It's not about recommending unpopular stuff, the issue is it recommends UNRELEASED stuff less now. So that dev with an upcoming game that was getting tons of wishlists two weeks ago is now getting a lot less visitors to his page, supposedly.
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PCGamer: Steam's Discovery update is making things worse for some indie developers
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The same goes to unpopular=/=quality.
We could be all the day discussing this. The only option is not to depend of an algorithm and have more human curation but with the release schedule Steam has it would require a lot of manpower (and they should as it will make that 30% cut to actually make sense). And right now, Epic only chases popular indies.
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I hope we end up getting complete numbers so we can properly judge if that change was a good or bad change as a whole. Maybe it was a zero sum game, maybe it actually decreased or increased the overall number of game bought or wishlisted.
One thing for sure is that I do appreciate going for more visibility for released game over upcoming games ( regardless of EGS exclusivity thingy, thought I do give bonus points for that ).
One thing for sure is that I do appreciate going for more visibility for released game over upcoming games ( regardless of EGS exclusivity thingy, thought I do give bonus points for that ).
I never talked about quality though.
It's also not homogenizing the market, you still get unknown indie breakout hits every year like before. It's just more spread out across several games instead of one making the millions upon millions like last decade. You also have several option at your disposal if you want to discover something new and different.
I really don't see how we can expect Valve to not only push quality games to its users but also quality games that aren't very popular. How can you do that unless you play everything out there? You need some kind of basis in reality to recommend a worthwhile game to a particular user, be it by what his friend list is playing, games from similar genre, or what's popular.
I never said that Epic does not chase popular stuff, actually that's why I argued many times in Epic threads, that they aim to popular indie/big publishers. That's why I always stated that Epic's model is a doubled edged sword. Instead of making the market more competitive is making it more homogeneous. Valve is reacting, but what people thought to become a competitive field for all these poor indie devs to thrive and raise is actually the contrary.
Yeah, recommending released games instead of unreleased ones seems like a good change to me.
K. You know this thread is about the industry / development side right?
You really can't separate the two though.
And helping game already released and in actual need of resources (more than a game in development) should be a good thing for the development side as well.
I mean, I just don't see they quoted me if they just wanted to state their personal preference and nothing else.
An indie breakthrough doesn't mean is not following popular trends from other successful products. Is something that happens already enough and this will further exacerbate the issue. If only what deemed popular can succeed, indie devs will likely to follow trends and what Steam recommends to people so they can get in the "recommended" section. Why take risks on genres not popular if Steam is gonna marginalize your game in favor of popular genres and other similar games?
On a industry already hard on risks this is making the problem worse. Precisely, what indie games, specifically succeeded, is to separate itself from what the publishers was dictating and make their own way and games. Steam was the platform that, mostly, allowed that. Not anymore.
Why would a game that's been released need more resources than one in development? It's the polar opposite, especially when the system is recommending popular stuff, which obviously doesn't need resources because it's already successful.
That sure seems to be the case for the ones that use Twitter.
Which platform has the best discovery tools in your opinion?
You can't expect Steam (or any platform really) to shape the gaming landscape. People will play what they like, the best Steam can do is make it as painless as possible to find what you're looking for. Everything is readily available, people in need of new experiences are often people playing dozens of games a year and are well informed on the medium. They have several ways to find that content.
Because if they're not successful they're in need of additional revenue, a game still in development is working on a set budget that should last them until the game is released.
When I used to buy games in shops years ago there was this concept of browsing, which is like searching, and I don't recall people complaining about this back then.
People nowadays just want everything done for them as they don't want to put the effort in themselves.
This should not be happening.
Which is weird because browsing in shops is exactly what I was comparing it in my mind to. When I go to the local supermarket I can wander around the aisles and see what is available. On Steam it is like picking items from a ten thousand page catalogue written in small print.
Browsing and searching are actually completely different tasks.
Also what is this bullshit about people wanting everything done for them? Do you have no idea how commerce works?
You can scroll the main page and get a huge amount of games recommended without searching for anything.
Steam has literally aisles that you browse, called "tags". And even different store sections as well.
Edit: I remember your avatar from other EGS threads. Naaaah, not worth it.
I'm not going to say that I'm someone who knows every indie game ever made but I would definitely say I generally am on top of releases pretty well even if I (understandably) don't touch everything. Having said that, I've never heard of Thomas Altenburger, Flying Oak Games, or their roguelike ScourgeBringer. I don't think any store front will ever have an algorithm that will be consistently good about recommending a game from total obscurity that is also at least 2 months old (that might also be in early access?).
Rock Paper Shotgun says its Dead Cells meets Celeste which could not be a more unappealing combo for me personally but it seems like a well made game for the people who like those kinds of games (and it looks nice). That article is also the closest thing to a major critic review that I could find. Anyway, I guess my point in all of this is that it sucks that it seems like the changes Valve made to Steam might be negatively impacting some indies and Valve definitely need to do better but also there will never be a storefront that figures this out. There will always be some that do it better than others but completely fixing storefront algorithms is just an absolutely impossible task thanks to how many games come out in a year.
Rock Paper Shotgun says its Dead Cells meets Celeste which could not be a more unappealing combo for me personally but it seems like a well made game for the people who like those kinds of games (and it looks nice). That article is also the closest thing to a major critic review that I could find. Anyway, I guess my point in all of this is that it sucks that it seems like the changes Valve made to Steam might be negatively impacting some indies and Valve definitely need to do better but also there will never be a storefront that figures this out. There will always be some that do it better than others but completely fixing storefront algorithms is just an absolutely impossible task thanks to how many games come out in a year.
Which works great if you want to see every genre/category.
If you select one of the built in genres from the Games dropdown you can't actually browse that by scrolling down
If you choose to look at a popular tag you can't browse that by scrolling down
If you choose to browse more from those pages or do a custom search you end back at the list of games which is not helpful
The problem with the list is that it does not contain enough information on each title and the space given is way smaller.
Why does everything have to be so small?
You can click on "show more" at the bottom of a tag or a genre list and get the adequate list of games with hundred of pages. You can do that based on new release, best selling, popular or upcoming.
If you hover over a game a pop-up window comes up with screenshots, tags, the game's review rating and any recommendations of that game from your friends. What other information would you like to have?
True you can do that but the only way to see all titles is by looking in Most Popular which sorts only by Most Popular (you can't refine this list)
I think it should be more like the content in the top banner (a bit smaller) but browseable. Steam wants to give me a list with small tiles and little information about the game.
Why do that when you can complain about visibility on steam and get way more clicks for easy less effort? Clicks are money!
Dunno about best, each has plenty of problems. The PlayStation Store is incredibly slow and bloated, I don't have an Xbox One so can't comment on that store, the Switch eShop is basically just a list of everything which tbh is more than other stores do but still isn't great, EGS has the same problem except it's worse cause it's literally just a giant page, Steam has a bunch of different systems but none really do a great job recommending stuff beyond what's already popular and it expects too much effort from the user before it really does anywhere near a decent job featuring stuff you might like.
I think itch.io's front page is surprisingly good. Of course the site mainly only sells niche indie stuff already so that's all it's going to show anyway, but they do a good job showing a variety of fun and interesting looking games on there. It's also just simple and clean.
This page does most of what you want, I think:
The "Browse All New Releases" link will show you every single release on Steam, which you can then filter by any number of tags (and other criteria), and the "Browse All Upcoming Releases" link under the Upcoming tab will show you yet to be released titles.
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Waking up and seeing how the discussion has gone overnight in this thread is very disheartening to me on a personal level.
Not quite, the News channel is really good for discovery imo. The shop just facilitates purchasing.
You actually don't know what you are talking about.
You can browse based on individual tags, multiple tags at the same time and sort them in multiple different ways and are given dozens or hundreds of pages depending on your criteria.
What has "awards winning" to do with more exposure? You get exposure regardless if you win the award or not. These are not the Oscars that get reported in all of the media, just getting the name out is exposure, winning the award gets you no yes on CNN or the Washington Post.
To be straight up I don't know what you expected.
All I can say is I hope the potential damage to devs livelihoods is limited to non-existent. This isn't a "solvable" problem this system necessitates winners and losers and can never be tuned to the mutual satisfaction of all involved parties they just can't we're so far past that point.
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Itch.io does looks nice but it also features half as much games as Steam's front page. Right now I counted 53 games on Itch.io's homepage compared to 106 on Steam (without going into the infinite scrolling section).
I don't think that's a bad thing. I think the more important thing also is that itch.io's front page design isn't a bloated mess.
If indie devs had control over the algorithm we would just get a big fat cover photo of a single game and nothing else. The control cant be in the hands of developers, it needs to be as fair as possible, but there will always be winners and losers.
Or this:
User Banned (Permanent): Antagonising Other Members; Numerous Prior Bans for Hostility and Inflammatory Behavior
Its his schtick. He starts a thread about steam, and if it doesnt go his way he screams, bad community.
That's pretty uncalled for. Regardless of if you think the thread went the right way or not, this seems pretty close to a personal attack. :/
More on-topic, here's a way to deal with discovery and the number of games per month being released on Steam:
Amazon owns both Goodreads and IMDB. Amazon (the store) pushes recommendations based on purchases and browsing of specific items, but it also pushes upcoming books and movies/TV via Goodreads and IMDB. At the very least Goodreads sends out a monthly email picking out the top books of each genre for the coming month, and that's just the basic newsletter. IMDB pushes trailers for upcoming movies and TV series alongside interviews, random shit and "Upcoming".
Where is the PC gaming version of this? Youtube? Fuck Youtube, with its shitty algorithm and stressing of creators to churn content and clickbait.
Valve - or Epic, or EA, or Ubi, or someone - needs to start the Goodreads and IMDB of gaming, police it strictly for racism, sexism and hate, and allow editorial independence so that recommendations for every PC store can be shown. Trailers and video content on one, interviews, news, and reviews on the other.
It would be a start, at least.
Why? Everyone is being polite and there's substantive discussion.
Do you not have the same complaint of Amazon? Why are we comparing steam to a brick and mortar store?
Steam got heavily (!) criticized from basically every Indie Dev in the world for promoting hand selected games, basically choosing the winners and losers.
Thats the reason why there is no curation on Steam anymore because everyone deserves an equal chance of winning.
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Topic turned into another EGS vs Steam topic for some pages, which is fucking annoying and not at all on topic.
You can't expect everyone to just ignore the elephant in the room that is the EGS and what it represents when it comes to negative Steam threads like this, especially when there isn't a proper place to discuss the EGS on this site. The community's mostly fine so far, it just isn't what you specifically want it to be.
Sure, but how do you think that developers would feel if tomorrow Valve announced that it's cutting the number of games on the front page by 50% for the sake of making the page cleaner? Itch.io can afford to be cleaner because no one is counting on itch.io for their livelihood.
If people are to lazy to scroll through the list of New and Upcoming releases on Steam then that's your own fault. I don't have a problem doing that as it's not hard work.
That would give Steam even more power in picking out the winners, also I think they're already pretty good at highlighting popular games, the issue here is that some developers are negatively impacted because they're showing popular games even more.
An IMDB/Goodreads of gaming would probably be pretty similar to what Valve is already showing.
If Steam would show 50% less games on their front page, but in exchange would have a better design causing more people to actually look at the games it shows on there, plus if like itch they made an effort to show a good variety of stuff on there, then I don't think developers would mind. If anything it'd likely cause people to explore games on the store more.