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YouTuber NerdCubed Denounces Steam, Plans on curating own store

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Daniel "NerdCubed" Hardcastle has critiqued Steam in the past, but now he's finally reached his breaking point. Despite being one of the biggest Steam curators—people who maintain lists of recommended games on Steam to help others sort through the madness—he decided to delete his Steam curation page and take his game highlighting services elsewhere. 

~Kotaku

 

 

"It was entirely my choice to delete it after much discussion," he said in the above video. "I've been quite critical of Steam lately, and it felt weird that on one hand I was criticizing Steam and on the other hand I had this list of games on Steam. As such, my logo and videos were being plastered all over Steam. So on one hand I'm being critical, and on the other I'm getting a little bit of ad revenue just from Steam... It felt wrong to me."

Daniel said.

He believes Steam isn't what it used to be. Back in the day, it was a walled garden surrounded by a moat full of genetically enhanced killer mermaids—a storefront that only featured (rare exceptions aside) the best of the best. Everything else was ruthlessly punched and shown the door. People knew they could go there for quality. However, with the advent of Steam Greenlight and Steam Early Access, Hardcastle thinks the quality bar has gone from the ceiling to six feet under the floor

 

 

"Having people vote [on Greenlight] means that if one semi-decent YouTuber of any kind of size goes, 'Hey look, I like this game'—even if it's a piece of shit or has a funny video with it—that thing's gonna get greenlit to the fucking moon,"

It could be anything. I mean, I think with the current setup of Greenlight you're more likely to get on Steam if your game is a screaming, howling piece of donkey piss. A good-to-OK game has no chance. If a game is fantastically, endlessly brilliant or awful, it'll get on. Nothing in the middle will. That just doesn't work as a system. That's a broken system."

Using examples of infamous Steam failures like Air Control and Ride To Hell: Retribution, Daniel further argued that it's in Steam's best interest to have as many games up for sale as possible since Valve takes a 30 percent cut of the profits. Developers used to benefit in spite of that because getting on Steam was like striking an endless vein of gold, oil, and chocolate, but now games get crowded off the front page due to sheer volume—if they even make it that far.

Daniel now plans to create his own storefront by way of Humble and do his own curation there without taking any sort of cut from it—no money whatsoever. In his eyes, that means everybody wins. Developers get more money, and he doesn't have any conflict of interest. He added: "Basically what I've done is gone, 'I'm gonna build my own Steam, with blackjack and Hooker Simulator 2015.''

 

Source: Kotaku

 

 

It's not a bug, it's an undocumented feature!

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He's fucking stupid.

Why?

Almost not related to topic: I'm tired of the Steam store, I mean CoD is fucking overpriced on Steam, 59 euros($67) for BO2?! Are they retarded!?! the retail version costs fucking $20, compared to the steam version which costs as much as the latest CoD.

I'm tired of their shit!

It's not a bug, it's an undocumented feature!

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Why?

Almost not related to topic: I'm tired of the Steam store, I mean CoD is fucking overpriced on Steam, 59 euros($67) for BO2?! Are they retarded!?! the retail version costs fucking $20, compared to the steam version which costs as much as the latest CoD.

I'm tired of their shit!

That's not steams fault it's Activisions, they're the ones who set the prices.

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The three complaints that he made in the video all seem pretty reasonable to me.

 

Greenlight is essentially a popularity contest at this point, where any large scale youtuber coverage tips the vote to yes almost instantly.

 

Early Access isn't a great idea in the most case. Its just games that are half finished and filled with promises, and the devs are getting the cash already. There are exceptions to this, I've personally bought Overgrowth, Prison Architect and Kerbal all of which are regularly updated and with decent content. But all 3 iteratively add things, not like some games which launched with main mechanics missing.

 

And final complaint of his was the state of Steam Support. I've not had a bad time with it, but not a good one either. Luckily for me its always been small things like games not applying to my account. People with actual problems with hijackings and the like can go days and days before receiving any support. It really does need to catch up to the rest of the company and actually start trying. Take a look at Blizzard, I've got nothing but amazing interactions with there customer support.

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IMO origin is a better service.

 

no I'm not kidding.

 

Steam needs help. I love it, but it needs help.

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Well he's correct in that thousands of god-awful games are making their way onto Steam, including outright scams like WarZ and many Early Access games that were never going to be completed by the devs. However this is almost necessary if you want loads of titles on Steam, in particular a plethora of indie titles.

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There is huge amounts of trash on Steam now, there is lots of price discrimination, Steam has terrible customer service, Valve has done nothing for us and takes a huge cut off publishers mostly indie publishers.

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"Wahhhhh, i'm mad that Steam has become more open for devs. Wahhhhh, I'm mad because i bought Air Support when i knew it was a bad game to begin with. Wahhhhh, I want Steam to go back to being a AAA haven."

 

Obviously, this YouTuber doesn't trust people to vote with their wallets. Which, more often than you'd think, many people are more than capable to do so. So, how does he deal with it? Does he deal with it like a civilized person and educate his viewers about games that might possibly be bad like say TotalBiscuit? No... Instead, he denounces Steam, takes his ball and goes home. This guy is a loser in my book.

 

Sure, Steam's Greenlight and Early Access is an easily exploited service but this guy is doing nothing to fix the problem. All he can do is whine about it and hopes it'll go away. Spoiler alert: It won't. This guy doesn't seem to understand that if you want those great, hidden-gem indie titles, you have to sift through piles of coal to find them! This can be applied to any entertainment medium.

 

If people really feel the need to fix Steam, the answer is simple; vote with your wallets!

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Obviously, this YouTuber doesn't trust people to vote with their wallets.

Problem being that people are idiots. WarZ sold many many copies on Steam, despite being an outright scam. Many people are preordering and buying into unfinished games that were never intended to be completed by the devs. People shouldn't, but they do. So no, I don't trust people to vote with their wallets. These companies and devs exist precisely because people don't vote correctly with their wallets.

 

 

All he can do is whine about it and hopes it'll go away.

Thank you for teaching me that I shouldn't bother raising awareness of a problem or try to solve it in any way.

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He's fucking stupid.

He's absolutely right about this though.

 

Why do you think goat simulator exists? Because of this crap.

 

Problem being that people are idiots.

Understatement of the century.

.

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Problem being that people are idiots. WarZ sold many many copies on Steam, despite being an outright scam. Many people are preordering and buying into unfinished games that were never intended to be completed by the devs. People shouldn't, but they do. So no, I don't trust people to vote with their wallets. These companies and devs exist precisely because people don't vote correctly with their wallets.

 

Thank you for teaching me that I shouldn't bother raising awareness of a problem or try to solve it in any way.

 

Thank you for cherry-picking my post.

 

Anybody can raise awareness. That's easy. The problem with this guy is he's doing it in such a poor manner. He presents no answers, no solutions, no ideas. All he did was complain. He does not deserve my attention nor anybody else's.

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"Wahhhhh, i'm mad that Steam has become more open for devs. Wahhhhh, I'm mad because i bought Air Support when i knew it was a bad game to begin with. Wahhhhh, I want Steam to go back to being a AAA haven."

 

Obviously, this YouTuber doesn't trust people to vote with their wallets. Which, more often than you'd think, many people are more than capable to do so. So, how does he deal with it? Does he deal with it like a civilized person and educate his viewers about games that might possibly be bad like say TotalBiscuit? No... Instead, he denounces Steam, takes his ball and goes home. This guy is a loser in my book.

 

Sure, Steam's Greenlight and Early Access is an easily exploited service but this guy is doing nothing to fix the problem. All he can do is whine about it and hopes it'll go away. Spoiler alert: It won't. This guy doesn't seem to understand that if you want those great, hidden-gem indie titles, you have to sift through piles of coal to find them! This can be applied to any entertainment medium.

 

If people really feel the need to fix Steam, the answer is simple; vote with your wallets!

 

TB's videos on bad games still sell them since people will buy it just to see how bad they are or because they think it's funny. It's not like TB doesn't also heavily criticize Valve and how shit the Steam store has become. NerdCubed is a huge gaming channel and publicly pulling support for Steam might have a ripple effect among his subcribers and cause some of them to abandon it as well. Let's be honest here, Valve does not give a single fuck about customers anymore and the only way to change things is to vote with your wallet. What he is doing is simply a different way of trying to get people to do that. There is nothing uncivilized about it, in fact I'd argue that putting your foot down and sticking up for what you believe is a very civilized thing. Why should he feature videos of bad games? Why should he give shit developers, thieves, and scam artists money in order to buy a game and showcase it? 

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TB's videos on bad games still sell them since people will buy it just to see how bad they are or because they think it's funny.

More than that. Simply raising awareness of a product increases sales. There was a TV advert in America that simply repeated the name of the product over and over. Incredibly irritating, but effective enough. All an advert has to do is get the product or company name stuck in peoples heads, make people aware that it exists.

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If nothing else, Steam needs to join the 21st century and get competent customer service. 

These assholes can't tell me they can't afford more CSR after all the "Free to Pay" nonsense they keep encouraging throughout their own games and on Early Access. 

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He's fucking stupid.

 

That's a brilliiant comment, sir.

 

On topic: Dan is right, steam used to be like a humble bundle, GoG, a place where only good games come out, now we have things like dayz... 2 years in early access if a recall correctly, its sad he quit steam curators because i have bought games that he recomended and turned out to be terrific games!

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I agree. GOG is endlessly better than Steam but Steam is a necessity for pc gamers that has become too main stream to just go away now.

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More than that. Simply raising awareness of a product increases sales. There was a TV advert in America that simply repeated the name of the product over and over. Incredibly irritating, but effective enough. All an advert has to do is get the product or company name stuck in peoples heads, make people aware that it exists.

 

Yep the old saying is true: There is no such thing as bad press.

 

Doesn't matter what your intentions are big YT personalities featuring games even spending an hour calling them shit still causes sales to go up. There is a reason only fucking stupid developers try to silence negative opinions.

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You mother fucker. I thought you were a trustable YouTube persona but this was what you all were from the start. You aren't doing this because you care about people or your integrity. You are doing this because you want to take a cut from every game you review. And Humble Store will do exactly that something which Steam would never do for you. Fuck you Nerdcubed. You have lost all your credibility.

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1 comment on this video. This guys says when or if steam pulls shop you have how ever many games and cant play. That isn't true. You don't need any connection/support from Steam to play a game . For instance. Left for Dead. You do not need internet connection at all to play it *shrug*. Anyhow I like a lot what he is saying. When BF3 wasn't on Steam I was super pissed and knew something was wrong.

Gonna cuffem and stuffem. QUE QUE QUE. I love it I love it. :P

 

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Whats sad is that if you go around reading comments on other places this is posted, people are telling him good riddance and siding with how Steam and Valve do things right now. 

Wow. Just wow.

People are becoming complacent with the mediocrity that Steam has become. Fucking eh, ladies and gentlemen. 

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Yep the old saying is true: There is no such thing as bad press.

 

Doesn't matter what your intentions are big YT personalities featuring games even spending an hour calling them shit still causes sales to go up. There is a reason only fucking stupid developers try to silence negative opinions.

Actually: Streisand Effect. 

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