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Should Steam be on topic for the Video Games site?
Steam by Valve is a popular game platform and storefront. Features of Steam include:
- Purchasing games
- Running games (in fact, using Steam is mandatory games purchased on Steam)
- Compatibility and performance enhancements (such as running Windows games on Linux with Proton)
- Social media features (friends, chats, profiles, forums, guides)
- Mod management and distribution (Steam Workshop)
Steam is extremely popular among gamers and many, many games are available on it. In fact, probably the vast majority of modern PC games are exclusive to Steam. Proton (modified Wine, which pushes fixes back to regular Wine) has become a significant part of the Linux gaming scene as well. There is value in third party discussion sites like Codidact for Steam, because the official support channels provided by Valve are not the best.
While Steam is obviously very related to games, it is not itself a game. Should it be on topic for Video Games?
There are a few sub-topics to this. Please address each one separately in your answer:
- Usage of Steam to run games (eg. Proton, updates, compatibility modes, overlay)
- Buying games on Steam (eg. refund policies, regional pricing)
- Selling games on Steam (also about policies)
- Social media features (Steam forums, guides, messaging)
- Using SteamAPI to develop Steam-integrated games
Notably, the Steam Deck is a new gaming device from Valve that uses Steam as its main UI. https://proposals.codidact.com/posts/288625 proposes that:
Questions on game-specific hardware and utilities are allowed.
And Steam Deck would certainly qualify, and anyways it would be silly to say allow questions about the Playstation and XBox but not the Steam Deck.
1 answer
I think at least some aspects of Steam are already on topic as per the existing proposal, and simple logic/common sense:
Usage of Steam to run games (eg. Proton, updates, compatibility modes, overlay)
This would fall under "game utilities".
Using SteamAPI to develop Steam-integrated games
This would fall under game development.
Also, because Steam Deck is on topic, Steam should also be on topic, otherwise it would be difficult to ask questions about the Deck since it uses Steam as the main UI.
If not on Video Games, the next best place for Steam would be Power Users or Linux. However, it would be a niche tag for those, since most of their user base is not gamers nor care about games. Whereas on Video Games, Steam would probably be relevant to the majority of users.
I'm not so hot on other aspects:
Buying games on Steam (eg. refund policies, regional pricing)
Selling games on Steam (also about policies)
These come down to Valve's policies. I don't think there's a point in us having a Q&A section devoted to the policies of an individual company, even if it is a large one. Valve can run their own Codidact instance if they want :)
More importantly, questions here will always be at a disadvantage vs. official Valve channels. Say a Codidact question claims you can get a refund on a game, and Valve refuses - well, they're not going to care what some random forum says about it, they make the rules. Also, when Valve changes policy, questions about them would become obsolete, and it might take time for the community to catch up and edit. Although then again, perhaps there would be enough activity to not have much lag.
Social media features (Steam forums, guides, messaging)
This really seems against the spirit of the Video Games site - like including XBox Live. It has very little to do with games and is very niche. Also, these products are bundled upsells, when ideally they should have been separate stand alone services. They are only included in Steam for ulterior, marketing purposes. Had they been standalone, they would obviously not be on topic for video games, for the same reason that Discord or GameFAQs are not on topic. Valve building them into their software should not change that.
But then again, I also don't want a hair splitting rule like "you can talk to X, Y features of this software but not Z feature". That just seems overcomplicated and petty somehow.
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