Valve are continuing to roll out more features to help gamers find the titles they want to play, with the latest being Developer And Publisher Homepages which is expected to roll out on June 18th. It's still going to be in a Beta when it's rolled out, while they continually add features.
According to this Steam Partner page, it's currently in a "closed beta" with a limited amount of developers and publishers testing it out. As you can see from the shot above, it looks quite a bit like the current Curator system (see ours for example).
What's even more interesting, is that page talks about franchise pages. So it sounds like publishers would be able to have a specific section for series that have many entries.
I have to say, I actually love the idea of this. Being able to follow specific places, see their upcoming titles and so on, it's a good way to help sift through the noise. You could obviously argue that this is what their respective websites are supposed to be for, but when Steam has so much of the market already, actually having it all there makes a lot of sense.
What do you think?
Thanks, SteamDB.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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The comments on this article are closed.
I like the news, but I'm now pretty tired of how bad the Steam UI is. I think the supposed overhaul needs to be priority 1.
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I'm cool with this so long as we can get a "Not Interested" button on developer/publisher pages, so that I no longer have to do it for every individual game released by a company I'm boycotting.
Can't wait for that UI overhaul, either. Hopefully they'll add the ability to ZOOM THE FUCK IN which would bring it slightly closer to being up to date with the features found in 20-year-old web browsers.
Last edited by Ryblade on 8 June 2018 at 3:23 pm UTC
Can't wait for that UI overhaul, either. Hopefully they'll add the ability to ZOOM THE FUCK IN which would bring it slightly closer to being up to date with the features found in 20-year-old web browsers.
Last edited by Ryblade on 8 June 2018 at 3:23 pm UTC
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Finally I will be able to just click "Follow Feral" and "Follow Aspyr", and be informed about their new releases. :-)
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Comandante Ñoñardo Jun 8, 2018
Finally!
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Quoting: tonRitch.io -style game page is most perfect IMO.
Itch.io really is excellent to use for my purposes. The only feature they need to copy from Steam that I would like would be the ability to permanently delete games from your library.
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I wish they would start curating more and kick the asset flippers off the store for good.
Too much garbage started infesting steam.
Too much garbage started infesting steam.
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Doc Angelo Jun 8, 2018
Quoting: TheSHEEEPSpeaking about reviews, I seriously hope they will remove that thumbs down/up nonsense, since many games simply aren't that clearly good or bad. A simple 5 star system would be much better.
I'm not sure about this. A while ago, I've read about rating systems, and that many professionals are saying that the 5 star system has failed. Looking at Amazon, almost anything has 4 and a half star. Most people give it 5 stars if they like it, some give 4, and people who didn't like it are giving 2 or 1 stars. Additionally to this, no one really knows where the "baseline" is. How do you rate a product you find to be neither good or bad, but sufficient? 3 stars? Or rather 4? Or 5, because you had no "problem"?
If I remember correctly, those professionals said that Thumbs Up/Down systems work better, because the emotion behind both options are stronger, and people wouldn't vote up if they didn't really like it, and people wouldn't vote down if they didn't have a substantial problem with the product or service. In the end, statistically, the result should be more fitting and useful.
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Quoting: Doc AngeloAh... "professionals".Quoting: TheSHEEEPSpeaking about reviews, I seriously hope they will remove that thumbs down/up nonsense, since many games simply aren't that clearly good or bad. A simple 5 star system would be much better.
I'm not sure about this. A while ago, I've read about rating systems, and that many professionals are saying that the 5 star system has failed. Looking at Amazon, almost anything has 4 and a half star. Most people give it 5 stars if they like it, some give 4, and people who didn't like it are giving 2 or 1 stars. Additionally to this, no one really knows where the "baseline" is. How do you rate a product you find to be neither good or bad, but sufficient? 3 stars? Or rather 4? Or 5, because you had no "problem"?
If I remember correctly, those professionals said that Thumbs Up/Down systems work better, because the emotion behind both options are stronger, and people wouldn't vote up if they didn't really like it, and people wouldn't vote down if they didn't have a substantial problem with the product or service. In the end, statistically, the result should be more fitting and useful.
There is no problem in most people giving something 5 stars and 4 if they like the game. What else would they vote?
Someone who likes a game, but thinks it isn't perfect will give 4 stars. If it is a close thing, 3.
Strong emotions are the very last thing you want when you are looking for traceable ratings.
Those "this game sucks" or "best game ever" reviews are a plague. Speaking about that, I'd also simply forbid rating shorter than 500 characters or so. There's no need for and no use in low effort reviews.
You also cannot compare wordless Amazon ratings that are done after using something once (for the most part) with a review written after hours of playing and analyzing something.
Only two review possibilities have the incredible downside that something can only either be very good or very bad. For many games, that just doesn't work out.
The result is that you almost only get reviews that are super positive or super negative or leave the reviewer with a very bad feeling because the rating doesn't reflect the actual situation.
Just look at GOG (or any other service, because I think it is pretty much only Steam doing the "only good or bad" rating system) to see how well it works.
You get far more variety in reviews and a much better glance at what people think.
Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 8 June 2018 at 10:30 pm UTC
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Quoting: TheSHEEEPSpeaking about reviews, I seriously hope they will remove that thumbs down/up nonsense, since many games simply aren't that clearly good or bad. A simple 5 star system would be much better.Yeah . . . although a lot of people use 5 or 10 star systems a little oddly. Like first, if the average rating isn't as high as the person's individual rating, they will tend to rate it 5/10 even if they think it's actually somewhat lower than that in an attempt to pull up the average; or contrariwise if they don't like it they'll rate it 1 to pull down the average. Second, there is sometimes an odd compression . . . I guess you notice it more on 10-star systems, where I've seen a tendency that 10 means excellent, 8 means mediocre, and 5 means horrible piece of shit I wouldn't pollute my precious saliva by spitting on.
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Doc Angelo Jun 8, 2018
Quoting: TheSHEEEPOnly two review possibilities have the incredible downside that something can only either be very good or very bad. For many games, that just doesn't work out.
The result is that you almost only get reviews that are super positive or super negative or leave the reviewer with a very bad feeling because the rating doesn't reflect the actual situation.
Just look at GOG (or any other service, because I think it is pretty much only Steam doing the "only good or bad" rating system) to see how well it works.
You get far more variety in reviews and a much better glance at what people think.
If you would be allowed to read only one single review, a 5 star system would be better, because this reviewer has more range of expression. But the overall rating statistic of all reviews consisting of "recommend" and "don't recommend" has the same effect, while supposedly being more correct and helpful.
I just checked the game list on GOG. Roughly 100 Games have 5 stars. roughly 1500 games have 4,5 or 4 stars (ca. 750 each). There are 2500 entries on GOG. The more you get into the lower territory, the more you get DLCs, digital goodies or sound tracks in there. So it doesn't look like there are 2500 actual games on there, but a lot of the lower rated entries is just bonus stuff.
That means the majority of the games on GOG have either 4 or 4,5 stars. For me, that's not really helpful.
Last edited by Doc Angelo on 8 June 2018 at 11:25 pm UTC
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