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Valve Index - Specifications released.

KlodsBrik
Expert Trustee
1,893 REPLIES 1,893

CrashFu
Consultant
I like to think of the curation in stores like Oculus Home and GoG (and once upon a time, Steam) as being like... looking for a product on Amazon, and selecting the "Two Stars or Above" sorting option.  They typically only filter out the very worst products, or things that aren't safe / legal to sell.

Whereas modern-day Steam is like going on craigslist and buying a cardboard box with the name of its supposed contents written on it.  Are the promised goods actually inside?  Are they broken into twenty pieces?  Does it actually contain a swarm of angry wasps instead?  Who knows!

And honestly, I don't think this "Zero curation" policy of theirs is sustainable.  Sooner or later, somebody's going to  upload a great big virus install package disguised as a free game, and countless people will have downloaded it by the time word gets out and long before Steam admins actually take it down.   When that happens, no amount of issued steam credits or hiding behind a EULA will get Valve off the hook, or get back the customers they'll lose.

So, uh.. those of you who end up getting the Index might wanna be wary of the first Index games to appear on the storefront, unless they're from a trusted developer.  You wouldn't want to be first in line to install anything untested :wink:
It's hard being the voice of reason when you're surrounded by unreasonable people.

pyroth309
Visionary
There actually is an approval process for getting your game hosted on Steam, it's just lenient as long as you aren't breaking any laws or too risky for Valve to host. They recently denied several japanese games over nudity that has people upset.
Their approval process is also for preventing like you said installing spyware or viruses on people's machines. They do check for that.
The refund policy is the protection for buying a game that isnt very popular or is trash. I've bought several VR games that i ended up refunding because they were clearly unjustified in the cost I paid. it's not such a unique thing anymore with the refund policy but steam had it all along.

As far as filtering above two stars, that's actually something I've always wanted and maybe it's possible but I never figured out how to do it. I want to filter based on the percentage of positive reviews and also by the date so like I only want the most recent games in last 3 years with at least an 80

I usually stick to searching by tag and then sort by popularity or what's being experienced now and you can find all the top games pretty easily that way. The other option is stats and look at the 100 games with most players in them. Where it falls short for me is finding the lesser known diamonds among all the dross. Blanket denying the dross to me isn't really the answer because I've seen so many games that came out in bad shape with horrible reviews in Early Access and actually turned it around into great games with continuous updates.

But yeah I hear you, the average person just wants to go find the latest triple a game or the most popular games and jump in. And they should make that easier to do.

bigmike20vt
Visionary
The valve regional pricing thing I actually have a bit of sympathy for. If valve lose that it won't benetfit us it will just hurt poorer countries, and have the added effect of we will lose access to cheap CDkeys. (Poor countries prices will rise ours won't drop).

RE steam being doing refunds since for ever is not true either, it was bought in a few years ago. Over all I like it but it is a double edge sword as it put paid to the fire sales in the steam sales.

RE valves lack of curation and content control it is a mess and it is the easiest way for the likes of oculus and epic to stand out... I get that some like to dig in the dirt for the rare jewel and others are just fundamentally against any form of "control" or censorship, well IF valve are to continue to put everything on their store imo it needs to be in a separated "uncurated" store imo and if we turn a filter on it all just vanishes , then only the quality titles can get voted out of the dross. This has issues with fake sockpuppet accounts so would need to some how be tied to actual reviews from PAYING users as well as some sort of trust system where certain accounts carry far more weight to promote and relegate content from the unfiltered mess. Steam as it stands is imo not fit for purpose.

Fiat Coupe, gone. 350Z gone. Dirty nappies, no sleep & practical transport incoming. Thank goodness for VR 🙂

pyroth309
Visionary


The valve regional pricing thing I actually have a bit of sympathy for. If valve lose that it won't benetfit us it will just hurt poorer countries, and have the added effect of we will lose access to cheap CDkeys. (Poor countries prices will rise ours won't drop).

RE steam being doing refunds since for ever is not true either, it was bought in a few years ago. Over all I like it but it is a double edge sword as it put paid to the fire sales in the steam sales.

RE valves lack of curation and content control it is a mess and it is the easiest way for the likes of oculus and epic to stand out... I get that some like to dig in the dirt for the rare jewel and others are just fundamentally against any form of "control" or censorship, well IF valve are to continue to put everything on their store imo it needs to be in a separated "uncurated" store imo and if we turn a filter on it all just vanishes , then only the quality titles can get voted out of the dross. This has issues with fake sockpuppet accounts so would need to some how be tied to actual reviews from PAYING users as well as some sort of trust system where certain accounts carry far more weight to promote and relegate content from the unfiltered mess. Steam as it stands is imo not fit for purpose.



Yea that was the first thing I thought about with the regional sales, seems to punish poor countries who now have to pay a LOT more for games. 

Yea, my bad on the refunds, you had to jump through hoops to get a refund before they made it for any reason. 

Yea that's pretty much what I was getting at with making good games stand out. You will run into politics there with developers unhappy that their project is being relegated to the B squad but obviously they can do it better than they are now. I personally don't like someone else deciding what games I should be playing so I like that steam is a one stop shop for most everything. At least half of the top 100 most popular games I actually find pretty terrible lol, but kids love them. 


kojack
MVP
MVP
The refund policy only came in after the australian government sued them for breaking consumer laws for not refunding.

I've only ever refunded one purchase on Steam. I bought Tilt Brush for my college's steam account for our Vive, then realised a few minutes later we got a free tilt brush key with it. 🙂

Author: Oculus Monitor,  Auto Oculus Touch,  Forum Dark Mode, Phantom Touch Remover,  X-Plane Fixer
Hardware: Threadripper 1950x, MSI Gaming Trio 2080TI, Asrock X399 Taich
Headsets: Wrap 1200VR, DK1, DK2, CV1, Rift-S, GearVR, Go, Quest, Quest 2, Reverb G2

pyroth309
Visionary

kojack said:

The refund policy only came in after the australian government sued them for breaking consumer laws for not refunding.

I've only ever refunded one purchase on Steam. I bought Tilt Brush for my college's steam account for our Vive, then realised a few minutes later we got a free tilt brush key with it. 🙂



I've refunded many but I own a lot over there. Over 600 last I checked across two accounts. I always go in with intent to give the game a legitimate shot but doesn't always work out. I've gotten refunds out of them before the any reason policy change which is why I flubbed.  I actually had to threaten credit card chargebacks on one of them so yea. 

Luciferous
Consultant
Lot of negative Valve sentiment but let us not forget without them adopting VR early into their ecosystem, where would VR be today.

pyroth309
Visionary
With regards to the topic, this is something that's been on my mind since both the Rift-S and Reverb got announced with LCD's with RGB and the Index is rumored to be LCD as well. Why isn't anyone utilizing OLED with rgb like the PSVR? Is that something Sony owns a patent on or do they just have a unique ability to produce the screens? I am guessing cost is the biggest reason why everyone is going with LCD and just accepting the worse blacks as a tradeoff.
Also, I get that fast switch has the benefit of less persistance but that has me wondering, is "fast switch" a tn panel or an IPS panel? I'm doubtful it's VA since people noticed the blacks being bad and VA usually has decent blacks. What was the panel in the Go? 


pyroth309
Visionary


Lot of negative Valve sentiment but let us not forget without them adopting VR early into their ecosystem, where would VR be today.


Well, Valve deserves a lot of it tbh. I like Steam and I appreciate the ingenuity of Valve as a company but I'm actually neutral about them. I'm primarily a PC gamer, been one since the early 90's and I'm pretty bitter about them resting on their laurels and collecting their billions in income from steam sales and doing very little to advance PC gaming for so long. Sony/consoles have closed the gap. Nvidia and Microsoft also share some of the blame for that.
The next generation of consoles PS5 etc. may actually be the best platforms to game on and I've never felt that way since I've owned a PC in 1992. The graphical differences between the systems are just too small to matter much anymore, especially if they have Ray tracing on consoles. That will pretty much leave exclusive software as the main reason to buy a system and unique exclusive PC titles that aren't trash are getting fewer and fewer. I hope PCVR gets games worthy of utilizing the power of the PC but my faith in Valve providing that long term is low. At least they're a PC only company which is more than I can say about their main competitor right now but something has to give. 

I haven't bought a console at release since the Sega Genesis (usually wait for the hype to cool down and grab one on the cheap lol) but I'm likely going to be grabbing one next year. 

Zenbane
MVP
MVP


Lot of negative Valve sentiment but let us not forget without them adopting VR early into their ecosystem, where would VR be today.



VR would be exactly where it was before Valve existed: Everywhere.

Valve has done their fair share to support the VR implementation of the current times. Giving them less credit is just as folly as giving them too much credit.
🙂