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PayPalThere really are a lot of games, and with more releasing every year, Steam has gotten rather large as a platform with it now listing over 100,000 games.
When you do a search specifically just for games on Steam the number Valve now give is 100,392, although on SteamDB that number is 104,727 as they still show games that were unlisted (which you can still download if you purchased them). That's kind of ridiculous isn't it?
Going by the last few noted release years on SteamDB:
- 2024 - 4,599
- 2023 - 14,337
- 2022 - 12,087
- 2021 - 10,994
- 2020 - 9,371
- 2019 - 7,669
- 2018 - 7,901
- 2017 - 6,106
- 2016 - 4,272
How are developers supposed to get attention when there's tens of thousands of games being released on Steam each year now? When the release lists on Steam are constantly moving, like what happened with Potions: A Curious Tale, with it being bumped right down the list due to various classic EA games being released all in one go with the developer posting about it on X. A little brutal perhaps, but then relying on showing up in a list like that on Steam hasn't been the best idea for a long time.
I remember in earlier years, being able to quite easily follow the Steam overall news list every day, quite literally impossible to do so now.
Even with Steam constantly adding games there's still plenty finding success though. Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor just hit 1 million, Palworld hit 15 million, Last Epoch hit 1 million, Core Keeper around 2 million, Rail Route hit 100k and the list goes on and on that's just cherry-picking a few I've covered directly. There are plenty of ongoing success stories. So clearly some developers are doing well.
This brings me to an opinion piece by GamesIndustry.biz titled "Discoverability is a problem that will never be solved", and it really does bring up some interesting questions. Worth a read! It also touches on the issue with Potions: A Curious Tale noted above. As Rob Fahey writes, "Discoverability is a battle that never ends", and Fahey is right. Valve do often tweak Steam, add new features and new ways to find games - but it won't ever end, and it will only get more complicated as more people make and release games seeing potential buyer attention spread ever-thinner.
I don't have any answer of course, I'm not some marketing guru, but every platform will end up with this problem. GOG, Epic Games and so on. The more they add, the more difficult it will be for future releases. PR teams and marketing folks certainly have their work cut out for them. Looking at my own inbox, I get easily between 50-100 emails weekly, some days are absolutely crazy with announcements all for games wanting some kind of attention.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
I think i spend more time looking at potential new games, sales and bundles than i play somedays.
"oh, there's a new bundle at *official key site*. Hmm, i already have 2 of the 3 games i'm interrested. Crap, i don't know half those games, are they worth it ? Are they even worth anything for retrading in the worst case? Okay, they're 3d action games, do they even run at 60 fps on the steamdeck ? Wait, do they even run on the SD period ??? Are they long games or things that can enter and exit my backlog fast ?
So i'm checking a lot of different sites to answer those question.
* youtube for reviews as the internet is full of AI generated crap and most website i usualy followed have all been bought by marketing firms since a while. But with the removal of downvote, it gets harder to find reliable reviewers. Even with plugin to bring them back.
* Then there's SteamdeckHQ, reddit, and back to youtube to see some footage to see if it runs, how well and at what settings. And steam reviews. They're not that helpful, as they range from "good game, no problem here" to "this is buggy as hell and the gameplay is horrible for x,y & z"
* There's also simply the steam store with augmented steam from isthereanydeal and the steamDB pluggin to see how much they usualy go on sales, how frequently and what not. Then for game in bundles i'm not that into it, GGdeals to see if i could at list manage to exchange them and for how much.
* ProtonDB too if after finaly buying a thing and the SD protonDB decky pluggin do not show a gold or higher badge.
I'm really at a point where i have a backlog that got way out of hand and i'm not buying anything anymore on D1, except some multiplayer fighting games. And even then, it's the one for a year or two. Everything else i need to curate a bit 'cause there's no way in hell i'm having enough time during the next 50 years to finish everything.
And lets face it, a lot of those games are kind of crap too. Either they're solo dev project full or rpgmaker/unity asset put together that feel wrong to look at in some way or another, or AA & AAA games that are basicaly the same but on an industry level. Generic as hell and following the current trends to milk your consumer and not really worth it either. Either in time or money. And then, there's shady port of games that are buggy as hell. Or with 3 servers able to handle a couple dozen player and a 10k userbase trying to rush in on D1.
It's a jungle out there, and not a consumer friendly one. Too many predators out there, not enough meat to survive for them and the quality that ensue is less than stellar.
And steam reviews. They're not that helpful, as they range from "good game, no problem here" to "this is buggy as hell and the gameplay is horrible for x,y & z"I've seen such howlers as "The voice-actors aren't famous enough!" and "It's too colourful.", and, of course, all those useless memes and those "Paste the bunny/kitty of doom into your review and pass it on!" things.
And - just sayin' - making sure your game is Deck Verified is going to get you a place in a smaller pool of games, and gives you a reason for a marketing beat.
Linux_Rocks Mar 18
"Paste the bunny/kitty of doom into your review and pass it on!" things.Oh god yes, people find way to spam anything with everything.
It's horrible.
As for the "famous voice actor", i haven't seen that one yet. But i don't read them in detail. I usualy look at both good and bad that go into the detail of why, then try to find more info on the bad reviews as it's generaly what ends up discussed on reddit and youtube.
The worst offender i've seen so far is Tactics Ogre Reborn. The bad reviews are complaining about what makes the strenght of this remake/remaster.
I'm so glad they finally pushed the Steam Recommender out for public use, as the Discovery Queue was just "We think you'll like this because it's popular".The Interactive Recommender's got its own problems, though - it doesn't respect your ignore settings. No matter how much I tweak it, mine's constantly full of stuff that I've either got elsewhere or don't want and got sick of seeing recommended in the Discovery Queue, rendering it possibly even more useless.
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