why does steam house lots of garbage games?

[Mr.Brown]

a really high rate (nearly all) of the games on steam consist of worthless releases. why doesn't anyone filter out those before putting them in the store? it is very difficult to spot real games worth playing among tons of flash / pixel browser animations.

this is a very bad business model, it might make you a couple bucks for now but if i was a real studio, i'd look for a more serious platform to release my game. and it's super annyong for users.

[Lizzard]

Steam reminds me of the 1983 video game crash. Too many 3rd party developers making cash-grab games for Atari and other prehistoric consoles which didn't have any anti-piracy built in, flooded the market with trash that no one wanted to buy (The infamous E.T. came out in this period). It wasn't until Nintendo stepped in with regulations, anti-piracy and solid contracts, that the market recovered.

Before too long, at the rate Steam is going, it won't take too much effort for a place like GOG to reach out to the masses of legitimate, disgruntled developers and start marketing the good games that slip through the cracks.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Lizzard eredeti hozzászólása:

Steam reminds me of the 1983 video game crash. Too many 3rd party developers making cash-grab games for Atari and other prehistoric consoles which didn't have any anti-piracy built in, flooded the market with trash that no one wanted to buy (The infamous E.T. came out in this period). It wasn't until Nintendo stepped in with regulations, anti-piracy and solid contracts, that the market recovered.

Before too long, at the rate Steam is going, it won't take too much effort for a place like GOG to reach out to the masses of legitimate, disgruntled developers and start marketing the good games that slip through the cracks.

The video game market is too huge at this point to crash that same way -- even with Steam's dominance of PC gaming, many more competing services exist and could mop up customers if Steam did suddenly crater, and besides, Steam's captive customer base would be bought up by someone else. And there's no such thing as a glut of digital game copies to dump in a landfill.

Furthermore, as much as I like DRM-free gaming, GOG's insistence on this does mean some publishers are averse to putting much on their store. Large publishers cocnerned about piracy would probably just shift to something like Origin or Uplay instead.

[Tito Shivan]

Lizzard eredeti hozzászólása:

Steam reminds me of the 1983 video game crash. Too many 3rd party developers making cash-grab games for Atari and other prehistoric consoles which didn't have any anti-piracy built in, flooded the market with trash that no one wanted to buy (The infamous E.T. came out in this period). It wasn't until Nintendo stepped in with regulations, anti-piracy and solid contracts, that the market recovered.

The problem wasn't as much about developer flood the flood of different console clones oversaturating the market and too many companies trying to be the next console leader.
Ironically it was a unified hardware (the personal computer) jumping into the game market what set the last mail on the coffin.

Nothing of that comes close to the actual scenario. The boom of 3rd party devs making games has more to do with the lowered entry barrier of software development (something that happens equally in every other creative industry right now) than with happened on the 83.
Hardware platforms are mature and settled in (way unlike the 83)

What you see as a sign of a second crash is the effect of just another content industry becoming more accessible to content creators.

When you've lived through three decades of the same song it gets old fast.

[Washell]

Leadwerks Software eredeti hozzászólása:

XBL Laberbacke eredeti hozzászólása:

And where? Uplay? Origin? Gog? Face it, Steam is almost a monopoly.

Discord is the first serious competitor, I believe.

Steam is and always will be the king of digital distribution. People are just too invested with their libraries. It can however go down in flames along with digital distribution all together.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/10/17446628/microsoft-xbox-game-streaming-cloud-service-next-xbox-teaser-e3-2018
https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/277982-google-announces-project-stream-a-game-streaming-service-for-chrome
https://www.techradar.com/news/playstation-now-three-years-on-is-sonys-streaming-service-for-games-worth-it
https://www.howtogeek.com/362411/the-best-cloud-gaming-services-for-streaming-video-games/

Sony, Microsoft and Google are far better situated with their finely meshed datacenters around the globe to deliver a game streaming service that actually works.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

And when that day comes I will still proudly be a conservative who insists on local downloads.

[Start_Running]

Lizzard eredeti hozzászólása:

Steam reminds me of the 1983 video game crash. Too many 3rd party developers making cash-grab games for Atari and other prehistoric consoles which didn't have any anti-piracy built in, flooded the market with trash that no one wanted to buy (The infamous E.T. came out in this period). It wasn't until Nintendo stepped in with regulations, anti-piracy and solid contracts, that the market recovered.

YOu need to actually read up on that. The north american Console crash was not what you think it was. It was at its heart caused by skittishness in retailers. There was never a drop in demand for video games or consoles (thats why nintendo made money like gang busters because the market had been starved for something it craved.

It wasn't quality either. . Granted a few flops like ET shook retailer confidence. You have to remember three things back then.

1.) There were a lot of competing systems back then. Just going by video game systems you had the atari 2600 & 5200, The intellivision, The Colecovision, The Odyssey, and one more i can't remember. Thats at least 5 different consoles...then you count things like the Home COmputer systems like the COmmodore, Spectrum and you realize that it was an inventory nightmare. Can you imagine what a game store would look like if it had 5 consoles each with rtheir ownincompatible libraries, peripherals and accessories?

2.) Retailers never considered hom,e gaming to be an industry, at the time it was essentially seen as a fad. Like Beanie Babies, Hula Hoops, etc. So Retailers were always looking and waiting for the optimal point to cash out.

3.) Nintendo really only got into retailer good graces initially via the Toy Aisle, rather than the home computing aisle. Have you ever really wondered why The Nes had so many odd peripherals Like ROB the Robot, the Zapper, The PowerPad, yet when you check the library the most supported of the peripherals (the zapper) had at best 10 games made for it.

Before too long, at the rate Steam is going, it won't take too much effort for a place like GOG to reach out to the masses of legitimate, disgruntled developers and start marketing the good games that slip through the cracks.

WHat masses of disgruntled developers? The ones who don't bother to market their games, the ones who make games that can't stand out from the detritus. Old saying. If you can't stand out from ♥♥♥♥, it's because you're ♥♥♥♥.

Developers of actually decent games don't have that much of an issue, since they work to constantly promote their games and target trheir promotions to their identified audience. It's only the developers who's entire marketing strategy was to 'get on on steam' tI.e lazy asshats that have issues. It's like saying you only need to 'get a degree' to get a good job. No, you need to get your degree then start networking and putting out your resumes and beating the pavement.

And lets be clear. The NES had a lot of HSite titles , all of which bore the Nintendo Seal of Quality. ANy developer that bought their carts from nintendo got to slap that suymbol on their game.

In fact if you look at the total library for most every system you'll find that at least half the games aren't what most would consider good. THe only thing that has really changed is that its easier to get into development and users are actually aware of the full array of options and not the shortlists that magazines and physical stores used to create.

[Tito Shivan]

Washell eredeti hozzászólása:

Sony, Microsoft and Google are far better situated with their finely meshed datacenters around the globe to deliver a game streaming service that actually works.

As much as it seems we have interesting times ahead I'm a bit skeptical of these services kicking Steam (or Origin, Uplay, GMG) out of the game in any short or medium term.
Just accounting ISPs into the equation makes game streaming services stand on a difficult balance. ISPs messing with competition services to boost their own ones (as already happens with video streaming services) overcharging for them or metered Internet connections pose a hurdle on these services success over the existing ones.

It's still easier to download one and play at will than turning gaming into another Internet data chewing application along music and TV.

Not to mention gaming portfolios attractive enough to get people to jump ships.

And where's the business for hardware manufacturers (AMD, NVIDIA, INTEL) if gaming just requires a screen and KB+M? That's a lot of money not being poured into game development. (Maybe games will be financed by LG & Razer instead?)

If anything Google has enough power to run a service at loss to get people in... I wouldn't bet hard on it either given Google's habit of dropping or changing services at the drop of a hat.

Still an interesting long ball worth watching.

[Blynky]

Steam now resembles the displays of crap they try to get you to buy at the last minute at the checkout aisle of a store.

[Start_Running]

Blynky eredeti hozzászólása:

Steam now resembles the displays of crap they try to get you to buy at the last minute at the checkout aisle of a store.

Depends on where you look.. I found two games to add to my wish list just by glancing at the store page

[76561198001062896]

SirtankaDev eredeti hozzászólása:

I guess it's because of all the highlevel pu$$ycats that demand a a lot of cheap trash games to boost their game count. They kinda created a market for this.
The developers of these games mainly make money by selling retail keys to bundle sites and/or by trading card sales.

Those games aren't really ment to be played. Thier main use is to farm massive amounts of archivements, boost the gamecount and get cheap card sets for steam leveling.
For example, you can get 200 unique games for about 10$.

That's why there are so many accounts that have thousands of games, but when you actually look into their statistics, you just find a huge amount of cheap bullsh*t, meant to fake a big account.

how dare people like games you dont like

nice generalising there btw

[Nu3n0]

Please, can anyone from the industry shed some light on the profitability of developing games? If low quality games are made in garages or basements, there must be monthly revenue to pay rents, bills & to put food on the table. The gamer reviews & active players in the community hub show their low appeal so what is keeping these game developers afloat & how are they able to survive?

Anyway, I've ignored the quantity so they won't show up - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3290901579

[Annie]

This thread was quite old before the recent post, so we're locking it to prevent confusion.