[Opinion] Dear Steam : Things NEED to change
Today I felt like writing an opinion piece of the state of the PC game distribution platform called Steam. For those who don’t know, Steam is a video game distribution platform for Mac, Windows and Linux PC’s. Steam allows you to purchase games digitally on the internet, and have them downloaded directly to your computer. I can see how physical copies of games are not as convenient when almost everyone has the internet. Apart from being a game distribution service, Steam has a community as well as the Workshop (in supported games) which is essentially is a mod distribution platform (like Nexus Mods).
While Steam offers a convenient service for the PC gaming community, there is still things that need to change. While digital distribution might be the future, Steam feels like the past. For starters lets look at the design of the client. The design of the Store is one of my major gripes with Steam. As a long term user of Steam, I would expect better by now. The whole usability of the Store really needs to be worked on. I really hope that one day soon Valve will listen to the many who agree with me and will improve Steam. The Workshop is another area where I think Steam needs work. Its not the fact that there isn’t content, or it doesn’t work. It is simply the fact that managing mods is a pain, especially compared to using something such as the Nexus Mod Manager program.
Another area of concern for me and many other is the fact that Steam has had many security issues. The last of these being December 25th of 2015. It really wasn’t a hack, but it was a caching error, which potentially revealed personal information from the accounts of others. Thankfully Steam shut down as soon as the error was discovered and promptly fixed, but this is still very worrying. It is becoming harder in the digital age to trust companies with sensitive information. When something as simple as a caching error causes a breach of security, who knows what kind of damage a hacker can cause?
To summarize, Steam is a good game distribution platform, but some things NEED to be fixed, such as the Store (as a whole) and the Workshop (management of mods is horrible). Steam may have the best game selection of all the PC game platforms, but that doesnt mean we shouldn’t have the freedom to use another service. Time and time again I hear people complaining about Origin and uPlay (they love Steam though — its ok, everyone can have their own opinion). I feel like Steam can (and should) learn from its so called “competitors” to create a better game distribution service. I am not saying Steam is horrible and crap in every way, but I just feel like things can (and should change).
