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Comment by cobrausn | Hacker News Reader

Part of the allure of Steam is that everything on that service has been vetted before I ever see it, if not for fun then at least for being a game and not malware.

Not sure how I feel about this. Sure, the users will catch the problem eventually and get it pulled, but in the meantime you would be really leery about downloading something new.

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This is largely an illusion. Take the war z. They were able to release a dishonest incomplete game, and it took community outrage to bring it to valve's attention.

It's not that it required community outrage it bring it to Valve's attention, necessarily; sometimes fixing problems involving business and business relationships just takes more time than folks want/expect. When a product is released with a simple bug, it's usually not the users complaining for hours nonstop about it that gets it fixed (though sometimes it is), but that it takes time to debug, fix, test, and ship the fixed version. The same thing often applies to business decisions like this.

Again, I mentioned that it wasn't screened (necessarily) for completeness or 'fun' - just that it wasn't malware disguised as a product.

I'm not sure if that's ultimately true. The Steam store only has several thousand apps. When you consider the % that are malware or harmful on say the android or iOS store, it's entirely likely that steam is being saved by statistics and possibly basic (automated) virus/malware detection.

In a recent speech by Gabe, I think he said they'd still check for malware. But he didn't give any details, so I'm not sure if he actually has a plan to open the market, but in the same time has a system for checking malware, or he was just saying that.

That is why the user created stores would be great. You'd still get curated content, just not from steam. So it might be even better than today, in the sense of "properly" curated content!

Seems like they could offer both. If they watch the traffic they could approve the most popular games but still allow people to use games immediately if they want to.

Yep, Steam to me has been a place where I know there is a certain quality standard.

If I wanted to just download random files I'd go to pirate bay or mega upload.

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