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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
Can it verify that the player did more than just sit at the main menu? actually started the game?
Also, hopefully this will cut down on long unskippable opening cutscenes.
Valve should require video of a full game launch through Steam, through the main menu and then starting a new game, with at least five minutes of actual gameplay to verify that it’s not a crashy mess.
Also also, it should be required for every major update, not just the initial product listing, along with a list of test platform specs.
At the very least, this would show that the game will at least launch, which apparently isn’t always the case
heroes3 remake on Steam, few months ago :D
What was that download? Like 300KB?
did research… 23.49KB
If it was Epic, they’d be bragging about how fast the game installs.
5 MINUTES!? How about 5 months!? I mean WTF!?
Games with launchers becoming trendy in 1, 2, 3…
That’s a nice way to leverage Steam’s own stats against dumbasses.
