Trying to open a new topic to talk about game stores such as Steam (which just unveiled a new beta), or GOG, and their associated communities and launchers/clients (Steam library beta and Galaxy 2.0 are the talk of the town.)

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First, in case you didn't notice, Rockstar released their very own launcher for... their very own games, obviously. It's never a good sign, because it adds to fragmentation, but it's not like the store didn't exist before, so I'll let it go. The launcher is limited to Rockstar games, and from what I've heard, it doesn't even have GTA 4 in it, but it should allow you to launch your Steam Rockstar games (eh, what a bargain..... Ahah.) It also offers GTA San Andreas for a limited time. Has anyone heard about differences with the Steam version? I've read that the Steam version crashes a lot, and that the Rockstar version supposedly doesn't, I don't think I'll ever play the game, but that would still be enough to entice me into opening a Rockstar account just to make sure.

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Now...

I just want user opinions on the Steam library redesign!

I don't know about you, but I'm on the fence. On the one hand, it looks nice, and it adds extra filtering options such as Steam tags and sort by playtime[1]

On the other hand, it's slow! On my computer at least, and it's not some old crap computer. It's clearly web-based.[2] I'm used to switching between library games with the arrow keys, so I could find out what games needed more achievements to be completed, and it was nearly instantaneous. Now it takes a good couple of seconds to switch to another game! So yes, looks nice, but when I want to be efficient, it's annoying. Especially with my 4500 games. I can't imagine how it must look like on a library with 10k+ items...

Also:

- Scrolling through the text list of games is also slow! It seems to take time to load icons, but if you filter games by name, you'll see it takes a second or so for the list to update, when previously it was instantaneous. Cache, please!

- The library tab in settings is very limited. It allows you to select a smaller, less obnoxious size for game thumbnails, which is great, but doesn't allow you to switch to horizontal banners for them[3], and allows you to disable animations, but that doesn't actually do anything, for me.

- I can no longer group my games by category. The option "Group by category" is there, but it's grayed out. I found no way to re-enable it.

- Where's the Hidden category? I can still hide my games, but can no longer find them.

- I've heard that free games are no longer hidden from your library when you uninstall them, which is great. No need to manually put them into the Hidden category (which is the only reason I used 'Hidden' at all!), which was a trick I found to make them remain in my accessible game list, even when uninstalled. But I'm starting to wonder if they haven't simply removed the hidden category, and my games now show up in the main list..? I'd have to check.

- Can't add multiple categories to a game anymore, I'm not seeing any way to do it. I have to manually right-click, select Add to, select a category, then start again. Way to go for user experience, Valve..!

- Game entries:
* Custom categories no longer show up. Neither does the DLC tab. I remember the store pages don't always have all DLCs available to see, so I often accessed the list from the library page, as sometimes I would get a free soundtrack DLC on them that wasn't listed on the store page.
* They now prominently feature 'activity'... What do I care that a friend added to their wishlist this game I already own? That might be understandable were it a multi-player game, but it also does it for single-player games... Also, I do not, and probably never will, play multi-player, so I'd appreciate if I could disable that... I do care if a friend adds a review for the game, though, that'd be a great place to read about them.
* Community content? I don't care about screenshots! Most community content is that. Make them smaller, maybe. I'm fine with guides and even discussions being linked there, but they're lost among the countless screenshots.
* The 'i' button to show the game description is great, and was really needed. But who thought it'd be great to remember that setting per game, instead of per session or generally..?! If I want to see a game description, I probably want to see them for all my other games at the same time...

Needless to say, right now my experience is very, very lackluster. If at least half of these issues aren't fixed within the next couple of weeks, I'll eagerly go back to the 'old' version, fearing the moment I'll be forced to 'upgrade'. Gosh, Valve, what's happening to you guys..?

1.	Up until now, Lestrade's was actually the only way I was aware of to be able to view your library by playtime in a timely manner when you have thousands of games-- although Lestrade's still has the upper hand because it gives more information, removes farming times, and shows playtime accurately, not rounded by the hour.
2.	I'd have to look into it, with a packet sniffer or something.
3.	Which would make a lot of sense considering only a fraction of my library has vertical thumbnails... Of which I'd like to find the URL scheme, by the way... Again, I'll need to run my packet sniffer... Unless it's already all cached on disk... Hmm...

Well, I got bored and decided that I'd give every single member access to premium features.

Of course there's no guarantee you'll always be able to access them. But I never monetized the website, and all of the features I hid behind the premium wall have been sitting unused for over a year now.

Here's what new for you guys:

- Three more filters available in your match pages. For instance, you can now limit your match results to games in your tradables or wishlist that are considered 'rare' on the website. (Can be customized to 3, 5, 10 or 20 copies available.)

- Ability to refine search in tag pages. For instance, you can select a secondary tag that all games must also have. You can also specify a tag to EXCLUDE from the search, similarly.

- Ability to filter game lists very finely: in addition to 'in library', you can also filter by: not in library, in tradables, not in tradables, in wishlist, not in wishlist, in blacklist, not in blacklist.

- Custom tradable notes are now limited to 255 characters, rather than 30. Don't abuse that, it would make your tradables less readable. ;)

There may be more features available, but I wouldn't remember them. I already had to go through my main code to list the ones above. ;)
Also, I thought the 'Matches' and 'Takers' buttons in game lists (when selecting at least one checkbox next to a game) were reserved to Premium users, but it looks like I already gave you guys the feature. It's by far the feature I use the most in this list, so it'd make sense that I already gave access to it. I just don't remember.

Anyway, enjoy! :)

I thought I'd launch a topic for generic/random discussions that don't merit a new topic on their own. I can always split them into topics if they end up being talked a lot about.

Feel free to post anything you like here.

I was looking at Steamspy's stats, and it struck me that in its first 6 years, Steam added less games (750) than in any recent month. (e.g. 873 games added in September, current record holder.)

I remember when Greenlight was being criticized for allowing shit games to go through. Made sense that Valve would replace the system with an even worse one, ah ah... Be careful what you wish for, eh..?

Now I'm wondering if they're regretting their decision, in light of the fact that they're letting through any kind of asset flips. (e.g. just look at the Match 3 tag page, there's a lot of games with 'berry/berries' in their name, they're all asset flips from a Unity tutorial, and they were all eventually removed by Valve, but how many games like that until it stops...?)

Have you guys noticed how Indiegala changed their bundle gift system..? They recently started sending out passwords in addition to links. Then yesterday they started sending passwords by e-mail for EVERY gifted bundle, even the old ones.
I had to ask my previous bundle provider to fetch 12 passwords for me... Not fun for him, or me. I did about 50 bundles, took me an hour, thank you Indiegala. :-/
I know it's for our security, but... Really, can't they do like HB and allow us to link a gift to our account..?

I've issued my first infraction (a 1-week ban) for a user who insulted another on this offer:
https://lestrades.com/offer/7834/
Next infraction from him will result in a perma-ban.

Lestrade's is a place to trade duplicate/unwanted bundle games. It's not a place to freely insult people who don't agree with your valuation of said games. Just add their matches to your Skips if you don't want to deal with them in the future. I will not let Lestrade's become like Barter when I used to use it.

If you get insulted for any reason in comments or by PM, please report to me and I'll take action if warranted.

I probably should open a topic like this.

Two people that are on LT's but that I'd advise against trading with:

- <DropBase>, banned at BVG, scammed me at BVG, went here, said he wouldn't do it again, and then disappeared when I asked him to make up for his theft. Considering he completed 120+ trades at BVG, I always gave him a second chance to come & make it up. Enough is enough! He probably skedaddled and is now trading (and future-scamming) with an alt account. If you're aware of potential alts of him, feel free to share.

- Sullwyn, also a lot of trades to his account... Hasn't come back in 5 weeks here (and BVG), I sent him half a dozen keys for an accepted offer back then, he hasn't sent anything back. When you want to scam someone, please, PLEASE don't scam the website's admin, because he doesn't even need the proof to ban you and make sure nobody will ever trade with you again!

Don't hesitate to add other names -- either of traders who have a bad reputation outside LT's, or traders you're suspecting are scamming you at LT's. I'll edit to add & remove names depending on their scammer status being verified or not.

Last Sunday, I posted a summary of what I did on Lestrade's in the last ~10 days, like I usually do. (And I did more after that, but I haven't documented anything.) Also as usual, I asked for readers to invite their friends. 2 days in, we've now reached an all-time low for active users. As a result of my announcement, 2 members left the group, and no one bothered to invite anyone (this is indicated in admin stats.) I always feel bad when I have to ask people to help with promoting the site, but I feel even worse when I see they don't even bother to click that damn Invite button.

I don't even know why I'm bothering... I have so much love for this site, and so much plans to develop it beyond its current status as the most usable trading site ever. But I'm in a situation where in order for it to be the best, it needs to be popular. I'm more comfortable the other way around.

What should I do? Pay people to join the site? Give up on my 5-hour nights and devote them to marketing?

I think the title of this topic is a subconscious way of saying, popularity these days comes not from talent, but marketing.
Lestrade's needs to reach the masses to work. More users = more choice = more reasons for me to build tools to help with the widening opportunities. But the more features I add, the less active users we have.

tl;dr: Has anyone here any marketing skills? Does anyone know anyone who'd be excited at the idea of helping LT get more popular? Usually, the job of marketing guys is to take an ordinary product and make it sound like it's better than the rest. Here, the product is definitely better, and will continue to be so. It's just that I'm the only one working on it and I don't see why I should also deal with marketing, since it's something I've always been terrible at, and risk losing motivation to work on the multiple projects I have for LT right now.

I need your help, plain and simple! Please post suggestions!

Important poll: obviously I was working on that dropdown because I'm looking into saving the setting. However I'm not sure which way to do it.
1/ Save the same setting across all Sort dropdowns (in all list pages + offer creation pages)? If yes, what about the Library? (a) Should I ignore the setting and always sort by playtime first? (a) Should I store library sorting separately from all the rest?
1/ Save the same setting across all list pages (with same question for library), and a different setting for offer creation pages?
3/ Save the setting separately for each list and offer creation pages? Could be confusing, but also more powerful.
4/ Something else (please tell)..?

I could even technically store 2 sorting preferences per user, with a checkbox to switch between the two... But good luck to me to come up with a usable UI for choosing those, ahah...

I really need some suggestions now. The feature is already written, I just need to figure out which solution to use, because once I settle on it, it's gonna be harder to change it...