Annoyances of changes to DLC

Archie

Hi there, when i purchased NS2 special edition with black armor i wasn't expecting the steam inventory to convert my DLC to a perishable item from the inventory, now i can't share my account and have the DLC shared also which is frustrating, is there anyway to change it back into a DLC item and not have it appear in the inventory without deleting it?

A little bit unfair, but it's a feature i used sometimes.

rantology

Hey there, you cannot trade or sell Black armor- The item being in steam inventory is purely cosmetic. Do you have issue with it beyond this?

Frozen

Sounds like the concern is that when he used Family Sharing with someone, they no longer have the "DLC" items activated. So no free skins for that account. Sounds reasonable except that he bought them under a different assumption.

Might call for a "sorry, but here's tundra stuff for free" type thing

Archie

rantology wrote: »

Hey there, you cannot trade or sell Black armor- The item being in steam inventory is purely cosmetic. Do you have issue with it beyond this?

Yeah but i bought it as DLC not as a steam inventory item, there's a difference there you know? with steam DLC the function is for sharing with family or friends when i am not using it, thus it defeats some purpose to the steam family sharing function when wanting to share and show the DLC item off and to top it off if one of the NS2 steam admins gets annoyed he can just delete my item, they couldn't do that with the DLC.

I never bought an item, i bought DLC.

That's all i am saying.

Sure you've unintentionally stopped smurfs using black-armor/armour but you've also made it harder to catch smurfs because when black armour was listed as DLC all things included like badges were not, so a steam shared will just have a default black armor with no attachments.

Just letting you know there are some side effects from this that i dislike.

IeptBarakat

Steam Family Sharing was announced on September 11, 2013, which the majority of skins were released before that. So people couldn't have bought them under the assumption of using a feature that didn't exist at the time.

Archie

I never stated that i purchased it for the steam family sharing function, where did you get that from? i said that i bought it and used it with steam family sharing function, even if that happened afterwards the unintended consequences happen to be annoying because i've been using steam family sharing for ages, it's DLC that's supposed to be stuck to your account, not a steam inventory item and that's what bothers me because it should always only have the option to be locked to my account in that sense, it was sold as "DLC"

note:i even said the function of a DLC item for steam family sharing is that it can be shared, probably not my intent for misconstrued post, but what ever.

Don't know what you get out of coming in here thinking that i was saying i bought it in 2008 specifically for that reason? i am not that dumb, i agreed with you because that's not what i meant and i don't know who would be stupid enough to make that up.

IeptBarakat

What I'm saying is that you can't fault UWE for ending support of an unintended feature.

Though as far as intentions go, they didn't have a choice of making it dlc or not until Feb 5, 2015 when the Steam Inventory Service was expanded to all Steamworks Developers.

So yes, UWE weighed the scales of inventory versus dlc and decided that supporting the market/trade was better in the long run. Meaning family sharing would cease to share the dlc as it used to since they were converted into inventory items.

It may suck in some instances but they can't go back on this decision due to players already having paid for or sold items on the market.

Archie

IeptBarakat wrote: »

What I'm saying is that you can't fault UWE for ending support of an unintended feature.

Though as far as intentions go, they didn't have a choice of making it dlc or not until Feb 5, 2015 when the Steam Inventory Service was expanded to all Steamworks Developers.

So yes, UWE weighed the scales of inventory versus dlc and decided that supporting the market/trade was better in the long run. Meaning family sharing would cease to share the dlc as it used to since they were converted into inventory items.

It may suck in some instances but they can't go back on this decision due to players already having paid for or sold items on the market.

They only changed it so Black Armor was an inventory item a few days ago, it was still a DLC item(and still is somewhat), i suspect it was more about consistency then anything, but it's not really neccisiary because black armour is never going to be sold or traded.

Archie

Also now it's listed as purchased as inventory item? i purchased it as retail DLC not through steam, but through paypal in 2008 and keys + i think it also came from some other source

who has access to the steam inventory system withen UWE? could someone who knows please be kind enough to provide us with the admins with access? incase something fishy goes i know Ironhorse is one of them (from memory)

I only wish to know because i know some special admins from steam game admin can delete inventory items they believe to be duplicates or sold off items, in which case doesn't that mean someone has a delete function? in which case is it possible for someone with a vendetta could just delete specific peoples items? or is that not a feature for the NS2 inventory/marketplace + workshop?

That is what i mean by perishable items.

IronHorse

@nizb0ag I can admin steam workshop, but idk about steam items. I doubt I can, and I doubt anyone but Valve can.

@remi is the one who is handling all the steam item stuff if you have specific questions/concerns.

remi

@nizb0ag Thanks for bringing your concerns to our attention, and for your feedback.

I wasn't aware the skins could previously be shared via family sharing. It certainly wasn't intended to be that way, so I'd consider that a free bonus for the time period where it was possible.

Converting the skin to an item doesn't really hamper our ability to detect smurfs though, as we can detect whether you truly own the game or if it is being shared independent of that. I wonder if it would be worth displaying that to other players in some way.

As to your concerns about items getting deleted... It's not something you need to be concerned with, no one will be deleting your items. We have the ability to investigate trades and missing items, and the only way I have to delete an item would show up in that transaction history. The ability to delete is not available to admins, only UWE employees... and even then, the tool to do so hasn't even been written.

Archie

Thanks for the response Clark-kun, remember your contributions to the Nayruden NS2 Mod in alpha builds of NS2 it was a pretty nice feature, i used it to tell who was smurfing and to admin on some servers anonymously, that said i suppose it won't be coming back.

Yeah there are steamworks API to detect and even block steam sharing(rust was the first game to implement this iirc), though i think that's a bit unfair though, would be cool if we could get something built-in that server admins could possibly tell who's a smurf and who isn't etc, sort of like sh_who, would make it easier to profile/log people, mind you i enjoy the privacy ;P


wouldn't want to block people though, i never really have issues with smurfs unless they're being cocky.

yeah might be for other games, but i've heard of angry devs getting pissed off at specific players in a different community and deleting items, didn't last long before Valve got involved and refunded $$$ to users.