The problem is that, barring actually trying a demo, the best way to "pay attention to what they throw money at" is to see what other people are saying about the game. If a developer has the power to remove all negative comments from the discussion (and abuses that power), then you can pay attention all you want, you'll still only see positive comments even though the game is shit. Do you not see a problem with this?

Not when there's the entirety of the internet to search for information.
When this level of forum editing/abuse is happening you can catch it in and around the forum itself.
Mods rarely keep up with the vitriol of the posters, and a simple search usually leads to stories on review pages, Youtube videos, and other forums talking about the abuse and game quality in general.

All that said it would be great if there were a way to report abuses like the one in the Jimquisition video to a quality control portion of Valve so the worst offenders are dealt with one way or another.

But then that opens up another system to be abused by bored kids and unscrupulous competition, not to mention another expense of having to hire someone(s) to deal with that department.

The happiest solution I've found is to just learn a bit about the game I'm interested in and not impulse buy.

Well, I can't exactly say that I disagree with what you're saying. I too would definitely look beyond the Steam forum for information prior to buying an early access game (I'd never even look for one on Steam if I hadn't read about it elsewhere), but I'm afraid lots of people wouldn't look further than that. That's their own damn fault, I hear you saying? Well, yeah, but I still think a service as large as Steam has to work on preventing the type of developer abuse we're talking about, since it is extremely damaging to the reputation of the service.

In order for you to learn a bit about the game it's likely some folks will have to bite the bullet first. And coupled with no responsability over what they sell steam has arbitrarity for a refund policy so the 'research first' rationale in cases like this basically boils down to "i'm ok with steam and develloper x scaming people out of their money in order to keep me safe from scams".

'research first' applies to situations where you want to find out if a game looks like one you'll enjoy or if the game is poorly executed, has critical bugs, hardware compatibility issues, etc, it doesn't, or shouldn't, apply to scams because for me to know it's a scam someone has to be scammed first. This case definitely qualifies as scam, no ?

If steam had a set policy for refunds things would be slightly different since steam users would have some protection in cases like this, as it is the arbitrarity makes it borderline theft in my book.

I'm actually glad Jim Sterling does this sort of thing because now Steam has given developers carte blanche in their moderation.
It also isn't a secret developers/publishers write their own wikepedia pages for games and it isn't a secret big reviewmagazines/sites generally not give scathing reviews to keep the publishing houses happy.
And now even vloggers are approached for getting into the loop of mutual interest, the circuit of gamepublishers and reviewers in fooling the consumer into spending their money.
So the question is where can you still go for unbiased information about a game?

I hope you realize this shit both informs the community AND gets in one's face.

Easy example: when I launch Steam, I see their fucking ads. I don't want to see them, the only reason I ever had to launch the client was to perform an action they decided not to implement in the web version because they wanted me to install their rootkit on my pc for the privilege of paying them $3 or so.

A non-videogame example. I still have a piece of paper for a navigator because I don't like that the electronic kind comes with facebook and twitter sharing. Just no, double no, fuck no, I don't want to pay $800 for an unprogrammable computer that's going to market disgusting shit to me on my own tenkopeikas each time I use it.

Similarly, I don't want a store to track which games I play, how many times I launch them, how long I play, I don't want them to sell my information, and sure as fuck I don't want them to grade my fucking performance because I'm not at fucking school!

tldr steam sux hail gog hail hail hail yes

By the same logic, games are DLCs, too.

No. Words don't work like that. Words don't have hard definitions outside of hard science. IRL, you just point at things and hope the other party can follow your metaphorical finger. We had addons, expansion packs, upgrades, bonus materials, extra campaigns. DLC is in the mind of a majority associated with small doses of microtransactional extra content. (And yes I know some companies release and call them [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_papillomavirus]DLCs. Uh.)

Saying "but but but W2's EE was distributed by download so it's DLC so not all DLC is bad" is unproductive. It's basically "well I know murder is cosidered to be wrong but there's stopping violent criminals and euthanasia and abortion (trollface.png) and killing pests so murder is kind of okayish". No. Murder's still wrong, and the stuff that's okayish to fine is not murder.

DownLoadable Content, not murder. Murder is something else, not sure how it relates....

I am also not sure by which authority you have to be able to speak for the majority, but the people I know (which then per your definition is not part of the majority...) do see all extra content as DLC's, be it a large expansion pack or some multiplayer skins. Where ever I see these things mentioned, like the expansions for Oblivion or Borderlands, they are classified as DLC's, which is also why this is the definition on for example Wikipedia, which I then also guess do not represent the majority.

I seem to recall Oblivion's shiver isles was considered an expansion & the other official addons wee called DLC so that's the basis for my personal definition

<checks CD cases> yep, as I remembered

And that is because it was on CD, not DownLoadable (the DL part of DLC...)

Here is the digital version from Bethesda, called DLC's - http://www.elderscrolls.com/oblivion/dlc/

Edit - by the way, the second picture you provide as evidence says "Oblivion Downloadable Content Collection" and what is the abbreviation for Downloadable Content? :)

And I didn't even dl those ;)

See, even the disks has DLC now :)

You mean the disc has DLC. Only his Knights of the Nine one is DLC. Shivering Isles is a expansion pack.

http://www.gog.com/forum/general/a_new_jimquisition_you_should_watch/post100

I suggest you turn them off then next time you launch the client. Steam -> Settings -> Interface -> Uncheck Notify me about additions or changes, new releases, and upcoming games.

In addition, if you only care about your games library, you can set it to load default to your library by changing the 'Favorite Window' on the same page.