noah

Valve has always struck me as a very odd true-believer-libertarian kind of company. Standard ethos in that regard: everyone technically has the opportunity to get preferential treatment, no bias whatsoever.

(It did make me indescribably furious the first time I found out that big devs aren't getting charged the full cut though.)

Good post.

Personally, to me, all of Steam clicked into place once I learned Gabe Newell is a libertarian. They will never do curation because the company was founded and still operates on those principles: that the market will pretty much regulate itself.

Which in real life tends to end up meaning "the big get bigger"

I agree with most of the above but outside of the vaguely libertarian ethos at work, the main other motivating factor at valve (and where their ethos falls flattest on its face) is in enforcement.

Being able to view the struggles of adult game makers and visual novel makers on steam leads me to believe that if valve is delusional if it genuinely thinks it's a meritocracy with no one putting their finger on the scale.

Tangentially related but I've always wanted to look more into the curators on steam and found it frustrating that it's not easier to find ones that will surface games I'm into. It would be nice if there was a way to pick a list of obscure games I like and say "show me a curator who has recommended all of these"

I'll take the way Valve does it over whatever results in the Nintendo Eshop or the PS Store, and I don't even like Steam.

Yeah it's rough, but following steam releases, I've also noticed a few games releasing with absolutely nothing and still getting noticed. This wouldn't happen on Switch or Playstation, and I really doubt these would be games highlighted by Valve employees.

Another thing is that when you do have stuff like Nintendo Direct and State of Play, then it's the only thing people look at. They're good to showcase already pretty well marketed games to people who look at nothing else, but they won't create success out of nothing by looking at releases and picking what they find interesting.

Of course it would be nice if the home had a spot for lesser known games, but then you're just moving the problem, who gets picked, what stops them from going for high potential for sells instead of quality etc. I get why they're staying away from this.

The one place I've seen Valve do this is for Steam Fest trailers, because they do pick games here, but yeah it's mostly about what looks good and varied for a trailer.

Really good text, nothing to add really. Just that my general image of steam builded in all these years has fallen in this year in a relatively little time. Not that they did a big major bad decision, but it was just, so little things, one by one, that have created a mountain of disliking that I have to deal as a player and dev... A visual novel dev, without 100$. Glad Itch exists, not that it doesn't have problems, but it's good things make it really good. But yeah I really suggests start with Itch if one is a dev wanting to grow, specially if you want to do anime inspired visual novels.

Yeah, it's this false premise that the single independent variable is the quality of the game. But obviously it isn't true if you look at the varied circumstances under which the games are developed and distributed.

To me the idea of browsing Steam is like scrolling the front page of Amazon looking for ~something~ to buy. I only go there to check out a game by name, god knows what Valve's demographic actually is for their "recommendations" algo

I agree that curation is valuable, but I'm not convinced that Valve (or their storefront) are the best place to do it. This is what games journalism is for. It is better, I think, for the inherent bias of journalism to be something that readers opt into, rather than vertically integrating with the store page.

The one argument that I can see for this is that Valve can afford to do it, whereas most games journalism is either dead broke or in a tense relationship with their advertisers. Perhaps it would be ideal for Valve to offer something akin to Amazon's Affiliate Links; where if someone bought a game by following the link on your website, you'd get some small cut of the sales price? This might allow popular curators to earn a living doing game journalism based on their effectiveness, rather than just being paid to recommend something whether they like it or not. I kind of doubt that this would ever be done in an equitable way, though, given the power dynamics of the parties involved.

I don't know; I honestly have never gone to Valve's store page and decided to browse for a game. I know that some -- many! -- people must do this, but I don't have time to play the games that I've extensively researched. To me, the steam storefront is an obnoxious banner-ad that plays beneath the Search Bar. I get most of my game recommendations from either social media or streamers, who are often in a good position to spend a lot of their time researching less-popular, still-fun games.

I quite agree with you, i like human curation greatly, and so found it elsewhere than on steam
But i feel like the festivals they get (next fest, deck builders fest, farming fest etc.) and the indie editors, award events having some too (like the LudaNarraCon, the MAZE. Awards etc.) are good new way (i think it's quite recent but can't remember when it started) for them to have this curation. it's not perfect as it still suffers from the meritocracy you've talked about with better selling games being shown first, but i feel like it's making progress in a good way as i've been discovering a lot of these hidden gems.

Valve has exactly two "lean on buttons", which is the one day banner takeover (which is always usually a big title or a huge famous indie game), and the publisher sales/daily deal (which is more "the top 40 publishers gets 1 week of the year").

That 100% does nothing for anyone without a publisher to vouch for them though. It's entirely based on "Is your game bought and played a lot? It goes up the list, with it going higher on people's list who buy this genre", which kinda works but really requires word of mouth.