Every developer who releases a game on Steam probably knows the routine by now. An update goes live, thousands of players jump in, and somewhere on the Steam forums someone has already discovered something they absolutely cannot live with.
Sometimes it is serious. A game crashes, servers stop responding or an update introduces a problem that genuinely needs attention. Those reports are important, and community feedback remains one of the most valuable tools available to a developer.
Then there are the other complaints.
A tiny visual change becomes a disaster. A balancing adjustment apparently ruined the entire game. A server hiccup lasting a few minutes becomes evidence that the developers no longer care. Before long, a handful of extremely vocal players can make it look like the entire community has turned against a game.
GamingHQ thinks there should be a little more balance in that conversation.
Not Every Steam Thread Represents the Community
Steam Discussions are an important part of PC gaming, but they can also become an echo chamber for frustration.
The players having a great time are often doing exactly that: playing the game. They are not necessarily stopping every 20 minutes to create a forum thread explaining that everything is working normally.
That can leave developers staring at a page filled predominantly with problems.
Those problems should not be ignored, but they should also have context.
A complaint from one player could expose a serious issue affecting thousands. It could also be caused by a particular hardware configuration, driver, mod, network connection or something completely unrelated to the game itself.
That distinction is difficult to make when the conversation immediately turns into outrage.
GamingHQ Would Rather Test It
This is something we want to approach differently at GamingHQ.
Instead of joining the crowd whenever another complaint appears, we would rather see whether we can actually reproduce it.
That is also an open invitation to developers.
If your community keeps reporting a problem and you want another pair of eyes on it, contact us. If you have an upcoming update, build or feature that could benefit from additional testing, we are interested in helping.
It does not need to involve a major release or a huge publisher either. Smaller studios, Early Access developers and independent projects are equally welcome.
Give us the game, tell us what is happening and let us see what we can find.
Sometimes, Smaller Playtests Are Better
An open beta or public playtest is not always the best way to test a game. Sometimes, keeping a build in the hands of a small group of carefully selected players can produce far better results.
With only a handful of testers, developers can work at a cleaner and more controlled pace. Bugs can be reproduced properly, changes can be tested again after a fix, and developers can communicate directly with the people who originally encountered the problem.
More players do not automatically mean better feedback either. Having 500 people yelling about the same issue on the Steam forums does not necessarily provide 500 pieces of useful information. A small group of dedicated testers who explain what happened, how it happened and whether they can reproduce it can provide considerably more constructive feedback.
Open playtests certainly have their place, especially when testing server capacity or large-scale systems. However, when the goal is detailed testing and useful feedback, sometimes ten good testers are worth far more than hundreds of angry forum posts.
Open Playtests also gives the player access to he game files, meaning disadvantage such as mod menu’s and hacks can be crafted while the game is still in early playtests and noone likes a hacker in their lobby.
Useful Criticism Is Better Than Noise
GamingHQ is not offering developers guaranteed positive coverage.
If we encounter a serious problem, we will report it. If something does not work properly, we are not going to pretend otherwise simply because a developer provided access.
But criticism becomes considerably more useful when there is something behind it.
Can we reproduce the issue? When does it happen? Does it happen repeatedly? Does changing a setting solve it? Are other players experiencing the same thing?
Those questions provide considerably more value than another forum post screaming that the developers need to “fix their game.”
Developers need information they can work with.
Players ultimately benefit from that as well.
We Know Games Are Not Perfect
No game launches in an environment where every possible hardware configuration, internet connection, peripheral, driver and piece of software can be tested beforehand.
Things will go wrong.
Updates will occasionally introduce unexpected problems. Servers will have bad days. A feature that worked perfectly during internal testing can suddenly behave completely differently when thousands of players get their hands on it.
That is part of software development.
What matters is finding those problems, understanding them and getting enough useful information to fix them.
That is where GamingHQ would like to help.
Developers, Our Door Is Open
GamingHQ has spent years covering games, updates, community problems, server issues and the increasingly complicated relationship between developers and their players.
We are not interested in becoming another voice screaming from the sidelines whenever something goes wrong.
We would rather get our hands dirty and find out what is actually happening.
So, if you are a developer dealing with a flood of Steam complaints, preparing an update, running a playtest or simply looking for independent feedback, you are welcome to reach out to GamingHQ.
Maybe the community has discovered a serious problem.
Maybe we will discover something completely different.
Or maybe someone on the Steam forums really is just crying about every fart they discover.
Either way, we would rather test it before reaching for the pitchfork.
