Dades wrote on Jul 5, 2011, 17:28:
You have no idea what the problem is. It could be a problem with the web server, it could be Apache wonking under the pressure, it could be a bottleneck in the I/O backend and about a thousand other things. Fixing infrastructure problems takes time, it isn't something you do overnight on production hardware during one of your major yearly events. Given how Steam has scaled up over the years I don't see them not trying to fix it but now isn't the time, of course it will have to be later. Look at Blizzards backend for WoW and they still have problems. You can't plan for everything and some things have to be solved after the fact.
Posting a ticket with Steam Support does tell them something, it tells them you aren't happy about it. When enough people start complaining things get changed a lot faster than when they never hear from anyone. If you're so chatty with Valve employees you should already be aware of this.
And you know what? ALL of those problems can be solved with money, either by hiring employees to fix it, or paying overtime to employees in place, or buying more servers. None of which changes my point. My point doesn't really rely on knowing the exact underlying cause. And as an enduser and customer, it doesn't matter the cause, what matters is its causing issues for me. In fact you just confirmed my point, I agree its not something that one should do on production during an event. Its something that should be done BEFORE.
You mention things get done if enough people complain, that hasn't really proven to be the case in the years past. Like I said, issues like this happen with steam EVERY big sale or release. There's plenty of forum posts and support tickets about this stuff already. They know.
Like creston talks about, its obvious valve has decided some pains around these events and the amount of customers it pisses off is worth not paying to avoid them.
Dades wrote on Jul 5, 2011, 17:09:
You keep using Steam despite having supposedly many issues with it. Why should they change anything? You act like this stuff is a big deal but you don't do anything about it.
What exactly am I going to do? Boycott them? What difference would that make? And I already have about 500 games with them, how exactly am I going to play those? I don't think valve is going to transfer them to another service for me.
Just because I have issues, doesn't mean the only things I can do are a) stfu or b) boycott.