6 ms·

Every time I read about how Valve is composed of only the finest minds in the industry, I wonder how Steam can be a a) slow, kludgy desktop app with inconsisten

Every time I read about how Valve is composed of only the finest minds in the industry, I wonder how Steam can be a a) slow, kludgy desktop app with inconsistent and at times amateurish UI and visual design, and b) a slow, unreliable, glitchy network service.

Afforess 14y ago
At Valve, developers work on the projects that interest them. I imagine the actual Steam client is not that interesting of a task compared to HL3 or Portal 3, etc. Seems worthwhile to mention the (leaked?) Valve Handbook. It explains a lot of this stuff: http://newcdn.flamehaus.com/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.pdf http://newcdn.flamehaus.com/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.pdf
- sliverstorm 14y ago
  Besides, Steam is just a delivery platform. They make money on games, not Steam, so as long as it is good enough...
  - cpeterso 14y ago
    As a gateway to all their games, is Steam critical to the company?
    - intended 14y ago
      It's the difference between being a distributor vs being a creator. Steam is the most critical part of the company for their future.
  - rieter 14y ago
    I would imagine Valve making more money from Steam now than from their own games. Remember they sell a lot of third-party stuff there and take their cut on those sales.
  - doomlaser 14y ago
    They make lots of money on Steam. They take a healthy cut of everything sold on the platform.
codexon 14y ago
There are no bosses at Valve and they have a stack ranking system deciding how much money you make. This means people there don't do unglamorous things like maintenance and stability fixes.
- damian2000 14y ago
  Shouldn't being involved in an interesting project (e.g. Steam Client) mean you'd actually want to see it through to completion and iron out bugs, etc. - assuming the developers actually care about their work?
  - codexon 14y ago
    In theory maybe. In practice, makers are different people from polishers, and Valve's system of hiring the "best" (people with impressive CVs) and salaries based on stack ranking means there is a huge bias towards makers (Who brought the company more money? the person who helped roll out dota2 or the person who fixed edge cases in the steam client?). Many of Valve's products are full of bugs that don't get fixed for years. And since they only hire the "best", they don't have any testers. Many times patches are released that cause servers to crash within seconds (tf2 falling damage crash). And sometimes they release them on Friday which means it doesn't get fixed until Monday (Overflow error writing string table baseline crash). These patches were also mandatory.
    - jacques_chester 14y ago
      What's missing is negative reinforcement. If not through a management hierarchy, some sort of Customer Pain Index is at least required. Every crash, every slow load, every extra click, every reported bug, every support call would push the index up. Edit: though, to contradict myself, this is still as gameable as all hell if you do something silly like connecting it to reward and punishment.
  - svdad 14y ago
    "See it through to completion" != "iron out bugs"
pmh 14y ago
I've always been amazed at how they managed to cultivate such zealotry in the gaming community despite being one of the first developers to push (what was at the time, onerous and nearly unprecedented) DRM on their current user-base. Not to mention both the Steam client and network were significantly worse than they are now.
- trafficlight 14y ago
  Because Steam is easy and it always seems to work as expected. They also have a great catalog. I've spent more money buying games through Steam than I have with any other method. Edit: I forgot the Sales. Those damn Steam Sales get me every time.
- nlawalker 14y ago
  From what I remember, people originally got on Steam because that's how you got Half-Life 2, which the world was clamoring for. They put up with the problems until it got better because Steam was how you played CS and HL. As for the DRM... has it ever really been onerous? The only case I think of is if you don't always have access to an internet connection, and they have workarounds for that, though they admittedly are imperfect. True, the hypothetical/potential failure modes suck - being locked out of your account and losing your games; Valve goes out of business and you lose your games; you're offline and can't switch to offline mode and thus can't play your games until you find an internet connection. That said, I've always been of the impression that most people don't mind Steam's DRM that much because doesn't stop them from doing what they generally expect to be able to do and want to do with their PC games, which is sit down at any PC where they can log in on Steam and play them. This is unlike DRMed music and movie files: sure, DRM prevents you from making unlimited free copies for your friends, which I think most anyone would agree is reasonable, but it also can prevent you from doing things like changing formats or resolutions or storing/viewing from certain devices.
  - jasonjei 14y ago
    There is precedent for software developers to responsibly shut down activation servers, such as Adobe (gasp!) who made available a serial number and software download for CS2. http://autodesk.blogs.com/between_the_lines/2013/01/get-free-adobe-creative-suite-2-now.html http://autodesk.blogs.com/between_the_lines/2013/01/get-free...
dataangel 14y ago
Steam hasn't been slow or unreliable for me in years. They're one of the biggest consumers of internet bandwidth in the world. Also the UI was completely redone in the last year. Maybe your views are stuck in 2005?
- rdl 14y ago
  It's still pretty crashy/unreliable for me, about the same as iTunes, for what should be a fairly simple application.
  - temp453463343 14y ago
    Not to mention it has one of the worst chat clients I've ever come across
- petitmiam 14y ago
  It's irritatingly slow starting up for me. Once it's going though, it's rock solid and fast enough.
- webwielder 14y ago
  I opened Steam three times in the past hour and it updated itself every time. Ask me tomorrow and something else weird/buggy/slow will have happened.
- bentcorner 14y ago
  It certainly gets the job done, but so does IE.
  - vacri 14y ago
    A telling analogy - as it's built on IE. Or at least, used to be.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  Takes considerable time to load for me on Windows and doesn't work at all for me on Linux.
ekianjo 14y ago
And I wonder how they qualify as "makers" since they hardly released any game for years now. And let's not talk about HL Episode 3...
- mwill 14y ago
  That's sort of unfair, I think. Off the top of my head, there was the new Counter Strike late last year, Portal 2 the year before, plus the level editor/sharing update last year, DOTA2 in beta at the moment, constant updates to TF2, recent OSX and Linux ports of most Valve games and Steam, the Source engine and related tools, the Steam Box project, the mod workshop for some games, Steam Greenlight, and whatever games they've yet to announce still in development. Considering Valve Corp as a whole supposedly has a total of only about 400 employees and is acting as a developer house, publisher, and 3rd party distribution system rolled into one, I think they've got a pretty fantastic churn rate. EDIT: Just want to say I wasn't the one who downvoted you.
  - corin_ 14y ago
    They do use outside staff for development, at least in some cases, so perhaps talking about the 400 employees is a little misleading. For example, Hidden Path Entertainment did a lot of work on the new CS title, and Wikipedia tells me they also did some models work on Left 4 Dead 2. I've no idea about the other games, perhaps they are all done 100% in-house.
  - ekianjo 14y ago
    Hey, I do not mind being downvoted anyway. I stick to my opinions no matter if they are unpopular. I know what you mean, but apart from Portal 2 the rest does not really qualify from development from scratch (even Portal 2 is dubious on that aspect, since it takes all the mecanisms from the previous games and expands on it). While I love what they do as a distributor and very much appreciate what they do for Linux support, as a pure game developer they fall short of expectations, and they have not done anything very original for a while. For a company with a "flat organization" that is somehow disappointing.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

Afforess 14y ago

At Valve, developers work on the projects that interest them. I imagine the actual Steam client is not that interesting of a task compared to HL3 or Portal 3, etc. Seems worthwhile to mention the (leaked?) Valve Handbook. It explains a lot of this stuff: http://newcdn.flamehaus.com/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.pdf http://newcdn.flamehaus.com/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.pdf

sliverstorm 14y ago
Besides, Steam is just a delivery platform. They make money on games, not Steam, so as long as it is good enough...
- cpeterso 14y ago
  As a gateway to all their games, is Steam critical to the company?
  - intended 14y ago
    It's the difference between being a distributor vs being a creator. Steam is the most critical part of the company for their future.
- rieter 14y ago
  I would imagine Valve making more money from Steam now than from their own games. Remember they sell a lot of third-party stuff there and take their cut on those sales.
- doomlaser 14y ago
  They make lots of money on Steam. They take a healthy cut of everything sold on the platform.

codexon 14y ago

There are no bosses at Valve and they have a stack ranking system deciding how much money you make. This means people there don't do unglamorous things like maintenance and stability fixes.

damian2000 14y ago
Shouldn't being involved in an interesting project (e.g. Steam Client) mean you'd actually want to see it through to completion and iron out bugs, etc. - assuming the developers actually care about their work?
- codexon 14y ago
  In theory maybe. In practice, makers are different people from polishers, and Valve's system of hiring the "best" (people with impressive CVs) and salaries based on stack ranking means there is a huge bias towards makers (Who brought the company more money? the person who helped roll out dota2 or the person who fixed edge cases in the steam client?). Many of Valve's products are full of bugs that don't get fixed for years. And since they only hire the "best", they don't have any testers. Many times patches are released that cause servers to crash within seconds (tf2 falling damage crash). And sometimes they release them on Friday which means it doesn't get fixed until Monday (Overflow error writing string table baseline crash). These patches were also mandatory.
  - jacques_chester 14y ago
    What's missing is negative reinforcement. If not through a management hierarchy, some sort of Customer Pain Index is at least required. Every crash, every slow load, every extra click, every reported bug, every support call would push the index up. Edit: though, to contradict myself, this is still as gameable as all hell if you do something silly like connecting it to reward and punishment.
- svdad 14y ago
  "See it through to completion" != "iron out bugs"

pmh 14y ago

I've always been amazed at how they managed to cultivate such zealotry in the gaming community despite being one of the first developers to push (what was at the time, onerous and nearly unprecedented) DRM on their current user-base. Not to mention both the Steam client and network were significantly worse than they are now.

trafficlight 14y ago
Because Steam is easy and it always seems to work as expected. They also have a great catalog. I've spent more money buying games through Steam than I have with any other method. Edit: I forgot the Sales. Those damn Steam Sales get me every time.
nlawalker 14y ago
From what I remember, people originally got on Steam because that's how you got Half-Life 2, which the world was clamoring for. They put up with the problems until it got better because Steam was how you played CS and HL. As for the DRM... has it ever really been onerous? The only case I think of is if you don't always have access to an internet connection, and they have workarounds for that, though they admittedly are imperfect. True, the hypothetical/potential failure modes suck - being locked out of your account and losing your games; Valve goes out of business and you lose your games; you're offline and can't switch to offline mode and thus can't play your games until you find an internet connection. That said, I've always been of the impression that most people don't mind Steam's DRM that much because doesn't stop them from doing what they generally expect to be able to do and want to do with their PC games, which is sit down at any PC where they can log in on Steam and play them. This is unlike DRMed music and movie files: sure, DRM prevents you from making unlimited free copies for your friends, which I think most anyone would agree is reasonable, but it also can prevent you from doing things like changing formats or resolutions or storing/viewing from certain devices.
- jasonjei 14y ago
  There is precedent for software developers to responsibly shut down activation servers, such as Adobe (gasp!) who made available a serial number and software download for CS2. http://autodesk.blogs.com/between_the_lines/2013/01/get-free-adobe-creative-suite-2-now.html http://autodesk.blogs.com/between_the_lines/2013/01/get-free...

dataangel 14y ago

Steam hasn't been slow or unreliable for me in years. They're one of the biggest consumers of internet bandwidth in the world. Also the UI was completely redone in the last year. Maybe your views are stuck in 2005?

rdl 14y ago
It's still pretty crashy/unreliable for me, about the same as iTunes, for what should be a fairly simple application.
- temp453463343 14y ago
  Not to mention it has one of the worst chat clients I've ever come across
petitmiam 14y ago
It's irritatingly slow starting up for me. Once it's going though, it's rock solid and fast enough.
webwielder 14y ago
I opened Steam three times in the past hour and it updated itself every time. Ask me tomorrow and something else weird/buggy/slow will have happened.
bentcorner 14y ago
It certainly gets the job done, but so does IE.
- vacri 14y ago
  A telling analogy - as it's built on IE. Or at least, used to be.
jiggy2011 14y ago
Takes considerable time to load for me on Windows and doesn't work at all for me on Linux.

ekianjo 14y ago

And I wonder how they qualify as "makers" since they hardly released any game for years now. And let's not talk about HL Episode 3...

mwill 14y ago
That's sort of unfair, I think. Off the top of my head, there was the new Counter Strike late last year, Portal 2 the year before, plus the level editor/sharing update last year, DOTA2 in beta at the moment, constant updates to TF2, recent OSX and Linux ports of most Valve games and Steam, the Source engine and related tools, the Steam Box project, the mod workshop for some games, Steam Greenlight, and whatever games they've yet to announce still in development. Considering Valve Corp as a whole supposedly has a total of only about 400 employees and is acting as a developer house, publisher, and 3rd party distribution system rolled into one, I think they've got a pretty fantastic churn rate. EDIT: Just want to say I wasn't the one who downvoted you.
- corin_ 14y ago
  They do use outside staff for development, at least in some cases, so perhaps talking about the 400 employees is a little misleading. For example, Hidden Path Entertainment did a lot of work on the new CS title, and Wikipedia tells me they also did some models work on Left 4 Dead 2. I've no idea about the other games, perhaps they are all done 100% in-house.
- ekianjo 14y ago
  Hey, I do not mind being downvoted anyway. I stick to my opinions no matter if they are unpopular. I know what you mean, but apart from Portal 2 the rest does not really qualify from development from scratch (even Portal 2 is dubious on that aspect, since it takes all the mecanisms from the previous games and expands on it). While I love what they do as a distributor and very much appreciate what they do for Linux support, as a pure game developer they fall short of expectations, and they have not done anything very original for a while. For a company with a "flat organization" that is somehow disappointing.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]