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Steam 2017 spring sale
Steam 2017 spring sale













  1. #Steam 2017 spring sale update#
  2. #Steam 2017 spring sale Pc#

#Steam 2017 spring sale Pc#

The sort of market power that Steam has in the PC gaming world should also bring with it some responsibility, and the big thing Valve needs to work on this year is curating Steam content. I’ve spoken with indies who told me that people would walk up to their PAX booths with money in hand, only to change their minds once they heard “It’s not on Steam.” For many indie developers, it was a nigh-impossible task.

steam 2017 spring sale

As you might recall, not so long ago it was a royal pain-in-the-ass to get your game on Steam. These are a consequence of Valve loosening the restrictions for adding a game to the service, which was done in response to complaints that getting games on Steam was too difficult. We’ve all seen the stories of games like those put forth by Digital Homicide, or the Unity-store asset flips masquerading as actual games. After all, isn’t more games always a plus? Now at first glance, that doesn’t seem like a bad thing. That’s roughly 38 percent of all the games on Steam, and is a drastic increase from the 2,964 games released in 2015, and the 1,772 games added to the service in 2014. Where’d all these games come from?Īccording to the pie chart below (originally posted to Twitter by SteamSpy), 4,207 games were released on Steam in 2016. Suffice to say, fixing discoverability is a daunting task, and to fix it Valve may end up having to address another problem: what’s in its store. One indie dev related a story in which his game was selling 20-50 copies an hour when a user dropped its rating from “Positive” to “Mixed.” Sales dried up almost instantly, with no copies being sold until the rating went back up. The effect that reviews have on discoverability is unclear (and Valve should clear this up by explaining just how the review ranking system works), but the effect they have user perception is not. Steam has had an eye on reforming the reviews system in recent updates, but it needs quite a bit more thought. I’ve also had indie devs tell me that negative reviews that were removed, either by the author or by Steam, still count as a negative review on their total.

steam 2017 spring sale

This can also lead to the bizarre situation where you can look at a game’s Steam page and see more positive reviews than the count shows. It also punishes indies to a larger extent than larger companies, as they are more likely to have large numbers of fans who backed on crowdfunding sites, or acquired the game through a bundle. Kickstarter backers, those who buy from other sites like GreenManGaming, bundle purchasers, and retail purchasers all get hosed by this system. While at first glance that sounds good, as it would keep a company from exchanging keys for good reviews to game the system, it also locks out a swath of legitimate customers from using the system. For instance, any review that was written by someone who activated a Steam key, rather than purchasing the game through Steam, no longer counts toward the game’s total review score. The system is better than it has been in the past, but it still harbors some inexplicable idiosyncrasies. The Steam Store has already begin showing you games based on what you play and buy, but what if you could pick developers, genres and more that populate your front page, and still had a dedicated section devoted to showing you similar games.Īnother issue that plagues discovery is Steam reviews. These are solid first steps, but Valve needs to do more, and that may involve giving much more control to its users.

#Steam 2017 spring sale update#

Back in September, it released an update to the way that new titles appear on the store, and revamping how its home page displays games.

steam 2017 spring sale

So far, Valve has implemented things like tagging, discovery queues, and a curators system in its previous attempts to address the discoverability issue. Finding a new game to play that you don’t already know the name of is more than a crap shoot these days – it’s reaching into the lottery bin and hoping to draw your number on the first try. While Valve has taken steps to try and alleviate this, they’ve been only marginally effective. With so many games on Steam, it’s become almost impossible for games to get noticed organically within the store. One of the biggest challenges Steam is facing, especially in the face of such explosive growth, is discoverability. How can that be, with such a huge explosion the number of games available for purchase? Well, the answer lies, at least in part, in the things that Valve needs to fix about Steam in 2017. But that same report showed that while the total number of games on the service had grown dramatically, with over 4,200 new games being released last year, Steam’s revenues stayed just about the same as in 2015. The majority of PC gamers own multiple Steam games, as is evidenced by Steam’s $3.5 billion in revenues from paid games in 2016 (according to the SteamSpy annual report, which excludes DLC and free-to-play revenues). Steam has become a vital part of the PC gaming universe the past few years.















Steam 2017 spring sale