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PCGamer: GDC's 'realistic' talk about game sales on Steam paints a grim picture
- Thread starter BlackManLovesKUF
- Start date
Visual Novels were rejected too, because they arent games.
German Point and Click Adventures too, because "they wouldnt sell well", but american P&C were fine.
A bias already existed in the curators mind....
Its true without the curation/gateway aspect the amount of terrible games is simply overwhelming, and makes it so most people don't want to dig through titles to find something interesting. I know I don't, I rely on word of mouth. Steam used to be better about this.
Steam has so much absolute crap on it and everything is early access now. I wade through for hours some nights without finding something worth a shot. It really is hard to single out games with actual effort put into them because there is just a massive pile of shit burying them.
I really feel bad for these one-man shops, I really do. It sucks to put months and years off work into a game, and consider yourself lucky to make even $1000 off of your project. I barely have time to play the new Zelda, let alone whatever random games I got in the last Humble Bundle. I agree that a game is going to need to have an interesting premise before I consider buying it.
I'm not sure there's a solution for this either. Every year, you're competing with more people and and a continuously growing pile of games on every storefront. It feels to me that indie games are in the same spot that e-books from small authors are now.
There's simply too much on the marketplace for any one person to be reasonably able to sift through. I hate to say it, but diversifying your income with a day job and studying online marketing on the side seems like the best idea for most devs now.
And that's to say nothing about actual game quality, but that's a totally different issue.
I'm not sure there's a solution for this either. Every year, you're competing with more people and and a continuously growing pile of games on every storefront. It feels to me that indie games are in the same spot that e-books from small authors are now.
There's simply too much on the marketplace for any one person to be reasonably able to sift through. I hate to say it, but diversifying your income with a day job and studying online marketing on the side seems like the best idea for most devs now.
And that's to say nothing about actual game quality, but that's a totally different issue.
which you never have to see
which you can filter out
i don't see how that's possible, unless you're intentionally going through all new releases without using any of the tools that surface games with high reviews, games that are popular, games your friends like and are playing, etc.
Nonsense.
This I cannot understand. On my personalized front-page are the usual AAA games, but also new releases in my most played genres. I do not need to "wade through for hours".
New Hardware/ecosystems being a big opportunity for new blood is nothing new though. It's happened literally every hardware cycle. We got the stories for Xbox live and PSN too. Now those markets have matured. The switch will get there too.
This has to be the final form of exaggerating the Steam store experience. Hours a night without finding something interesting? Those are some narrow tastes.
If you cannot find something worth playing while searching for hours, you have some narrow tastes or super high standards and should use filters. Because even in the darkest, most unfiltered corners of steam there's good stuff.
This. Nowadays being a good indie game just isn't enough on Steam, if the game doesn't standout among the sea of indie games, it's likely that it won't get any attention.
This. The man has handles this topic with little to no nuance, and almost all of it comes off like "hur durr this is inconvenient to me as someone who covers games'. It's frankly inane how he's handled the topic. More to it this problem isn't exactly new. Games not making their money back and not selling in a crowded market also had a role in killing so many studios in retail, and the death of the middle market on consoles for so long.
The indie scene itself has gotten bigger and more diverse. Which is a positive that comes with a huge con, it's that much more competitive now. Throw in how much of Steam's good will is built on sales, and I would imagine it is ridiculously hard to be a break out indie hit on steam without some serious word of mouth.
Is there no middle-ground? We can have good releases and also get rid of the trash, the consoles already do this.
Yeah, like there weren't plenty of crap games on WiiU or Wii. Switch platform is a year old with Nintendo being insanely limiting dev kits. Wait 3-4 years.
Steam has a back catalog stretching decades. An indie releasing today on it has to fight with other great games releasing in similar time window but others great games released over literally decades and a few year old AAA games that are going for cheap.
That new indie game (which plenty of people will wait a week or two to buy for impressions and then will push off till next Steam sale) might also show up in the next bundle or game pass or EA pass or Humble monthly.
For indie game to succeed now days it has to stand out to the nth degree, come from a reputable studio and go virul. There is too much competition otherwise.
If you can't find a single good game on steam after searching for hours the problem is 100% in front of the monitor
Consoles also have to bother with less than 1% of the indiegames steam does.
And it's not like there hasn't been shit on them either
Consoles also have to bother with less than 1% of the indiegames steam does.
And it's not like there hasn't been shit on them either
Which console does this?
The one with Vroom in the Night Sky, the one with Life Of Black Tiger, or the one with Fighter Within?
Filters only go so far and then you miss out on good things, thanks for the replies though guys guess the massive amount of crap on there has nothing to do with lack of sales then my bad
I can tell you right now, the amount "absolute crap" thing people throw around is a huge, huge, HUGE over-exaggeration. Maybe only about 10-20% of the total Steam library I think could be defined as this, keep in mind a bad game that is an earnest attempt to be good but makes mistakes isn't "absolute crap" like should be defined here, though frankly the real issue here is there's a super high number of at least decent, and even a surprising number of good games. Now one man's trash can be another man's treasure, I understand different people have some different definitions, standards, and interest in style of game here, but even if you removed every game on Steam with a Negative or Mostly Negative review rating (which would be kind of foolish to use that as a barricade), or hell even lower Mixed reviews, the frankly honest truth is there'd still be too many games.
People are so focused on this spin despite often not really digging into what's actually the majority of the Steam library. I don't know the full Steam library either but there's several genres I literally check every release and buy most of few genres games. The 'issue', which is both a pro and con, is PC has no real 'reset' on its library. Games just keep coming out, at an increasing rate currently, most are actually honest attempts at games too, and plenty of them are quite good. But as more releases, the library becomes larger and larger, and soon games aren't just competing with what's currently releasing but a library that's nearly two decades old. Add to this so much is coming out there's no way anybody could reasonably cover it all. Consoles have 'resets' every few years when they change platforms, but imagine if literally for example every game that ever released on a Nintendo platform, from the NES to current era and including all different region games (as Steam does allow this to some extent though some exceptions) was all available in one place and more games just got thrown at it that releases on Nintendo platforms. You'd begin having the same issue. ow imagine if on-top of this there was 10-20 new games releasing every weekday on the platform on-top of this.
The real root of the problem is too much of a good thing, NOT trash games. It's not really an easy problem to solve, even if somehow all "fake/trash" games were taken care of the problem would not resolve itself as it's not the actual root of the problem.
People are so focused on this spin despite often not really digging into what's actually the majority of the Steam library. I don't know the full Steam library either but there's several genres I literally check every release and buy most of few genres games. The 'issue', which is both a pro and con, is PC has no real 'reset' on its library. Games just keep coming out, at an increasing rate currently, most are actually honest attempts at games too, and plenty of them are quite good. But as more releases, the library becomes larger and larger, and soon games aren't just competing with what's currently releasing but a library that's nearly two decades old. Add to this so much is coming out there's no way anybody could reasonably cover it all. Consoles have 'resets' every few years when they change platforms, but imagine if literally for example every game that ever released on a Nintendo platform, from the NES to current era and including all different region games (as Steam does allow this to some extent though some exceptions) was all available in one place and more games just got thrown at it that releases on Nintendo platforms. You'd begin having the same issue. ow imagine if on-top of this there was 10-20 new games releasing every weekday on the platform on-top of this.
The real root of the problem is too much of a good thing, NOT trash games. It's not really an easy problem to solve, even if somehow all "fake/trash" games were taken care of the problem would not resolve itself as it's not the actual root of the problem.
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I only read half this thread so maybe this was posted on page 7 or something.
Several posts talk about Indies that probably just do not market enough for their game to be shown and bought on Steam. But that only is half a genuine answer with how expensive marketing can become. If we define indie development as small team with small budget they also would not have the budget for marketing campaigns, now there obviously are ways to market your game cheap which usually boils down on sending out codes to everyone and their mother in the hope of publicity or going viral. If you look at AAA marketing budgets for example those games too have crazy high marketing budgets because that stuff just is not as cheap as most people would assume.
When an Indie developer releases a game they probably barely have any budget to market their game anyway, they can spend their free time marketing it themselves but then they also would need to put effort in learning marketing techniques themselves, build a platform, reach out to people, etc. That just is not doable for someone who is alone or works with a few people and then has to start working on a new game with similar assets to recoup losses.
And then there comes the fact that Steam does have too many releases, 40 games a day, on average is insane and i don't believe for a second that all those games are going to be quality games, probably not even half of them. But if you have your game release and have to market against 10 other Indie games of similar quality it becomes hard to find success already. Indie is successful but not by default.
Steam also could put more effort in their front page, when you open the storefront it usually starts with some big publisher sale followed by a personalised featured and recommended section of which the algorithm can hit or miss in my opinion, followed by special offers which again tends to be big publisher games, followed by discovery queue (which feels like paid advertisement to me), then it suggests curators, shilling of the Vive and Steam controller, and then we get to the tabbed page that has New and Trending by default with the other tabs being Top Sellers, Upcoming and Specials. It is not until here that Steam really starts showing a wider variety of games.
Now if i go to GoG for example the front page starts with a Featured section which i assume is curated showing a wide variety of games like Pizza Connections 3, Iron Maiden, Dead in Vinland, The Curse of Monkey Island, Ash of Gods and Surviving Mars. None of these games are found on Steam's front page at all yet also are recent releases. Right next to the Featured column the front page also shows Special Offers then another row of promoting a variety of games (Tyranny, Battletech, Close Combat, Manic Mansion and The Witcher 3). And then the page is finished with a similar tab system as Steam featuring Popular (by default), New, Upcoming and On Sale on the right with a menu showing Headlines which again features a variety of games though articles and updates on games.
I think it is reasonable to say that, looking at the front page of Steam and GoG respectively you can see a difference in how both platforms support games. Steam feels like it only supports a game that already has sold a lot or is assumed to sell a lot, which usually boils down in big publisher games with big marketing budgets. GoG however gives the platform to all sorts of games, not necessarily everything that will interest you but it does give people the chance to explore by default. And personally i would assume this is due to how GoG does curate all their releases so they know what they have on the store and can push a bit more on the storefront. And unlike Steam i haven't heard a lot of people complain about GoG's curation being too rigid which was Steam Greenlight at launch which ended up being toned down enough to the point publishers could circumvent it would giving out free keys if you votes for the game. I don't think the crap argument holds a lot of merit, necessarily, but Steam definitely is overcrowded partially due to the high amount of releases.
Several posts talk about Indies that probably just do not market enough for their game to be shown and bought on Steam. But that only is half a genuine answer with how expensive marketing can become. If we define indie development as small team with small budget they also would not have the budget for marketing campaigns, now there obviously are ways to market your game cheap which usually boils down on sending out codes to everyone and their mother in the hope of publicity or going viral. If you look at AAA marketing budgets for example those games too have crazy high marketing budgets because that stuff just is not as cheap as most people would assume.
When an Indie developer releases a game they probably barely have any budget to market their game anyway, they can spend their free time marketing it themselves but then they also would need to put effort in learning marketing techniques themselves, build a platform, reach out to people, etc. That just is not doable for someone who is alone or works with a few people and then has to start working on a new game with similar assets to recoup losses.
And then there comes the fact that Steam does have too many releases, 40 games a day, on average is insane and i don't believe for a second that all those games are going to be quality games, probably not even half of them. But if you have your game release and have to market against 10 other Indie games of similar quality it becomes hard to find success already. Indie is successful but not by default.
Steam also could put more effort in their front page, when you open the storefront it usually starts with some big publisher sale followed by a personalised featured and recommended section of which the algorithm can hit or miss in my opinion, followed by special offers which again tends to be big publisher games, followed by discovery queue (which feels like paid advertisement to me), then it suggests curators, shilling of the Vive and Steam controller, and then we get to the tabbed page that has New and Trending by default with the other tabs being Top Sellers, Upcoming and Specials. It is not until here that Steam really starts showing a wider variety of games.
Now if i go to GoG for example the front page starts with a Featured section which i assume is curated showing a wide variety of games like Pizza Connections 3, Iron Maiden, Dead in Vinland, The Curse of Monkey Island, Ash of Gods and Surviving Mars. None of these games are found on Steam's front page at all yet also are recent releases. Right next to the Featured column the front page also shows Special Offers then another row of promoting a variety of games (Tyranny, Battletech, Close Combat, Manic Mansion and The Witcher 3). And then the page is finished with a similar tab system as Steam featuring Popular (by default), New, Upcoming and On Sale on the right with a menu showing Headlines which again features a variety of games though articles and updates on games.
I think it is reasonable to say that, looking at the front page of Steam and GoG respectively you can see a difference in how both platforms support games. Steam feels like it only supports a game that already has sold a lot or is assumed to sell a lot, which usually boils down in big publisher games with big marketing budgets. GoG however gives the platform to all sorts of games, not necessarily everything that will interest you but it does give people the chance to explore by default. And personally i would assume this is due to how GoG does curate all their releases so they know what they have on the store and can push a bit more on the storefront. And unlike Steam i haven't heard a lot of people complain about GoG's curation being too rigid which was Steam Greenlight at launch which ended up being toned down enough to the point publishers could circumvent it would giving out free keys if you votes for the game. I don't think the crap argument holds a lot of merit, necessarily, but Steam definitely is overcrowded partially due to the high amount of releases.
This is also something worth mentioning. Indie games don't usually have a budget for advertising (that shit is expensive yo), and add to this there's not really a good place with no money to really advertise (most places shame self-promotion or the like). Steam also does a "we'll promote you if you do a certain level of success". It makes sense why they do this, I don't think it's the wrong call for them, but it is a self-feedback loop. The games doing well do better, the games doing badly stay in obscurity.
Of course, GOG has its own issues, GOG frankly for example doesn't really gear towards quality either, they curate based on the curators personal taste (some genres are far more accepted than others), and they are far more likely to deny newer games and accept older games. Though I'm surprised you never have seen some of GOG's controversy, like when they denied Cook, Server, Delicious for being 'too casual' looking, or I need to remember its name (I'm terrible with names) this one really successful and popular game on Steam that had sold hundreds of thousands of copies and super well received with a huge cult audience being declined because they thought it "looked like a mobile game". They have a lot of weird arbitrary restrictions on curation on GOG, and again they seem to favor certain styles and genres more than others. They're free to do that as its their storefront and all, but frankly I can say I'm not a fan.
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Steam is so flooded that everyone just gave up looking at new releases.
That makes it impossible for good games to get discovered. Word of mouth can't spread if nobody played your game in the first place.
It really doesn't have to be that way. Even some bare minimum curation would help a lot.
Cutting out the worst, most low effort games would make the new release section a lot more overseeable.
That makes it impossible for good games to get discovered. Word of mouth can't spread if nobody played your game in the first place.
It really doesn't have to be that way. Even some bare minimum curation would help a lot.
Cutting out the worst, most low effort games would make the new release section a lot more overseeable.
THat's why indie publishers are for.
That said, it's not that bad. We're regularly getting successful indie releases without indie publisher and any big marketing push, so it's not like it's impossible. Far from it. Somehow those creators do manage to find a way to put their product in front of peeople who are willing to buy it.
Then users like me spend some time searching new releases to maybe be that first review but I get called out here for not using filters or going off reviews/random twitch guy opinions. Damned if you do or don't. Good/Bad/Garbage there's a lot on there and if nobody puts time in actually checking things out only popular or marketed things get any exposure.
No, they don't. There are literally hundreds, maybe thousands of great indie games that aren't available on consoles.
Agree with that in our case even being F2P didn't help... Being indie dev it's not an easy task... Your game dissapear between a wave of games made in weeks or even in days...
In looking at the store page, I realized there is something baffling about how the Steam community reacts to curation. Among all the sorting tools on Steam, there is one that is almost universally hated and I'm not really sure why. There is literally a feature called Curators that got written off almost instantly by everyone which does what the "can't wade through all the crap myself" crowd wants. There are some really great, well sorted lists out there full of games I hadn't seen otherwise. Don't like that the first curator you clicked on doesn't like the same game you do? Well, that's how Steam was by default when they were the only curators, but now you get a choice in who does your spoon fed curation.
Here's my favorite.
http://store.steampowered.com/curator/7099409-Weird-Games-for-Your-Pleasure/?appid=746940
Edit: Come to think of it, half these cool games seem like the kind of thing a level headed Valve in 2010 would reject outright.
Here's my favorite.
http://store.steampowered.com/curator/7099409-Weird-Games-for-Your-Pleasure/?appid=746940
Edit: Come to think of it, half these cool games seem like the kind of thing a level headed Valve in 2010 would reject outright.
Don't forget about pinball games. People used to joke around in the Steam threads that Valve hated pinball.
In my mind, the question is not "Why should my game compete with crap?", but instead "Why should my game sell at all?". And the answer, sadly, is "It doesn't". There's no reason your game needs to sell better than any other. You put a lot of work on it, sure, but so did the other dev. You believe it deserves to sell well because you made it, and while it makes perfect sense for you to think that way, your potential audience doesn't share that sentiment. There are thousands of good games shouting for their attention, both new and old, both full priced and on sale, and with limited time and money they have to draw the line somewhere.
Asking for more curation is asking for other games to be removed except yours. That's arrogant. That's saying you should be treated in a special way just because. That's claiming you are entitled to good sales because you released a good game, while ignoring the other hundred people who released a hundred equally good games that same month, and blaming it on the bad stuff nobody ever wants, buys or even looks at (except for some very angry Youtubers who are the target audience for those products, as much as they may complain about it).
Your good game isn't competing with Prolapse Simulator 2018. That title doesn't appear on anyone's Discovery Queue or New and Trending or Top Sellers tabs. No, your good game is competing with stuff like Celeste, Hollow Knight, Axiom Verge, Super Meat Boy, Stardew Valley, Dust, Bit.Trip, Towerfall, The Witness, Superhot and countless other games that people are happy to buy. It's a shame to see a good product not selling well, it truly is, but don't go looking for excuses. Instead, try to find out the real reasons and do something about them. It's hard as hell, but it is what it is. Steam won't do your marketing for you, that's your job as the developer/publisher. Steam won't stop other similar games from being sold there, so you either make something in a different, less explored genre or try to make it stand out somehow. Complaining about bad games stealing your lunch won't get you anywhere, especially because that's really the least of your problems, if at all.
It sounds really hard to make it in the current landscape. Indie devs truly have my sympathy. They bear all the risk, while customers get to enjoy an infinity of great experiences. That said, as a customer myself I wouldn't want to have it any other way.
I should put a disclaimer that i have a very specific taste that is catered towards JRPG's so both storefronts are somewhat equal to me although GoG is less favoured by most publishers on that front.
Obviously curations has its pros and cons, it is the whole 'point' of having some arbitrary subjective system in place. But one could argue that due to this curation that is so subjective people that resonate with said curation will find a lot more games on a place that is curated than a place that is not. So yes there probably is drama surrounding it (and i am googling the games you mentioned as i write this) but it flew over my head personally due to not being in my field of interest. What gives GoG this edge for me personally i for different reasons which are things you mentioned too like the catering towards preserving older games; i think it is amazing that games Baldur's Gate and Ultima are being preserved on their platform for example. Neither of those example are found on Steam for example despite being classics. The curation does resonate with my personal taste at times, i've put more games i never heard of on my GoG wishlist than i ever have on Steam but the biggest reason i moved to GoG primarily, and this does not even have any link with the topic at hand actually is that they comply with currency conversion unlike Steam who has been suggesting publishers to treat $1=€1.
What you wrote about the self-feedback loop is hitting the nail on the head indeed, the whole point i try to argue that i think that Steam could do a lot more to help Indies and other niche audiences by promoting their games. The big games will sell no matter if they are being featured on the front page no matter what.
Yeah, they gave the Curator system a huge overhaul a few months(?) ago.
Most people complaining about Steam and Valve and the flood of asset flips and trash drowning out the poor indies are just parroting talking points from certain others and don't really use and/or follow Steam much.
We're already kinda starting to see it, Nintendo seems to green light a lot of crap while denying real indie devs access. It's super bizarre.
Not sure if it has been said,but many indies fail in terms of basic marketing. Putting something on a shelf and cashing in doesn't work in any industry. I know a great local musician for example who has his 1000 views or less on YouTube and a lot has to do with not understanding some simple marketing for himself. And I'm not talking about advertisements on TV, but something a single person could do.
I you are a small dev with a good game,go to small YouTubers with good content and collaborate with them for example. Give a bunch of keys to a smaller outlet for a giveaway. Find someone for translations of your store page to French,Spanish and German(could do this one for free if someone here needs help)if possible and no, google translate often makes things worse. Send keys to every youtuber,twitch streamer and review outlet possible, or like one dev who gave away a few hundred keys on neogaf once. Advertise your social media accounts as good as possible and make them interesting in ways beyond your game.
Hoping you can put your game on steam and it magically sells doesn't really work most of the time, but there is a lot a single person or a small studio can do.
I you are a small dev with a good game,go to small YouTubers with good content and collaborate with them for example. Give a bunch of keys to a smaller outlet for a giveaway. Find someone for translations of your store page to French,Spanish and German(could do this one for free if someone here needs help)if possible and no, google translate often makes things worse. Send keys to every youtuber,twitch streamer and review outlet possible, or like one dev who gave away a few hundred keys on neogaf once. Advertise your social media accounts as good as possible and make them interesting in ways beyond your game.
Hoping you can put your game on steam and it magically sells doesn't really work most of the time, but there is a lot a single person or a small studio can do.
I'm one of the persons that gave up looking a new releases and I know many other that also gave up.
Now we are at the point that most new games barely get any reviews if any.
My impression is that even titles with good reviews and from 'big' indie publishers like DevolverDigital are not doing that great anymore. It's very interesting to look at SteamSpy numbers and see the pronounced downward trend across indie publishers and developers between 2015 to 2018. Some devs have moved from 300K+ sales to barely reaching 30K. Even if one accounts for cumulative sales over time on the market, and various discounts and bundles, it's incredibly worrying. You simply cannot expect to make a living, even with a modest budget and team size, these days with indie game development.
Marketing and storefront visibility are important aspects for sure, but I think overall market and playtime saturation, waiting for discounts and overall 'indie game fatigue' are the biggest factors.
DevolverDigital is possibly the biggest and most well-known indie publisher out there. They got connections to streamers, journalists, visibility and very active social media. Look at their SteamSpy figures and rank them on recent releases: http://steamspy.com/dev/Devolver+Digital
It's not good, it's not sustainable for 5-man teams to pay their salary.
Marketing and storefront visibility are important aspects for sure, but I think overall market and playtime saturation, waiting for discounts and overall 'indie game fatigue' are the biggest factors.
People do all of this and still fucking fail.
DevolverDigital is possibly the biggest and most well-known indie publisher out there. They got connections to streamers, journalists, visibility and very active social media. Look at their SteamSpy figures and rank them on recent releases: http://steamspy.com/dev/Devolver+Digital
It's not good, it's not sustainable for 5-man teams to pay their salary.
Thats not true, and that specific reasoning actually favours Steam due to the way steam integrally allows for key resellers, and the best you get from GOG is a "Sorry we fucked you on the exchange rate! heres some store credit!"
e:
I mean, Valve have been pushing for regional pricing for a very long time, and have pointed to the successes of converting pirates into customers by doing so. It is just false to suggest that they are pressuring publishers to put everything into flat rate dollars.
I generally wait until an indie game gets a lot of attention, reviews or a console storefront release before checking it out, but I do worry that we're getting tons of great games come out on Steam and get no attention, but it's hard to see a way around that
Curating Steam would be a huge effort and Valve have no incentive to limit what they sell on their storefront, and actually curating it would probably cost them money in terms of paying staff to actually do that
However if you leave it as it is, you will lose good games to the void
At least we're at a point where PSN/Switch etc can shine a light on some of these titles, but it's inevitable that at some point they'll become overcrowded too, especially if console storefronts start to carry forward instead of resetting every generation
Curating Steam would be a huge effort and Valve have no incentive to limit what they sell on their storefront, and actually curating it would probably cost them money in terms of paying staff to actually do that
However if you leave it as it is, you will lose good games to the void
At least we're at a point where PSN/Switch etc can shine a light on some of these titles, but it's inevitable that at some point they'll become overcrowded too, especially if console storefronts start to carry forward instead of resetting every generation
Steam has its own Curator system that allows everyone to be that subjective curator and make personalized lists and shit.
You could try and find a few Curators on Steam that are close to your taste and go from there. There are lots of curators focusing on RPGs and/or Japanese games.
Handling curation by selectively presenting games based on subjective metrics is much better than denying access to the storefront based on subjective metrics.
Also :P
Who is to say what an indie or niche product is? Who gets that help from Valve? Subset Games, who marketed their latest release as "From the developers of FTL", and have done quite well with it? Mike Bithell, who is very adept at using Twitter to promote his games? What about Slitherine, who publish a ton of old-fashioned strategy wargames? But they also have their own store-front, so they aren't actually as in-need of Steam sales as one would initially think. And then, once that point is found, what you're going to have is the pubs/devs who aren't given that help get (righfully) angry/upset at Valve for not helping them. A two-tier system where someone will always feel left out, regardless of if they deserve to or not.
Edit: Missed this
Only for the major markets. Here in Malaysia, I'm being asked to pay in US dollars, whereas Steam is in the local currency.
Because they expect an algorithm to do it for them and they expect that at some point, that algorithm will be as good as a human doing that task. Google does the exact same thing with Youtube which is why they had Paul Logan's controversial cadaver video on their "frontpage" for such a long time before they took measures.
I swear to god, what is it with people just inventing their own stories in discussions about steam?
They have put in way more work - WAY more work - trying to create systems to try and solve the discovery problem - WAY more work than anyone else has bothered doing on any other digital storefront, be that Apple, Google, Amazon, or any of the other gamesites that are just barebones sores with whoever pays top dollar getting the front page by deault, and to try and make it a community driven effort specifically because there is no fucking algorithm for "Iz game gud?"
Like, the laziest ass solution they could have come up with is what people who don't use Steam claim to want, which is how old steam worked, which was some dude in an office just went "Yeah" or "nah" on submissions at his own leisure and with no oversight or real reasoning as to why fed back to submitters.
You're talking on a videogame forum. There's a monthly Steam thread, and there's also "This month on Steam/PC" and "Hidden Gems" threads.
Absolutely spot-on with this. How many adults are posting here? How many with full-time jobs? How many in a long-term relationship, and/or with kids? How many care-givers? How many doing night-courses to get a better job?
Playtime is limited. Hell, even for a teen playtime is limited.
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Straight-up, Steam/Valve threads on gaming need the same moderation as Sony/Nintendo/XBox threads - the disinformation, misinformation and trolling are all the same as a "console war/platform war" thread.
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Maybe some numbers will put things in perspective. Here's a list of all Steam games, sorted by user reviews.
http://store.steampowered.com/search/?sort_by=Reviews_DESC&page=477&tags=-1&category1=998
I've marked that specific page for a reason. Steam has a total of 19538 games. I've singled out the number of games on Steam with a positive rating or higher. This should be a decent indicator of quality, I think it's fair to say that games with a positive user rating have a place on Steam. Anyone want to take a stab at guessing the number? I'll put it in spoilers below.
If we add games with a "mixed" rating, which means games that at least part of the audience found to be good or interesting, we get this number:
Please note that this number is actually higher because after that number the list gets mixed with games that don't have enough user reviews to receive a rating.
So these are the facts:
1 - Over half of all the games on Steam have a "mostly positive" rating or higher.
2 - Over three quarters of all the games on Steam have a "mixed" rating or higher.
3 - Less than a quarter of all the games on Steam could be considered unpopular (too few user reviews) or bad ("mostly negative" rating or lower).
So I'd like to ask fans of curation these questions: How do you curate such a massive list of decent to great games? How do you decide which ones to cut?
http://store.steampowered.com/search/?sort_by=Reviews_DESC&page=477&tags=-1&category1=998
I've marked that specific page for a reason. Steam has a total of 19538 games. I've singled out the number of games on Steam with a positive rating or higher. This should be a decent indicator of quality, I think it's fair to say that games with a positive user rating have a place on Steam. Anyone want to take a stab at guessing the number? I'll put it in spoilers below.
11916
If we add games with a "mixed" rating, which means games that at least part of the audience found to be good or interesting, we get this number:
15685
Please note that this number is actually higher because after that number the list gets mixed with games that don't have enough user reviews to receive a rating.
So these are the facts:
1 - Over half of all the games on Steam have a "mostly positive" rating or higher.
2 - Over three quarters of all the games on Steam have a "mixed" rating or higher.
3 - Less than a quarter of all the games on Steam could be considered unpopular (too few user reviews) or bad ("mostly negative" rating or lower).
So I'd like to ask fans of curation these questions: How do you curate such a massive list of decent to great games? How do you decide which ones to cut?
^^
And if you remove games with mixed or lower review ratings, you'd be removing every COD game released after MW3, you'd be removing No Man's Sky, Wolfenstein 2, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, GTA V, Ark, Civilization VI, Fallout 4 and so many other popular games.
And if you remove games with mixed or lower review ratings, you'd be removing every COD game released after MW3, you'd be removing No Man's Sky, Wolfenstein 2, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, GTA V, Ark, Civilization VI, Fallout 4 and so many other popular games.
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I didn't question whether or not they put work into it, I merely tried to explain why it works the way it does and why that might not seem appealing to some consumers.
Keep in mind that great games with not enough reviews cannot earn a "mostly positive" tag even if all reviews are positive.
Curation stans are trying to solve a problem by inputting the wrong answer.