Economists are praising it‘s efficiency but there are massive shortcomings when it comes to costumer support. A couple years ago I was told they have a whopping single person dedicated to matters in the german market for example. Anyone who has any idea about the german bureaucracy hellscape knows this is far from sufficient to deal with any issue whatsoever. And I suspect it‘s not running much smoother elsewhere.
I guess it’s cheaper to not pay wages to dozens of people for years, instead of just paying fines/for damages when something happens that said employees could have prevented. Because afaik, the only CS I or everyone I ever heard of needed in Steam was refunds - which they grant very reliable. What kind of CS would involve any real legal stuff, even in our beautiful country Bürokratie- äh Deutschland?
costumer
I don’t think valve owes the cosplay community squat.
in a serious reply to your point though:
I appreciate their line of thought - why dedicate resources for roles that don’t add value to steam’s development just to engage with every country’s unique bureaucracy? until those countries fine valve for noncompliance it seems like an easy choice to make.
Anyone who has any idea about the german bureaucracy hellscape knows this is far from sufficient to deal with any issue whatsoever.
Maybe that’s contractable.
Does that matter when the bottleneck is this tiny? A single employee would have to contract, stay in contact and approve whatever they outsource. And going by some quirks with the german side of the store their usual response seems to be simply blocking german IPs from accessing whatever may cause extra bureaucratic work for them.
The single full time employee is the lead or manager. They have some number of contractors to work with but aren’t headcount.
