What isn't coming to Steam these days? Some week ago god damned Sudeki arrived. So that's great, or something. In theory, ease of access for developers and publishers is a good thing, more creative people being able to make more games available. But that's never how that story ends is it? Just look at any open games market thus far. With the floodgates open, any ol turd will float by. There's nothing inherently wrong with bad games being allowed to exist, as long as it's easy to just slurge those the **** out of the way to get at the good ones. And that's the problem that needs to be surmounted. Valve's done some things, tagging, reviews, recommendations, but is it enough?
I think perhaps the most important step that needs to be taken is for Valve to start offering a proper returns policy. The idea of waiting and checking for user impressions is sound, but then if everyone does that, there's no users to give impressions. And with the Steam customer reviews becoming increasingly relied on as a seal of approval , people will try to abuse it. So if you end up paying for a broken piece of shit you ought to be able to get a refund. And not Steam wallet credit, a proper refund. That way people won't get punished for being willing to give games a chance. And hopefully it'll help give less known, unshitty games a better chance of establishing themselves rather than getting flushed away in a flood of refuse. Remember how Recettear did pretty well in 2010? Would it do as well today? Would critics be as willing to give it a look?
Seriously, if a store is taking a cut from selling baffling, pseudo-busted rubbish like Dark Shadows, or fundamentally broken garbage like Game Tycoon 1.5, it needs to take responsibility for it.
Another thing is the data that drives charts and featured slots. The stuff that's on the front page. Quality isn't part of it.
Valve's smart people, hopefully they'll better help us spend our money wisely and rejoice at the amount of variety rather than solely lowering standards all around.
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