Some things to avoid doing on Steam due to breakage or annoyance.
Preface
This guide isn't intended as a personal attack towards any individuals. Instead, this is meant as a rant made into a guide, thus while I hope you benefit from reading this, please don't interpret it as doing in spite of the Steam exploit community.
While I hate the majority of exploits thrown around, it is still a great place to learn.
While I hate the majority of exploits thrown around, it is still a great place to learn.
Extremely Hacky Exploits
Extreme proportion exploit
Ever seen very broken and hard to navigate artwork/screenshot galleries? Thank this exploit, a very hacky and problematic workaround for bypassing maximum image height.Please don't do this. Instead, either forget about it and upload artwork as intended, or try to fit it in a square or a wide rectangle.
In order to fix viewing image galleries infested by this type of artwork, use this bookmarklet (code by uniQ):
javascript:(()=>{$J('head').append($J("<style>", {"html": ".publishedfile_popup_screenshot,.publishedfile_popup_screenshot>img,.profile_media_item,.imgWallItem{min-height:100px; max-height:300px}"})[0]);})()
In general: anything reliant on exploits
Valve fixes exploits. Sure, it takes them a Valve Time to do it, but it does happen.What if your pretty guide with [color] tags malformed to death becomes spaghetti of unparsed code? Well, now you have to remove them all, or worse, if you used any kind of colour coding, start from scratch. Your group may be banned if you go absolutely overboard, too.
(If you're curious, [color] tag was a community suggestion, but this[i.gyazo.com] is the extent the exploit was used to. Now the tag is gone. Yikes.)
Forced Formatting
♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. I cannot comprehend how annoying it is to browse Steam on anything other than a Windows PC using a Chromium-based browser.
Solution? Don't. Not only is it very hard to read on anything but the intended configuration, but that configuration may change on either Steam's or the browser's end at any time.
Please do it properly with the formatting tags given to you, otherwise it will have problems.
Just imagine how annoying it must be for a visually impaired person to comprehend what the ♥♥♥♥ is written here, especially if they rely on screen readers. Even worse, not all OSes ship with fonts that feature required character sets; what's a character for you is very likely going to be a box for some.
Centering with whitespace
Due to font differences and viewport sizes, any time text is centered with manual line breaks and whitespace, total chaos appears. It's so much worse on phones!Sometimes everything looks like
this...!
Please align your text left/right
as usual.
• Double lists are • way,
way worse!
• I hate this! • Please
make two separate ones.
Solution? Don't. Not only is it very hard to read on anything but the intended configuration, but that configuration may change on either Steam's or the browser's end at any time.
Please do it properly with the formatting tags given to you, otherwise it will have problems.
Fancy text
Another somewhat related example of nonstandard formatting is what I like to call text massacre.ʍʏ ɦɛǟɖ ɦʊʀȶֆ ȶʀʏɨռɢ ȶօ ʀɛǟɖ ȶɦɨֆ ռօռֆɛռֆɛ...
Just imagine how annoying it must be for a visually impaired person to comprehend what the ♥♥♥♥ is written here, especially if they rely on screen readers. Even worse, not all OSes ship with fonts that feature required character sets; what's a character for you is very likely going to be a box for some.
I c▯n perf▯▯tly ▯ead my abomi▯ati▯n now!
Spamming Comments
Whether you do it with good intentions or not, please don't spam text/emoticon art and other "have a nice X" type of comments to every single profile.
![Example of a spam comment]( "Example of a spam comment")
We understand you like attention. What nobody else likes is the insane amount of notifications it can generate posting from profile to profile. Yes, great job on finding a userscript, please don't hesitate disabling it.
There is no excuse for spam! No matter what flavour you use, you are 100% more likely to be ignored for it.
We understand you like attention. What nobody else likes is the insane amount of notifications it can generate posting from profile to profile. Yes, great job on finding a userscript, please don't hesitate disabling it.
There is no excuse for spam! No matter what flavour you use, you are 100% more likely to be ignored for it.
"Guides"
Artistic "guides"
Wonder why some Community Hubs have very irrelevant guides with fancy animated icons? What you keep seeing there are artistic "guides" with no actual content. The Community Hubs of many games are filled with these.If you want to make them so badly, why not create a guide using the App ID of Steam? That way they aren't indexed anywhere but on your profile. Thank you.
Nonsense "guides"
We get it. You want Steam Points.Please create something meaningful, it may be helpful and genuinely interesting instead of being yet another one.
Discussion Behaviour
Bumping, accusing of necroposting and posting "this discussion will be locked!" is not only bannable, but it is beyond annoying.
![Example of annoying discussion comments]( "Example of annoying discussion comments")
All of these have the same solution: don't bother, move on, report if needed. End of story.
All of these have the same solution: don't bother, move on, report if needed. End of story.