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[A] ton of games were released on Steam this year. Valve's store has seen nearly 13,000 game launches since January 1, 2025, according to Steam data hound Gamalytic, and a majority of those games went straight under the couch to be forgotten for the rest of time like lost batteries.
This sounds like too many games are being made. I suppose a lot of these are hobby/passion projects or learning exercises people have made, but that has to be more games than there is any viable market for.
Just knowing how the internet be, I bet it’s 98% shovelware garbage looking for whales
Ah man, I used to buy whole magazine because of the shovelware CDs on the front. Countless hours were spent installing credit card validators and odd scientific calculators.
Oh hey, this random CD I got from the mail has a screensaver in it!
Just knowing Steam, it’s shovelware.
There's a lot of complete trash. Multiple reskins of the same puzzle game with randomly generated names. Bare bones minesweeper clone written entirely by AI, and advertised as such. That sort of thing.
Don't forget the Unity Asset Store free example gamemodes packed with free assets and shoved onto Steam.
Its also that it takes time building an audience, and some devs are awful at setting up their store page.
It's also a marketing problem. I find games all the time on Steam that are a year+ old that I would have bought long ago if I'd even known they existed. It's a problem with small indie developers - they either don't know how to or don't have the money to market their game and just hope putting it on Steam will get it visibility.
It's not necessarily a marketing problem because it's not necessarily an economic question. Steam and a few small other platforms like it are the reigning paradigm for indie game distribution, but games aren't necessarily an economic endeavour. Ars gratia artis is still a thing for a non-zero contingency of creatives.
While the page is important, there is also the need to get enough attention for the game so that people even visit the store page.
It's the same as in any art field I think. Inevitable side effect of the internet and modern technology. I listened to a podcast a while back that had one of my favourite small indie bands as guests, and they were discussing how the same thing applies for music. The market is simply way, way oversaturated.
How many of them were good games and original?
Listen best I can do is ai slop.
Precisely three.
To release something for free on steam, does it cost $100?
Is that 100 per game or per developer account?
Per game.
😲
Oof. Forking over a hundred dollars as a dev just out of college looking to get broader critiques kinda sucks
Steam refunds the fee if you make over $1000 in Gross Adjusted Revenue.
It’s supposed to be a tactic to discourage shovelware.
$100 is nothing compared to how long a game costs to make. Hundreds of development hours is tens of thousands of dollars. And if you’re making a game for less than a hundred development hours… maybe it’s not a very good game?
Most student projects I found weren't particularly good, you’re right. They seemed to be looking for perspective on a specific thread they were winding through. Whether it be visuals or a basic gameplay loop. It’s just funny to look back and see thousands of dollars and hours spent to receive responses like “I couldn’t get past the first page because the menu was broken.”
It doesn’t seem like Steam is the right venue for a student project. It’s not a place to receive basic feedback which students or novices would need to improve.
Depending on what you're looking for in critique, Steam may not be a great place to get feedback. If you're looking for just a handful of focus users, you're better off uploading a game to itch.io and then asking people to try it via whatever relevant channels you're looking at.
Steam is better for reviews. Though reviews are not aimed at the dev but aimed at potential buyers which is very different looking.
I would distribute on Github, make a Flatpack, or use itch.io or similar for a hobby project.
If you're just looking for critiques there's plenty of other spaces to post your product. 100USD for the outreach & services steam provide a developer is actually quite cheap in western countries. I could see it being more difficult in parts of the world with lower purchasing power though unless they have some regional pricing scheme.
Come on, what can a hundred dollars be anyway? Five bananas?
yes
you a pay deposit to publish on steam, you get it back after enough sales
Is there a search filter for hardly bought games?
You could filter for very low reviews <10 on SteamDB
https://steamdb.info/sales/?max_reviews=10&min_discount=0&min_rating=0&min_reviews=0
I'm not sure if steamdb can search the entire catalog, but at https://steamdb.info/sales/ you can put a filter on the maximum number of reviews.
Not exactly the same thing, but may be a decent proxy.
With the economy tanking like it is, they likely won't recover soon either