I've had a customer service request in for about 4 days now. I know that if/when it gets replied to, the person who replies won't read what I typed and I'll have to explain it again and wait another 5-6 days to get any action. (Before you ask, it's about a DLC that isn't part of their refund policy, so I can't simply refund it.)
Based on Steam's example, I'm not a fan of this concept. They're popular because they have a lot of network effect, not because Steam's any good.
Every single other marketplace even slightly similar to Valve has support that outshines Valve in every single way possible.
EA with their Origin client launch did a fantastic job with customer service and making sure they are keeping as many people that actually use Origin, happy. (yeah we all love to hate them, but they got this one right.) I thought it would go to crap quickly but from my (admittedly limited) experience and what I have heard it is still great.
I am actually scared that should my steam account get hacked I will lose everything. I've used steam for many many years. I've put more money than I should have into it (400+ games) and now I have to be extremely careful that nothing I do screws my account because there is a very good chance that it will go unresolved and I will be out all of that time/money.
Whenever I look to get a game, I buy them any way I possibly can outside of steam before I turn to their platform.
I believe there is time for Valve to turn it around. There are many things they have certainly done right. They've done a great job pushing for Linux, especially since I moved to linux only gaming over a year and a half ago. They've helped Indie developers and modders bring their creations to a unified platform.
And why do they continue to do well with their game offerings?
Steam won because it had first mover advantage. Valve was historically a developer, and it launched Steam with a highly-anticipated game, so I suppose it didn't have pre-existing relationships with its retailers to negotiate. Other traditionally to-retail large publishers didn't get into the online distribution and online DRM game till quite a bit later. Meanwhile, the indie gaming scene exploded, and many of them chose to distribute via Steam.
As for why it continues to be the most popular platform, I presume that they are mostly due to it's reach as a channel as well as its gamification of its platform to encourage loyalty and spending. I think I should let someone who's seen things from the developer side answer this though.
https://books.google.ca/books?id=JEuYpTC-mQYC&pg=PA242&lpg=P...
In short, students walked over the grass, despite the "keep off the grass" signs. The solution proposed by university president Dwight D Eisenhower was "Why not let the students take whichever route works, and then build the walkways over the bare patches?"
The same could apply here. If the rank & file see person X as being necessary / useful, then give that person an official title and responsibilities.
I've also heard a version (or two) in which the campus was specifically one of the top tier US schools for CS (MIT/Stanford/CMU/etc.). The common thread was always that it was supposed to illustrate the visionary status of whoever was in charge, and/or the enlightened status of the company or university. The Eisenhower version would be the oldest one though, perhaps it was the original.
While I appreciate the philosophical sentiment, I think it's both a little naive and a little jaded.
Naive because in practice, there are real disputes, and someone needs to be in a position to resolve those disputes and keep things organized. When the structure is informal, even with great technical people (and often this occurs more often with great technical people), effort will often be spent on duplicate tasks, and the differing implementations will compete for mindshare internally. While that's not always a problem, there are times when the structure needs to be directed so that more important corporate goals can be achieved. If the employees can't operate with unity, they may find the whole company unified with them on the unemployment line in the not-too-distant future.
It's naive because good ideas are not always received well by self-interested actors, especially when you're dealing with people of mixed experienced levels and backgrounds, as any company with more than a few employees is. The manager's role is to make a critical analysis of the proposal and make what is frequently a difficult choice about what will be in the organization's long-term interest.
It's also naive because there needs to be a designated official who represents both you to the company and the company to you. That representation ensures you always have someone to voice your concerns and needs to. It ensures that you understand what the company wants you to be doing instead of having to try to pull it out of the ether, come out with the wrong thing, and find yourself in sudden political turmoil. It ensures that you have an appointee who can advise and represent your cause in sensitive personnel matters, and argue for the value you bring to the company. A good manager serves many very important organizational functions besides just determining technical direction.
Jaded because such a massive majority of managerial structures are so comically broken and useless, that traumatized workers don't understand how they could ever be useful for anything and just want to chuck the whole thing out. Believe me, I beyond sympathize with this, but I don't think it always has to be that way. This is part of why finding a good corporate fit is very important for the job seeker.
Any time you get more than 3-5 people in a room, a political pecking order will naturally arise. That force needs checks and controls to keep everyone safe. Benevolent, mindful leadership from good, fair judges is critical to the success of any group of humans, whether organized into a corporation, nation, tribe, family, or other. We can't discard that principle just because it's hard to find qualified leaders.
"We began to realize that by building a company with a flat org structure, we had done the exact opposite of what we had intended. We had centralized all the decision-making, and we were relying on a secret implicit structure to make progress.
Every company has a structure. If you don't explicitly define your structure, then you are left with an implicit one, and that can stifle productivity. We had hoped that being flat would let us move faster and be more creative, but as we grew, we ended up with an unspoken hierarchy that actually slowed down our ability to execute."
There is no such thing as a structureless group. Any group of people of whatever nature that comes together for any length of time for any purpose will inevitably structure itself in some fashion. --Jo Freeman, "The Tyranny of Structurelessness"
Are they that effective at Valve though? Seems it's not bad enough to cause the company serious damage but are they doing much nowadays? Yes there's the Vive but that's in partnership with HTC who may be providing a lot of the top-level direction.
I get the feeling Valve is coasting along on the Steam cash cow and could be doing a lot more with the people and resources they have available.
I don't buy your reasoning either. Right business move because DotA 2 and their Hats! are a cash cow business, sure.
They don't want to make Half-Life 3, the expansion to Half-Life 2. They want to make something new. They created something new with Portal, which required them to hone their ability to introduce players to an entirely new game mechanic, but now they have to wait for VR to put it all together.
And they're not really coasting. They're at the forefront of broadcast gaming, competitive gaming, whatever you want to call it. I've watched Riot grow, and Blizzard falter in that industry, but I'm damn near positive that Valve has the better framework for the long-term.
Edit: I also think that Valve's primary product is "not having to deal with industry standard financing and deadline problems so we can make games that are actually good without burning out like everyone else does."
Valve seems like the poster child for upsides and downsides of this system.
They release cool games, make lot of money, Hats!
On the other hand, steam is still really clunky and their customer service has historically been horrible.
I've never tried so hard to give a company my money and have them so actively refuse it.