Compliments to Steam regarding new Discovery Algorithm

[Friends with Benedicts]

I've seen reports of devs saying this update really helped them with visibility.

While steam has a lot more to improve regarding Customer Support, Refund policies and a harder grip on the trash that overflows steam, I've got to stop complaining for a minute and compliment you guys on this area.

Things like these are what promotes more good games and competent developer teams. Keep it up, as there still a lot more to improve!

EDIT: In lights of many counter arguments I can't say that this update was done with intention to help low key devs, nor can it be proved how it affected sales. Further info is needed, but everyone already has their sides and mind sets. Stroll through the comments and links and get your own conclusions.

[Friends with Benedicts]

Omg don't use the argument that games have the same price tag for years because they are literally selling weapons and levels, along with deluxe editions that cost 150$ plus, re using old assets with new textures, lying to customers, getting away with poor working conditions among other things.

Many indie devs work as equivalent to how people worked back in the days were those price tags were established, and they don't even charge that value. Value of a work is completely subjective to both what a company wants to earn and what the market is willing to pay (and obviously the initial cost of producing such work).

If you're saying me that companies treat their workforce badly because they're being the good guys giving us "cheap" price tags (standard game edition), then why don't they man up, and charge the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ value that it is worth? Maybe it is because they know it'll translate to not worth? Then don't do it. Don't come throwing this guilt on the consumers. They're the ones choosing their price tags. This is the latest fallacy a consumer can use to defend big publishers, seriously.

[Start_Running]

引用自 Mr. Pink：

引用自 Start_Running：

It depends on how you define 'Success' I define success in the boradest terms. A game that makes a 30% or greater return on investment.. So assuming the bare minumim of $100 a successful game would be one that makes $130 in revenue, or $30 in profit over the course of Also your statement says you didn't actually read my point which is that successful indies are the ones who LEARN how to promote and market their games and get a handle on engaging with their audience.

google search: notable released steam early access games. and try to use a little perspective at the same time. even the dozen notable EA games that were released are just flavor of the month average outings in a market of AAA's, the only reason those games are notable is BECAUSE they fought amazing odds to become 1 of the 100 percentile of EA games that were'nt just a huge waste of internet space.

And with such a limited view of success you will find that same result no matter what subclassification of the market you look at. That's the thing people seem to forget about indies. They generally don't need to be mega blockbusters to be successful. They just need to be very good at pleasing their targeted niche. A BHS made for BHS enthusisasts is going to sell very poorly in the general market buty sell very well among its targeted audience. You don't need a 100,000 sales if you can turn a 50% or 100% RoI on a thousand sales.

引用自 Mr. Pink：

引用自 Start_Running：

Did not sink fast enough? they always sank incredibly quickly. Now they sink even faster because the number of releases has gone up. It's the difference between concrete brick and a tungsten brick tossed into the ocean.

the front steam store page basically looked like an advertisment for gamemaker deluxe studio 2003. it was pathetic. like i said. its better now so ill stop.

To you. Other people who were buying thiose games were quite happy. See how that works. EVery product has its niche .

and yes, i dont doubt the number of gamemaker studio games released has gone up. lol

And Unity games, and UE4 games, and RPGMAker games, and I think there's even been an uptick in Jupiter ENgine games. More games more developers using pre made tools.

引用自 Mr. Pink：

引用自 Start_Running：

Again not quite reading whats there. The point is you want the industry that said all those things (until a couple inde/small studios proved them wrong). to do the gate-keeping?

wtf where did the other half of what i said go? im not going to get another copy of what i really posted, so you can go grab the whole quote and ask me agin in a whole new post if you really wanna know my answer. nice try though ;)

COnsidering this is the answer you chose....yeah I have little reason to think any thing you'd add to this would be worthwhile.

引用自 Mr. Pink：

引用自 Start_Running：

500 customers is a rather large customer base to start with.And if you made a half decent game, that customer base will grow. Burt even if it does, having an actual number actuall makes it easier All you have to do is make sure the money you get is at least a 30% RoI and thats simply a matter of streamlining production. That is basically how studios like Spiderweb Software and Team17 have managed to stay in business for over 30 years. They found their bniche, found a way to market to that niche and figured out how to producte content for that niche profitably.

500 customers is a large customer base? you are obviously a small time indie tinkerer to have an outlook like that. lol

It's not the number of customers you have m8, its the amount of money your customers are willing to drop. Just ask the guys behind Train Simulator...DOvetail Studios if I remember. I'm willing to bet their audience is very small but very willing to plunk cash on the absurd amount of DLC .

Thats how smart developers stay in business. CHasing ever widening user bases however is what historically kills studios and franchises.

500 is not even in the ballpark to continue developing your game. i have more friends on facebook.

If you can get $20 from each of those 500 that's $10K. If you can grab $10K per game you release and you can manage 2-3 a year in your spare time.. thats a not insignificant amount of cash for one man/small dev team. Especially if the development costs are less than $1000 per game.

Again. Business is about RoI not raw numbers. doesn't matter if you make a billion dollars if it only amounts to a 10% RoI. YUou'd literally make more money just parking the capital in a bank or a long term investment portfolio.

引用自 Mr. Pink：

引用自 Start_Running：

And there are people who would happily take those game maker and rpg classic games over Ark any day.

ya... well.... some people are fascinated by horse drawn carriage. we need to phone mercedes RIGHT NOW and inform them of the market opportunity they are missing out. we should give the horses equal front showroom time as the $500,000 r&d's modern vehicles cuz some hutterite like horse drawn carriage.

You might want to look in what kinda figures the equestrian industries pull down. People pay a lot of money for finely bread horses. Small market yes.. but a very, lucrative one.

引用自 Mr. Pink：

IT DOESNT MATTER! why dont the 500 of ya'll take your game to tucows and leave the store alone? lol

Why does it matter to you? Does the fact that there are people who enjoy things that you don't bother you that much m8?

But again I suppose that is the catch-22 Valve has, and all developers/publishers. Getting your game seen by the right people Getting your game seen by your target audience as opposed to a bunch of chintzy randos. Fuinding a way to make sure the people who see your BHS aren't ome scrub casuals that couldn't tell Ikaruga from Gradius.

WHich is exactly what STeam is trying to figure out how to do... of course they'll eventually hit the other problem in which case people will start complaining that the discovery is too effective and is predatory because it shows people stuff they can't help but buy.....


SIgh.
#whywecanthavenicethings

[Aachen]

Ah. Buyer’s remorse. EA is not for you. Amazing that you got “scammed” because you chose to ignore the as-is nature of your purchase. Amazing.

[ReBoot]

引用自 Mr. Pink：

引用自 Aachen：

Ah. Buyer’s remorse. EA is not for you. Amazing that you got “scammed” because you chose to ignore the as-is nature of your purchase. Amazing.

Amazing how Ark Survival evolved managed to develop circles around 99% of the basement developers on steam. What are the rest of them doing? Can't they take time off from their day jobs to finish their scribble attempt at developing a game?

Sorry, i cant finish my project. It says i dont have to in the little blue box. Plus i forgot i have school in the morning. Sorry steam customers. lol

That's the risk YOU take when buying something explicitly labeled unfinished.

[ReBoot]

引用自 Mr. Pink：

引用自 ReBoot：

That's the risk YOU take when buying something explicitly labeled unfinished.

Yes, and people laughing at your development skills in a steam forum is a risk YOU take when you try to do something you have no idea how to do

Add in "getting told off or laughed at on the forum for complaining about having bought an unfinished game when you bought an unfinished game" and that's a perfectly fair deal.

[ReBoot]

引用自 Mr. Pink：

引用自 ReBoot：

Add in "getting told off or laughed at on the forum for complaining about having bought an unfinished game when you bought an unfinished game" and that's a perfectly fair deal.

i cant read that. do i turn my monitor upside down or something lol

If you can read upside down, go for it. I have a rather hard time reading flipped or mirrored letters, but a friend of mine doesn't even notice. He can write upside down freely, to to it off.

[Aachen]

引用自 Mr. Pink：

Yes, and people laughing at your development skills in a steam forum is a risk YOU take when you try to do something you have no idea how to do ....

In the fantasy world where your sole contribution to this thread was mockery of said developers, perhaps — but you’ve done rather more than that ITT.

[Start_Running]

引用自 Mr. Pink：

引用自 Start_Running：

If you can get $20 from each of those 500 that's $10K. If you can grab $10K per game you release and you can manage 2-3 a year in your spare time..

You really are an indie dev. Here you are trying to figure out if you can make your project float, and sustain, you're even figuring out how much you have left over for groceries a month in the back of your head.

You're the one who floated the figure of 500 m8. I'm just showing how you could make good change on it. Heck with teh right production setup, you could make a $400 profit at justy $1 a title, and if you really have a sweet niche you could charge as much as $40 or even a full $60 per. That 500 can add up real quick real fast if you know what you're doing.

Here im sitting... just an average gamer... thinking about how theres thousands of games making millions of dollars, tens of thousands of games making hundreds of thousands of dollars....

And there's the problem.. you seem to be content with being average... which you seem to conflate with being ignorant. The sort of ignorance that apparently makes no distinction between revenue and profit. You can make millions and still be in the red. and you can make a few thousand and be solidly in the black. The difference boils down to how good you are at mathing.

and then a million ea's who have there business model figured out and can stay afloat with 500 customers.

And what's wrong with that?If they can do with 500 customers what AAA's can barely manage with a million customers, then they are clearly doing something right.

Why do me, or any other steam gamers want to see this fascinating "budget balancing act" on the front page right between star wars and cs:go? We don't want to see people's deluxe gamemaker savegames on the front page of steam.

Because what gets a game on the main store page for the most part is either the game's quality or the user's preferences and habits. So your better question would bem, what were you doing to make steam think you wanted to see all those games?

引用自 Mr. Pink：

引用自 Start_Running：

And Unity games, and UE4 games, and RPGMAker games, and I think there's even been an uptick in Jupiter ENgine games. More games more developers using pre made tools.

Plus when one bruh sees his bruh making game of gameaker deluxe pro, bruh gets game maker deluxe pro and becomes a video game developer too.

And this is a bad thing how? That just doubles the chance of something fun and awesome coming to market. Can't see anything wrong there.

引用自 Mr. Pink：

Take a break, sit down, and actually have a look at why there is so many more releases. Its all exactly the same game, copied, the background changed, and sold again as another name.

That sort of thing has been an industry staple since the Atari 2600. Might surprise you that something as simple as a change in background, or a small tweak in artstyle or gameplay can actually make a big difference. It's entertainment. Some peiople don't like the colour red but go cazy for purple. Some people don't like platforming with a skeleton pirate, but will totall buy a game that lets them platform as a fish-ninja.

引用自 Mr. Pink：

Honestly, even Steam has it figured out. Why are you even trying to defend some of that junk shovelware anymore? lol

Yes. Steam figured out that they need to steer people who like those games towards those games, and people who don't like them away from them. The problem wasn't the games, it was the people seeing it.

引用自 Mr. Pink：

Again, im glad you've managed to figure out your business plan from your basement,

Its where all the top companies start out. Good planning and a moderately roomy basement.

引用自 Mr. Pink：

but no one wants to see the trials and tribulations of start_runnings fun little developer project... on the front of a major store! lol

translation...YOU don't. But there's at least 500 people who do. And that's all any good dev needs to start with.

Just be glad Steam figured out a way to make sure you never see a game outside your little comfort zone.....of course therin lies the other catch-22 . I'll wager in another few months you and others will be complaining that it keeps showing you the same games or the same kinds of games.

引用自 ReBoot：

引用自 Mr. Pink：

Yes, and people laughing at your development skills in a steam forum is a risk YOU take when you try to do something you have no idea how to do

Add in "getting told off or laughed at on the forum for complaining about having bought an unfinished game when you bought an unfinished game" and that's a perfectly fair deal.

That's practically the civic duty of every responsible and intelligent steam user.

[Aachen]

引用自 Mr. Pink：

.... I dont want to buy a game from some dude living in his moms basment balancing money between working on his game or groceries. I WANNA PLAY THE BIG GAME ....

And? Why is what YOU WANNA DO more relevant than other users?

Also, it’s quite disingenuous to complain that someone’s responding to you piece-by-piece, only to do the same with multiple posts. At the least, you could keep your responses confined to one-at-a-time.

[Start_Running]

引用自 Mr. Pink：

引用自 Start_Running：

And what's wrong with that?If they can do with 500 customers what AAA's can barely manage with a million customers, then they are clearly doing something right.

Thats because AAA's sink all that money back into the game. They need to keep their games looking and running top notch.

No dear. The revenue for one game goes to pay for the games development costs and absorb the losses/costs of other less successful games., and if there's any left over, it goes back into the game or goes into the next game. This is also a pattern common to all developers: indies, small srtudios, mid studios and AAA's. You'd likely know this if you weren't so content with being 'Average'

Also 'top notch;'.

Fallout 76
Anthem
Mass Effect: Andromeda
Heroes of the STorm
And the list goes on....

This is a problem that your 500 customer base game doesn't have. They only have to worry about maths and if their game made enough money to pay for groceries that month.

And when you can churn out those games on the regular, pretty soon you start making house payments. Best of all is the factor I mentioned at the start of this that you have long forgotten... I said 500 customers is a pretty good customer base to start with,. If you're doing an even half way decent job at developing your games for the niche you're targeting that number is going to steadily grow over time 500 this year, 2000 next year, maybe 5k the year after.

How do you think these monolothic developers got started. All of them started doing small basement games targeting small markets and steadily building up over time. As said. You have devs like SPiderweb Software, and Team17 that have managed to stay in business for almost 3 decades now. WHich is more than can be said by many others.Like Acclaim, THQ, Atari, Sierra, etc...

I dont want to buy a game from some dude living in his moms basment balancing money between working on his game or groceries. I WANNA PLAY THE BIG GAME!

Then have fun with those. plenty of those for you to enjoy and as said Steam is working to make sure you will never have to be aware of anything outside your dought overpriced comfort bubble. So rejoice and don't fret when you see a strange game occasionally filter in... just load up another round of CoD or Fortnite. and try to forget it ever happened.

[Tito Shivan]

引用自 Mr. Pink：

LOL, I actually slipped it in last night, but the mods deleted my post, just like i said.

Except no post of yours has been deleted here.
In fact your most recent deleted post dates back to june.

引用自 Mr. Pink：

edit: if you see this fast enough, they'll probly want to be hiding this post to hide the fact that they hid my last post even though it didnt break any rules... u know... the usual. funny how the mods do a better job at making steam look good than steam themselves. maybe the mods should be running steam. lol

Your tinfoil hat is too tight buddy.

[Start_Running]

引用自 Tito Shivan：

引用自 Mr. Pink：

LOL, I actually slipped it in last night, but the mods deleted my post, just like i said.

Except no post of yours has been deleted here.
In fact your most recent deleted post dates back to june.

So claims post was deleted and no such post was deleted...WoW...

[Aachen]

引用自 Mr. Pink：

What i or other users want to do doesnt have anything to do with my point. It only has something to do with your out of context quote....

First: if “.... I dont want to buy a game from some dude living in his moms basment balancing money between working on his game or groceries. I WANNA PLAY THE BIG GAME ....” had nothing to do with your point, why’d you bring it up? Second: what context is absent? What further, left-out information is relevant?

.... Even the niche fans have got to be wondering if some of these basement dwellers are planning on finishing their game too. ;)

Quite telling that you continuously fall back on rhetorical tricks (you rather like to poison the basement tap). You also adopt a very black-and-white, all-or-nothing posture; just what proportion of the users have the same difficulty with “as-is” as you? I’ve never yet felt “scammed” by any EA title I’ve played. So your characterization surely doesn’t fit me.

.... You must be new here. Look at Start_runnings post history. He does it to tire out his opponents ....

Ooooooo! Poison-the-well redux! You must be new to forums, as you’re not familiar with fisking. SR is not the first to do so, nor is your rationale for the technique’s application likely to be accurate.

[RedLightning]

Heck even Steam itself is Alpha-ware..

What are they thinking.

And that Tinfoil hat comment is one I'm totally getting sick of hearing thrown around.

[RedLightning]

引用自 Mr. Pink：

引用自 RedLightning：

Heck even Steam itself is Alpha-ware..

Ain't that the truth though. This interface. It gets worse every day i look at it. At least its just the video game distributor, its not like we have to spend hours sitting here playing it. =)

Yes.. you do make point there, however it is a great window to the late mindset of Valve..

I checked out the featured and recommended.. as I usually do not.. and I had to laugh.. :>, well almost..

Enjoying your posts.. makes for a great read.. thanks..