When Valve first announced that it was taking a long-overdue crowbar to Steam Greenlight and replacing it with a new system called Steam Direct, people weren’t sure what would happen. Some thought Steam was about to get more exclusive again. Others feared that Valve was only widening the floodgates. Now we’ve got numbers.
Since Steam Direct — which allows any developer to submit a game to Steam for $US100 ($127) — launched seven weeks ago, Steam has added over 1,000 new games, per figures provided by Ico Partners’ Thomas Bidaux (via GamesIndustry.biz). Of those, 215 arrived in the first week of August alone. Since mid-July, the number of games releasing per week has increased precipitously:
Here are the number of releases of the previous weeks (from mid-April 2017).
— Thom ⚔? ?gamescom (@icotom) August 7, 2017
When Steam Direct launched, Valve predicted that, thanks to games still caught up in the arcane gears of the Greenlight system, there would be “an initial surge of new submissions and then a new rate somewhat higher than what was coming through Greenlight.” The upswing in releases, then, could be a heaping helping of Greenlight leftovers, or it might be a sign of things to come.
Regardless, Valve has contended that Steam’s algorithm and supporting systems are up to the task of helping people sift the cream from the crap. Time will tell whether or not it’s on the money with that gamble. For now, though, how are you surviving The Great Steam Game Flood Of 2017?
Do you use built-in Steam features like the discovery queue and curators? Do you find that all these new games (some of which ain’t great) harm your ability to use the store, or are they just an irritating humming noise in the background?
Comments
6 responses to “Steam Has Added Over 1000 Games Since Steam Direct Launched”
I use discovery occasionally, but the most useful feature to me (and less well known) is the “More like this” feature. Go to the store page of your favourite game, scroll down to “More like this” and click “See all”, and it will show a concise list of very similar games that are worth a look.
I’ve found the queue to be pretty useless – it shows me a bunch of titles based on tags or “similar” games but I don’t think I’ve ever clicked on more than a handful of them, ever. I was able to at least make it slightly more useful by excluding particular tags, but the majority of what it pulls I skip over.
I still mostly find out about games from places like Kotaku AU, Eurogamer, or YouTubers – Steam is practically useless for game discovery for my purposes. The only exception is the VR section but it’s small enough for me to browse.
Hmm yes, really trying to change things for the better, yep.
If you go to steam to find games you’re doing it wrong…
I occasionally cycle through my discovery queue, added almost a dozen games to my wishlist during the last sale when there was incentive to view your queue. I generally find that my activity feed is better for finding games.
Either friends adding to wishlist or buy or curators recommending. But with 100 games already on my wishlist and multiple hundred in my library unplayed I am not actively looking for new game to buy.
As a customer – god I miss a curated steam. The cream almost always made it on their eventually and it meant I could buy alnost anything on there and it would be passable. Now I can’t find anything.