Gamers only: do you use the social features of gaming platforms?
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XBox has a page about their social features
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/gaming/gdk/docs/services/community/live-social-overview
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@evan I do play games on my computer, I suppose I qualify. :)
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@evan I do play games on my computer, I suppose I qualify. :)
@jenesuispasgoth do you play on a platform with social features?
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@evan I use the social features of Steam, but really only with people I know from other places.
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@evan
I don't consider "Steam chat", which I link games for my SO (in the same room), for those links veing opened in Steam instead if a browser, nor do I consider connecting to friends games via Steam overlay as a "social feature". Other than that, I don't need more from a gaming platform (except the ability to gift games with ease). -
@evan
I don't consider "Steam chat", which I link games for my SO (in the same room), for those links veing opened in Steam instead if a browser, nor do I consider connecting to friends games via Steam overlay as a "social feature". Other than that, I don't need more from a gaming platform (except the ability to gift games with ease).@Kyyrypyy ok. Steam has a list of its social features.
https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/595C-42F4-3B66-E02F
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undefined evan@cosocial.ca shared this topic on
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@evan I use the social features of Steam, but really only with people I know from other places.
@BathysphereHat what about setting up a profile and avatar, having friends, that kind of thing?
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XBox has a page about their social features
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/gaming/gdk/docs/services/community/live-social-overview
Steam has a page about their social features.
https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/595C-42F4-3B66-E02F
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@evan Since I don't know what any of that means, I will assume I am not a gamer.
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Interesting results! I don't have great data on this, but the XBox game culture report says about 1/2 of respondents play online multiplayer games. I think you have to have the social features turned on to do that, so I'm going to guess about 50% of XBox users have those features turned on.
https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2025/11/19/xbox-culture-of-play-report-gaming-survey/
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Interesting results! I don't have great data on this, but the XBox game culture report says about 1/2 of respondents play online multiplayer games. I think you have to have the social features turned on to do that, so I'm going to guess about 50% of XBox users have those features turned on.
https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2025/11/19/xbox-culture-of-play-report-gaming-survey/
About 17% of respondents here said Yes. That's much lower. I have a couple of guesses why: first, a lot of commenters didn't seem to consider features like a game profile, friends list, or the activity feed "social features".
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About 17% of respondents here said Yes. That's much lower. I have a couple of guesses why: first, a lot of commenters didn't seem to consider features like a game profile, friends list, or the activity feed "social features".
Others were quick to say that they only use social features with real friends and family. I'm not sure why that would be a "but..."; it's the whole point of those features.
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Others were quick to say that they only use social features with real friends and family. I'm not sure why that would be a "but..."; it's the whole point of those features.
Finally, I think Fediverse users are generally more protective of their privacy than the general population.
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Finally, I think Fediverse users are generally more protective of their privacy than the general population.
Anyway, my answer: yes. I have a profile on XBox, Switch, and Google Play Games. I connect with friends on all the platforms. I share achievements and activities and screenshots and sometimes chat.
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Finally, I think Fediverse users are generally more protective of their privacy than the general population.
@evan I think thereās also an aspect of differing opinions on what it means to āuseā a feature.
If I have a community āprofileā on steam, but I never think of it, never look at the friend requests, never willingly interact with it, I would say I do not use it. But the bean counters at Valve would presumably count me as part of their āsocial usersā population.
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Others were quick to say that they only use social features with real friends and family. I'm not sure why that would be a "but..."; it's the whole point of those features.
@evan Seeing what my kids are playing is the most used steam social feature, followed by occasional chats with them.
It seemed to need clarification from what I consider most people's usage social features of a gaming platform.
Screaming obscenities at strangers or at by strangers, never had much of a draw for me.
Primarily single player gamer, but yeah I'm "on" just about every platform, but good luck interacting with me there for the first time.
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@evan I think thereās also an aspect of differing opinions on what it means to āuseā a feature.
If I have a community āprofileā on steam, but I never think of it, never look at the friend requests, never willingly interact with it, I would say I do not use it. But the bean counters at Valve would presumably count me as part of their āsocial usersā population.
@philip Sure. It could also be related to your self-image.
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@evan Seeing what my kids are playing is the most used steam social feature, followed by occasional chats with them.
It seemed to need clarification from what I consider most people's usage social features of a gaming platform.
Screaming obscenities at strangers or at by strangers, never had much of a draw for me.
Primarily single player gamer, but yeah I'm "on" just about every platform, but good luck interacting with me there for the first time.
@mrcopilot so, yeah, here's another issue. It seems like a lot of people have strongly negative ideas of what "social features" of a game or game platform could be -- especially related to interactions with strangers.
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@evan Since I don't know what any of that means, I will assume I am not a gamer.
@gam3 OK!
Gli ultimi otto messaggi ricevuti dalla Federazione
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@hober @aeva if it's zero for long enough, the software is unmaintained. They are no longer a maintainer in any meaningful sense, even if they still have write access to the git repo.
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@evan @ted If you think someone is obligated to put work into something despite not being paid, that's called entitlement. If you want to ensure they keep working on something, you should make it worth their while. Otherwise you're just exploiting them and demanding free labor. It's the same thing as "working for exposure".
What their goals are is entirely orthogonal to the question you asked. Your question was broadly applicable. Narrowing the scope is moving the goalposts.
And I say this as someone who's put tens of thousands of hours into FOSS projects without the promise of compensation.
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@aeva yes, exactly. which is why "it depends, anything from zero to infinity" is the only reasonable answer to the pol, as far as I can tell. who am I to even guess?
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@ted I guess I wouldn't call sharing public self-instruction, proof of concepts, or art projects "maintaining" the project. I agree, maintaining software is hard work.
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@hober I think I would prefer to defer to the hypothetical maintainer as to whether or not they might have a really good reason to put aside volunteer work for a month
[a sock puppet with a little shirt that says "hypothetical maintainer" on it rises up from the bottom of the screen] child care! personal emergency! health crisis! fascist goons kidnapping your neighbors!
thank you hypothetical maintainer, that was very informative.
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The amount of time and expertise an Open Source project needs is not coupled to the amount of time an unpaid, volunteer maintainer should dedicate to it.
Conversely, an unpaid, volunteer maintainer has no obligation to dedicate any particular amount of time to an Open Source project.
Perhaps it takes more time to maintain a project to my satisfaction than any maintainer is willing to dedicate to it. If so, I'll be disappointed. I'm used to it.
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@benpate @tess it's probably fair to pick a minimum number, although @aeva rightly pointed out that your motivation is going to flag if you never make any progress whatsoever.
So, regular review of security reports, bug triage, dependency and platform updates, that kind of thing are probably the minimum for "this software is not unmaintained".
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@evan
and tbh: yes it drives me crazy, if I see that the main maintainer of a project I use is not releasing new software, even they promised it, and prefer working on their new project. It drives me nuts, but it's their right to do.Hopefully there will be a bigger team at one point, so the complete project is not relying on one person (who did a great job so far).
