The Valve and Steam Platform Discussion Thread

[Metro]

Like I said, GabeN is the modern day Howard Hughes. He doesn't have to have his idea pay off financially.

 

[Caim]

To be fair, if my net worth was almost 1.5 billion dollars I wouldn't give a shit either.

 

[AngryEddy]

I put steamos on an old PC to kick it around and see how well it works.

If Valve wants to compete with consoles, they really need to step it up on the media front.

Well that, and consumer relations, competitive pricing/sales, hiring an actual support team, stocking their digital shelves with something other than indie abandon/shovelware, and maybe relying on word of mouth that isn't gibbering idiots mindlessly repeating "GABEN, HALF LIFE 3!!"

 

[tuluse]

Well that, and consumer relations, competitive pricing/sales, hiring an actual support team

Uhhh, you think MS and Sony do this?

stocking their digital shelves with something other than indie abandon/shovelware

They're honestly getting there in this department. I believe they're working on getting UE3/4 ported if they do that, like 75% of consoles games will be trivial to port.

 

[LESS T_T]

According to STS, Valve will be adding a "funny review" button, most likely to improve the average ratings by excluding joke reviews.

https://twitter.com/SteamDB/status/555318810547585025

Good one.

 

[Bubbles]

"Funny review" button is now live. You can vote both "No" and "Funny" on reviews at the same time, which I've proceeded to do with all positive Dead State reviews.

 

[pippin]

A Good For What It Is (tm) button applied to games would have been more useful, but Gaben surely doesn't want to hurt any dev's feelings.

 

[Metro]

Not that the reviews are exceedingly helpful but whenever I look at them the top rated ones are invariably stupid two or three sentence jokes so... good change.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

I feel another reviewstorm coming on. Friends at 153 before ITZ begins, let's see how many drop this time.

You need to have used this product for at least 5 minutes before posting a review for it (0 minutes on record).

FUCK YOU GABEN I MOVE WHERE THE SPIRIT TELLS ME



Edit: That'll have to do me for now. Steam funposting is tiring.

Edit 2: 152 friends now, aw yeah.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Just noticed the "funny" rating now. Should help with the issue of "19/10 too much water" meme reviews getting tagged as "helpful" by everyone and pushing the actual reviews to the bottom of the pile. Of course, the fanboys will rate any negative review as "funny", but them's the breaks.

 

[Gerrard]

This button has potential.

 

[Turjan]

There's now a button to watch your friends how they idle their games for cards in the release version of the client (it's already been implemented in the beta, but I haven't opted in into those). So, is this any good?

Edit: Can you make videos of them embarrassing themselves in the game and upload it on YouTube?

 

[Metro]

The broadcast? It's just streaming.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

There's now a button to watch your friends how they idle their games for cards in the release version of the client (it's already been implemented in the beta, but I haven't opted in into those). So, is this any good?

It's good for "HEY BRO CHECK THIS OUT" since it requires essentially no dickery. It's not particularly good for generally streaming shit though, since without the dickery you can't get finicky programs streaming properly.

It also seems like it probably leans on your CPU for the encoding too, which again is a bit of an issue given the lack of dickery. If I'm using OBS I can use Quicksync magical CPU wizardry to encode the video with essentially no performance hit on my end, while Steam streaming can cause a slight noticeable hit.

 

[Turjan]

OK, thanks for the insight. Which reminds me that I've never made a video of any game yet. I should probably look into this.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Edit: Can you make videos of them embarrassing themselves in the game and upload it on YouTube?

If you're capturing the video on your end, sure. But there's nothing in the Steam shit itself to do that for you.

 

[Metro]

If you're on muh friends list you can watch me play Derp Souls.

 

[Turjan]

If I'm using OBS I can use Quicksync magical CPU wizardry to encode the video with essentially no performance hit on my end, while Steam streaming can cause a slight noticeable hit.

I already got excited when I read this, then I remembered that I bought a CPU without integrated video because "what do I need this for".
Oh well. Then again, realistically spoken, I probably wouldn't make much use of it anyway.

If you're on muh friends list you can watch me play Derp Souls.

Thanks. Maybe another time. I think I've seen already too many DS videos.

 

[Metro]

 

[Cowboy Moment]

It's good for "HEY BRO CHECK THIS OUT" since it requires essentially no dickery. It's not particularly good for generally streaming shit though, since without the dickery you can't get finicky programs streaming properly.

It also seems like it probably leans on your CPU for the encoding too, which again is a bit of an issue given the lack of dickery. If I'm using OBS I can use Quicksync magical CPU wizardry to encode the video with essentially no performance hit on my end, while Steam streaming can cause a slight noticeable hit.

Really? I thought In-Home Streaming already used hardware encoding, would be strange if Broadcasting didn't.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Really? I thought In-Home Streaming already used hardware encoding, would be strange if Broadcasting didn't.

Couldn't say for certain since they obscure it, but I was just going off of the performance of Dead State when I was streaming it using OBS versus when people would watch me play with Steam broadcasting using equivalent settings (As far as Steam can, at least). Plus I believe the in-home streaming can use videocard-specific whatsits like Shadowplay but I'm not sure if it uses CPU whatsits like Quicksync.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Couldn't say for certain since they obscure it, but I was just going off of the performance of Dead State when I was streaming it using OBS versus when people would watch me play with Steam broadcasting using equivalent settings (As far as Steam can, at least). Plus I believe the in-home streaming can use videocard-specific whatsits like Shadowplay but I'm not sure if it uses CPU whatsits like Quicksync.

They supported Quicksync before NVENC (the encoder Shadowplay uses) or VCE (AMD equivalent): http://steamcommunity.com/groups/homestream#announcements/detail/1387413317054247916. At this point, I think the drivers and SDKs for these technologies are mature enough that it's not a huge hassle to support them. Practically every modern streaming application does, to my knowledge.

Actually, according to this: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steambroadcasting/discussions/0/624076851231448268/, Broadcasting is governed by In-Home Streaming settings in this respect. Have you tried enabling Hardware Encoding in IHS settings?

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

They supported Quicksync before NVENC (the encoder Shadowplay uses) or VCE (AMD equivalent): http://steamcommunity.com/groups/homestream#announcements/detail/1387413317054247916.

Actually, according to this: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steambroadcasting/discussions/0/624076851231448268/, Broadcasting is governed by In-Home Streaming settings in this respect. Have you tried enabling Hardware Encoding in IHS settings?

Just tested it with Bruticis and by gum you're right. God knows why they decided to have some broadcasting settings in the in-home streaming area (Which I briefly looked at, grunted, and then never used) but wut eva. Clicked enable hardware encoding in there and the performance was much improved while streaming it, more in line with OBS.

 

[Infinitron]

Isometric Half-Life: http://imgur.com/a/jPVgD#0

 

[Curious_Tongue]

I watched a few playthroughs of Railroad Tycoon 3 and decided I wanted to give it a go.

I was baffled to discover that Steam won't let me purchase it in Australia.

It's one thing for a company to direct my purchase towards a more expensive platform in my region, but to flat refuse to sell me a game is just insane.