Valve considers "Cheaper games for non-douchebags" policy

[Kerensky287]

Link (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/110056-Valve-Discusses-Charging-Customers-Based-on-Popularity)

One of Gabe Newell's theoretical Steam payment methods would charge more for players that are awful people.

There are a few standard payment models for videogames today that include retail, monthly fees, and microtransactions. Valve boss Gabe Newell recently called these models "broken," revealing that the company is looking into new ways of charging customers based on the customers themselves.

In a lengthy interview with Develop, Newell said: "The industry has this broken model, which is one price for everyone. That's actually a bug, and it's something that we want to solve through our philosophy of how we create entertainment products."

Rather than pricing a product based purely on what that product is worth, Newell talks about pricing a product based on what the customer is worth as well. "Some people, when they join a server, a ton of people will run with them," Newell continued. "Other people, when they join a server, will cause others to leave."

"So, in practice, a really likable person in our community should get DotA 2 for free, because of past behavior in Team Fortress 2," Newell added. "Now, a real jerk that annoys everyone, they can still play, but a game is full price and they have to pay an extra hundred dollars if they want voice."

Newell also went over how Valve is already charging high-value customers "negative" amounts, such as those that were paid royalties for creating Team Fortress 2 items. "Their cost for Team Fortress 2 is negative $20,000 per week," he said. "You're never going to see that in a retail store ... It's people who make hats get paid. People who are really popular play for less, or free."

Could this be a method that actually reduces the number of people whose internet anonymity causes them to spout an endless number of obscenities and racially motivated comments just because they were gunned down by a sniper? It seems like it might. Not that internet jerks would disappear overnight, but money could be a strong motivator to make someone pat a fellow player on the back instead of tea-bagging him.

Now, don't get me wrong - I love this idea in theory.

But in practice, they're taking the people who would be least happy with this style and giving them the power to ruin it for everyone else. I mean, if you're a white-knight paragon of gaming mannerisms, then that's all well and good, and a bunch of people might rep you, so to speak. But I could just as easily see some asshole giving you anti-rep just because you ended his killstreak.

There are too many people playing for them to effectively monitor this, either, so I don't know how they'd deal with abuse. I could see servers showing up just for people who want to circlejerk their rep points, too, resulting in people who cheat getting much more of a bonus than people who deserve it.

[Bells]

it would eventually turn into Elitism and "trickle-down" gaming rep. There is indeed too many people to keep track of. As such, they will likely opt by let the community moderate itself. Right there you have a problem with International players. Already breaking down into smaller communities. And also casual players, or just the larger base of players that are just fine and regular good people but simply don't get noticed, so they will eventually fall down into this "abyss" where they are worth a lot, but never get recognized for it.

[Osterbaum]

It's a pretty dangerous road to go down on. I don't think this would really be all that great.

[Aerozord]

I have to agree, rep based economy can only function in a system of full disclosure and on a small enough scale that people will notice something is up. Individual servers and clans have this and it works well because effort can be made to verify the claims. Automating the oversight is asking for trouble.

Though they might not leave it up to the players to judge naughty or nice. Like players suggest someone is good or bad, but before actual rewards are issued someone checks to make sure its valid.

The other issue I see is that this is a purely reward system. That has a slight flaw. This forum for example has a rep system where you can only add to it. However no one gets repped for being nice and polite, sure if you aren't you wont get any but everyone views not being a flaming dick as something to be expected and assumed. You get rep for adding contributing in some way to the forum. Make a particularly entertaining post, help someone solve a problem, make a good point in a discussion.

In a game you would get rep for being a good player more then anything. In and of itself that is good especially in team fortress 2 where good player means being a good teammate. Problem is simply being nice or a douche wont factor in much. People are willing to forgive alot of annoying tendencies if you can single handedly down half the other team

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

Yes, because this is clearly a proven system that has been working across the world for thousands of years of human trading and is in fact, how all modern business is conducted
/rolleyes

Eugh, no Valve, just, no.

[Kerensky287]

I don't know the full extent that they're trying this, to be honest. Like, is it the sort of thing where they'll reward people that they HEAR of? Newell was being a little vague.

I mean, yeah, game devs want good communities, and the best way to achieve that is to reward people for good behavior. I don't think that a scholarship-like situation is the way to pull it off though.

[Bells]

they are already trying this on us... didn't TF2 got a "Tutor" or something like that system just recently? Well, be a Good Tutor and Valve will know if good apprentices become good tutors... it's one way to evaluate who well behaved is your player base

[Loyal]

Somehow I doubt he's being entirely serious. Even ignoring the problems of trying to implement this, it seems like an excellent system if you want to hemmorhage cash ridiculously fast.

[PhoenixFlame]

After screaming hysterically and jamming a pair of nails in my eyes, I sat down and thought about this logically, and not even from the player's perspective. From the buyer's perspective it's pretty easy. Either you're getting a discount or some jackass is charging you an arbitrary fee over some nebulously catalogued vaguely definable information.

... Which probably means you'll never buy something from them again.

Maybe they want that? I don't know, that sort of sounds like what the goal is. Still, think of it from a business perspective. How do you adjucate this? How much money do you spend adjucating this? Don't you already /have/ this?

I mean, if you play an online game on VALVE ANTI-CHEAT (VAC/TM) secured servers(TM) via your steam(TM) handle that must run in the background to play your game, you can already get banned if you act like an asshole, thus making you buy the game again (and possibly all of your other games again too) if you want to continue playing or, failing that, achieves the 'you don't play' result in my previous paragraph.

... Why do this to yourself, Gabe? Do you like pain? As much as I do? Oh god, my eyes!

[Bells]

i think the only way they could reward players via their actions would be to Install a bunch of Achievements geared towards that spirit and track those. Of course, even that is somewhat easy to bypass, but still. Provide reward for those who work harder to get them

[Amake]

I wanted to do an MMO like this. (And then I remembered making games is hard.) My thinking was that you could have your character spend time on a job that benefits the game world or players, building bridges, playing doctor, run an item shop, fight the forces of evil, what have you, and that'd give you a discount on your subscription. Whereas if you want to run around and kill low level players, there's jobs and skills where you can do that, but it'll cost you extra.

Translating that to Steam's fractured game world is obviously problematic. Your behavior in one particular game or two doesn't help or hurt the community in any measurable way. To accurately judge your worth to the community, all your actions and every word you say in chat or forums must be counted for extended amounts of time, and weighed by humans who can analyze your patterns and intentions. And as has been pointed out, with the size of Steam's community that's just not feasible.

Yet.

Recall Valve's vision for Steam, which fifteen years ago John Romero described as a bundle of happy thoughts with no support in technical ability and no concrete plans for hardware or software. I'd say chances are good we're looking at the conception of the next generation's big thing.

[Fifthfiend]

I SUSPECT Gabe's taking the piss

[synkr0nized]

I would hope so.


I don't want Billy Everyteen to cause my game prices to go up 'cause he thinks it would totally be lulz to report me as a bad player or something.

Such a system seems like something that could easily be abused, and it also seems kind of stupid even aside from that.

[BitVyper]

Even if it's serious, everyone seems to be assuming that it'd be based on player-given rep. Why? As far as I can see, the article doesn't actually say that. I'm not going to try and list every alternative method I can think of, but I can imagine at least a few that would be better than that.

Edit: Which isn't to say I think it's a good idea. It seems kind of awkward to try and make it work, and probably more expensive for them than profitable. I could see something like maybe expanding who they cut breaks to though. Doing something like giving a monthly discount to people who run major guilds in an MMO (does Valve even make anything like that?) would seem like a not-too-terrible idea. Given certain prerequisites for qualification and some moderation to make sure they aren't rewarding people for running total asshole guilds, obviously.

[Jagos]

Guys and girls, I am a Valve fanboy. As such, I fully admit that I have a bias for Valve and almost everything I say will be taken with a grain of salt.

But let's look at what other companies do versus what Valve does.

Ea - DRM heavy. Registration woes. Hilarity (http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/04/drm-run-amok-how-bioware-and-ea-are-screwing-users-right-now.ars)

Activision - Nuff said.

Ubisoft - Do I really have to talk about them?

Valve - Look at how Valve is cultivating their customers. I have yet to hear them enforce copyright law against anyone. The modders and hackers kind of work in an odd synergy with Valve.

This said, I don't fully support the idea that Valve expresses, though it has merits. How you do this, is going to be a question that Valve may find a unique answer to. He's already said that he'd rather server the griefers more ads as punishment. And he sees that those that add value to the community and help it to succeed do need to be acknowledged of that fact. Examples abound all over the place. The TF2 wiki started as an independent thing, then Valve mainly put their stamp on it. Same thing goes with the Polycount pack or all of the various mods that add value to TF2 and its $20 pricetag.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

While I don't really hae any thoughts about whether the idea is good or not or whether the guy was being serious everyone on the INTERNET~~ZZ seems to be treating it the exact opposite of the way its intedend- they are treating whatever the lowest price of the game possible as the price and then you get penalised and have to pay more.
The way I read it was the complete opposite- the price of the game is the maximum price - and this will bewhatever the game costs now there abouts- and then you get rewarded for being a good community member and get a cheaper game as a result. It's a customer rewards scheme not a customer punishment scheme.


Would we seriously complain if Valve is like "We're going to give some players discounts based on our own criteria and everyone else will get the game the same" that becasue we didn't get a discount nobody should/

[Aerozord]

Valve - Look at how Valve is cultivating their customers. I have yet to hear them enforce copyright law against anyone. The modders and hackers kind of work in an odd synergy with Valve.

Was reading this (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_305/8856-Self-serving-Small-Print.2) where a steam user temporarily and almost permanently lost his entire steam library because of a 3.75 dollar transaction error. Being told flat out that if it wasn't resolved he would remain locked out.

Not saying this is worse, but you said you never heard of them kicking someone in the balls, or being money grubbing, but they were perfectly ok with banning someone from all their steam games for 4 dollars.

[PhoenixFlame]

Would we seriously complain if Valve is like "We're going to give some players discounts based on our own criteria and everyone else will get the game the same" that becasue we didn't get a discount nobody should/

Semantic differences does make the idea seem more palatable doesn't it?

Too bad it doesn't change reality.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

It's not a semantic difference. There is a very real difference between giving rewards for good behaviour and giving punishments for bad behaviour. Especially when one of those two behaviours is a business model used by uncountable numbers of major consumer based businesses and that one also being the model that Valve would choose.
Like if you go protesting your local subway every time smeone gets a free sub because they have bought 6 subs in the past then I'll accedpt your argument.

[rpgdemon]

Like if you go protesting your local subway every time smeone gets a free sub because they have bought 6 subs in the past then I'll accedpt your argument.

That is a thing that happens?! Why did no one tell me?!

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Get a subcard. Scan your subcard. Get free subway.
It's pretty simple.

[rpgdemon]

Why did no one tell me this? And furthermore, does Quiznos have a similar deal? It's marginally closer to campus, but Subway subs are better.

[synkr0nized]

Even if it's serious, everyone seems to be assuming that it'd be based on player-given rep. Why? As far as I can see, the article doesn't actually say that. I'm not going to try and list every alternative method I can think of, but I can imagine at least a few that would be better than that.

I'd like to hear a few, as I am wondering how Valve can program Steam to detect when I aid a team-mate or complete the objective instead of going for more kills in an FPS, for example, without other players having control of rating me.


I agree that the idea that you're getting penalised and paying more isn't the right angle, though it is the one I took with my previous post. Still, the only clear example I see in that article is for folks who contributed hats to the TF2 community, and that seems like a special and easily identifiable case. And not really similar to then the mention of folks who, "when they join a server, will cause others to leave". How are these "jerks" going to be detected to make them pay more for voice in DotA 2, as noted as an example?

I also shouldn't complain, as without such a system we'd all just be paying the regular price or a sale price, but I am sure I will be jealous of a bunch of guys who add to a wiki or post often on their forum boards getting a better price than me just because I don't care to hang out where they do. Damnit, NPF, where're my free things? What connections are you offering to me?!


@Jagos: Your post seems a little off-topic. I mean, was that a defense of this idea via examples of poor behaviour in other companies?

[Jagos]

@Jagos: Your post seems a little off-topic. I mean, was that a defense of this idea via examples of poor behaviour in other companies?

It's to show how other companies use DRM to hit legal customers over the head with these types of issues. It's also to say that Valve does a better job of adding value to their games than EA, Activision, or a number of other developers.

I wouldn't doubt that if any company could make it work, Valve can. But you can take it with a grain of salt, because I still admit to being a biased party in this. I don't know how exactly Valve could track the wiki followers (making sure they get hats for their hardwork) along with Polycount (who may play but might not have accounts linked up to Steam) but it's safe to say that Valve can find ways to give them discounts depending on what they do in game. Perhaps the new video replay could also help by showing mods or something. Not sure, but just a few ideas.

[Aldurin]

This would be okay except that I wouldn't even trust the Valve employees or hand-picked moderators that go through months of meditative training to judge my performance.

It also isn't too much of a stretch that you could get marked down for something considered "spamming" by the tournaments.

I mean, FUCK YES I would like free games for being a polite gamer online but the potential abuse is too much of a risk.