Apparently, Valve keeps getting builds that were never run through Steam at all, which is how games end up with broken launch options or missing depots.
Honestly surprised this wasn’t already a rule. The number of times I’ve bought something on day one and the first thing I see is a launcher error or a missing DLL is kind of absurd for a store that takes 30%.
The Steam Deck Verified stuff makes it worse, because people trust that badge. If a patch breaks the game on Deck and the badge stays up for weeks, that’s on Valve too, not just the dev. Five minutes of a human launching the actual depot would catch most of the dumb ones: wrong launch option, wrong exe, Linux script pointing at nothing.
I agree with you but also Steam has the easiest refund process in the entire industry. I’ve had old EA games become fully unplayable because of them switching origin to EAapp and had no way to even ask for assistance let alone get a refund. With Steam you just have to get past the bot and you’ll be fine once you can explain the situation to an actual employee.
Yeah, maybe Valve should have a QA staff that needs to at least run each game to make sure it can get into a game before putting it up for sale.
Do it like submitting a mario maker level. If you haven’t beat it yourself, no upload for you.
These poor guys who have to make Bethesda games
Everyone assumes it’s just to stop the slop, but I had the same issue with gta4. Could not get past its launcher.
I fucking despise Rockstar’s launcher and their fucking idiotic overlay that is bound to the Home button against my fucking will.
“Oh you know that button on your keyboard that you paid for? Yea that’s like, our property while the game runs, fuck you.”
Really the only option is to just pirate it at this point
Actually that shouls have been the only option to begin with come to think of it
Shame on me for buying Rdr2 on sale, should’ve just pirated it and ignored multiplayer.
Thought multiplayer would be similar to the main game. My fucking ass. First random mission I tried had me hauling zombie corpses while getting shot by crazy priests controlling said zombies. Fuck that.
Allegedly, Miyazaki is required to beat every game of From Software (Dark Souls, Sekiro, Elden Eing, etc.) before it can be released.
(There are occasionally glitches that allow you to bypass bosses. For this reason, they are called “Miyazaki’s passways”.)
Japanese standards are hilarious, if you can beat sekiro you are quite good at action games by western standards
Thank you for this confidence boost
-not so good at action game
-made and beat DS3, ER
Love this dude’s hair.
Aaron Mahnke over here with the lore
Chinese subtitles?
Yes, the subtitles are in Chinese. When Sekiro came out, they did a promotion event in Beijing. The interviewee is Yasuhiro Kitao, marketing manager of From Software.
Same reason Mario maker required completion before sharing the level you made.
Of all the Nintendo games that will never make it to Steam, that would be one of the best on PC.
Lol.
Can’t say how many times I’ve screamed “DID THE DEVS EVEN PLAY THIS” while smashing my keyboard.
Honestly, it seems like a lot of devs just get caught up in the coding aspect and forget about gameplay.
Considering in the past, even before AI, there have been games put in the store without an executable file, this rule makes sense and should’ve existed long ago.
What the actual fuck
The last time I hit submit I had three thousand hours clocked on the game
I get the impression this means per specific build of the game submitted to steam, not just the game.
Meanwhile we were so afraid to hit submit we tested for months even if we were just launching a playtest build. Sweating before every early build submission and our steam review.
Even if it was actually a rubber stamp im glad we took so much care and am glad steam is setting up more tests like this.
Pride in creation is so much greater for the knowledge you did it right. It’s so easy to not, but taking pride in your work as you do it is the secret to results you can be proud of.
Don’t stop caring just because others don’t. Do it for yourself. It will show. Proud of you.
Im going to share this with the team thank you :)
Glad there’s some devs who do care. Do You mean any specific title here?
This new law is probably aimed against ai slops or/and super bugged self crashing crap… bethesda :V
I am a co founder of Hermertia Wars. Bunch of indie devs making our dream come true by working on an Action RTS that takes characters from our 13+ year lore playing minecraft community, and makes them heros you control while recruiting villagers, soldiers, and directing economy. Like AOE/warcraft 3 meets smash bros. Early game. We have a long project in mind. Would love new playtesters or meet folks interested in indie dev :). We are also a workers cooperative which is the best part.
For last few days and probably few weeks more, I’m deep diving another game that I just acquired (Soulframe). Hermertia Wars got wishlisted and installed and defo gonna check, may even do some infodump about at some point.
Much thanks for doing games with passion.
Oh thank you! Its most fun with friends as an arena game as the NPC ai is still just getting going. Feel free to join our discord to find other players. We have a mini tournament every Monday night too. :) we hoped to meet other gamers or devs on this journey. Awesome! https://discord.gg/ahZGXCvTH
Hell yeah, when it’s further along be sure to talk about it on here more
You got me intrigued.
Indie, the game type, you being in a workers cooperative, aiming for a long project and thorough development sound so good.
I’m going to join the playtest!What’s the preferred way to provide feedback aside from Discord, which I don’t use.
Looks interesting, just joined the playtest!
But looking back, do you think that after you were done with testing, you could have said: “These tests we’ve run show that our game runs according to our standards” with confidence?
Reminds me of the new Simon the Sorcerer game. The Linux build used a script to launch the actual game. The only thing the script did was to call the game’s binary. Trouble was that they misspelled the binary. Just launching it once would have shown them the error.
deleted by creator
Now imagine the developer who wrote that terrible code starting to use AI to excrete exponentially more terrible code…
The verb form of excrement is to excrete.
The more you know!
Non-native English speaker. Thanks!
But think of how much faster they could put terrible code out!
I mean, this is actually the type of overengineered error LLMs make when coding. Especially back then.
Four months or so Blizzard dropped a new season for Diablo 4 (along with a new game update), while being “Steam Deck Verified” and the new version of the game didn’t launch at all on Linux anymore.
The Proton team had to make an experimental Proton build which took around a day before it was fixed iirc.
So really, even AAA devs can’t seem to test launching their games for all scenarios.
A game can be “Steam Deck Verified” by Valve without the publisher making a request. In fact request by the publisher is the last option after automatic heuristics and Valve identifying a game as improtant.
Ngl, kind of surprised that something like this wasnt the case already.
Five minutes seem unreasonably paltry.
I’d hope it’s on every update (from the screenshot in article seems like last 7 days also works), so they can’t expect the devs to do long testing on small bugfixes.
But also devs will probably do most of the testing outside of steam.
For real.
If it were me, I’d probably be swinging the pendulum too far in the other direction, but I’d prefer that the developers clear the whole game to make sure the whole thing works. Submit enough gameplay data to prove that every achievement is unlockable.
That would just encourage hidden convoluted cheat codes that the devs you use to clear the checks.
Make them play at least 2 hours so they can’t ask for a refund
Lmao
The Stanley Parable devs be like
Every achievement is too much. Some achievements are pure time sinks, and some are designed to be hard to be completed.
I said what I said. Every. Achievement.
(Half joking, but also half serious. It sucks when people accomplish something crazy difficult only to learn that the game is bugged and the achievement fails to unlock or the criteria can’t be met)
Assetto Corsa has something like 700 achievements, because a lot of them are just ‘finish on the podium with this car on this track’.
That was my initial thought, however it may seem unreasonable as some studios develop for multiple storefronts and/or platforms. Should they play the entirety of their game on every platform or storefront, probably, but testing is like security, they don’t really care about it because it’s not a money maker.
I miss the days of old when a game would launch mostly bug free (with a few minor exceptions).
Just getting people to boot the damn build can be like pulling teeth
I think it’s too harsh. The rule should be “devs should be aware of their
slopgame.” That’ll get ‘em. /sEdit: Downvoted for a comment making fun of Steam going too easy on sloppers flooding the indie scene…
For the “sarcasm doesn’t need a /s” crowd; sometimes even the /s isn’t enough.
We are now living in time where the platform holder asks the developers to at least play their game for 5 minutes. The quality bar is that low.
Tim McSweeney next week:
Steam’s terrible choice to demand that developers play their own game is incredibly anti-consumer and is cyber-bullying me specifically. How can anyone compete in such an unfair ecosystem?
Well yeah, he’s got a point. Would you want to be forced to play fortnite?
Those are rookie numbers. I have thousands is hours in my steam game.
5 minutes is paltry. Devs should be required to submit an uncut recording of the first 30 minutes of gameplay from launching via Steam before they can release a game or push an update.
I don’t think that’s an unreasonable demand, cause if a game can’t launch or survive 30 minutes of normal gameplay, it shouldn’t be on the store for people to waste their time and/or money on.
5 minutes is paltry.
Yes, but I feel like this is intended more to curb AI-generated games that are submitted to Steam without any testing. This is just adding a layer of “a human (or something close-enough to a human) launched the game and didn’t find it immediately unsuitable for public release”, which I guess wasn’t there before.
Yeah, it’s “this game can start and the most basic controls work”
2 hours. If 2 hours is enough gameplay to completely lock us out of getting a refund, it’s the bare minimum for devs to play their own game.
100% agree from me on this!
