I have a few ideas for stuff that could make Steam better. At least, better in my opinion

• Regularly install DirectX/C++ Redistributable/Silverlight etc. updates. This way you can launch new games faster.
• Look for all video card drivers, not just AMD drivers.
• Make it a requirement to use Steam as the DRM solution. No extra DRM piled on top please!
• Track game time across categories and track non-steam game time.
• Retroactively add demos for games that are on the service.

Any other ideas? What else do you think Valve could improve?

After trying to get some of the Borderlands DLC to work I fully agree with your third point.

A client that doesn't constantly freeze. I'm Valve Fanboy #1, buy oh boy, does the client freeze up on me a lot.

They will never track non-Steam games time, people will have shit like "Sasha Grey Getting Fucked: The Game" or "Mozilla Firefox" showing up on their profile.

@Witzig: Yup, EA/Ubisoft are especially guilty of that one. I guess we don't have to worry about EA doing that anymore.

@Sooty: But don't you want to know? Don't you want an account of all the time you've wasted?

Add League of Legends to the List of games it supports. I know they are coming out with DOTA2 but they put Rise of Immortals on there which is MOBA, so why not LoL. Are they really that terrified of competition?

Have a combined achievement score thing akin to xbox live, rather than a separate thing for each game.

Cloud saves should work in all games.

@c0l0nelp0c0rn1 said:

@Sooty: But don't you want to know? Don't you want an account of all the time you've wasted?

http://raptr.com

It's the only way around it really, there's too much potential for people to make fake stuff show up on their profiles.

More Steam Cloud support! 
I realize it's up to the developers, but it's still something that would make Steam better.

1. Give an option to scan your hardware and compare that data to games' sys. reqs.
2. An offline mode that doesn't have to be triggered while you're online.
3. An ability to install games on a partition other than the one that contains steam.
4. Additional search options (e.g. ability to list last month's games by their metacritic score).
5. Let users who have purchased a game rate it in a separate rating system.
6. Improve the quality of moderation on the steam fora.

• More games. Especially older ones.
• More compatibility like Cloud saves (For older games especially).
• More media, like E3 Trailers and whatnot. Also in higher quality.

A filter which allows me to block Kotaku articles from my news feeds.

Save my GOD DAMN BIRTH DATE!!!

I have to fill it in every time there's an age gate, and it's not like it's discarding it for security because I can buy a 60 dollar game in 3 clicks without filling in anything.

So apparently my birthday is more important than my home address and CC number.

No condensation.

@Sooty said:

They will never track non-Steam games time, people will have shit like "Sasha Grey Getting Fucked: The Game" or "Mozilla Firefox" showing up on their profile.

What?

(My ideal feature would be "multiple games per category." The current system feels a bit limited. Also, maybe sharing library categories with other people.)

• Force more developers to put products on their service with complete Steamworks support (*shakes fist*)

That's about it. Most requests that people have are out of Valve's control. If a company doesn't manually work Steamworks into their games, you're not going to get cloud saves in that game, or achievements, or stat tracking.

Just remember my fucking birthday.  I hate age-gates.

So uhhh... don't go spreading around me asking this, but where exactly does one get "Sasha Grey Getting Fucked : The Game" ?

@Video_Game_King said:

@Sooty said:

They will never track non-Steam games time, people will have shit like "Sasha Grey Getting Fucked: The Game" or "Mozilla Firefox" showing up on their profile.

What?

(My ideal feature would be "multiple games per category." The current system feels a bit limited. Also, maybe sharing library categories with other people.)

I'm the only one that's had some idiot launch a web browser from Steam before?

@Rockanomics said:

So uhhh... don't go spreading around me asking this, but where exactly does one get "Sasha Grey Getting Fucked : The Game" ?

Lol I was just saying that if you allow non-Steam games to be tracked on profiles you'll get people making up vulgar games just to have something like that on their profile for a joke.

At least that's how it'd work with the current system, as you can add executables then freely call them whatever you like.

@Sooty:

Yes. I think the closest I've come is seeing ArbitraryWater play GOG versions of games.

@Sooty said:

I'm the only one that's had some idiot launch a web browser from Steam before?

Now I have to try that.

Edit: It changes back to normal when I open Steam again. Was hoping for a "In a non-Steam game: Mozilla Firefox" or something. Though the border around my avatar turned green, so I'm not sure how it appeared to the people on my friends list.

More Origin exclusives

Cloud saves should work in all games.

Imagine the possibilities if Steam offered music. Or films.

i'd like a more useful recommend feature.  right now if you’re considering buying a game, it could say 148 people recommend this game to their friends.  you can’t compare that number across games because it depends on how well-known the game is and how long it’s been out and probably other factors as well.  even something as simple as an option to recommend against a game and then saying “124 people recommended this game but 547 recommend against it” is a lot more helpful than “148 people recommend this game.”  for a while i had some “recommendations” saying the game was crap, and it would be nice to be able to tell my friends in a way tied to the game without increasing its number of recommendations in a way that seems positive about the game.
 
at least i can post longer reviews with a rating on giant bomb!

Rent games i dont wanna buy a game thats 6 hours long and has multiplayer im not gonna play let me give you like 8$ and let me have it for like 3 days.

More Mac games. It's nice there is a bit of support.

I know this is really petty, but I'd like them to put some effort into making the steam overlay and general interface more accessible. Really, I'd like to be able to change font sizes without having to edit the styles resource file. How hard would that be? I play on a 32inch screen... my eyesight isn't the greatest at the best of times. 'Tis annoying having to squint at everything. A little effort in the accessibility department!

Be able to launch steam games WITHOUT steam.

@BirdkeeperDan said:

-multiple hard drive support

This! Running out of space on my main drive and I'd like to just be able to add a drive and start pointing game installs over there.

@c0l0nelp0c0rn1 said:

• Make it a requirement to use Steam as the DRM solution. No extra DRM piled on top please!

This would be great.

The release of origin!...

but yeh, some good ideas in here.

@Shuborno said:

@BirdkeeperDan said:

-multiple hard drive support

This! Running out of space on my main drive and I'd like to just be able to add a drive and start pointing game installs over there.

Would love this feature too. Some kind of tabbed browsing on the store would be nice as well, as it is I usually just browse the store from the website

I think they could benefit from an OnLive type of of setup. If you want to keep using Steam the way you have been then you can still do that of course, but if you have a crappy computer or you don't feel like downloading a demo or something then you could just 'game on the cloud' or whatever. I don't think OnLive is or will be a serious threat to Steam for quite some time, but I think it's definitely something they should be looking into.

@Sooty: Yeah, but isn't that up to the players?

@zels said:

1. Give an option to scan your hardware and compare that data to games' sys. reqs.
2. An offline mode that doesn't have to be triggered while you're online.
3. An ability to install games on a partition other than the one that contains steam.
4. Additional search options (e.g. ability to list last month's games by their metacritic score).
5. Let users who have purchased a game rate it in a separate rating system.
6. Improve the quality of moderation on the steam fora.

Benchmarking was the one of the key features I forgot to mention. There's nothing worse than buying a PC game when your rig can't run it.

Anyway, I know that GameSaveManager 2 let's you spread out Steam games to different hard drives. It uses symbolic links and NTFS junctions, so I don't know how reliable it is.

Steam cloud is all on developer end so i doubt they could get everyone to sign on.

There isn't much they could do better. Forcing developers would limit games and cause possibly all those cool indie games to not be there.

API access to their chat. Probably not going to happen but I would love to have steam chat on my phone. Also not have tf2 become a promotional item front for every game that comes out for steam.

Add FRAPS-like video recording for players to easily record anything they do in games, as well as allow you to group your friends a lot better than just having a list of friends and already-existing groups.

@c0l0nelp0c0rn1: Face lift to the community profile/page. Add full collective of steam stats displayed and messaging to offline users.

@c0l0nelp0c0rn1 said:

Any other ideas? What else do you think Valve could improve?

Geese.

I doesn't come up too often, but I'd like to be able to download games while playing games on Steam.

Not steams problem but I wish more games had Steamwork.
Track hours on non steam games.
Make Steam achievments more rewarding to get.

@Ninjakid7396 said:

this

I like that

• The ability to search and sort your games in a variety of ways (order by longest played, search by genre tags, show in reverse alphabetical order, only show games with remaining achievements, search by aggregate rating score, etc...)
• Show GameRankings scores too; personally, I think GameRankings is better than Metacritic.
• Personal deals - every now and then a game on your wishlist might go on sale of 10% or 20% off.
• Have the ability to set screenshots to a lossless format. Really, anything, as long as it's not jpeg =(

@S0ndor said:

A filter which allows me to block Kotaku articles from my news feeds.

Video recording, fully integrated - just like how screenshots work now.

Ultimately, I'd want Steam to have (optional, for the user) video recording that works like APB's video recording used to work (minus the videos not rendering correctly for dual-screen users), ie: start recording before you hit the record button - allowing you to hit the record button as something crazy has happened, saving the crazy moment :)

@Brake: You can, you just need to jump through a hoop everytime that happens: Start the game you want to play. Alt-tab out, back to Steam. Go to downloads. Press Resume. Play your game.

It does make sense that it pauses automatically, you don't want to download a massive game while playing a competative multiplayer game, for instance - but I agree, it's annoying.

Shut down and remove itself from memory when I exit a game.

if steam gave us a disc for every game we purchased, i would be the happiest person on this planet.

Add FRAPS-like video recording for players to easily record anything they do in games, as well as allow you to group your friends a lot better than just having a list of friends and already-existing groups.