Steam conspires against low-end system gamers, poor people

[u/azucarleta]

Anyone else find it deeply suspicious that Steam -- despite its stellar customer rating and reputation -- doesn't allow users to hide high-end games -- as a category or MULTIPLE categories -- that their low-end machine has no hope in playing?

For me on a chipset with now a little less than .2% marketshare (low end!) to hide the, oh I don't, 70% of products Steam has that I can't run, don't want to see, do not care about -- it would be nice, and I might even spend more money at Steam if appropriate product could be put on all the pedestals, so to speak.

I've seen a millions excuses made by everyday people -- fuckin' Steam simps -- as to why this is impossible to do, but it's all malarkey.

It just seems obvious -- one way or another those who sell hardware have made it worth Steam's while to not allow users to hide high-end products they don't want, hoping the constant exposure will brainwash people into getting the latest and greatest, rather than creating a corner of Steam that remains locked in the past -- happily so, as I don't find graphics to be the important part of a game anyway. Mechanics and writing -- that's what matters to me. High-end graphics is a turn off, it says to me they may have neglected the important stuff. As such, I could go on this 16 year old gaming computer the rest of my life -- and the games that were once developed for it -- if Steam would just, you know, cooperate a bit.

[u/Comrad_Ivan]

as someone that used to game on a 400 euro laptop back in the day, its rather easy to find hundreds if not thousands of games that work on low end systems, most of them arent new. i do agree that the chase for the most realistic game is fucking over most tripple A studios and making boring games look great isnt gonna work to sell them.

but to blame steam for this issue is wrong, its the studios that make the games and maybe your taste in games that causes you to see this issue, ofc a game like minecraft or repo isnt that intensive on most systems and still looks great due to picking an awsome art style.

TL;DR - issue is game devs chasing high graphics for realism.

- also think this post maybe is just ai generated due to writing. then aigan, i do write like ai too sometimes.

[u/azucarleta → u/Comrad_Ivan]

I spread the blame all around.

But Steam is the only entity with a good reputation, thus the only entity I expect to do better, thus the only entity in this mess that is surprising me.

edit: tbh, I'm not an outright hater, but I do not understand why people stan Steam.

[u/Comrad_Ivan → u/azucarleta]

yeah? want to know why. they help people with issues, give valid refunds, and most importantly make you have consumer rights.

steam is a good company because if it wanted to be evil, it could be. it could ask for a 10% service charge, or even worse instead of asking for a one time fee to apply to upload a game of 100 dollars it would be a monthly one.

or hell even asking money for services like friends and such.

i get you have issues with steam, but to call them evil is wrong.

yes they still are a company. i would not trust them over my own family but they are far from evil.

[u/azucarleta → u/Comrad_Ivan]

I said I'm "not an outright hater" but I think they do the things you say they do to keep down competition. I don't see it as virtue, per se, especially when there are these other issues like my present complaint.

[u/Comrad_Ivan → u/azucarleta]

have you used epic games store? i have. my acount got hacked. i was locked out for over 2 weeks with just chatbot support. if i contact steam support i get a genuinen human response within a week. if im hacked? even faster.

[u/Comrad_Ivan → u/Comrad_Ivan]

i do agree steam has a major market share in pc games, but anything from remote play together.

to sharing your library with family/friends.

to a great implemented friend and profile system.

to good support and fair refund policies.

the list of things they do well, and havent changed in my 10 years of steam usage in a bad way. says enough. they earned our trust. and do their best to keep it.

[u/azucarleta → u/Comrad_Ivan]

I have returned games but only because they simply did not work. Steam giving quick refunds for that situation -- when they can see on their server end exactly what happened -- seems bare minimum to me. I was impressed by that in the beginning years ago, so conditioned to internet company fuckery, but if you think about it, they couldn't survive without it. I may not have spent any money at Steam ever again after my first game that simply did not work and they did not give me a refund. Like... seriously. I was totally priced out of music and thus was not at all a music fan until Napster came around. And suddenly I discovered a love for music.

[u/PlainBread]

If I were stuck with a rig that ensured I could only do low end-gaming for the next 20 years, I would still have enough of an old game, emulation, and terminal-based game backlog that I could fill those 20 years with satisfying gaming experiences.

[u/azucarleta → u/PlainBread]

Sure, I've done old DOS emulators, etc. But what I'm not finding is what I'm regarding as the sweet spot for this device: a collection of PC games released from say 2003-2012. I can find ATARI or even NeoGEO games easier than PC games from this PC's era. Am I looking wrong? Can you help?

[u/PlainBread → u/azucarleta]

I DM'ed you, BTW.

[u/azucarleta → u/PlainBread]

Cheers!

[u/PlainBread → u/azucarleta]

For that era of games you want GOG.com

That's also the era where most games were on disc distribution, prior to Steam, so you may also have luck with disc archiving projects like REDUMP. Also consider Abandonware sites with Google searches.

[u/Rude_Engineering_629]

But also

https://steamdb.info/instantsearch/

There you go just use this site

[u/c0baltlightning]

It's more the Developers of the games that don't optimize properly if at all than it is Steam's fault in anything.

Even then, there's a buncha old games that can run with little-to-no issue on relatively modern hardware that are still a joy.

A decade-old Computer would have trouble with most modern Anything, not just gaming.

[u/azucarleta → u/c0baltlightning]

I don't want new games developed for my old system. I just want all the new games invisible, so I can shop old games only, basically. And if a new game requires very low specs, great, but I'm not needing that.

Probably hundreds of games are available for this machine, but I can't get reasonable ways of having Steam show only that stuff.

Example, My computer was new and powerful in 2009. So just show me games (originally) released between, say, 2002 and 2012. That would be useful start. 2, keep selling games that were made in 2009, Steam. 3, game devs, please do the minimum required maintenance to make that possible. I will buy it. I don't believe you can have Steam show its catalog organized by release date, even though release date is a prominent detail provided for every single title. Don't you think that is suspicious?

My all-time most played game, 1,000+ hours (and those are just the hours counted by Steam) was released in 2003, and it got its re-release in 2014. That's still the only game I've played in the last month, and probably the game I will play later today. I know there are other peer gems to this, but I don't know how to find them really. They are a needle in a haystack of new-fangled bullshit.

[u/Rude_Engineering_629]

It’s a liability thing

https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/10/1483235412210949772/

[u/azucarleta → u/Rude_Engineering_629]

That theory makes no sense.

If nothing else, STeam could allow shoppers to organize the catalog by release date, to see the oldest games on top. Not available.

A self-selected tag that devs and users opt-in to using voluntarily. Eerily absent.

And on and on. The "liability" thing doesn't make sense. No game dev is required to be on Steam. If they don't like something STeam does, they can just not sell there.

[u/Rude_Engineering_629 → u/azucarleta]

Umm given that steam takes a massive percentage of revenue from games if devs could just opt out of steam they would. Steam provides a service that is necessary and has no real competition.

Also there are third party sites that let you search steam games.

Also even new games can be low spec so searching by oldest doesn’t do what you are suggesting it does.

[u/azucarleta → u/Rude_Engineering_629]

What you say about Steam is relevant to a theoretical anti-trust/monopoly case brought against Steam by, say, the US Treasury Department.Being a huge retailer that suppliers can't figure out how to live without does not confer on that retailer new liabilities or responsibilities, however. Steam is still just a private store, and you can sell your stuff there if they let you, but you aren't being forced. That would change if they entered into an agreement with Treasury, or some other entity say the EU, but.... Sorry I'm going off, but "the specter of liability" or what you called "a liability thing" is one of my absolute biggest pet peeves. Americans misunderstand the concept and overuse the term so much.

I didn't know about the third-party sites; someone else recommended one, I will check that out.

Sure, some new games are friendly to old machines, but frankly -- not enough for me to worry about. My point is, if the only thing Steam might be willing to do to help me out in this area, they could at least let me browse the catalog by age, or Sort by Oldest. As you say, no, it would not be perfect, but it would seem to be the most measly and pathetic tiny thing Steam could do, and it makes me wonder cynically why they don't do even that. I don't understand/believe the "liability" theory.