Site feedback: the new "latest updates" policy is hot garbage and needs to be reverted STAT.

[ThtsMyScrtCapImAlwysHorny]

Here it is, for anyone who doesn't know.

As I said in the Power Vaccum thread:

I really, really hate this new policy about the way the Latest Updates page gets... updated. If I wasn't subscribed to this thread and didn't happen to check it and see discussion about the official version, I would have missed that it was up for god only knows how long.

Hey, mod/admin team? It's "Latest Updates". When I click it, I want to see... can you imagine? The latest. Updates. Not a curated selection thereof with arbitrary restrictions. Bugfixes, full versions, and the like ARE IMPORTANT (do you even know that for this game, the beta that got promoted while the full version didn't WASN'T PLAYABLE for content prior to the current update? That's right, they weren't being cute calling the early access version a beta, it was an actual beta test version useless to anyone not interested in helping with a beta test), and I shouldn't have to watch every thread like a hawk to know when they go up when WE HAVE A LINK AT THE TOP OF EVERY PAGE THAT SAYS IT'S FOR THAT PURPOSE. That's a full-time job, and you aren't paying me. This change was purportedly instituted because a few bad actors were abusing the system - the answer to that is to address those bad actors directly, by banning them if need be, not to degrade the functionality for everyone else.

Thoughts?

 

[Igneel1]

The policy change was not aimed at bad actors, as most of them just time their promotions smartly which is fine & abusers have been dealt separately.The main issue is the increasing number of game reports submitted daily coupled with the insufficient number of volunteers available to handle them, so the policy was revised to reduce the workload on our volunteers.

 

[Hagatagar]

All quotes are from OPs link.

- Updates from basic versions to more 'premium' or 'higher-tier' editions of the same game version will no longer be promoted.

So when a trimmed public version is uploaded (or intentionally "leaked" by the dev) one will see it in the LU, and then when someone uploads the full(er) version one will miss it?
And when the next update comes out, it will of course be replaced by the newer but again trimmed version and the LU will again push only the new but trimmed version?

Am I getting that right?


As someone who gets all his game update informations from the Latest Updates page (because I check them every day), I find this rather hindering and inconvenient.

- Make Latest Updates great again! We want users to think that if they see a game on LU, it's something big or at least worthwhile checking out.

This sounds more like a recommendations page, not a latest updates page.

 

[♍VoidTraveler]

I don't even use LU and never felt like it was a problem.

 

[c3p0]

The main issue is the increasing number of game reports submitted daily coupled with the insufficient number of volunteers available to handle them, so the policy was revised to reduce the workload on our volunteers.

As this is the main reason and they are searching for uploader since long time:

Any volunteers for it?
And no, I wouldn't volunteer myself for it, cause I don't believe I would be reliable and I don't really like Discord at all.

And when the next update comes out, it will of course be replaced by the newer but again trimmed version and the LU will again push only the new but trimmed version?

Depend, if they take the links down of the old "special" version, then yes, only complete games will have them. If they just change the new free version and don't touch the links to the old "special" version you still have both. I think, I see them do that some time (although not entirely sure about it).

 

[baneini]

Next step should be to only update games once every 6 months so players give the dev enough time to add meaningful amount of content to justify downloading it again.
So many games where one goes "new update yay" and theres like 2 sentences that were new + some bug fixes and I just wasted my time with the whole effort.

The whole patreon inspired meme where devs gotta keep interacting with the "fanbase" every day alongside frequent tiny updates is a scam that has zero positives for the gamers.

 

[ThtsMyScrtCapImAlwysHorny]

The policy change was not aimed at bad actors, as most of them just time their promotions smartly which is fine & abusers have been dealt separately.The main issue is the increasing number of game reports submitted daily coupled with the insufficient number of volunteers available to handle them, so the policy was revised to reduce the workload on our volunteers.

Sorry, don't buy it. That makes no sense at all. We're talking about whether a game gets promoted to the Latest Updates page WHEN AN UPDATE IS UPLOADED AND THE THREAD UPDATED, not whether the update gets uploaded at all - something that takes like half a second extra (unless the under the hood engineering of how promoting a game to the LU page works is implemented in some kind of pants-on-head stupid way that somehow requires the uploader to do anything more than click a button saying some version of "promote to LU now" when they update the thread).

edit: thinking about it a bit more, the one way I can see that what you're saying makes sense is if the flood of reports you're talking about isn't "game is updated" reports, but rather "game shouldn't be in LU for this minor update" reports, in which case, again, the answer there is to address the bad actors directly - but this time, the ones abusing the report button. Make it clear that a game hitting LU is already mod-team-cleared and not something to complain about through the report system and violators will get a week's vacation.

 

[peterppp]

As I said in the Power Vaccum thread:
That's a full-time job, and you aren't paying me.

Thoughts?

and you aren't paying them so suck it up

 

[Atemsiel]

Great change for devs who aren't releasing multiple pointlessly short updates per week just to stay on the front page for longer though. Most likely a great change for players who get tired of seeing the same thing pop up on latest updates constantly with maybe an extra couple minutes of content as well. (And that's if there's any new content at all.)

Could be an unpopular opinion, but if I'm following something, and am actively waiting for an update to it, I'll just check in on that thing, rather than refreshing the list of all things to see if it happens to show up. That's just me though.

The new two week promotion limit and bugfixes no longer being eligible are great changes imo. The thing about higher tier versions no longer being eligible isn't something I can really comment on, but it seems like an oddly specific rule both to enforce, and also to be upset about. Granted, it may have only been a few people abusing the system before by fixing a typo or two, releasing that as an update and getting another free round of promotion, but the idea of dealing with them individually seems silly. What rule were they breaking? None, but it was still an issue. Dealing with just the people who aren't technically breaking the rules but were still causing a problem would've been unfair treatment, so now the rules have changed for everyone so that it's fair., and imo only really negatively affect the people who would've been singled out in the first place. Hell, the change might even positively affect the players of those games because it means when they do see the game they're following pop up, they know that there's actually something new, rather than just a bug fix or whatever.