Steam is ridiculously outdated

[minervx]

1) Video content and pages in general load slower than the typical website I've noticed.

 

2) Why is Steam basically a web browser, but only allows 1 tab?  I can understand RAM management, but even if it allowed a maximum of 2-3 tabs, it would be much better.  Maybe I want to examine the page of a particular game without wanting to exit the store?

 

3) Why do the "Details" page of games have info on the news of a title, but absolutely nothing on what the game is about or what it looks like to play?  I need to use my one allocated tab to click several links just to find this out.  Games have tags in the store, but none of the tags are available in the Library.

 

4) Why do the trailers and pictures of games in the store usually have no gameplay footage?  Am I supposed to by a game based on concept art alone?  With an RPG game (which is a very vague description), for example, the preview pics/videos should have real combat and the HUD, so I can at least know what kind of combat system it has.

 

5) Why does the Community section look like its from 2008 and the Details section of the Library look like its from 2004?

 

Considering Valve makes a lot of profits with relatively small operating costs,as well as the fact that Steam is their #1 product and it's truly ubiquitous at this point, I'm surprised that after 2012 they put minimal effort into updating the design?

[AskTJ]

If it is outdated, why is it still used? It works, and that's all people care about.

[xriqn]

You need to upgrade to the beta. It's greatly improved.

[minervx]

I just selected the beta participation option. 

 

I'm surprised on how obscure this setting is.  98% of people won't click it because most of them doesn't even know it's there.  And even the ones that know it's there may have the impression that it's just a few small incremental updates rather than an overhaul.

 

Steam should advertise this more.  Maybe every now and then a pop-up telling people a brand new version of Steam is in beta and where to find the menu to join it.

[WereCatf]

3 minutes ago, AskTJ said:

If it is outdated, why is it still used? It works, and that's all people care about.

Not really. People want games and, for better or worse, Steam is biggest PC-games platform. There isn't really much of any other reasonable platform to switch to, especially if you have already a good collection of stuff on Steam, and that's why people use it. Personally, Steam and their mobile app is such a crude, terrible piece of crap that I'd drop both like hot potatoes, if it didn't mean losing all of my games.

[Sakkura]

Valve time is why.

 

In any case, none of their competitors are any better. They actually tend to be worse. So it's not like there's a big incentive for them to improve.

[minervx]

Initial thoughts on the beta.

 

Main store page is better.

Game-specific store pages are still the same

New social/friends features are nice.

Profile design is nice

It's not any faster or smoother to browse.

Library (when not in grid view) is still ugly

 

I all of the changes and little refinements I notice overall.  But there is a consistency issue when some aspects of Steam are in 2018 and other are in 2004.

 

[WereCatf]

8 minutes ago, minervx said:

1) Video content and pages in general load slower than the typical website I've noticed.

 

2) Why is Steam basically a web browser, but only allows 1 tab?  I can understand RAM management, but even if it allowed a maximum of 2-3 tabs, it would be much better.  Maybe I want to examine the page of a particular game without wanting to exit the store?

 

3) Why do the "Details" page of games have info on the news of a title, but absolutely nothing on what the game is about or what it looks like to play?  I need to use my one allocated tab to click several links just to find this out.  Games have tags in the store, but none of the tags are available in the Library.

 

4) Why do the trailers and pictures of games in the store usually have no gameplay footage?  Am I supposed to by a game based on concept art alone?  With an RPG game (which is a very vague description), for example, the preview pics/videos should have real combat and the HUD, so I can at least know what kind of combat system it has.

 

5) Why does the Community section look like its from 2008 and the Details section of the Library look like its from 2004?

1) Have you enabled hardware video-decoding in Settings -> Interface? That helps at least a little with load-times for video-content and reduces general system-load when videos are playing. It doesn't fix things, no, but it's still better than nothing.

2) Because Valve.

3) See above.

4) Marketing. It's easier to sell people an idealized view of a game and get them hyped on that. Personally, I think it's shit and it irritates me a lot, but not much I can do.

5) See #3 and #2. Also, take a look at their shitty mobile-app, which is even worse.

[AskTJ]

5 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

-snip-

Yeah, but all people are using Steam for is to buy games and to play them. I personally like the look of Steam how it is because it is simplistic, and works for me.

[WereCatf]

1 minute ago, AskTJ said:

but all people are using Steam for is to buy games and to play them

You must have missed all the conversations going on in the discussion-forums, all the artwork and stuff getting posted in the community-hub, all the broadcasts going on and so on. The sentiments made by the OP here do get echoed in the forums quite often, if you'd care to take a look.

[minervx]

10 minutes ago, AskTJ said:

If it is outdated, why is it still used? It works, and that's all people care about.

That's basically the mindset of complacency.  

 

Steam wins because its pretty much the main game in town.  They did it first early on and any company that wants to compete has a lot of catching up to do.  Battlenet, Origin and others are nice little suites for what they are, but none will be the complete package with thousands of games.  I've heard of other services like GOG, but they're honestly not big enough to threaten Steam yet.

 

You could say the same logic about Intel's CPU's a year ago, but then AMD came along and Intel decided it couldn't afford to offer only minimal improvements.

 

[minervx]

4 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

1) Have you enabled hardware video-decoding in Settings -> Interface? That helps at least a little with load-times for video-content and reduces general system-load when videos are playing. It doesn't fix things, no, but it's still better than nothing.

2) Because Valve.

3) See above.

4) Marketing. It's easier to sell people an idealized view of a game and get them hyped on that. Personally, I think it's shit and it irritates me a lot, but not much I can do.

5) See #3 and #2. Also, take a look at their shitty mobile-app, which is even worse.

I see what you mean on point 4.  The purpose of sales is to get impulse buys.  If a trailer shows the HUD and things like that, people will say "oh, it looks too complex." or something like that

[minervx]

5 minutes ago, AskTJ said:

Yeah, but all people are using Steam for is to buy games and to play them. I personally like the look of Steam how it is because it is simplistic, and works for me.

But it's not even that Steam is lacking in features.  If anything, Steam is cluttered with links and words, and things are not streamlined in an intuitive way.

[LogicalDrm]

I'm surprised that someone else besides me has courage to show critique towards Steam. Usually its Origin which gets the hate while Steam hasn't shown anything major for years. Well, if we can count in ability to request refund. Which Origin had before Steam anyway... Considering Origin has been around for 6 years and Steam double that. Steam main UI has been same since 2007/8. They have big picture mode and store has gotten rewamp (which imo is worse than what it was before). But there's much room for improvements.

[Mira Yurizaki]

5 hours ago, minervx said:

1) Video content and pages in general load slower than the typical website I've noticed.

 

2) Why is Steam basically a web browser, but only allows 1 tab?  I can understand RAM management, but even if it allowed a maximum of 2-3 tabs, it would be much better.  Maybe I want to examine the page of a particular game without wanting to exit the store?

Steam likely uses an outdated version of Chromium. And while I can't explain why the main app doesn't have tabbed browsing (at least it'll open a new window if you middle click on something), the overlay browser has tabs.

5 hours ago, minervx said:

3) Why do the "Details" page of games have info on the news of a title, but absolutely nothing on what the game is about or what it looks like to play?  I need to use my one allocated tab to click several links just to find this out.  Games have tags in the store, but none of the tags are available in the Library.

I don't see this "Details" page you're talking about. What specific page is this?

 

Also I don't think having tags in the library is a good idea. Those are community generated and they may not agree with what I want to tag the game with. Besides, you can group games by category and I think they recently added it so you can group them by more than one category.

5 hours ago, minervx said:

4) Why do the trailers and pictures of games in the store usually have no gameplay footage?  Am I supposed to by a game based on concept art alone?  With an RPG game (which is a very vague description), for example, the preview pics/videos should have real combat and the HUD, so I can at least know what kind of combat system it has.

That's more of a problem with what the developer pitched and I don't think it should be Valve's responsibility to make sure the developer knows how to make a pitch. Steam is merely a storefront for them and if the developers can't show you what the game is about, then they're not good marketers and you just move on.

5 hours ago, minervx said:

 

5) Why does the Community section look like its from 2008 and the Details section of the Library look like its from 2004?

 

Considering Valve makes a lot of profits with relatively small operating costs,as well as the fact that Steam is their #1 product and it's truly ubiquitous at this point, I'm surprised that after 2012 they put minimal effort into updating the design?

I don't see any other storefront looking any different than it did since the late 2000s. Steam isn't the only online store service that has UI/UX issues. Even GOG.com's page on a game looks very similar to Steam's.

 

In the end I would ask how would you change things? Like specifically.

[veli2501]

While I agree with the points that you have made the majority of the alternate market places are worse than steam in almost every aspect so I guess that breeds complacency on Valve's part.

 

edit: I actually read the rest of the thread and it seems you had already discussed this point

[Stefan Payne]

14 hours ago, minervx said:

That's basically the mindset of complacency.  

You ever heard about the saying: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"?
Steam ain't broke, so there ain't no reason to fix it

Yes, it looks ancient, feels ancient but still is better than the shit M$ and Sony were able to pull on their consoles.

Especially if you have a larger libary...

 

And that is the important stuff.

Also they have to be careful not to put any security holes in there. That would be really bad for them and its the most important thing, security. But you won't know/see that...

[Guest]

Sites like GOG have gained a lot of traction in the past few years as competition to steam. Personally I’m likely to buy most future games from GOG for the sake of not being DRM Locke’s. Steam is updating though & it doesn’t need to be complex. People hate change-especially constant like the old meme of YouTube changing the layout. 

[Praesi]

The one Tab is realy annoying.

[Selena Anderson]

I think steam is a far better platform than its rivals(Origins, Uplay) not just because it has a vast game library but due to its ease and smooth operations. Its vast library and huge sales on occasions is a plus point for all those gamers who want to buy games at discounted rates. 

[IrshaadH]

Don't fix what ain't broke.  

 

Seriously, it's a much better interface than Origin, UPlay, etc.  The only other game management app that comes close (imo) is Battle.net.

[Peskanova]

I've used steam since launch and well there is a huge improvement  (in my experience) . I remember the time when if you use login when lauching windows you need to finish steam proccess in order to run. 

Maybe , just maybe i was thinking yesterday that steam dropped support for winXP and vista because they are making a new platform. I told to my friend yesterday that remember all the new engines from valve tends to appear with significant generational step-ups , maybe they need to use some win10 feature that shit on our pants , maybe they are waiting for a new engine to make a change. All especulating but I dont think volvo drop support because some random reason. 

[TacoSenpai]

Ok imma take the maybe unpopular opinion here.  All I need Steam for is purchasing, downloading, and seeing user reviews of games and it does just that.

[Mira Yurizaki]

18 minutes ago, LordOTaco said:

Ok imma take the maybe unpopular opinion here.  All I need Steam for is purchasing, downloading, and seeing user reviews of games and it does just that.

I'm pretty sure that's the popular opinion

[Stefan Payne]

6 hours ago, Praesi said:

The one Tab is realy annoying.

STRG + Leftclick

Then you open a new Window...

 

And you can always browse it in your Webbrowser.

With Sony Playstation Network its more convenient than the Console version.