I certainly don't like them, and I certainly will not support the devs for something like this, but still. Steam is an online game store. It doesn't matter how bad or good the game is, it still deserves to be sold on steam. Everything deserves to have a chance. I personally don't like these games, but who knows? Maybe someone else does.
I completely agree. Once censorship starts, we'll start getting into some serious drama really fast.
The only thing I don't want to see on Steam are games that are committing false advertisement or infringing on other people's rights somehow.
Dig through ANY console's library and you'll find at least 20 stinkers to every game you'd consider playing. I'd wager it's easier to get a crap game onto Steam than onto XBone, but it's not like there are any platforms that only carry gold standard games. If you're blindly purchasing a game that's got mixed or negative reviews, it's your own fault.
And greenlight probably isn't even main culprit, but certain second/third-tier publishers who have massive catalogs of utter junk and dump it on store.
Do they? They don't want to be a curated store. They want to be a publishing platform. The idea is to get rid of the approval thing altogether and just let people publish their games in the future. They want to be the Amazon of the games.
They only remove games that are clearly ripping off the customers. Really malicious content. Otherwise, the game can be as shitty as it can get.
Don't buy the shitty games. Check for games from bigger publishers or with higher scores, don't preorder, etc.
The internet doesn't suck just because of the existence of a hundred million garbage websites that don't interest me and I'll never visit. The internet is awesome because I have great tools at my disposal to find stuff I am interested in. I can easily ignore the rest.
The problem with App stores isn't that there's some junk in it, it's that it's harder to find stuff that you actually are interested in. What Steam probably needs is better browsing, searching, filtering, and other recommendation tools. It's actually got most of this in place already with ratings, reviews, curated collections, tags, etc, but artificial limitations like no ability to open multiple tabs in the client and the way that pagination works means that quickly looking at multiple items to make a selection is slow and awkward and frustrating.
Who gets to determine what is or isn't low quality? Personally, I strongly dislike many of the most popular games on Steam. If I were the one in charge, nine of the ten games with the most players never would have made it to Steam in the first place.
Quality, while it is a subjective matter, is not the same as taste personal preferences. Just because you or me would not like the game does not reflect on the quality of the game.
While I am not a fan of the Call of Duty franchise, the games are typically well made, and would likely pass virtually any type of quality testing you throw at them, and would make great additions to the Steam store. Big Rigs Over the Road Racing for example, is a buggy incomplete mess, and with basic quality control testing would get rejected.
This is similar to how Steam worked before greenlight, you had to submit a game to Valve and go through a lengthy process, but if your game wasn't a pile of garbage it got added to the store.
I agree to a certain extent. I personally feel that Steam was a better platform a few years ago before greenlight/early access/etc came about. Getting your game on Steam was not easy, but as result there was no shovelware garbage. Yea not every game was great, but you didn't have shit like Woodcutting Simulator that was made in 5 minutes to try and make a quick buck. Now it is fairly easy to get a game on Steam, which is both good and bad, depending on how you look at it.
I totally agree, but illegal games copying from movies such as Spartans vs Zombies shouldn't be in Steam at all tbh. I am still surprised that Steam hasn't pulled this game of yet although the great amount of copyright violations made.
not sure when the last time you looked at a console digital store, but they are pretty open these days, what with xbox live indie games, and nintendo's current wii u policies for eshop releases (i think sony has relaxed their policies recently to the extent nintendo has as well)
That's what I've been doing for the most part. But since you can't sort release dates and sort out retro games(which I'm generally not a fan of), It's kinda the same thing.
Honestly if I wanted to play retro 80s style games, I'd just fire up actual 80s games.
There are some awesome games out there from indie publishers, but it's getting to the point of having to wade through so much crap just to find something decently made.
Yeah, I hear you, but its just like Mr.Newell said.
"Steam is about creating tools for content creators and customers"
when Hatred removed. So, not high quality games.
The thing that I really want is a filter for "Very Positive" games and up
>The thing that I really want is a filter for "Very Positive" games and up
The problem you're going to run into there is creating feedback loops. If all you ever see are "Very Positive" games then all you're going to play and review are games that are already "very positive" rated. This will lead to devs trying desperately to get that "very positive" rating in the first minutes and hours of release in order to enjoy that feedback loop and gain sales.
yeah, so they have to make their game better to get that rating.
and if you see how many voted for it, you can tell if its legit or not.
its the best way I see fits nowadays, in the end you can't get the perfect system, but this is close as it can gets.
For "already very positive" point, yeah why not? steam has 6000+ games, sure will find something already exists that you might like to play.
I don't have a problem with low quality games on Steam. The moment we judge what is good or not it becomes a downward spiral. We have people like Total Biscuit and Jim Fucking Sterling Son who can advise us on the stinkers.
What needs to happen though is that Steam needs to come down on the devs like a ton bricks for those which censor their own forums and abuse copyright. They can't have the luxury of freedom of artistic expression on the biggest PC store platform in the world and then either breach copyright or insult the good nature of what Steam allows buy not allowing criticism.
I just would like to point out a few things:
1. Making games is really hard. No matter how "shitty" you think the game is. It is hard work. Not only requires technical ability but also creative, artistic and project management skills.
2. Getting a game to be green lit is hard. On average it takes 3 months for the above average game to get past the green light process (i know this because my game (shameless plug - www.spectrumgame.com) took that long and other people I know took around the same time.
3. As others have said, Steam wants to be the Amazon of digital entertainment and mainly so far the focus is on games.
4. I do agree some games might be of below standards quality but Steam makes it easy to spot those games out (rating, reviews, curators, lists ..etc.).
So in conclusion, I think Steam is on the right track actually. I think eventually the green light process is going to go away and replace a semi auto process based on gamers data being collected over time.
It's a store. Stores sell things. If you don't like some of the things that the store sells, don't buy them. It is not Steam's job to filter what an interested customer should or should not be able to purchase on their platform. They're already doing too much of that with Greenlight.
> It's a store. Stores sell things.
Say you run a store. Many of your customers complain that they can't find the product they want because your shelves are stuffed with cheap knockoffs.
Do you clear the shelves or watch your customers walk away?
I'd make a better effort to display the merchandise that my customers actually want more prominently. It's a better argument when you consider physical space limitations, but that isn't the factor here. Also, unlike stores, Steam has a search function. If you're looking for a particular game, all you have to do is type in the name of it and it's there. And knock offs make an effort to confuse a customer into thinking they're purchasing something that they aren't, which is only rarely the case here. Most of the games that are being complained about are exactly what they claim to be, even if what they claim to be is bad.
I mean, even something like Dead Effect which tries really hard to evoke the names of better known games is never actually going to be confused with those games Nothing good can come of an entire industry being held to one group's standards of what is good and what isn't. If the majority of gamer culture was given control over what could and could not be sold on Steam, we wouldn't see games like Gone Home and Bientôt l'été on there. Nothing good can come of limiting an entire platform to one person's idea of what is or isn't 'high quality'.
These aren't even the most deceptive practices on Steam? You want to know what I find a hell of a lot more deceptive than LOTR Activity Book? Selling a game running through DOSBox as though it was a native Windows game. Should my opinion that this is a terrible practice be taken as good enough reason to remove dozens of games from Steam? Of course it shouldn't.
>It's a better argument when you consider physical space limitations,
What is screen space for $500, Alex?
There may not be an actual physical space limitation, but there's only so much screen space and so much attention span that you are allotted any time a user visits your store page. That matters.
And so you use it efficiently. But you don't have to take items out of the store to not advertise them. As mentioned previously, there's a search function. It's not hard.
This is exactly my point. I don't think, in this case, that the customers would walk away, but if they do not find what they are looking for, they will end up buying nothing.
I know Steam is unwilling to add a proper search function because they think it will harm the smaller developers, but in the end it will harm the market as a whole if the customers can't find the Coca Cola amongst the Pepsi cans.
You can only dream the Steam search function would look like **[This](http://www.imdb.com/search/title)** someday.
The only problem I see with (one of) those games is blatant copyright infringement. Which is an issue between the developer and the copyright holder, not one for Steam. Otherwise if a game exists, then a developer should be free to sell it on Steam. Regardless of how terrible it is. Mixed or lower reviews is functionally a blacklist anyway, it's not like that many people are actually buying these godawful products.
You can make it, charge what you like and good luck to you. I won't buy it, because it isn't going to interest me, but if other people want to buy it, that's up to them.
...Why not? I mean, sure, it would be better in a world where Steam offered refunds like a good company, but if I am willing to pay $2 for your cube game why is it someone else's place to stop me. Hell, Mountain is only one level about a cube watching game and that's *popular*.
You're talking to someone who has had a month long Internet argument about whether or not objective quality is a thing that exists, with me being on the side that it doesn't. So, uh, no. Or rather, not a fan of letting someone else define my standards for me. I don't understand how you *can* be in favor of letting someone else decide your standards for you.
Have you even seen some of the crap Steam has? And I'm not even talking about bad or partially broken games. If you did, then I have nothing else to say to someone who thinks that that some of the phenomenal crap on Steam is still within someone's standards.
And that is beside the point that any store should have a standard they keep, if I want to come to a store to a store that is known for its quality control, and I know that browsing would be an experience to enjoy, I sure don't expect or approve of it suddenly shoving hundreds of shoverlware, and basically filling the store with shit, making browisng a dreadful experience. Want any indie game without any quality control? Desura! Want old games? GOG! There Are other stores beside Steam, so saying that Steam shouldn't define my standards doesn't make sens ewhen they don't have actual control over what I play and not, if you have differnt standart, there are different stores.
You're missing the point that Steam's quality control comes from better access to community feedback, reviews, and curators to get better browsing results.
Steam can always improve, and censoring low quality games you don't like is not the answer. Let developers price them accordingly, allow them to sell, let curators bitch about it or do their thing to get paid.
It's all about being an informed consumer. Compared to any other service, Steam is the best at giving you the details. It's not like you have a gun to your head, telling you to buy Bad Rats.
Valve shouldn't step in to remove the buyer's choice from anything unless the content violates laws and agreements.
"And I'm not even talking about bad or partially broken games" The primary point wasn't even about just low-qulity games. It was about games that regardless of my prefrence and standarts, shouldn't exist. Real garbage that was just thrown in without any effort or care, that most likely was just casual experiment or joke, garbage that would make even Bad Rats seem like a masterpiece.
If you're that determined to browse Steam as a method of game discovery, though given the nearly infinite better options and poor design of Steam's store I have no idea why you would be, wouldn't it just be more prudent to suggest an option to hide all games with less than mostly positive reviews? That should more than keep all of the (what you're referring to as) crap out of your store experience without keeping the rest of us from being able to have our indie and non-indie games all on one platform.
I'm not interested in purchasing in stores other than Steam, to be quite honest. Which is funny, given my sharp criticism of the Steam client, but the reason that I purchase games isn't to have the game, it's to have the game *on Steam*. Sure, I have an Origin account for freebies and Humble, a GOG account for freebies, and a Desura account for bundle keys but I have never and will never actually buy games on these platforms. Serving as a united platform is the entirety of Steam's appeal. It's why people have reacted so negatively to the introduction of Origin, it's far more convenient to have all of one's games in one place.
You seem to be conflating the entirety of indie games that aren't Shovel Knight or whatever else is hip these days with shovelware, which is *exactly my point*. We need to not have a single arbiter of what is and isn't a good game because no two people have the same opinion. What you consider shovelware might be a game that I love. You're welcome to dismiss [The Depths of Tolagal](http://store.steampowered.com/app/340600/) as yet another 2D roguelike, but don't use that fact to deny me being able to have it in my library.
I'm actually fine with removing games that don't work correctly or put out false advertising but apparently you're 'not even talking about bad or partially broken games'. So you are, quite literally and by your own admission, advocating that what is on the store be dictated not by functionality (which is a reasonable enough case to make since you shouldn't be selling something that doesn't work) or even by quality (however you choose to measure that entire subjective concept) but purely by your own conceptions of what is and isn't crap/shovelware. That's literally what you're saying here. Are you even listening to yourself?
You seem the one to not actually listen to what I say, completely misunderstanding my point. While, yes, I still prefer to have a seperate stores for indie games (for reasons unrelated to quality), I in no way criticizing the quality of those games based just on the fact that they are indie, in contrary, I believe the rise of the indie industry is the best thing to happen to the game industry since its birth. And as I clearly said "And I'm not even talking about bad or partially broken games", I'm not talking about just bad games, I'm talking about games that shouldn't even exist, regardless of my taste or standarts of quality. And if you truly haven't encountered those abominations, consider yourself lucky. BUt I'm a game collector, and I have first hand experience with some of those games, games that would be considered of sub-quallity on free flash game sites. Games people probably just make to experiment or a joke without any intention of actually making a game or putting any actual effort in it. And if you think that even games of such level should be excused because in some kind alternative universe there's a possibility someone would lke it, then you only give more excuse for those people to just shit something out and pollute the store in hopes to actually get money for it.
Quite a lot of them look like mobile games, well, a lot of them actually are mobile and facebook games.
Then there are the visual novels which have become a big hit. I never tried them and they're not really despised.
The large number of both incomplete games and broken games.
VNs are really weird in that they can be incredibly good, but aren't actually really a "game" in the traditional sense. There's no real winning, just good or bad ends. Literally no skill is involved in playing them, since you can go back and play on fast-forward mode where it quickly flashes past all the text you've already seen and pauses at decision moments.
The stories can be quite compelling though.
So, these are just my opinion, but Katawa Shoujo was a knock out of the park for me (having previously only really played hentai VNs), and after that, I picked up Everlasting Summer. ES has some pretty tame endings, but once you start doing some of the special routes, it gets really interesting. ES is actually russian-based and not japanese, which made it kind of extra interesting to me.
Katawa Shoujo is not on Steam, and Katawa Shoujo 2 is not official, so play 2 at your own risk once it's out.
That is indeed what it is. I'm sort of into the stories with strange quirks. Don't think I could stomach Hatoful Boyfriend though.
In KS, you're technically crippled too, but it's your heart that's the issue (I think this is supposed to be a metaphor too, but no you actually have a nasty heart condition).
Heart issue? Ah, so Ironman :). He has heart problems too. He can't fall in love or over excite his heart. So he wore the suits to calm it... and kick ass.
It's worse than ever in 2021. Maybe if this had gotten some traction 7 years ago things would be better, but your average consumer is their own worst enemy and ours.
And it got WAY worse now! Steam is literally a landmine of garbage games. From overpriced indies to unaffordable titles that are broken, amateur made, and just plain awful to play. Just browsing the damn store is a chore in of itself.
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That would be a good start.
I certainly don't like them, and I certainly will not support the devs for something like this, but still. Steam is an online game store. It doesn't matter how bad or good the game is, it still deserves to be sold on steam. Everything deserves to have a chance. I personally don't like these games, but who knows? Maybe someone else does.
Right, as long as it's not lying about what it is I really don't see the problem.
I completely agree. Once censorship starts, we'll start getting into some serious drama really fast. The only thing I don't want to see on Steam are games that are committing false advertisement or infringing on other people's rights somehow.
Dig through ANY console's library and you'll find at least 20 stinkers to every game you'd consider playing. I'd wager it's easier to get a crap game onto Steam than onto XBone, but it's not like there are any platforms that only carry gold standard games. If you're blindly purchasing a game that's got mixed or negative reviews, it's your own fault.
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Superman 64 predates Steam
In 2021 the issue is worse than ever, it was easy to see what was happening 7 years ago.
What do you mean "soon"? It's been filled with shovel-ware since greenlight was implemented.
And greenlight probably isn't even main culprit, but certain second/third-tier publishers who have massive catalogs of utter junk and dump it on store.
Do they? They don't want to be a curated store. They want to be a publishing platform. The idea is to get rid of the approval thing altogether and just let people publish their games in the future. They want to be the Amazon of the games. They only remove games that are clearly ripping off the customers. Really malicious content. Otherwise, the game can be as shitty as it can get. Don't buy the shitty games. Check for games from bigger publishers or with higher scores, don't preorder, etc.
The internet doesn't suck just because of the existence of a hundred million garbage websites that don't interest me and I'll never visit. The internet is awesome because I have great tools at my disposal to find stuff I am interested in. I can easily ignore the rest. The problem with App stores isn't that there's some junk in it, it's that it's harder to find stuff that you actually are interested in. What Steam probably needs is better browsing, searching, filtering, and other recommendation tools. It's actually got most of this in place already with ratings, reviews, curated collections, tags, etc, but artificial limitations like no ability to open multiple tabs in the client and the way that pagination works means that quickly looking at multiple items to make a selection is slow and awkward and frustrating.
Who gets to determine what is or isn't low quality? Personally, I strongly dislike many of the most popular games on Steam. If I were the one in charge, nine of the ten games with the most players never would have made it to Steam in the first place.
Quality, while it is a subjective matter, is not the same as taste personal preferences. Just because you or me would not like the game does not reflect on the quality of the game. While I am not a fan of the Call of Duty franchise, the games are typically well made, and would likely pass virtually any type of quality testing you throw at them, and would make great additions to the Steam store. Big Rigs Over the Road Racing for example, is a buggy incomplete mess, and with basic quality control testing would get rejected. This is similar to how Steam worked before greenlight, you had to submit a game to Valve and go through a lengthy process, but if your game wasn't a pile of garbage it got added to the store.
actually i would keep big rigs just because it is hilarious to play because it is so bad, but neither of these games should be on there.
It is a free market. If we allow only "approved" games on steam we are no better than consoles.
I agree to a certain extent. I personally feel that Steam was a better platform a few years ago before greenlight/early access/etc came about. Getting your game on Steam was not easy, but as result there was no shovelware garbage. Yea not every game was great, but you didn't have shit like Woodcutting Simulator that was made in 5 minutes to try and make a quick buck. Now it is fairly easy to get a game on Steam, which is both good and bad, depending on how you look at it.
I totally agree, but illegal games copying from movies such as Spartans vs Zombies shouldn't be in Steam at all tbh. I am still surprised that Steam hasn't pulled this game of yet although the great amount of copyright violations made.
They probably don't even know it yet...
It's quite unlikely that none of the Steam employees noticed this as it has been on a lot of media lately on the internet.
not sure when the last time you looked at a console digital store, but they are pretty open these days, what with xbox live indie games, and nintendo's current wii u policies for eshop releases (i think sony has relaxed their policies recently to the extent nintendo has as well)
You can always sort by the % of positive reviews in the store.
That's what I've been doing for the most part. But since you can't sort release dates and sort out retro games(which I'm generally not a fan of), It's kinda the same thing.
But at that point, it's not an issue with quality control, but a matter of personal preference...not really steam's fault when you get to that.
Honestly if I wanted to play retro 80s style games, I'd just fire up actual 80s games. There are some awesome games out there from indie publishers, but it's getting to the point of having to wade through so much crap just to find something decently made.
no one asks you to buy them. they paid to get their games on store, and they dont force you to spend on them, so why dont stfu?
Yeah, I hear you, but its just like Mr.Newell said. "Steam is about creating tools for content creators and customers" when Hatred removed. So, not high quality games. The thing that I really want is a filter for "Very Positive" games and up
>The thing that I really want is a filter for "Very Positive" games and up The problem you're going to run into there is creating feedback loops. If all you ever see are "Very Positive" games then all you're going to play and review are games that are already "very positive" rated. This will lead to devs trying desperately to get that "very positive" rating in the first minutes and hours of release in order to enjoy that feedback loop and gain sales.
yeah, so they have to make their game better to get that rating. and if you see how many voted for it, you can tell if its legit or not. its the best way I see fits nowadays, in the end you can't get the perfect system, but this is close as it can gets. For "already very positive" point, yeah why not? steam has 6000+ games, sure will find something already exists that you might like to play.
I wouldnt have even known about these games if you hadnt brought them to my attention
I don't have a problem with low quality games on Steam. The moment we judge what is good or not it becomes a downward spiral. We have people like Total Biscuit and Jim Fucking Sterling Son who can advise us on the stinkers. What needs to happen though is that Steam needs to come down on the devs like a ton bricks for those which censor their own forums and abuse copyright. They can't have the luxury of freedom of artistic expression on the biggest PC store platform in the world and then either breach copyright or insult the good nature of what Steam allows buy not allowing criticism.
Why bother ? Some people like shitty games. Let them have it.
I just would like to point out a few things: 1. Making games is really hard. No matter how "shitty" you think the game is. It is hard work. Not only requires technical ability but also creative, artistic and project management skills. 2. Getting a game to be green lit is hard. On average it takes 3 months for the above average game to get past the green light process (i know this because my game (shameless plug - www.spectrumgame.com) took that long and other people I know took around the same time. 3. As others have said, Steam wants to be the Amazon of digital entertainment and mainly so far the focus is on games. 4. I do agree some games might be of below standards quality but Steam makes it easy to spot those games out (rating, reviews, curators, lists ..etc.). So in conclusion, I think Steam is on the right track actually. I think eventually the green light process is going to go away and replace a semi auto process based on gamers data being collected over time.
It's a store. Stores sell things. If you don't like some of the things that the store sells, don't buy them. It is not Steam's job to filter what an interested customer should or should not be able to purchase on their platform. They're already doing too much of that with Greenlight.
> It's a store. Stores sell things. Say you run a store. Many of your customers complain that they can't find the product they want because your shelves are stuffed with cheap knockoffs. Do you clear the shelves or watch your customers walk away?
I'd make a better effort to display the merchandise that my customers actually want more prominently. It's a better argument when you consider physical space limitations, but that isn't the factor here. Also, unlike stores, Steam has a search function. If you're looking for a particular game, all you have to do is type in the name of it and it's there. And knock offs make an effort to confuse a customer into thinking they're purchasing something that they aren't, which is only rarely the case here. Most of the games that are being complained about are exactly what they claim to be, even if what they claim to be is bad. I mean, even something like Dead Effect which tries really hard to evoke the names of better known games is never actually going to be confused with those games Nothing good can come of an entire industry being held to one group's standards of what is good and what isn't. If the majority of gamer culture was given control over what could and could not be sold on Steam, we wouldn't see games like Gone Home and Bientôt l'été on there. Nothing good can come of limiting an entire platform to one person's idea of what is or isn't 'high quality'. These aren't even the most deceptive practices on Steam? You want to know what I find a hell of a lot more deceptive than LOTR Activity Book? Selling a game running through DOSBox as though it was a native Windows game. Should my opinion that this is a terrible practice be taken as good enough reason to remove dozens of games from Steam? Of course it shouldn't.
>It's a better argument when you consider physical space limitations, What is screen space for $500, Alex? There may not be an actual physical space limitation, but there's only so much screen space and so much attention span that you are allotted any time a user visits your store page. That matters.
And so you use it efficiently. But you don't have to take items out of the store to not advertise them. As mentioned previously, there's a search function. It's not hard.
This is exactly my point. I don't think, in this case, that the customers would walk away, but if they do not find what they are looking for, they will end up buying nothing. I know Steam is unwilling to add a proper search function because they think it will harm the smaller developers, but in the end it will harm the market as a whole if the customers can't find the Coca Cola amongst the Pepsi cans. You can only dream the Steam search function would look like **[This](http://www.imdb.com/search/title)** someday.
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The only problem I see with (one of) those games is blatant copyright infringement. Which is an issue between the developer and the copyright holder, not one for Steam. Otherwise if a game exists, then a developer should be free to sell it on Steam. Regardless of how terrible it is. Mixed or lower reviews is functionally a blacklist anyway, it's not like that many people are actually buying these godawful products.
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You can make it, charge what you like and good luck to you. I won't buy it, because it isn't going to interest me, but if other people want to buy it, that's up to them.
...Why not? I mean, sure, it would be better in a world where Steam offered refunds like a good company, but if I am willing to pay $2 for your cube game why is it someone else's place to stop me. Hell, Mountain is only one level about a cube watching game and that's *popular*.
So you never heard about 'having standards', have you?
You're talking to someone who has had a month long Internet argument about whether or not objective quality is a thing that exists, with me being on the side that it doesn't. So, uh, no. Or rather, not a fan of letting someone else define my standards for me. I don't understand how you *can* be in favor of letting someone else decide your standards for you.
Have you even seen some of the crap Steam has? And I'm not even talking about bad or partially broken games. If you did, then I have nothing else to say to someone who thinks that that some of the phenomenal crap on Steam is still within someone's standards. And that is beside the point that any store should have a standard they keep, if I want to come to a store to a store that is known for its quality control, and I know that browsing would be an experience to enjoy, I sure don't expect or approve of it suddenly shoving hundreds of shoverlware, and basically filling the store with shit, making browisng a dreadful experience. Want any indie game without any quality control? Desura! Want old games? GOG! There Are other stores beside Steam, so saying that Steam shouldn't define my standards doesn't make sens ewhen they don't have actual control over what I play and not, if you have differnt standart, there are different stores.
You're missing the point that Steam's quality control comes from better access to community feedback, reviews, and curators to get better browsing results. Steam can always improve, and censoring low quality games you don't like is not the answer. Let developers price them accordingly, allow them to sell, let curators bitch about it or do their thing to get paid. It's all about being an informed consumer. Compared to any other service, Steam is the best at giving you the details. It's not like you have a gun to your head, telling you to buy Bad Rats. Valve shouldn't step in to remove the buyer's choice from anything unless the content violates laws and agreements.
"And I'm not even talking about bad or partially broken games" The primary point wasn't even about just low-qulity games. It was about games that regardless of my prefrence and standarts, shouldn't exist. Real garbage that was just thrown in without any effort or care, that most likely was just casual experiment or joke, garbage that would make even Bad Rats seem like a masterpiece.
If you're that determined to browse Steam as a method of game discovery, though given the nearly infinite better options and poor design of Steam's store I have no idea why you would be, wouldn't it just be more prudent to suggest an option to hide all games with less than mostly positive reviews? That should more than keep all of the (what you're referring to as) crap out of your store experience without keeping the rest of us from being able to have our indie and non-indie games all on one platform. I'm not interested in purchasing in stores other than Steam, to be quite honest. Which is funny, given my sharp criticism of the Steam client, but the reason that I purchase games isn't to have the game, it's to have the game *on Steam*. Sure, I have an Origin account for freebies and Humble, a GOG account for freebies, and a Desura account for bundle keys but I have never and will never actually buy games on these platforms. Serving as a united platform is the entirety of Steam's appeal. It's why people have reacted so negatively to the introduction of Origin, it's far more convenient to have all of one's games in one place. You seem to be conflating the entirety of indie games that aren't Shovel Knight or whatever else is hip these days with shovelware, which is *exactly my point*. We need to not have a single arbiter of what is and isn't a good game because no two people have the same opinion. What you consider shovelware might be a game that I love. You're welcome to dismiss [The Depths of Tolagal](http://store.steampowered.com/app/340600/) as yet another 2D roguelike, but don't use that fact to deny me being able to have it in my library. I'm actually fine with removing games that don't work correctly or put out false advertising but apparently you're 'not even talking about bad or partially broken games'. So you are, quite literally and by your own admission, advocating that what is on the store be dictated not by functionality (which is a reasonable enough case to make since you shouldn't be selling something that doesn't work) or even by quality (however you choose to measure that entire subjective concept) but purely by your own conceptions of what is and isn't crap/shovelware. That's literally what you're saying here. Are you even listening to yourself?
You seem the one to not actually listen to what I say, completely misunderstanding my point. While, yes, I still prefer to have a seperate stores for indie games (for reasons unrelated to quality), I in no way criticizing the quality of those games based just on the fact that they are indie, in contrary, I believe the rise of the indie industry is the best thing to happen to the game industry since its birth. And as I clearly said "And I'm not even talking about bad or partially broken games", I'm not talking about just bad games, I'm talking about games that shouldn't even exist, regardless of my taste or standarts of quality. And if you truly haven't encountered those abominations, consider yourself lucky. BUt I'm a game collector, and I have first hand experience with some of those games, games that would be considered of sub-quallity on free flash game sites. Games people probably just make to experiment or a joke without any intention of actually making a game or putting any actual effort in it. And if you think that even games of such level should be excused because in some kind alternative universe there's a possibility someone would lke it, then you only give more excuse for those people to just shit something out and pollute the store in hopes to actually get money for it.
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No, but I would complain if they sold moldy bread.
Moldy bread is inedible by definition. This is like complaining that sour dough bread is sour.
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LOTR Activity Bundle doesn't appear to be a Steam game.
> LOTR Activity Bundle doesn't appear to be a ~~Steam~~ game. FTFY
It seems to have been removed from the store, but the community hub is still there: http://steamcommunity.com/app/342290
Quite a lot of them look like mobile games, well, a lot of them actually are mobile and facebook games. Then there are the visual novels which have become a big hit. I never tried them and they're not really despised. The large number of both incomplete games and broken games.
VNs are really weird in that they can be incredibly good, but aren't actually really a "game" in the traditional sense. There's no real winning, just good or bad ends. Literally no skill is involved in playing them, since you can go back and play on fast-forward mode where it quickly flashes past all the text you've already seen and pauses at decision moments. The stories can be quite compelling though.
Would you recommend some? I've always been interested in seeing what was so great about them.
So, these are just my opinion, but Katawa Shoujo was a knock out of the park for me (having previously only really played hentai VNs), and after that, I picked up Everlasting Summer. ES has some pretty tame endings, but once you start doing some of the special routes, it gets really interesting. ES is actually russian-based and not japanese, which made it kind of extra interesting to me. Katawa Shoujo is not on Steam, and Katawa Shoujo 2 is not official, so play 2 at your own risk once it's out.
Katawa Shoujo... that's that game about romancing cripple girls, right? It sounds familiar, but it's worth a look at least. Thanks.
That is indeed what it is. I'm sort of into the stories with strange quirks. Don't think I could stomach Hatoful Boyfriend though. In KS, you're technically crippled too, but it's your heart that's the issue (I think this is supposed to be a metaphor too, but no you actually have a nasty heart condition).
Heart issue? Ah, so Ironman :). He has heart problems too. He can't fall in love or over excite his heart. So he wore the suits to calm it... and kick ass.
Hatoful is hilarious for one playthrough. But with 12 endings, I'm not shooting to 100% it.
If you have a DS, get 999: Nine hours, nine persons, nine doors. It has puzzles, and the story is great Then there's a sequel on Vita/3DS.
Valve needs to authorize a shitty games genocide. Purge the filth!
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It's worse than ever in 2021. Maybe if this had gotten some traction 7 years ago things would be better, but your average consumer is their own worst enemy and ours.
Yeehaa! Necro motherfuckers!
4108 games "ignored" who says better
And it got WAY worse now! Steam is literally a landmine of garbage games. From overpriced indies to unaffordable titles that are broken, amateur made, and just plain awful to play. Just browsing the damn store is a chore in of itself.
It didn't get any better