test/expected/SLASHDOT/0102640946.html

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  12         <h2>Valve Explains How It Decides Who's a 'Straight Up Troll' Publishing Video Games On Steam (vice.com)</h2>
  13         <div class='details'>(Thursday September 06, 2018 @11:30PM (BeauHD)
  14 from the behind-the-scenes dept.)</div>
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  16     <ul>
  17     <li>Reference: <a href=''>0102640946</a></li>
  18         <li>News link: <a href='https://games.slashdot.org/story/18/09/06/2146237/valve-explains-how-it-decides-whos-a-straight-up-troll-publishing-video-games-on-steam'>https://games.slashdot.org/story/18/09/06/2146237/valve-explains-how-it-decides-whos-a-straight-up-troll-publishing-video-games-on-steam</a></li>
  19         <li>Source link: <a href='https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/9kmej7/valve-it-really-does-seem-bad-games-are-made-by-bad-people'>https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/9kmej7/valve-it-really-does-seem-bad-games-are-made-by-bad-people</a></li>
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  23                 An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard:<br/><br/>&gt; Wednesday, Valve, the company that operates the huge online video game store Steam, shared more details about [1]how it plans to control and moderate the ever-increasing number of games published on its platform . In the post [2]published Wednesday , Valve shared more details about how it determines what it considers &quot;outright trolling.&quot; &quot;It is vague and we&#x27;ll tell you why,&quot; Valve wrote. &quot;You&#x27;re a denizen of the internet so you know that trolls come in all forms. On Steam, some are simply trying to rile people up with something we call &#x27;a game shaped object&#x27; (ie: a crudely made piece of software that technically and just barely passes our bar as a functioning video game but isn&#x27;t what 99.9% of folks would say is &quot;good.&quot;)<br/><br/>&gt;<br/><br/>&gt; Valve goes on to explain that some trolls are trying to scam folks out of their Steam inventory items (digital items that can be traded for real money), while others are trying to generate a small amount of money through a variety of schemes that have to do with how developers use keys to unlock Steam games, while others are trying to &quot;incite and sow discord.&quot; &quot;Trolls are figuring out new ways to be loathsome as we write this,&quot; Valve said. &quot;But the thing these folks have in common is that they aren&#x27;t actually interested in good faith efforts to make and sell games to you or anyone. When a developer&#x27;s motives aren&#x27;t that, they&#x27;re probably a troll.&quot; One interesting observation Valve shares in the blog post is that it rarely bans individual games from Steam, and more often bans developers and/or publishers entirely. [...] Valve said that its review process for determining that something may be a &quot;troll game&quot; is a &quot;deep assessment&quot; that involves investigating who the developer is, what they&#x27;ve done in the past, their behavior on Steam as a developer, as a customer, their banking information, developers they associate with, and more.<br/><br/><br/><br/>[1] https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/9kmej7/valve-it-really-does-seem-bad-games-are-made-by-bad-people<br/><br/>[2] https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1708442022337025126
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  25 <hr/>
  26   <div class='comment' style='display: block; margin-left: 80px'>
  27     <h3>Just charge a $5K "listing fee" (Score:5, Interesting)</h3>
  28     <div class='by' style='font-style: italic;'>by west ( 39918 )</div>
  29     <div class='comment_content'><p></p><p>98% of the total garbage disappears (as well as a few percent of the good). Of course "not terribly good games" will still appear, but it gets rid of the absolute garbage.</p><p>Or if people are appalled at paying to appear on Steam, allow spending $10K for a Steam "check-mark of marketing", and allow users to filter to show only check-marked games.</p></div>
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  31       <h3></h3>
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  33       <div class='comment_content'></div>
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  35         <h3>Re: (Score:1)</h3>
  36         <div class='by' style='font-style: italic;'>by Anonymous Coward</div>
  37         <div class='comment_content'><p></p><p>"Choices"???</p><p>Thirty-five (35) games were released on Steam today alone .</p><p>Go fuck yourself.</p></div>
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  40     <div class='comment' style='display: block; margin-left: 80px'>
  41       <h3>Steam wants the garbage (Score:3)</h3>
  42       <div class='by' style='font-style: italic;'>by rsilvergun ( 571051 )</div>
  43       <div class='comment_content'><p></p><p>because there's no accounting for taste, and if you took away garbage there'd be no Goat Simulator. As the saying goes, one man's trash is another's treasure.</p><p></p><p>Plus, a lot of good devs get their start making trash.</p></div>
  44       <div class='comment' style='display: block; margin-left: 80px'>
  45         <h3>Re: (Score:3)</h3>
  46         <div class='by' style='font-style: italic;'>by AC-x ( 735297 )</div>
  47         <div class='comment_content'><p></p><p>> because there's no accounting for taste, and if you took away garbage there'd be no Goat Simulator. As the saying goes, one man's trash is another's treasure.</p><p>I'm sorry, but anyone with a functioning brain would see that infinitely more effort and polish has been put in to games like Goat Simulator than any of those garbage "asset flips" that litter the Steam store.</p><p>Yes the difference between a good and bad game is subjective, but broken zero effort trash is much easier to agree on...</p></div>
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  51       <h3>Re: (Score:2)</h3>
  52       <div class='by' style='font-style: italic;'>by mentil ( 1748130 )</div>
  53       <div class='comment_content'><p></p><p>Will never happen. There are way too many games like PUBG that would've never become Steam hits if they had such a policy. It only needs to be enough to make the trolls miss it/lose out with their scams; $100 would likely be enough.</p></div>
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  56       <h3>Re: (Score:2)</h3>
  57       <div class='by' style='font-style: italic;'>by Escogido ( 884359 )</div>
  58       <div class='comment_content'><p></p><p>Either would shut a lot of starting indie games developers out of the system, thus preventing said developers and the gaming industry in general from making future hits. Basically, all new games are either essentially reskins/clones of existing games, or trying new mechanics and/or interactions, and sometimes (rarely) stories and characters. Given the typical indie level production values are garbage, in general, only the ones that try to innovate actually do have some value for the industry. However, first</p></div>
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  61   <div class='comment' style='display: block; margin-left: 80px'>
  62     <h3>Best New Feature (Score:2)</h3>
  63     <div class='by' style='font-style: italic;'>by Kunedog ( 1033226 )</div>
  64     <div class='comment_content'><p></p><p>> A second set of changes was focused on improving how you can ignore things you're not interested in. In the past you've been able to ignore individual games or product types (like VR, or Early Access) you didn't want to see again. But now we've added ways for you to also easily ignore individual developers, publishers, and curators.</p><p>Imagine how much easier browsing Netflix would be if you could filter out whole franchises and showrunners. Of course, that might make it obvious how little on Netflix actually interests you.</p></div>
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  66       <h3>Re: (Score:2, Funny)</h3>
  67       <div class='by' style='font-style: italic;'>by Anonymous Coward</div>
  68       <div class='comment_content'><p></p><p>Then they could charge a fee to shows that don't want to be filtered by you</p></div>
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  70         <h3>Re: (Score:2)</h3>
  71         <div class='by' style='font-style: italic;'>by Archfeld ( 6757 )</div>
  72         <div class='comment_content'><p></p><p>Sounds like Amazon, and the Kindle Library. No matter what you search, every 7th listing is a 'Sponsored' listing, and even if you specify a particular author or absolute title, you always get 10 or 12 additional 'bonus' items listed.</p></div>
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  76   <div class='comment' style='display: block; margin-left: 80px'>
  77     <h3>Early Access Garbage and abandonment (Score:2)</h3>
  78     <div class='by' style='font-style: italic;'>by shendar ( 674986 )</div>
  79     <div class='comment_content'><p></p><p>How about if a developer starts a EA Project and walks away (takes forever with no progress) they are banned from further EA? How about if they are banned from the store entirely?</p></div>
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  81       <h3>Re: (Score:3)</h3>
  82       <div class='by' style='font-style: italic;'>by AC-x ( 735297 )</div>
  83       <div class='comment_content'><p></p><p>I'm sure the type of developer who does that would simply abandon their old label and create a new developer account to carry on.</p></div>
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  86       <h3>Re: (Score:2)</h3>
  87       <div class='by' style='font-style: italic;'>by mentil ( 1748130 )</div>
  88       <div class='comment_content'><p></p><p>"I'm sick of development, so here's version '1.0'."</p><p>Also define 'forever' in a timescale that doesn't apply to Notch, Rockstar or Valve.</p></div>
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  90         <h3>Re: (Score:2)</h3>
  91         <div class='by' style='font-style: italic;'>by Calydor ( 739835 )</div>
  92         <div class='comment_content'><p></p><p>Wait. I see what you did there.</p><p>You mentioned three developers.</p><p>CONFIRMED: Half-Life 3 is being produced by Notch and Rockstar!</p></div>
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  96   <div class='comment' style='display: block; margin-left: 80px'>
  97     <h3>Great Yet Another Meaning For Troll (Score:1)</h3>
  98     <div class='by' style='font-style: italic;'>by Crashmarik ( 635988 )</div>
  99     <div class='comment_content'><p></p><p>Already May well be the most overloaded operator in the English language. As it seems to mean anything anyone anywhere takes objection to, or otherwise makes them feel bad.</p></div>
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 101       <h3>Re: Great Yet Another Meaning For Troll (Score:2)</h3>
 102       <div class='by' style='font-style: italic;'>by Nidi62 ( 1525137 )</div>
 103       <div class='comment_content'><p></p><p>The troll in me wants to say that "nazi" probably has "troll" beat  ;)</p></div>
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 106   <div class='comment' style='display: block; margin-left: 80px'>
 107     <h3></h3>
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 111       <h3>Re: (Score:2)</h3>
 112       <div class='by' style='font-style: italic;'>by tepples ( 727027 )</div>
 113       <div class='comment_content'><p></p><p>Furthermore, unlike console and mobile platforms, Steam has very little switching cost. An end user can always just up and switch to Itch or Origin or GOG or Humble or wherever else.</p></div>
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 117     <h3>Steam's progression (Score:3)</h3>
 118     <div class='by' style='font-style: italic;'>by Luckyo ( 1726890 )</div>
 119     <div class='comment_content'><p></p><p>So Steam started as "shove it down their throats" Counter Strike 1.6 launcher. Evolved into highly curated game store over about a decade.</p><p>Then decided to suddenly drop all curation and allow anything and everything on the platform. Got flooded with garbage. Added weird "meta gaming" shit like trading cards. Got games that literally existed just to allow people to get cards. Allowed some trading and other meta gaming of the system. Even got pressured by some SJW types to drop politically controversial games like Hatred and even had their recent porn games brouhaha.</p><p>And now, they're doing this. I guess there's just too much pressure from all directions, and they really just decided that no, we're not bending to various pressure groups, and instead just making sure that asset flips and such are not on the store. If true, good on them.</p></div>
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 122     <h3>Early Access (Score:2)</h3>
 123     <div class='by' style='font-style: italic;'>by tylersoze ( 789256 )</div>
 124     <div class='comment_content'><p></p><p>Eh, all I really want from Valve is a filter that blocks all "Early Access" games from ever appearing, as I'm browsing for games on their web site.</p></div>
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