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.
Everyone assumes it’s just to stop the slop, but I had the same issue with gta4. Could not get past its launcher.
Same reason Mario maker required completion before sharing the level you made.
Allegedly, Miyazaki is required to beat every game of From Software (Dark Souls, Sekiro, Elden Eing, etc.) before it can be released.
(There are occasionally glitches that allow you to bypass bosses. For this reason, they are called “Miyazaki’s passways”.)
Japanese standards are hilarious, if you can beat sekiro you are quite good at action games by western standards
Four months or so Blizzard dropped a new season for Diablo 4 (along with a new game update), while being “Steam Deck Verified” and the new version of the game didn’t launch at all on Linux anymore.
The Proton team had to make an experimental Proton build which took around a day before it was fixed iirc.
So really, even AAA devs can’t seem to test launching their games for all scenarios.
A game can be “Steam Deck Verified” by Valve without the publisher making a request. In fact request by the publisher is the last option after automatic heuristics and Valve identifying a game as improtant.
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.
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?
We are now living in time where the platform holder asks the developers to at least play their game for 5 minutes. The quality bar is that low.
Tim McSweeney next week:
Steam’s terrible choice to demand that developers play their own game is incredibly anti-consumer and is cyber-bullying me specifically. How can anyone compete in such an unfair ecosystem?
Well yeah, he’s got a point. Would you want to be forced to play fortnite?
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.
Ah yeah? make them 100% the game first
