• magic_lobster_party@kbin.run
      30·
      5 months ago

      Closes Steam, sets latest survey date to 1 year ago, and then opens Steam again.

      I guess it’s so you can fill in the survey again. Not sure if it actually works.

      • Rustmilian@lemmy.worldEnglish
        22·
        5 months ago

        Yep, it forces the survey. Because some of us will be using steam on Linux for years and still never see it. But this way it’ll allow you to do it regardless.
        Just don’t go spamming, it’s only valid for the first 1-2 days of the month and you can only upload once.

        • BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          5 months ago

          Doesn’t really matter if you see the survey or not - valve can validate their data other ways. They easily know how many clients connect from each OS and what proportions as that’s fundamental to the client itself. The survey fills in the rest of the data like which kernel, distros, and hardware.

          All this would do is maybe weight some of the answers on which flavour of Linux and which hardware is being used in the favour of proactive users. But really good survey data relies on being representative and that is bes achieved by large random samples rather than people saying “count me!”

          • Rustmilian@lemmy.worldEnglish
            8·
            5 months ago

            Ofc they can, that’s why you can’t just spam it and expect it to change much, other than you potentially getting smacked for spamming the api.
            It doesn’t hurt to force it if it’s just never triggered before though, the survey trigger can be problematic on Linux.
            Besides, there’s plenty of Windows users who do the exact same thing.

            All this would do is maybe weight some of the answers on which flavour of Linux and which hardware is being used in the favour of proactive users.

            No, that’s not how the survey works, it’s opt-in. Sure privately they can see your system properties from the steam client, but they can’t publish it unless you explicitly opt-into the survey. Survey fail to trigger = never opt-in = you’re completely excluded. Forcing the trigger at the appropriate time when it’s never triggered even after years is perfectly fine. Plus it forces the trigger to reset properly for next time. Like I said, you can only upload once; after that just wait patiently for it to trigger on its own as it should be functioning as intended from then on.

    • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz
      7·
      5 months ago

      At a glance, it looks like it closes steam, edits steam survey data to backdate it to a year earlier, then starts steam again.

      This perhaps causes steam to update the survey data to make it report you as using Linux?