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[LuchaShaq]

18-24 months ago if a game got onto steam, there was a rather decent chance the game was at least functional, and at worst mediocre. Many of my favorite games were discovered and bought just by finding something that looked cool in the new releases section.


Now? New releases morphed into a dumping ground for trashy cloned mobile games, and there is no real level of quality to just getting on steam.

Many seem to be applauding the fact that greenlight approves trash constantly, and that Steam is becoming more and more like the App store. This is even though the app store might be the single worst store front in terms of finding quality content in all of software.

I build a low/midrange PC in 2009, and had planned on building a new PC (no longer working just a part time job while in college like I was then) and either skipping the generation, or snagging them for cheap at the end. The decline of quality in steam is one of the biggest reasons 95% of my gaming time is spent on my vita or ps4 nowadays. At least when a random indie game gets released on these platforms it either is a known piece of crap like angry birds, or it has at least a smidgen of decency.

Is it too late for steam to turn back? Do you want them to? Has this influenced your hardware choices or am I just a wackjob?

 

[Svafnir]

Bad games do not take away from the good games. I have no issues with this, sometimes those games are awesome and would otherwise be undiscovered. But it does not effect the big release games that are great, steam is still the best spot for me.

 

[Orayn]

I guess it might be a problem for someone who discovers new content exclusively by browsing the store, but does anyone really do that? If a game looks good or interesting, you'll almost always hear about it on GAF, gaming blogs, social media, etc. The amount of junk on the store is annoying, yes, but I don't see how it would impact your ability to find or play good games apart from making the new release section kinda cluttered.

 

[Mairu]

I personally don't care because I never used the Steam Store for game discovery in the first place. It hasn't affected my hardware choices.

 

[amrod]

they do let too much crap on via the greenlight shit

 

[shira]

I personally don't care because I never used the Steam Store for game discovery in the first place. It hasn't affected my hardware choices.

I use GAF for game discovery.

 

[SteveWinwood]

well you people bitched about how your favorite game couldnt get on and so now what

use your noggin and dont just buy shit because its on steam

you have to do a bit of legwork but it's better for everyone

 

[Gattsu25]

I used to check the new releases section on the storefront daily.

Now, the storefront is defaulting me to "Top Sellers" and I'm not even bothering with the new releases. I rely on trusted sites to inform me of games worth checking out.

 

[demosthenes]

Bad games do not take away from the good games. I have no issues with this, sometimes those games are awesome and would otherwise be undiscovered. But it does not effect the big release games that are great, steam is still the best spot for me.

One and done.

I don't understand the OPs problem.

edit:

I personally don't care because I never used the Steam Store for game discovery in the first place. It hasn't affected my hardware choices.

This as well.

 

[bistromathics]

I guess it might be a problem for someone who discovers new content exclusively by browsing the store, but does anyone really do that? If a game looks good or interesting, you'll almost always hear about it on GAF, gaming blogs, social media, etc. The amount of junk on the store is annoying, yes, but it hasn't really impacted my ability to find or play good games apart from making the new release section kinda cluttered.

Yeah, I know what the OP means since browsing steam for a game that caught your eye was fun. It's not like that doesn't exist, but there is certainly a lot of overpriced trash you have to wade through. At the same time it's nice knowing (just about) everything is on steam, so you can still learn about games through GAF and just swing by to pick it up.

 

[oconnomiyaki]

An overabundance of choice is always better than the alternative. I haven't turned my PS4 in ages because I'm done with what's out and there's nothing on the horizon until September.

 

[alr1ght]

Just like how I read reviews and get impressions from people on here for console games, I do the same for PC games. So, no.

 

[rakkadakka]

Go to Best Buy, look at bargain game bin.

Does that take away from your ability to buy good games?

 

[ArjanN]

That makes no sense OP.

There's still the same amount of good games. Probably more actually.

Just do the bare minimum effort required of looking into a game before you buy it.

 

[Maintenance]

It is fine the way it is.

Even though there are much more trash coming, some gems that would not get approved have the chance to go through. Nowadays there are a lot of ways to check if a game is good or bad, with sites, reviews, youtubers, etc. Just search for it.

The one complaint that I had and that they fixed is the removal of Early Access games from the "New Releases" tab.

 

[Schweinehund]

I research things before I buy them.

It's better that way, I don't want some service choosing for me.

 

[ThreePiMatt]

I used to check the new releases section on the storefront daily.

Now, the storefront is defaulting me to "Top Sellers" and I'm not even bothering with the new releases. I rely on trusted sites to inform me of games worth checking out.

Pretty much this.

But the thing is, indie devs in the past have complained about how the exposure they get from being on Steam would make or break their success with a game, but now that everyone and their sister can get a game up on Steam those Indie devs will get their wish, but they still won't get the exposure they wanted.

In some respects on glad that it defaults to "Top Sellers" now so I don't have to look at all the rabble that gets thrown on Steam, but at the same time it was always nice to poke through the new releases and find those cheap hidden gems.

 

[iNvid02]

i didnt think it was that bad until i came across this:

More games have been released on Steam just 20 weeks into 2014 than have been during all of 2013.

Reviews, tagging, reporting shit will no doubt help filter out trash, but its not going to be the same.

 

[Hazaro]

I don't care, I don't browse Steam looking for games and there are external resources to verify if games are broken or not (Even Steam forums for that title).
If it helps lower the barrier of entry for games that have struggled in the past, then I'm all for it.

e.g. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=244848853 Four Sided Fantasy was Greenlit and added, Steam before was a wall where you were just declined.

 

[Anon67]

I'm confused. You can avoid these terrible games by doing some research. I understand that Valve should do some quality control when it comes to these greenlight games, but seriously, you could avoid the whole problem pretty easily.

 

[aeolist]

there's no such thing as a "decline of quality titles" on steam, there's just more stuff overall

i have no issues finding good games

 

[Denton]

Even if Steam had every single PC game ever made, good and bad, I do not see a problem. I buy games that I know I am interested in beforehand.

 

[epmode]

Steam's problem is discoverability and lack of curation. I'd much rather have all the games on Steam than have a good one left behind but Valve really needs to do something about worthwhile stuff getting buried in the pile of shit.

 

[SteveWinwood]

Steam's problem is discoverability and lack of curation. I'd much rather have all the games on Steam than have a good one left behind but Valve really needs to do something about good games getting buried in the pile of shit.

I've been hearing about their front page redesign or change to the "digital storefront" for like 2 years now. They're aware of the issue, but like valve does they'll research it for 2 years and roll it out one day.

 

[GuardianE]

I don't care how much shit is on Steam as long as it gets all the good releases that it does.

 

[MUnited83]

Research before buying. A service arbitrarly deciding which games gets in is bad. And come the hell on, there was lots and lots of crap released on Steam before the greenlight situation.

 

[Visualante2]

The way PC is getting fragmented into various services, and the way those services are evolving so rapidly (early access, F2P) is turning me off from the platform somewhat. But the new generation of systems aren't mature to compete for my attention.

The store page itself just moves too quickly for me, too many deals, too many releases. It felt like the balance was better a while ago when it was just one or two deals a week.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

I didn't realise that you had to buy every game released on steam to be a real steam platform gamer.

 

[FACE]

Doesn't really affect me.

 

[BibiMaghoo]

If you are a person that impulse buys based on the store page, I could see that being a problem. Most people I like to think, look a bit further before spending money based on an advert.

 

[Perfect Cha0s]

I personally don't care because I never used the Steam Store for game discovery in the first place. It hasn't affected my hardware choices.

This, and the Greenlit content doesn't really affect me. It's good that those games are on there in the event of the occasional gem, and it's really not my problem if people are too naive to do their research before buying a terrible and/or broken game.

 

[antikythera]

They should imitate Xbox and put all the trash games in a separate store, so you don't have to browse through them when you're looking for something.

 

[jeffers]

Never used steam for discovery. at most I check sales less now, but I think thats just backlog saturation.

 

[Felix Lighter]

As others have mentioned, I have always researched games before buying so as long as I have no problem finding the game when I'm ready to buy, it doesn't affect me, personally.

 

[sflufan]

You're just a whackjob.

 

[Archie]

well you people bitched about how your favorite game couldnt get on and so now what

use your noggin and dont just buy shit because its on steam

you have to do a bit of legwork but it's better for everyone

Pretty much. I remember complaints when Greenlight first came out that 10 games a month was too slow.

Valve listened to the community and opened the floodgates.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

They should imitate Xbox and put all the trash games in a separate store, so you don't have to browse through them when you're looking for something.

Indie games like FTL are all trash and belong in ghetto that people can go to when they want to do charity work and buy trash games.

 

[Prototype]

Part if the reason is that no one knows what the next big thing will be, from mine craft to candy crush saga to flappy bird, some things blow up over night and everyone wants desperately to be part of it, steam not being an exception. The answer to 99 out of 100 questions is money and steam/valve/Gabe aren't (can't?) ignore that potential.

 

[Nzyme32]

18-24 months ago if a game got onto steam, there was a rather decent chance the game was at least functional, and at worst mediocre. Many of my favorite games were discovered and bought just by finding something that looked cool in the new releases section.


Now? New releases morphed into a dumping ground for trashy cloned mobile games, and there is no real level of quality to just getting on steam.

Many seem to be applauding the fact that greenlight approves trash constantly, and that Steam is becoming more and more like the App store. This is even though the app store might be the single worst store front in terms of finding quality content in all of software.

I build a low/midrange PC in 2009, and had planned on building a new PC (no longer working just a part time job while in college like I was then) and either skipping the generation, or snagging them for cheap at the end. The decline of quality in steam is one of the biggest reasons 95% of my gaming time is spent on my vita or ps4 nowadays. At least when a random indie game gets released on these platforms it either is a known piece of crap like angry birds, or it has at least a smidgen of decency.

Is it too late for steam to turn back? Do you want them to? Has this influenced your hardware choices or am I just a wackjob?

It IS too late for steam to turn back. Are you aware of what Valve ultimately are transitioning Steam into?

The basic gist is for Steam to become completely open to self publishing, but to have multiple users and groups creating their own curated stores within steam. So as well as Valve, there could be a Yahtzee store, TotalBisucuit Store, GiantBomb Store, Ubi Store, Cyberpunk Store, Bag of Shit store etc. Users, Devs, Pubs or whoever make stores would get a cut of the sales they create just as other people creating content do in TF2, Dota2 and a like. Gabe has explained the idea in previous years such as here: http://youtu.be/t8QEOBgLBQU?t=43m42s

As for worries of the quality dipping with the inevitable dumping of shit on to Steam, as we are already seeing, that has not been made clear too clear. However, a few weeks back some indie devs went to Valve to see where Steam is going. One of them is at least perfectly happy with how it's going to be particularly with those issues in mind and visibility of their own content: http://positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2014/05/10/the-future-of-steam-vr-and-other-seattle-stuff/

For a while, a lot of indies have been panicking about steam. There are more and more indie games being released though greenlight and people are worrying that the ‘average’ indie game on steam is making less money. The phrases you hear are ‘floodgates are opening’ and ‘race to the bottom’.

I’ve seen what valve have planned and I really do not think anyone has to worry. Actually I do. If your plan is to dump your first unity hobby game on steam and then retire rich, and that game is a clone or unpolished, or incredibly unoriginal, then yeah, you are so fucked, but frankly I don’t care.

Valve are approaching the ‘floodgates’ problem in exactly the right way. The steam experience for everyone is going to get so much better. I can’t fault their plans in any way. I’d love to attract loads of web traffic with a clickbait ‘valve are about to wreck steam’ blog post, but that would be complete bullshit.

My advice to indies uncertain about steam’s future is just to make a really cool game and don’t worry. That sounds like PR bullshit but it’s actually true for once.

Still, we'll have to wait and see how it goes. One dev at Steam Dev Days claimed Valve have told him that greenlight would be gone by the end of the year, which would make the new store implementation likely before then. Right now though, Steam is a mess. The only explanation I can think of for how messy it is could be that they purposely "open the flood gates" to a lot of shit content specifically to test internally how their new system handles it... otherwise I have no idea

 

[Orayn]

Indie games like FTL are all trash and belong in ghetto that people can go to when they want to do charity work and buy trash games.

I had to check your post history to make sure you were being sarcastic because some people actually think like this and it makes me sad.

 

[Dolor]

How hard is it to not buy things you aren't interested in?

 

[nded]

I only ever go to the storefront when I'm looking for something I heard about somewhere else. I don't just go in there to browse.

 

[Zafir]

If anything, with a great deal of games being ported to PC, and/or releasing on PC as well, I've become more of a PC gamer than I ever was. I still own all the consoles, but I don't really use them that much. Mind you, I suppose next gen hasn't really helped. Developers are still in transition period, so console releases seem to be small in numbers recently.

 

[ieptbarakat]

I'm happy with it, the strict curation that Steam used to have meant that most games were published for the existing userbase.

Now that the floodgates have opened you can see different types of games all throughout the store, this gives the chance for some obscure games to find success within the existing Steam userbase while also bringing in different userbases of their own.

Of course this means you're going to see a lot of garbage games as well, but this isn't restricted to Steam itself. Not that the current store setup is helping either.

 

[nephilimdj]

Steam store front page clearly wasn't designed for this amount of releases, I think valves design is coming back to hurt them and hurting dev's since new games vanish after 1-3 days.

Not all games have special deals with valve to have featured pop'up's

 

[tokkun]

I use GAF for game discovery.

OK, but if we are talking about an obscure game with no press coverage, then someone has to be taking a chance on the game to provide those initial opinions, right? Even if you aren't the person browsing the store to discover games you are probably relying on someone who is. Those GAF opinions don't just magically appear from the ether. So in a sense, making it hard to discover good, obscure games does effect you, right?

 

[Octavia]

My problem with steam is there needs to be a separate page for early release games. I do not feel these games fit the service well. The only one I have personally found worthwhile so far has been Terraria, and even that was pretty lackluster at the start until the hard mode update.

 

[Archie]

My problem with steam is there needs to be a separate page for early release games. I do not feel these games fit the service well. The only one I have personally found worthwhile so far has been Terraria, and even that was pretty lackluster at the start until the hard mode update.

http://store.steampowered.com/genre/Early Access/

?

 

[maneil99]

Steam has far too much garbage on the store now, the same day wolfienstein came out it was last on the new release page, transistor being on the 2nd. so much shovelware on steam its a joke, not to mention early access games galore that have no guarentee the game will actually be made. If you have a game in your store it should be guaranteed the customer won't buy a game for it to lose all developmental support, especially when the devs advertise modes not yet in it. Getting the developers to remove features from the store page after the game fails to deliver them is not good enough, The customer should not have to research if a game is going to be finished or not period.

 

[davonaytor]

Well, according to these replies, I guess I'm one of the only people who agrees with you, OP. I used to check out every single new release, look at gameplay on YouTube, read impressions, etc., but I do t have the time for that anymore, with the huge volume of releases. I feel like I'm probably missing out on finding games that I'd really enjoy because of it. Honestly, if a game like Volgarr the Viking, or Call of Juarez: Gunslinger (two of my favourite games from last year) came out today, I'd probably end up skipping it.

Valve have talked about putting storefront curation in the hands of the community. I have no idea what to expect from that, but hopefully it allows the great new games to get more time in the limelight.