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[Orayn]

I like lack of curration. Picking only the top titles would be good, if Steam would have at most 10% of DD market. But currently it's uncomfortably big in this area. And for indie devs being on Steam is often a matter of survival. Thus heavy curration would essentially undermine the whole point of being indie developer, with Valve becoming just another publisher devs have to suck up to and as a whole heavily damage the entire platform.

What Steam needs is better filtering and recomendation mechanism, so that people can sort through the releases better. At the very least Valve should steal Goodreads' mechanism of rating games and using this data to generate recomendation.

Well, we do know they're planning to offer user storefronts. If you find someone whose tastes are closely aligned with yours, you could subscribe to a curated list of games they recommend, which would presumably have some of the same options as the main store when it comes to new releases, top sellers, sorting by genre, etc.

I'm pretty sure they even floated the idea of paying people commission on games that are sold because of their recommendations, e.g. if Giant Bomb had a Steam mini-store and a random Quick Look or Endurance Run sparked a lot of interest in a game they had listed in it, they could get a few percent of each sale in Steam credit for something like that.

 

[RedSwirl]

Picking only the top titles would be good, if Steam would have at most 10% of DD market.

This is basically what PS4 and Xbox One are like right now. Sure Sony has become much more open and that's good, but even all the indie titles the PS4 is getting today really only scrape at the cream of the crop. Most of that stuff is still coming out on PC first, and PSN is still missing a bunch of good stuff.

 

[Wiktor]

Well, we do know they're planning to offer user storefronts. If you find someone whose tastes are closely aligned with yours, you could subscribe to a curated list of games they recommend, which would presumably have some of the same options as the main store when it comes to new releases, top sellers, sorting by genre, etc.

Yeah, but that's very primitive solution compared to Goodreads' one when it comes to recommendations.

And about getting the cut, Games Republic store just launched with the very same idea. I wonder how it will work out.

 

[staticneuron]

PC gaming sucks because there are too many games. I wish it was like consoles where you only have a few games to choose from.

Is this a joke? I can't tell. Normally within any given generation each console manages to gain a library over 1,000 titles in a 5-6 year period.

Oh and the PS2 launched 18 months prior to Xbox/GC.

 

[Corpekata]

Is this a joke? I can't tell. Normally within any given generation each console manages to gain a library over 1,000 titles in a 5-6 year period.

Oh and the PS2 launched 18 months prior to Xbox/GC.

He's sarcastically rephrasing what the OP wrote.

 

[staticneuron]

He's rephrasing what the OP wrote.

Sorry I missed that. The OP seemed to talk about quality not quantity. With very specific wording like..

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.

and

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.

and

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.

So maybe I missed something there or he edited the post but I don't see how bringing up quantity when the OP singles out quality, somehow is a clever rebuff.

 

[DSix]

The absence of big timed steam sales is also a very bad thing. When a game was a daily/flash, I would check it out (especially if I never saw it). I would allocate a finite budget for the sale, and by the final days I would usually check out the Neogaf threads about any unknown recommendations I might like.

Now I'm feeling pretty apathetic about the 24/7 sales on the store. Only the big known games turn heads. There's no more discoverability.

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.

Same here, it's pretty bad now, I can't discover anything good anymore. Back then I didn't hesitate to check out the new releases on neogaf/google/youtube. But now it's over, there's too much crap released every single day, I dont bother.

 

[Grief.exe]

The absence of big timed steam sales is also a very bad thing. When a game was a daily/flash, I would check it out (especially if I never saw it). I would allocate a finite budget for the sale, and by the final days I would usually check out the Neogaf threads about any unknown recommendations I might like.

Now I'm feeling pretty apathetic about the 24/7 sales on the store. Only the big known games turn heads. There's no more discoverability.

I'm not sure what you are referring to here. There are still large Steam sales in existence, for example the Summer Sale is coming up soon.

 

[DSix]

I'm not sure what you are referring to here. There are still large Steam sales in existence, for example the Summer Sale is coming up soon.

It's coming up? The absence of spring sale had me worried. I stand corrected then.
Though, my point about games that can be on sales any time any day still somehow stands: it's pointless and cheapens the effect of sales. At the very time we write this, there are 212 games on sale on steam.

 

[C.Dark.DN]

What if the main page and such was doubled and divided between greenlit games and established devs?

The current 3 top sellers have a kickstarted alpha between Watch Dogs and Wolfenstein.

 

[Grief.exe]

It's coming up? The absence of spring sale had me worried. I stand corrected then.
Though, my point about games that can be on sales any time any day still somehow stands: it's pointless and cheapens the effect of sales. At the very time we write this, there are 212 games on sale on steam.

Steam has never had a Spring sale. They did have an indie event last year in March, but that is it.

As for your second point, they have been doing constant sales for years revenue generation has only grown significantly YOY.

 

[JaseC]

It's coming up? The absence of spring sale had me worried. I stand corrected then.
Though, my point about games that can be on sales any time any day still somehow stands: it's pointless and cheapens the effect of sales. At the very time we write this, there are 212 games on sale on steam.

That figure refers to the total amount of items on sale. At present it breaks down to 128 games + 67 pieces of DLC + 4 pieces of software + 14 bundles.

 

[Lord_Balkan]

I don't think the OP is saying he is incapable of researching a game, what he is saying is that there was a general level of quality when a game gets on Steam. If someone got their game on Steam, it meant something, and warrants research. Now, it is a lot harder to sift through the influx of games getting on Steam, not everyone does as much research as people like us (debating on if they should is another issue). It would be nice to see the smaller indie games on the front page/new releases that are brand new, not just old ports of mobile games.

I'm not exactly against Steam letting all games through, but the current store page is not set up to handle that influx. There should be a separate page for early access games, and a separate page for old ports, or old games being redone (not new, but 'new to Steam'). There are several different solutions to make things more clear and allow better visibility to actual new games without exactly curating, assuming they don't want to curate.

 

[kudoboi]

It always saddens me when I hear about people not getting into PC gaming until recent years, or those who view PC gaming strictly as Steam-only. You've missed out on so much, and most will likely never look back on any of the classics.

for me personally, i only stick to AAA titles and critically acclaimed games or games that were recommended by the internet, friends or gaffers because i simply do not have the time to play through my entire backlog. I don't even have time to complete games that i want to play on Steam at this point let alone other distribution services.

 

[Durante]

Is this a joke? I can't tell. Normally within any given generation each console manages to gain a library over 1,000 titles in a 5-6 year period.

Yes. However, over 500 games have been added to the Steam library in just the first 4 months of 2014.

Anyway, I love buying books at Amazon, where there are currently 10 Million+ titles on offer -- I hope gaming can reach that level of variety at some point.

 

[tim.mbp]

The Mutant Mudds example is strange considering its on Steam, Nintendo and Sony's store.

 

[michaelius]

Yes. However, over 500 games have been added to the Steam library in just the first 4 months of 2014.

Anyway, I love buying books at Amazon, where there are currently 10 Million+ titles on offer -- I hope gaming can reach that level of variety at some point.

Is that sarcasm ?
Because only way to find book on amazon is if you know author and title

 

[Durante]

Is that sarcasm ?

Not at all. Amazon is my favourite book store because it carries almost every book. Steam is turning into a much better game store since it is starting to carry more games.

 

[d0g_bear]

Hasn't gaben been saying they're going to essentially offload curation to user-controlled storefronts? Why hasn't that happened yet?

 

[Wiktor]

Is that sarcasm ?
Because only way to find book on amazon is if you know author and title

And that's a bad thing? There are many methods of finding recommendations, even Amazon itself gives you plenty.

There are limits how lazy gamer should be and turning the whole platform into essentially closed system is where the line has to be drawn.

 

[staticneuron]

Yes. However, over 500 games have been added to the Steam library in just the first 4 months of 2014.

Anyway, I love buying books at Amazon, where there are currently 10 Million+ titles on offer -- I hope gaming can reach that level of variety at some point.

Interesting. Again with the quantity approach. What does it matter when the vast majority of the games are of questionable quality?

This is the idea here. Valve can now put out alot of low quality low budget titles on steam because of greenlight the onus is now on the members of steam to choose what they want to have released. The market gets flooded with amazing bad stuff, even titles that seem like they are in beta or games without endings or simply poor imitations of much more popular titles. The low cost may allow for some surprise purchases.

Right now I went on steam, in the new release section, 8 out of the 10 games are under $10. Out of those 8 games, 7 of them are under $6. Out of those 7 games, 4 of them are under $3. Seems really familiar to some other digital marketplaces with a large quantity of titles but very little quality.

Hop on over to the best selling section. Out of 10 titles there, 8 of them can be found on consoles. The two that cannot are Planetary Annihilation (kickstarter game) and Distant Worlds: Universe, Two strategy games that probably would find a very small niche in the console environment.

So if your entire point is that more is better despite the more that you are getting may be unfinished, unpolished, niche titles, I question if that is a good thing. If the Top selling and new release section is a good indicator of the direction the library is going, then I really can't fault OP for deciding to stick with consoles.

Edit: A quality book may be written by one person, in less than a year. Quality games normally takes teams of people and a larger budget to produce a game within a 5 year time period. Games should never be released in such bulk. Also the reality is that time affects books and peoples expectations of books far less than what is expected of games. The two industries should never be compared directly. Also, I would point out that digital book stores are not immune to low budget low quality cash grabs.