game before, because I never saw it on Steam's home page. You can easily tell if a game is good or not... You don't even have to research anything, it's on the same page!

If that was true, why was Aliens released on the platform? It was released on all platforms and it was broken as hell. Glitches and bugs everywhere

If the game isent going true Greenlight the problem isn't Steam its the developer who uses their steam option like crap.

But honestly Ride i think you are barking up the wrong tree here and have some strange bias against pc gaming.

Wait.. What? How exactly is Aliens Steam's fault? 0_o

@harry_james_pot: I didn't say it was, but you said it was only indie games

Yep. I think I have learnt from the last week or so is that PC gaming is an alien concept to him. And just wants PC gaming to be console gaming. Which it is not. I personally prefer PC games for its quality, performance, modability, community and quantity of different games, as well as it always being the forefront of innovation. That's just me.

I just get tired of the anti-steam sentiments that pop up every year co-incidentally right during the Steam Sales. It's always someone different too.

I'll leave him to his opinion, while it is ashame that he has been resulting to ad-hominems in similar Anti-PC threads over at system wars, I'll allow him to keep adding to that post count while the rest of us actually play games.

I didn't not say that. What I said that if Steam's lack of quality control on Green Light titles is resulting in a couple of broken games, then it's not a problem because they don't get the spotlight and it's very easy to tell a game's quality from the reviews.

Aliens was released on the PC AND consoles. It has nothing to do with Steam. Why don't you get mad at Sony and Microsoft for allowing that game through?

@illmatic87: LOL... You're assuming... I invite you to my Raptr page, the two most played games there are pc... Is it nice to be a troll? If you've seen me post in other threads, you would know i am not bashin pc...

I've finished every game I own on Steam, with the exception of Amazing Spider-Man 2. That game was really bad in my opinion.

@Jacanuk: Steam can still remove the game if it lacks the quality a game should have