For the past few months, I have wanted to do a thorough review of technical support systems for each digital distribution service. To me, this is one of the most important aspects of these services, and often dictates where a majority of my purchases will go. However, my schedule has not permitted me to fully investigate and write a thorough article on the subject. While I still plan to do this in the coming weeks, I wanted to share these two snippets from the latter half of 2009.
In August of 2009, I wrote Steam support to inquire if they had any plans to correct a security flaw within their password reset process, that would allow an account hijacker to continually take over an account. The support ticket was also meant to inform them of the problem if they were not already aware, despite having been posted on the forums a few times as well and sending an email to one of the developers.
The response to my support ticket I found rather surprising. Instead of reading my email, I simply received a form response and my account reset. I personally never asked for my account to be reset, and I am worried that it was so easy to do so via a support ticket, without me providing any actual identification of who I am. I responded back letting them know that was not my problem, but I continued to receive a form letter telling me to cease contact with the person pretending to be a Steam employee. Needless to say, I lost faith in the support ticket system at Steam, but I gave them the benefit of a doubt, and assumed this was just a random mistake.
After the recent holiday sales, a frustrated user on the Steam forums posted a screenshot of his tech support response. Similar to my ticket, the user received a form letter response that was unrelated to the problem at hand. The user claims he was receiving receipts for payments he was told were clearly declined. Instead, the user opted to work with a friend to gift him the game before the sale was over. In response, Steam tech support wrote short, generic responses that did not pertain to the problem at hand. The user only received a proper response after posting it publicly on the forum.
Personally speaking, this is why I find there to be an incredible need for phone support at every digital distribution service. Problems are going to arise no matter where you go, as no service is perfect. I understand the cost of phone support may cut into overall profits, but is it worth alienating customers and losing more money in the long run?
When I run into a serious problem, such as the billing errors I had over the holiday, it is frustrating to sit there with nobody to reach out to for assistance. Instead, consumers are often left waiting for days at a time for email support to respond, and if it is not the correct response like the images above, consumers are left waiting even longer.
I implore consumers to reach out to these services, and ask them to improve upon their support systems and to please implement phone support for more serious issues, such as billing errors or hijacked accounts. It is a reasonable request, and something consumers desperately need. I hope to have a thorough report of each service in the weeks to come.
5 Comments
Picture n.2 – Error 404 – Not Found.
Nice read and proves that support should be taken more seriously.
I myself have good memories with support, fixed my problems fast and were always helpful in general matters like returning a hijacked account or giving a missing TF2 items. But this proves that they’re basically trained puppets that do programmed chores beyond excellence but lack the knowledge, skill or enthusiasm to fix unique errors.
Yep, I think support from steam sucks. I don’t have high hopes for future improvement. The vast majority of people don’t have a problem, and thus don’t care.
The worst “support” I ever got from Steam was when there were major issues with Jagged Alliance 2 Unfinished Business. Basically the game was utterly unplayable and for whatever reason, a patch was never released on Steam (despite claims by the developers that they had sent the patch several times during that year long period).
Any how, I had actually asked for a refund but support saw fit to simply ignore the request for 6 months. I expect that if they hadn’t switched to their new support system, that ticket would still be in the default Open state being utterly ignored.
They are also known for giving out completely incorrect information too, such as telling people they would be able to purchase Dragon Age Origins in US and play it in Japan on the day of release — something they couldn’t do as Valve had IP blocked unlocking of the game for any Japan based IP addresses.
Support then stated to the affected people that they would never be able to play the game in Japan and offered up refunds. However, yet again, this information was incorrect and the game was in fact fully playable in Japan following its release in the UK (the last region where the game was unlocked).
I’ve not had much need for support from other digital distributors but so far I’ve had nothing but helpful relevant responses from BigFish, D2D, GamersGate and GOG. But with Steam, which I need to contact far more regularly than the others, I’ve rarely had a satisfactory outcome.
They have no incentive to improve service, because even the people who do have legitimate problems with a game, angry as they may be, love the benefits of Steam so much, that they will continue to buy games from them. They simply won’t lose any customers, because even the disgruntled ones are so enamored of the other benefits. While this attitude totally amazes and puzzles me, I see it so much on various gaming forums, I’ve simply come to accept that this is the way of the future….for most gamers. Not for me. I love PC gaming, but online activation was the straw that broke the camel’s back. To date, I’ve only purchased one Steam-activated game: Half Life 2. Since then, I’ve decided not to buy any single-player games that require a source outside of my computer to grant permission to play. I love to go back periodically and revisit old favorites, and I’m not going to risk my money on a bunch of these games, and then worry about whether they’ll be supported by the activation servers years later. And I’m getting too old to hunt around looking for illegal ways to get each of those games running, should activation ever cease for whatever reason. I refuse to deal with this. Yep, I’m missing out on some great games, but I’m also saving a lot of money. I totally understand the publishers’ need to protect their wallet. But my primary concern is protecting my own.
Nice blog – couldn’t agree more with whatever you said. Keep up the good work!
David
CCSP Training