

Gabe Newell's vision for Steam: More choice, more democracy, less Greenlight  - cjh_
http://gamasutra.com/view/news/186168/Gabe_Newells_vision_for_Steam_More_choice_more_democracy_less_Greenlight.php

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greggman
Without a sandbox you're still at the mercy of every game you install. Even on
Linux every game you install could upload the contents of your .ssh folder,
your .mail folder, or ~/Pictures or whatever's in your user folders.

And, even if it doesn't do itself if the game does any networking then if
there's any bugs in the networking code someone can use that as a way into
your system.

Here's hoping Steam can build a sandbox.

Note: This is also the problem with systems like the old PC/Mac/Linux Boxee.
How do I know the apps I'm one click installing can't read my whole HD? I
don't :-(

Apple's App Store, Windows 8's app store, iOS's app store, Android's App
store, and Chrome's App store all try to solve this problem. AFAICT Steam does
not.

~~~
slurgfest
I'm not sure why this is especially more dangerous than ordinary Linux
packages provided by distros, let alone games installed by means other than
Steam. A game is an executable, running any executable with your privileges
provides access to your home directory. That is ordinary design for a Linux
program. What is the home directory for, anyway? Again, it is absolutely
normal for ordinary programs including multiplayer games to use the network.

Connect your PCs to the internet through a firewall and don't install Steam on
production servers.

~~~
InclinedPlane
The point being: right now distro provided packages are screened and vetted,
as are steam games. Moving away from that model has obvious security
implications.

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cobrausn
Part of the allure of Steam is that everything on that service has been vetted
before I ever see it, if not for fun then at least for being a game and not
malware.

Not sure how I feel about this. Sure, the users will catch the problem
eventually and get it pulled, but in the meantime you would be really leery
about downloading something new.

~~~
hayksaakian
This is largely an illusion. Take the war z. They were able to release a
dishonest incomplete game, and it took community outrage to bring it to
valve's attention.

~~~
cobrausn
Again, I mentioned that it wasn't screened (necessarily) for completeness or
'fun' - just that it wasn't malware disguised as a product.

~~~
hayksaakian
I'm not sure if that's ultimately true. The Steam store only has several
thousand apps. When you consider the % that are malware or harmful on say the
android or iOS store, it's entirely likely that steam is being saved by
statistics and possibly basic (automated) virus/malware detection.

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prezjordan
I still want to see a complete redesign of their UI. It's slow, unresponsive,
and I don't even think it's native code. They have the resources to do it.

~~~
lcampbell
If you're talking about the in-client store UI, I believe it's PHP-generated
markup rendered in an embedded WebKit browser. Given that the overlay browser
uses the same tooling and also renders pages slowly, I'm inclined to believe
they're doing something inefficiently, but don't necessarily need to resort to
native code to fix.

Native code may be runtime faster, but there's huge advantages to leveraging
HTML. You'd have to either -

* Define your own serialization/markup for describing a UI, then specify a network transport for it.

* OR, just bake the whole UI in native code and fill it in with data pulled down from an API. Update the binary when you want to make UI changes.

Neither solution comes with the ease-of-development and flexibility that
HTML/HTTP provide.

~~~
prezjordan
I was mainly referring to the steam UI (friends list, library, etc). The store
UI might not have the best UX, but it's not "slow"

~~~
jholman
The store isn't a disaster, but it's slow (multi-second load times). And every
other part of their UI, like loading my achievements for some game, or loading
a Friend's profile page, or whatever, is like using dialup. Load times in
double-digit numbers of seconds.

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SkyMarshal
_> I would buy everything from Old Man Murray. - Gabe_

This brings back memories. One of the funniest OMM game reviews I recall
reading was of _American McGee's Alice_ :

<http://www.oldmanmurray.com/longreviews/56.html>

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james4k
Interesting...while reading this, I started picturing Steam becoming something
a bit more like Etsy, but for digital goods. Anyone else sort of get that
vibe?

~~~
rndmize
Yep. There's a lot of potential for some games to almost go beyond being games
and become platforms - Skyrim, Minecraft - if the community was allowed to
sell material they created for it.

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jiggy2011
Wow, what? They're opening their servers up as a way for anyone to host
anything? How will that scale?

I assume they're going to have to do something to prevent people just
uploading cracked versions of games that are otherwise available for money.

~~~
TillE
The best thing for them to do would be simply to adopt the app store model,
whether it's Apple's or Google's. Open to all comers who can pay the fee, but
with a brief approval process.

Greenlight was a failed experiment, and it's extremely encouraging to see them
acknowledging that. Valve could be, if they want to, _the_ platform for _all_
indie games, not just broadly popular ones. So far they've resisted that, and
I can't imagine it's been a particularly good business decision.

I know people want "curation", but have you seen some of the crap that's
already on Steam? Probably not, because it rarely features on their
storefront, which can always be curated regardless of how many other games
they accept and sell, which might only be found through a search or a direct
link. That's the best of both worlds.

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iron_ball
Nice to see an Old Man Murray shoutout. Last I heard, one of the writers of
that site and other web classics was working at Valve, so maybe some of the
wit and wisdom can live on.

~~~
jholman
Both of the OMM writers work for Valve these days. And you can tell, when you
play Portal or Portal 2. (Or Psychonauts, which Erik co-wrote.)

All of which games you should play, JUST FOR THE WRITING.

~~~
r0s
I want to play Psychonauts but it's just a mess, runs like crap on my fast-as-
hell PC.

This game gets so much nostalgia cred, someone should really clean it up.

~~~
jholman
So, I didn't play Psychonauts until last month. It runs silky smooth on my
5-year-old machine (high-powered machine for the time). So your problem isn't
the game, it's some interaction between the game and drivers, or something.
Maybe take it for a spin on a crappy laptop or something. ;)

And this game has no nostalgia for me, but it is amazing. The gameplay, which
is mostly 3d platforming, isn't the stand-out (though the gameplay is better
than I expected). The amazing thing is the writing, both in terms of
dialogue/voice-acting, and in terms of the plot. So awesome. It's surprising
how few really good writers there are in gaming, and how most gamers
apparently don't even notice, and so the standard is so low. And then you play
a game written by Tim Schafer and/or the OMM guys, and _boom_.

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jiggy2011
Thinking about this a little more, sounds like they are basically creating a
cross platform package manager.

Being able to pull down a game , a movie and a web framework all from one
place and be mirrored on all of my computers could be interesting.

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Shorel
One of the things I would like for Steam is to add the original publication
date of all games (not just the date they added the game to Steam) and let me
sort my collection by that date.

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shmerl
Let him make it DRM free first.

~~~
Semaphor
The publisher can decide if he wants DRM or not. Steam offers both.

~~~
shmerl
They don't discourage it as well and don't give you a way to filter out games
which are really DRM free. DRM free has a few different aspects:

1\. Being able to save the installer and install it at any time without
connecting to their servers.

2\. Having no extra components ("clients") running parallel to the game in
order to play it.

3\. Being able to play without connecting to their servers.

In contrast other publishers (like GOG) have a principal DRM free stance and
simply don't accept games with DRM. This should be the position of
distributors - to discourage DRM proliferation. So if Gabe Newell talks about
improving Steam, let him start with the subject of dropping DRM.

~~~
jholman
I'm fine with Steam supporting DRM for the developers. I wish they would label
it, and label it CLEARLY. When I buy a game, and then go to install it, and
only then find out that I have to install some Ubisoft rootkit, I feel
betrayed.

(yes, if I wasn't so dopey, I'd remember to never buy anything from Ubisoft,
but it's only the worst offender, not the only one)

