Good point. Unity is doing very well :)
Yes, good point and yet another way those industries are different aside from what I’d already mentioned. But what I was getting at and what I’m really curious about is, is there something we can gain from looking at the effects of those huge escalations of product? Does this decision by Valve create a flood of stuff even bigger than what we have now, and does it transform the industry in similar ways? Different?
Oh yeah, I agree. Music is another luxury product and just like games and art, there are lots of people that would love to do it for a career, so no shortage of offerings there.
I could have told you this. . .
I’m not saying the current way is the right way. If nothing else a review board (uh, ish) that can look over flagged stuff and some tools around that might be a good idea.
But as Jeff Vogel pointed out on Twitter the day of the announcement, it took him years and years to get onto Steam. And if you had followed that saga previously, he basically had to dredge up a series of contacts before finally getting a game to show up. There’s no universe where Vogel’s games don’t belong on Steam, except one where Valve is actively trying to curate stuff.
It’s true that there were probably too few people acting in that capacity, and they probably weren’t following clear guidelines (because, as previously discussed, it’s not possible to encode such in a way that doesn’t cause problems). The task is herculean.
Yeah, that example (and the DROD games) are a big reason I have preferred literally every subsequent approach Valve have tried, warts and all, to when they were actively curating.
Dear Valve,
I will curate and moderate your store if you let me work remotely and pay me a reasonable salary. It’s a bargain.
Love,
Bradley
Yeah they don’t have to scrub every game that comes in. They could just have a system to allow end-users to flag content for them to review. Amazon relies on this as well. With their new policy, there’s no point. They have no guidelines to offer.
I should say this. . . this approach will still run into a lot of the same problems as already mentioned in the thread (and almost certainly exacerbate whataboutism issues). I’m not sure it’s working great on Twitter right now, e.g.
I am not comparing it to Social Media. I am comparing it to Amazon. Amazon seems fine; they blow their competitors out of the water so more than fine… They didn’t put up a weird wall so only the stuff their staff says is okay, is okay. They review what customers ask them to review and decide and remove or not using internal guidelines. It’s not as if you suddenly can’t find any music or 10 page digital books on the store. It’s not really a quality check unless it’s counterfeit. It’s a merchant and what they deem is not something they want on their shelf check.
None the less, there are direct comparisons to social media.
Amazon has resources on a level Valve never will in a billion years. I don’t know if that’s what it takes to be able to do what they do, but it’s possible that it does.
Valve is not as large as Amazon. Amazon also has to deal with physical products. Valve doesn’t need the same level of resources to do this. They do have to care though which they clearly don’t.
Amazon is also very harsh with their enforcement, though. Getting them to reverse a decision seems to be almost impossible. Look at what happened here that led to Patreon.
Not really saying anything goes is better, just that there are downsides to curation too.
You be careful what you wish for.
I read an article about some peeps who had to do vetting of flagged stuff for facebook. The constant stream of hate, utter perversion and depravity had them all in the psych wards in months. You do not want that. Not for a meagre 1500 bucks a month.
Yeah, I’ll join you.
I’ve made the conscious decision half a year ago or so to try and avoid Steam as much as possible and use GOG instead. I’ve even re-bought games I already had on Steam. GOG curation may not be perfect, but that avalanche of crap on Steam is not worth trudging through. Sorry, developers, but if you only release on Steam I at least won’t be buying any more of your games…
My take on this is that right now Steam’s added value to most games (anything without heavy online functionality) is just dependent on their monopolistic position. That and Steam seasonal sales sale spikes. There’s some added value there.
For online games, their online infrastructure can be quite good (depending on the game, though) and some games can benefit from it.
But, if your game is not online multiplayer, and sice they don’t help discovery nor do they maintain a curated storefront anymore, you put your game of Steam because you have to be on Steam to sell on PC. Other (curated) platforms that do promote the games there much more. But they have pretty low sales in comparison. If some of those platforms pick up you will see a lot of devs employing a Steam-second strategy. Or at least I think it would happen, and fast.
But monopolies are hard to break indeed and I’m sure Steam will remain the main PC storefront for quite a while.
Is it wrong that despite the Monopoly, I love the platform, but hate the store? The only time I actually buy games from Steam is when it has a bundle on sale that is further discounted when I already own the game. Otherwise I usually buy it from other locations and install it with steam.
Well sure, because legitimate storefronts like GMG manage to offer substantial discounts on Steam keys 100% of the time somehow. Even on newly released games. I still can’t figure out how they manage to do this. I think they’re a money laundering operation.
Yes true for me too. While I might still buy on Steam, my purchasing there has evolved in recent years, largely affected by bundles. Oftentimes it’s more my game locker and less my game store as I get games elsewhere but just receive keys for Steam. And the Steam guys are probably just fine with that.
More and more I haven’t been using Steam much. I rarely buy games through them (because even before this navigating the steam store was obnoxiously difficult and exhausting) and I have been using the steam client less and less due to Launchbox
Launchbox is a tinkerer’s/collector’s dream. So easy to spend time arranging and tweaking versus playing.
I hope people aren’t convincing themselves while reading this thread that somehow Steam is in trouble, because that’s simply not true.