So, anyone with a Steam account will probably know about this contest they've had called The Great Gift Pie, where you were supposed to play games to earn virtual coal and then once you had 7 coal, you'd be able to craft it into a coupon, the coupon was completely random, of course, or you could save your coal and have a (very small) chance of winning one of four grand prizes, the first one being every single game on Steam.
Well, as a ton of pissed-off forum goers have already pointed out, Valve ran out of coupons and now everyone is entirely pissed.
Well, not everyone... Namely the people this rant is directed at.
I'm talking about the inevitable obnoxious twats that will show up on any thread where people are complaining about such matters (Or, in my experience, anything, really) and say something along the lines of "You ungrateful ****s are *****ing about getting free stuff?" Typically, this is the kind of person that completely misses the point of why people are angry, and typically is very narrow-minded about the entire situation, believing that "getting free stuff" as they like to call it, justifies a large number of people being disappointed and feeling cheated.
So this isn't a rant against Valve, because they obviously had a limited budget, even though they could have really managed the entire situation better by making the announcement more widespread than on a forum the majority of their customers don't visit, but rather a rant in general, in part directed at a group of people who I have never liked and find obnoxious in the best of times, unbearable in the wost, and partially against the entire concept of the contest in general, which, even if it went off without a hitch, I'd still be quite antagonistic about the whole concept, but more on that later.
Let's get the obvious thing out of the way first; Just because someone is being offered a chance at a discount (Which they will still have to pay the difference of out of their own pocket) does not mean they are being offered anything for free, and certainly is not compensation a company's fuck-up. I have seen this same attitude elsewhere, and honestly, I'd just like to give each person that thinks this way a good whack with an aluminum baseball bat. Because if there is one belief I hold to no matter the situation, it's that people have a right to complain, and if they have a reason for complaining, they should go ahead and complain, so shut the fuck up with your pretentious, sanctimonious bullshit that you people insist on shoving down everyone's throats and let them exercise their right to bitch about something they do not like. Because bitching about things we do not like is as much a part of human culture as intelligent debate or gratitude, it infuriates me that some people would be so callous.
Now that we've gotten that out of the way, the second part about this whole contest thing that I didn't like from the beginning.
First of all, I am...Well, I'm a unique gamer, I have what my friends generously call "unique" gaming tastes and what everyone else calls "Strange and nonsensical" gaming tastes, and what people who can't stand me, which is a rather large majority, "Terrible and completely ass-backwards" gaming tastes. If you look on my Steam profile, you'll probably find games you've either never heard of, or have no interest in, because nobody likes the kinds of games that I do, and I don't like the kinds of games most people do. I cannot stand Super Meat Boy, I find it boring and unrewarding for my efforts, I don't care for any Valve game that isn't Portal 1 or 2, and I do not like arcade games or shooters in general, so you can probably see where this is going.
If you can't, I feel like the whole contest alienated me.
The first day the contest announced what you'd have to do, play games and achieve certain things, I knew exactly what that would entail and I wasn't the least bit thrilled about it; this is one reason I am not nearly as angry as other people have the right to be, because I barely participated in the contest. Why? Because I knew right off the bat that most of the games required would be games I didn't own and didn't have any interest in owning, but that most of the population would probably own, the one game that I did see that I owned was Toki Tori, and if I have to be perfectly honest, I found that one experience of trying to complete some ambiguous achievement about falling snowflakes to be a borefest.
Because the second thing working against me here, and in most cases with the so-proclaimed "hardcore" gamers is that I am not competitive in the least. I have no shame in looking up walkthroughs if I can't figure something out, I have no problem with cheat codes, Gameshark codes, Action Replay codes, or savestates in emulators. I do not play video games to be challenged, I play them for reasons barely anyone understands and almost nobody cares to, but all you need to understand is that my concern with Steam achievements in general (Not just with the contest) is minimal at best. The very idea of scouring a game for a piece of coal for hours sounds like a tedious waste of time that I could be spending playing a game I actually like, so that's the second reason I didn't even bother.
So we have a contest I had no hope of actually getting anything out of, and to my way of thinking, putting forth effort for something I might earn is a complete waste of time. Some people, in fact, most people, find this to be such an incredibly thrilling concept, but some people, unlike me, are excessively competitive, wishing to "challenge" themselves and prove their merit. I have no such urgings, I never have, and I can't imagine why I ever will. Maybe because I don't feel like I need to prove anything, to climb the mundane ladder of superiority when I can stand aside and do my own thing and be considered just as valuable for different reasons, or maybe because I just don't give a shit what people think of me or my (lack of) skill in anything video-game related and I'd rather play a video game for afore mentioned ambiguous reasons that I play games for, or maybe because I find trying to win a desired prize against impossible odds to be a waste of energy; I am not ashamed to say that I'm lazy, I will not put myself out there unless reward is guaranteed, which is counter to most contests, which is why I do not compete in them.
But there is another side to this. I have a friend who managed to obtain 6 coal on his own. I gave him the three that I obtained (Including the one obtained for trading. :V) and then he crafted his coal into a coupon, hoping for a discount on a game he might want, and then once he finds out it's a valve coupon, I almost physically slam my head against the desk, having remembered a fleeting comment someone mentioned about how Valve ran out of 3rd party coupons and fervently apologizing to him about wasting his time and effort. I feel guilty about not recalling this before he wasted his coal, but there are two factors that make me angry about the whole "prize process" in general.
Number one: The coupons don't stack, and you can't use more than one; this leaves a lot of people with Valve coupons they probably can't even use. I suppose they might be able to gift them to friends, but that poses the problem that they might not even know anyone who could use the coupons or maybe they don't want to give away several hours of blood, sweat, and tears. The last time I checked, the majority of the human race isn't running a charity, and most people aren't feeling very charitable about work and money they just flushed down the toilet. (This would be one of the few groups I feel like I'm in the majority of.)
Number two: Some people don't like Valve games. OMG, IKNORITE? Someone might actually NOT want a Valve game?! GEE I wonder why that could possibly be! Maybe because said person might not even like the fucking genre the majority of their games fall under? How unbelievable! Well, believe it. As hard as it is for fanboys and various other obnoxious internet parties to believe, some people do not like shooters, do not like zombie games, have no interest in a shoddy sandbox game which I feel has been outmatched by various other sandbox games like Minecraft or Ace of Spades, or maybe they just don't give a shit about Valve's direction and would rather play something else?
I'm not saying that there aren't people who are thrilled to be able to buy Left 4 Dead 2 or Portal at a discount price, and I'm not implying that the people that don't care for Valve coupons for any reason are in the majority here, because there's a good chance they aren't, what I am implying is that offering 1st party coupons as compensation for running out of 3rd party coupons is not fair compensation by any stretch of the term. The biggest reason that I believe this is because of the type of variety in Valve's 1st party games versus the immense variety in the whole fucking online store. Whereas before you could expect a fun indie title, a point-and-click adventure game, maybe a blockbuster title like Bastion or Trine, maybe even that one obscure game on your wishlist that you have private interest in but aren't sure if you want to pay full price for it, now you are limited to a very few games that are all in the same genre or play similarly and barely differ in art direction from each other (I suppose TF2 would be somewhat of an exception) which, to my way of thinking, does not sound like fair compensation. Oh, it might sound like fair compensation to the aforementioned fanboys, but think about it for a second. Valve typically makes games within the modern shooter genre, the exceptions being both Portal games, as opposed to an entire online service teeming with variety. This new development in the contest only serves to alienate people further. Even someone like me had a chance to earn something they cared about or wanted, now we don't even have that.
Again, I'm not blaming a company for using up their budget, because that's just how things work, this is directed at the insensitive obnoxious twats that do not understand why people are angry. Well, this is why we're angry. Do you people still think we've been "properly compensated"? I hope not. Want to know how to compensate people? Give them their fucking coal back and let them try again next year. That seems fair to me.
No comments:
Post a Comment