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Weird Steam recommendations!
Pengling Dec 30, 2022
I was idly scrolling on the Steam homepage when I noticed a weird game recommendation;


I'm not sure what Steam thinks Super Bomberman R 2 and Star Trek Online have in common, but I'm pretty sure that nobody wants a bunch of bomb-making robots running loose on their spaceship!

After that, I noticed several more really strange recommendations;


This has nothing in common with Halloweenish cartoony oddities.


Ape Out is a colourful, jazzy, destructive maze-chase game, complete with the genre's traditional top-down view. Even a relatively bad algorithm shouldn't be recommending Doom in response.


I don't get how it came up with this one at all.


Games like these are basically the antithesis of a bouncy, cheerful title like New Super Lucky's Tale.


I guarantee you, Naruto is nothing like Zool and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. (Not pictured is when it also recommended a basketball game for the same reason... )

Of course, we all know that Steam is generally pretty terrible at recommending games, but I felt that these efforts really went above and beyond.

Has anyone else got any utterly insane recommendations that Steam has thrown at them? Please share!

Last edited by Pengling on 30 December 2022 at 3:05 am UTC
StoneColdSpider Dec 30, 2022
Quoting: Pengling
I don't get how it came up with this one at all.
Thats an easy one........ See you played "Shovel" Knight right???....... And you need a shovel to bury all the bodies of the people you kill in GTA......... See...... Makes perfect sense......
peta77 Dec 30, 2022
I guess these are simply recommended because they are very popular in general. There's currently a list up of most popular games in 2022, and pretty much all of those recommendations are in there in platin or gold section... So I assume, when the algorithm can't find anything suitable for you in the store it simply picks some titles from that list... At least that's how I would do it if I had to write such stuff... because most times it looks better to be a bit off than saying "we don't have anything for you" to a potential customer..
Pengling Dec 30, 2022
Quoting: StoneColdSpider
Quoting: Pengling
I don't get how it came up with this one at all.
Thats an easy one........ See you played "Shovel" Knight right???....... And you need a shovel to bury all the bodies of the people you kill in GTA......... See...... Makes perfect sense......
Hahaha!

Quoting: peta77So I assume, when the algorithm can't find anything suitable for you in the store it simply picks some titles from that list... At least that's how I would do it if I had to write such stuff... because most times it looks better to be a bit off than saying "we don't have anything for you" to a potential customer..
It's possible, sure, but then again this is the very same algorithm that tells me that direct sequels to games I've poured ludicrous amounts of time into aren't related to anything I've played!

That said, I'm not too concerned about the ins-and-outs of a known-bad algorithm, here - I'd just like to share some laughs about it, since I'm sure it does this with a lot of people.
Klaas Dec 30, 2022
Usually the queue thingy tells you when it recommends a game because of its popularity.
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