You must be mistaken. That's very clearly a "Not-a-Metroidvania" sale. The complete opposite of what he wanted.
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Jim Sterling Video - Valve Endorses AIDS Simulator
- Thread starter Chairmanchuck (另一个我)
- Start date
You must be mistaken. That's very clearly a "Not-a-Metroidvania" sale. The complete opposite of what he wanted.
Wow, that's a killer video title. But Jim produces quality stuff. I'll definitely watch this later.
Look at the metroidvania tag:
https://store.steampowered.com/tags/en/Metroidvania/
Search according to user reviews:
https://store.steampowered.com/search/?sort_by=Reviews_DESC&tags=1628
It takes until page 8 to start getting mixed reviewed games.
No this dilemma only exists because Valve does not want to spend money on doing actual curation.
You have the steamspy numbers off hand?
He won't make as much money from them though. That's what he actually cares about.
Honestly I continue to not really be able to draw a meaningful conclusion about what needs to happen in terms of problem-solving. On the one hand, I think personally think this absolute hands off policy just kind of makes Valve look lazy and agree that it makes for bad optics. I'm not saying it's something where you just flip a switch and the problem is solved, but there's got to be something that constitutes some bare minimum amount of visible effort that could make some meaningful impact on the amount of pure garbage that exists on the store.
But on the other hand, I'm not necessarily convinced that this would solve some tangible problem. As the consumer, I don't see this crap to begin with outside of stories/videos like these ones. And as for the indie dev problem, while I don't think pure garbage clogging the system has zero impact on their sales, I think the much bigger problem is that this isn't a platform that will ever reset back to day 0 again. There's a ton of great games out there and a ton of ways to buy them. Even if Valve weren't a lazy company content to just sit back and count the money rolling in and actually took a machete to all the garbage on their site, there's still a ton of games left. It would help, but I don't really think that this would solve the discoverability issue. I feel like most platforms encounter this issue as they mature.
But on the other hand, I'm not necessarily convinced that this would solve some tangible problem. As the consumer, I don't see this crap to begin with outside of stories/videos like these ones. And as for the indie dev problem, while I don't think pure garbage clogging the system has zero impact on their sales, I think the much bigger problem is that this isn't a platform that will ever reset back to day 0 again. There's a ton of great games out there and a ton of ways to buy them. Even if Valve weren't a lazy company content to just sit back and count the money rolling in and actually took a machete to all the garbage on their site, there's still a ton of games left. It would help, but I don't really think that this would solve the discoverability issue. I feel like most platforms encounter this issue as they mature.
OP
OP
Slaughtering Grounds has 50-100k.
Forsaken Uprising has 50-100k.
Tempter Tantrum has 50-100k.
Digital Homicide made a bundle where you could get a lot of their games for 1 or 2$, away from Steam without the 30% cut.
So he made at least, I estimate, 50k $ before taxes with the games.
I doubt without Jim they would have even 1k owners.
Sterling doing his one step away from Nightcrawler videos again I see.
I do wish Valve would sort this mess out though.
I do wish Valve would sort this mess out though.
That argument is completely nonsensical. A better analogy would be someone scribbling antisemitic trash on a fast food wrapper and asking it to be sold at the bookstore.
Or this. Mein Kampf is a historical text with educational value. School shooting simulator is most definitely neither historical nor of any value.
https://www.today.com/style/amazon-pulls-children-s-clothing-slavery-gets-sh-done-slogan-t121640
But they do do basic curation, that a game is what it says it is, isn't a keylogger, and actually boots. They have done this for a long time now, behind the scenes.
The actual problem is a philosophical one - they do not want to be a gatekeeper telling people what they are or are not allowed to buy, or what a developer is or is not allowed to produce.
For people who want a shop where some authority has personally vetted every single product available, you have multiple choices of where to shop.
No, but a game that has failed to meet arbitrary curation criteria will always sell zero copies on a heavily curated storefront.
It's baffling that people are actually believing Valve will permit everything and actually never remove any game (good or bad). They removed that game and every other game from that "dev". It's hilariously sad people are only taking these statements as all or nothing.
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Nope, and I didn't mean to imply you did. I was just pointing out how no one has to see games they don't want to.
I agree with you. Though i wish some shit wasn't allowed to be sold on Steam, ultimately i can deal with it because i can avoid it.
My post was regarding the usual thread whining.
Someone can scribble anti-Semitic trash probably will be able to sell it on the Kindle store though.
The kindle store has an unfathomable amount of trash alt-right books that are just on the brink of lawful when it comes to hateful shit.
You are absolutely right, you have completely defeated my argument. The Steam store IS great and the problem isn't that consumers have completely lost trust in using the platform, it is that it is TOO GOOD. You are so right, I'm not buying Celeste on Steam because it is just too tiring and overwhelming to scroll past page after page of quality. I mean, once Super Meat Boy showed up in my search results what is the point of looking any further? I'm glad that we settled this argument and that everyone who had complaints about the Steam store can just admit that WE were wrong. I'm sure that everything is just going to go swell from here on out.
Is it?
Imagine a world where you can't say anything unless your government approves of the content of what you say.
Valve is espousing an ideology. They are espousing an ideology as old as the internet: free and open computing platforms. That's the idea Tim Berners-Lee had when he designed the world wide web.
Steam is a digital software store. It's not a government or a country. If Valve doesn't "curate" products, that is not the equivalent of promoting a libertarian agenda.
Steam is not a war-time profiteer. If products make their way onto their platform, that does not imply a ringing moral endorsement on Valve's part. You have an interesting argument of implicit moral responsibility in the form of profit, however there's a fine line to draw.
That line is the value of an open platform versus the potential damage caused by one of these products. The value of an open platform is self evident. Before Steam PC was a disaster, a mess. That can't be argued. Steam is to be credited for creating a service that unified the PC gaming market.
Now what's the potential damage of one of these terrible products, like AIDS Simulator?
How many of these crappy games do you see on the front page of Steam. Because I see 0 of them. How many of these games get any attention at all? Well, every couple of months we seem to see maybe 1 with some outrageously offensive concept. However this never seems to translate into sales success, just derision.
I would much rather Steam exist as it is, an open and easily accessible platform. That means users, developers, publishers, everyone. All I want to see from Valve are better discovery tools, better ways to filter what I am interested in seeing and better ways to drill down into the available games. I'll "curate" my own experience. I don't need Valve to hand feed me what they think I should see.
Personally, despite the mis-characterization of Steam as some storefront inundated with so much garbage the good stuff is unfindable, I think that's the healthiest path.
On a related note: I can find just as much total garbage on "curated" storefronts, like iOS, as I can on Steam. Often I find it more easily. "Curation" on these platforms is nothing more than running a marquee list, said list filled by products from large (wealthy) publishers and a few critical hits. That's not curation, like a museum. It's the same money-driven advertising that runs television, movie theaters, and grocery stores.
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Actually the most common opinion between indie Devs is that it's the amount of good games that present a issue, not the amount of bad ones. The bad ones are literally completely and utterly irrelevant. No games are stopping standing out because of them.
There are post-mortems for many games, they're more or less unanimous in stating that they barely move anything on GOG. Note that GOG is not some unknown quantity in the PC space, people know they exist, but nobody bothers going there.
Here's a Reddit thread asking indie devs which non-Steam stores they recommend putting their games on. Almost all of them recommend itch.io or Humble Store (both of which are far less well known than GOG) over GOG, citing the fact that GOG's curation means the possibility of getting your work rejected isn't worth the tiny amount of sales you'll see.
They philosophically don't want to spend money on this is what you mean.
"Go somewhere else if you don't like it" even though there are plenty of games on PC that launch on Steam only. I don't think that works for me.
As a person that wants Valve to actually take ownership of this issue, I'm not asking them to be GOG. I'm asking them to have common sense.
Before I address this response here's what I will say: Libertarianism is absolutely a complete washing of the hands of responsibility for anything. It is an immoral selfish ideology that I would call a disease. Money over morality, the way of Rand Paul and Gabe Newell.
This has nothing to do with what we're talking about. Valve is a private entity.
Except not everything is accepted on the world wide web. Even it is curated by various organizations.
Of course they are. Not being a government body doesn't mean they don't have a company philosophy on things.
Selling games that incite violence is not a 'ringing endorsement' but they are making money from these products. There is no fine line to draw, these products are unacceptable. Pretty much everyone I've seen in this thread agrees on this.
This is akin to the big supporters of the 2nd amendment implying that their gun rights are worth more than all the completely preventable deaths of thousands of Americans. It goes back to my point about how libertarianism is a selfish disease.
I don't know, why don't you pay attention to the news where school shootings happen all the fucking time?
Now we're talking about justifying them based on how well they're featured or how they sell. If they're not important games and they don't sell, why does Valve bother to deal with the backlash with that logic?
You're an adult and can make your own decisions, obviously, but not everyone thinks the way you do or is in a place to do this.
Who is making this characterization? Steam is inundated with mobile ports all the time. Most of them are junk.
Nice whataboutism. Did it ever occur to you that maybe those companies practices are garbage on this front as well?
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This is the most honest store description I've seen in my life. And it's working, we're discussing it in this thread. I wouldn't have learned of its existence otherwise.
Why do people transform into libertarians when it comes to defending valve? And not like, soft libertarians either, but three steps away from objectivism libertarian.
Can you not be so passive aggressive?
I am just saying that Jim Sterling and most people way overestimate the effect of cash grabs games on Steam. The fact is that there is more "high quality" / "highy rated" games of most genres in Steam and that number will only ever keep increasing as more high quality indie games are being launched monthly now when compared to the start of the 2010s. There are issues of vissibility but those issues are not caused in major parts by the "trash" videogames but by other highly rated ones.
If you buy a steam game from anywhere other than steam, valve do not make a penny from that sale. In fact, it will cost them money.
You may choose to believe that the only principle they have is "don;t spend money", but the number of projects they directly fund that have no tangible direct financial benefits to themselves does not support that, and to be honest the entire concept of "just throw money at it" as a solution to a problem is incredibly naive.
This is what I get when I search for Metroidvania on Steam, sorted by Relevance (default)
It takes 7 pages until you get the first 'Mixed' game (and there are still positive ones afterwards) and I either own or have half the games in those 7 pages on my wishlist.
This is your competition when you're trying to release a new Metroidvania.
In this ongoing series which Jim Sterling continues to do regarding Valve and Steam, he's repeatedly pointed out that the indie developers have a problem with this. Case in point, here's one from his video back in November.
And here's another one in the same video:
To be clear, this problem with Steam's curation is something that Indie Developers have repeatedly taken issue with time and time again. I do not know where this narrative that indie developers don't care about this problem came from because they do, a lot.
Well, yeah, indie developers started complaining about too many things being allowed on the store as soon as they stopped complaining about not being allowed on the store.
To be fair, Jim wouldn't have a video or click-worthy title if he mentioned that, or even a thread like this one.
What about not watching the videos and ignore threads about those videos?
So the cause of school shootings is a game that was never even released?
Okay, Jack Thompson.
If 1000 games arrive on steam tomorrow, and 1 of them is good. how the fuck are you expected to find it, especially if it's from an indie dev without a lot of $ or manpower to promote it?
jim promotes stuff that i find to be hurtful to the video game community by spouting uninformed misinformation. i'm not specifically referencing this video.
If 1000 games arrive on Steam tomorrow and all of them are good. How do you expect to find specifically one of them ?
I never said this.
Did you even read my full response to that other poster or are you just looking for a 'gotcha'? Seriously the lengths some people go to defend Valve on this issue is astonishing.
Attacking Jim isn't going to change the fact that Valve's policy is garbage.