On a single platform. Giving a single company complete control over the marketplace, forcing any company looking to sell their game to a large audience to go through steam.
You ain’t got to buy the game on there, you can get codes at other retailers
You actually can’t buy the vast majority of Steam games elsewhere. 18,800 games released new this year on Steam. Do you know any legit retailers that even sell 18,000 games total?
It’s something I’ve been noticing with all the routine seasonal complaining about sales on Steam not being worth looking at anymore… Sure, I don’t only buy from Steam, but I do buy more from Steam than elsewhere, because those games–good games–just are not other places to be bought. So on the one hand, I see a lot of value from Steam sales and people shouldn’t dis them so out of hand, but on the other, yeah Steam clearly controls the market. And that’s not even getting into how Steam deliberately reduces the value-to-the-devs of your off-Steam purchases, so buying elsewhere keeps your purchase and reviews from helping the dev earn much needed Steam visibility.
So it’s far from as simple as “You can just buy codes elsewhere”.
I’m not the one getting worked up an letting it ruin my day.
I was just browsing Lemmy for a few minutes while visiting my parents and eating soup. You on the other hand have been acting like you spent Christmas alone because noone can stand you
No, I’m just insulting this guy because he deserves it.
Also, I’m not blind - it’s pretty obvious you only replied to my comment here because I pissed you off in a completely different post and you decided to rummage through my comment history. I’d like to point out that that’s kinda sad on your part. Not my fault you’re bad at making an argument. You don’t need to stalk me for it.
I’ll only go looking if I see a cool game in a YouTube video or see a cool article about something coming out soon that looks interesting. Otherwise, same.
It depends, sometimes I go down the rabbit hole on their “Games Like This” suggestions on my favorite games’ store pages. I actually just found a cool one that way the other day called Ad Fundum. It was a funny coincidence since it came up suggested on a completely unrelated game, but I’d been wanting a game centered around digging underground.
But yeah, with literally over 100,000+ games on Steam, it’s become way too difficult to find quality stuff that isn’t AAA or indie games that struck it lucky with popular streamers giving them exposure. Which sucks for indie devs that actually put out their passion projects since it makes discoverability so hard, as others have pointed out here.
I’ve always found the “games like this” section to be so superficial that it very rarely actually has games which I’d consider to be similar to the one I’m looking at. Just looking at the store right now, for “Aquaria” which I really enjoy, it recommends Skyrim as a similar game. Sure they both are open world adventure RPGs… but I definitely would not consider them to be similar games.
It’s definitely a crapshoot a lot of times. But there’s usually at least one or two on there that are similar enough that I might genuinely be interested in it. You can also forcefully hide games from showing up in suggestions, iirc. I’ve never done it, but some of my friends have recommended doing so in order to make Steam dig deeper for finding lesser known stuff. I’m not that big of a connoisseur, though.
Edit:
I recalled correctly, and it seems they’ve even made the Ignore button a lot easier to find (or I just never noticed before):
Some of the most-played steam games are “Banana” and “Cats” where you literally click it every few hours and get steam item drops. Basically NFTs where people try to get rare items, but even more braindead because the developer, at any time can make more tokens.
Discoverability is a huge problem on Steam because there’s so many games releasing, you can’t really keep up.
18,000 games is almost 50 per day on average. That’s 50 titles fighting for your attention and wallet every single day.
If you don’t get noticed because you didn’t spend half of your development budget on marketing, or your game didn’t pick up well with influencers or more traditional media like reviews, you’re just kinda fucked. No matter how good your game might be.
Speaking about quality, how many of those 18k titles were uninspiring, asset flipping slop?
I’ve always dreamed of a world where game demos were mandated by law. Some products can’t be tested out easily, but just about any video game really can.
I have picked up the same habit. I’ll download and test a couple of dozen demos every next fest, and then wishlist/buy the ones that are good. I played 108 demos this year, and some of my favorite games this year were demos like this: Kill Knight, Last Plague Blight, Karate Survivor, Empty Shell…
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All excellent, I’m sure.
How could the quality be anything but sterling with 50 new games each and every day?
That’s what happens when you have a monopoly.
What happens? Many games get released?
On a single platform. Giving a single company complete control over the marketplace, forcing any company looking to sell their game to a large audience to go through steam.
You ain’t got to buy the game on there, you can get codes at other retailers
But steam is de facto PC store
You actually can’t buy the vast majority of Steam games elsewhere. 18,800 games released new this year on Steam. Do you know any legit retailers that even sell 18,000 games total?
It’s something I’ve been noticing with all the routine seasonal complaining about sales on Steam not being worth looking at anymore… Sure, I don’t only buy from Steam, but I do buy more from Steam than elsewhere, because those games–good games–just are not other places to be bought. So on the one hand, I see a lot of value from Steam sales and people shouldn’t dis them so out of hand, but on the other, yeah Steam clearly controls the market. And that’s not even getting into how Steam deliberately reduces the value-to-the-devs of your off-Steam purchases, so buying elsewhere keeps your purchase and reviews from helping the dev earn much needed Steam visibility.
So it’s far from as simple as “You can just buy codes elsewhere”.
It’s because they got rid of their game standards
You act like Epic, GoG and itch.io don’t exist. Steam has plenty of competition. They just suck in comparison.
GoG sucks?
Amazingly good in some ways, and bad in some other ways. Eg. Doesn’t work on linux.
I see, thanks for clarifying!
Do you seriously have nothing better to do on a holiday than just bash Valve? Jfc, go outside and touch grass you terminally online neckbeard
Maybe don’t include that part when replying to a message on the holidays. Especially when you’re defending a monopoly.
I know G*mers like you aren’t known for their critical thinking skills.
I’m not the one getting worked up an letting it ruin my day.
I was just browsing Lemmy for a few minutes while visiting my parents and eating soup. You on the other hand have been acting like you spent Christmas alone because noone can stand you
You sure? You’re doing a lot of insulting people in this thread. Maybe take a break for a while, ok?
No, I’m just insulting this guy because he deserves it.
Also, I’m not blind - it’s pretty obvious you only replied to my comment here because I pissed you off in a completely different post and you decided to rummage through my comment history. I’d like to point out that that’s kinda sad on your part. Not my fault you’re bad at making an argument. You don’t need to stalk me for it.
what
no
I didn’t realize we had interacted before
I call bullshit. You made this comment within minutes of the previous one: https://redlemmy.com/comment/174904
Also, that’s pretty low-tier trolling
Can I borrow you for a bit in the new year? The projector in work hasn’t been working recently and we could use you to project PowerPoints for us.
That’s unironically the reason I don’t even attempt to find games on Steam anymore.
I’ll only go looking if I see a cool game in a YouTube video or see a cool article about something coming out soon that looks interesting. Otherwise, same.
It depends, sometimes I go down the rabbit hole on their “Games Like This” suggestions on my favorite games’ store pages. I actually just found a cool one that way the other day called Ad Fundum. It was a funny coincidence since it came up suggested on a completely unrelated game, but I’d been wanting a game centered around digging underground.
But yeah, with literally over 100,000+ games on Steam, it’s become way too difficult to find quality stuff that isn’t AAA or indie games that struck it lucky with popular streamers giving them exposure. Which sucks for indie devs that actually put out their passion projects since it makes discoverability so hard, as others have pointed out here.
I’ve always found the “games like this” section to be so superficial that it very rarely actually has games which I’d consider to be similar to the one I’m looking at. Just looking at the store right now, for “Aquaria” which I really enjoy, it recommends Skyrim as a similar game. Sure they both are open world adventure RPGs… but I definitely would not consider them to be similar games.
I can recommend the site steampeek.hu for this. It shows much better recommendations for similar games than steam itself.
Thank you!
It’s definitely a crapshoot a lot of times. But there’s usually at least one or two on there that are similar enough that I might genuinely be interested in it. You can also forcefully hide games from showing up in suggestions, iirc. I’ve never done it, but some of my friends have recommended doing so in order to make Steam dig deeper for finding lesser known stuff. I’m not that big of a connoisseur, though.
Edit:
I recalled correctly, and it seems they’ve even made the Ignore button a lot easier to find (or I just never noticed before):
On a scale from 1 to 10, how many of those games aren’t absolute shit and/or money grab scams?
0.001
So much absolute garbage.
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How many of those are $0.99 hentai titles with like an hour of gameplay, though.
My friend is a connoisseur, and he says both the quantity and quality has been declining this year.
A terrible, terrible for Steam and
goonersgamers this yearWhat’s wrong with an hour of entertainment for 1 Buck?
Noting, but many are basically the same game with different drawings.
The Ubisoft model
…I don’t think they’re playing it for the story
Dude, I legit read that as “hentai titties” 😂
Also true
And how many are nearly entirely AI generated?
Idk, AI is usually very good at translation into English, and most of the translations are garbage.
None.
Some of the most-played steam games are “Banana” and “Cats” where you literally click it every few hours and get steam item drops. Basically NFTs where people try to get rare items, but even more braindead because the developer, at any time can make more tokens.
Only around 17,000 or so. The rest are minimum effort Unity asset flips.
I do appreciate that it used to be too much effort to get a game onto Steam, but this situation is hardly better.
That’s like 20 gameplay sessions for 99¢, that’s only like 5¢ per.
Discoverability is a huge problem on Steam because there’s so many games releasing, you can’t really keep up.
18,000 games is almost 50 per day on average. That’s 50 titles fighting for your attention and wallet every single day.
If you don’t get noticed because you didn’t spend half of your development budget on marketing, or your game didn’t pick up well with influencers or more traditional media like reviews, you’re just kinda fucked. No matter how good your game might be.
Speaking about quality, how many of those 18k titles were uninspiring, asset flipping slop?
It doesn’t help that Steam store is a nightmare to navigate.
Releasing demos is a great way to succeed. It doesn’t take me more than 5 minutes to decide if it’s something I want to continue playing.
Putting videos of nothing but cut-scenes is a great way to ensure I keep scrolling but every title seems to take this approach.
I’ve always dreamed of a world where game demos were mandated by law. Some products can’t be tested out easily, but just about any video game really can.
I use steam’s two hour return window as a demo.
The Steam Next Fest is how I found most of the good indie games I’ve played. Making a good demo will put you above 99% of the cruft out there.
that and word of mouth or just cool gameplay vids. dude parrying an explosion got me to withlist va proxy
I remember that clip of the dude parrying a nuke, can’t remember the game but it stuck with me.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2063390/VA_Proxy/
Still getting worked on, but does look sick.
Thanks!
I have picked up the same habit. I’ll download and test a couple of dozen demos every next fest, and then wishlist/buy the ones that are good. I played 108 demos this year, and some of my favorite games this year were demos like this: Kill Knight, Last Plague Blight, Karate Survivor, Empty Shell…
Making a good game is one thing, making a huge amount of others want to play it is something else.
Guys we have soooo much shovelware, asset flips and softcore porn that’s barely a game. This is very much a good thing!!!
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