Community Feedback: Steam profile badges

[Chris D]

Unless you're deaf, dumb and/or blind, you will notice that most people have Steam Profile badges next to each post.

These are created when you fill in the relevant profile field with the last portion of your Steam Community URL.

We plan to keep the Steam Profile badges, but it is long overdue an update. And one gripe we have is that page loads are quite a bit longer - especially as we have 40 posts per page.

A new version is available which should improve the page loads quite a bit but, the steam profile information is collected in a completely different way.

Instead of being a profile field, actually it is done by linking your forum account to Steam. This involves clicking what will be a brand new "Sign in with Steam" button. This uses OpenID to associate your forum account to Steam. At that point, your Steam ID is collected and stored in the database and it will be that which makes your profile display.

We will also have available a new page that will contain Steam stats such as games owned, hours played etc. plus the opportunity to get more statistics in the future.

I am telling you this because if we do this, your current steam profile badges will disappear and you will be required to sign in with steam to make them display again.

If you have a major issue, please let us discuss it here. If you don't then we plan to make this change over the next few days.

 

[Vegeta897]

I've already used the sign in with steam feature on other sites, and I probably trust this site more than anything. So do it. DO IT.

 

[Chris D]

Thanks Vegeta897

Oh yeah, trust...

In case anyone is wondering... The Sign in with Steam thing... you enter your Steam username and password on a fully Valve operated, official Steam login form.

The only data we get back is obviously your basic user details that are available via the API. User name, Steam IDs, and game information.

No personal data, passwords, or billing info is sent to us.

 

[bobtheskull]

I don't have a problem with that, sounds fine to me. For those who may complain though, is it a mandatory thing that you have to link to Steam to log in, or will you still be able to log in without linking, like the way the profile badge is currently?

 

[Chris D]

You will still be able to login to the site as normal, but you won't get your badge until you link to Steam.

 

[Vegeta897]

I don't see how anyone couldn't have a problem with this. If they don't want their steam info showing, they wouldn't put their username in (current system)
In the new system, they wouldn't link their profiles.

Like you said, the API only returns the same data that the current system already does, only done more efficiently (I imagine). And signing in through steam is just as safe as telling valvetime what your steam username is.

 

[Chris D]

I don't see how anyone couldn't have a problem with this. If they don't want their steam info showing, they wouldn't put their username in (current system)
In the new system, they wouldn't link their profiles.

Like you said, the API only returns the same data that the current system already does, only done more efficiently (I imagine). And signing in through steam is just as safe as telling valvetime what your steam username is.

Correct.

And think of it this way: Right now, it's actually possible for your identity to be duplicated. There's no checks to make sure when I type "chris_d" as my Steam profile that I actually am Chris_D.

With this, you only get a Steam profile that can be verified as yours (by logging in).

And you can associate or disassociate at any time.

 

[morgs]

Mine doesn't work for some reason, I've got the right profile in...

edit: never mind, there it goes.

 

[Chris D]

Probably going to do this over the weekend if I get time.

 

[Hectic Glenn]

I've just added mine, not sure if it's working though. It says "Unknown Steam Account" under the associated account on my profile.

 

[Chris D]

I've just added mine, not sure if it's working though. It says "Unknown Steam Account" under the associated account on my profile.

Yes, it could very well be broken. The old versions were incredibly buggy.

Really want to move away from the old version.

 

[MuToiD_MaN]

Looking forward to the new integration! OpenID FTW!

 

[Krynn72]

In case anyone is wondering... The Sign in with Steam thing... you enter your Steam username and password on a fully Valve operated, official Steam login form.

The only data we get back is obviously your basic user details that are available via the API. User name, Steam IDs, and game information.

No personal data, passwords, or billing info is sent to us.

This answers my only question. Its not that I don't trust the staff of this site (if you wanted to screw me somehow, I'd provoked enough spite for it to have happened already), but it would really suck if this site got hacked and my steam account was compromised as a result.

Still may not do it out of sheer laziness, but good to know, and faster loading is always nice.

 

[Chris D]

Ok, so this is all done.

This is the new Steam Stats page:
http://www.valvetime.net/steam/

And the profile badges now load differently (and quicker).

 

[Vegeta897]

Okay, so I'm having a weird problem.

Opening this thread: http://www.valvetime.net/threads/college-woes.243050/
Is making my Chrome lock up. I have a suspicion that it's one of the people's Steam badges in there, since that's the only thing that has changed as far as I can tell, and it would make sense if it was someone's badge since they would only cause me to crash if one of their posts was in the page I was viewing.

Not happening for other people I asked, but may as well post about it here.

 

[ríomhaire]

Not happening for me. Is it possible to get a small unobtrusive button but in the top right hand corner of people's posts who don't have Steam badges that'll bring them to the the Steam login form? Would make an easy and clear way for people to find it.

 

[Vegeta897]

Posting this from firefox because I can no longer get to this thread.

This made me think it was Riom's badge causing me problems, since he posted in the college thread as well, (and broax's thread, which also causes crash) but the oculus thread works fine despite him posting in it.

So now I'm totally lost.

 

[ríomhaire]

Maybe something to do with people being online/offline/playing games on Steam?

 

[Vegeta897]

No idea. But remember I'm only guessing that it involves the steam badges. Might be totally unrelated.

Though it doesn't happen on any other site I go to, or on the home page or threads list. Just when I'm in certain threads.

 

[Chris D]

Weird.

Have you cleared your caches and everything?

 

[MuToiD_MaN]

All the Steam badges just say "Loading..." forever now.

 

[Bad^Hat]

This was happening to me a couple days ago with a different thread, I can't figure out which one it would have been now. Chrome is being a bit weird in general lately, though. Certain tabs just freeze or **** up after I switch from them and I can't even reload them, have to abort the tab and open it elsewhere to get it working again. I think the in-built Flash player might be playing up or something.

 

[ríomhaire]

All the Steam badges just say "Loading..." forever now.

Steam Community is currently down.

 

[Vegeta897]

This was happening to me a couple days ago with a different thread, I can't figure out which one it would have been now. Chrome is being a bit weird in general lately, though. Certain tabs just freeze or **** up after I switch from them and I can't even reload them, have to abort the tab and open it elsewhere to get it working again. I think the in-built Flash player might be playing up or something.

Are you using Chrome Beta? Maybe we have that in common. Though I don't recall any freezes or crashes on other sites recently.

No, I don't think it's the flash plugin. For one thing, there is no flash used on these pages (unless there's a youtube video in a post, but several of the threads that freeze on me don't have that). During these freezes sometimes the flash plugin will crash, but I think that's just a result of the freeze. I've had java crash as well in the same circumstances (where a java applet was running in another tab). It's not the cause of the issue. If it was just flash player crashing, Chrome would deal with it gracefully by saying it's causing the browser to become unresponsive, and killing it would enable control again, but it doesn't. Whatever IS causing the freeze continues to do so after killing flash/java.

So my best guess is it's something screwy with the Chrome beta channel. Anyone else using beta?

 

[Chris D]

Actually every thread has flash in it.

The "Upload a File" button uses a flash applet. Otherwise we wouldn't have multi file uploading etc.

 

[Bad^Hat]

Not using beta. Seems to have smoothed out a bit ever since I disabled Chrome's internal flash player through about:plugins.

 

[Chris D]

Not using beta. Seems to have smoothed out a bit ever since I disabled Chrome's internal flash player through about:plugins.

I had this problem on my work computer with Chrome.

One solution was to keep the Chrome flash plugin disabled and instead get a standalone release installed. This didn't always work properly either. Uninstalling and reinstalling Chrome didn't help.

In the end, I had to reformat anyway so it was no longer a problem, but essentially, that is what ultimately fixed it for me.

 

[Vegeta897]

Well it seems fixed now. Hooray.