Quality control, and store management have been issues among those that take daily notice of steam's store... which happens to be a lot of folks. Steam has currently very poor and loose feeling of control over their store, and while that's not but so bad in itself its the way its executed that is directly tied to Valve's fault more so than the garbage raising the complaints. Its nothing really new, and quite a few have called steam out on it before including popular internet critics/commentators Jim Sterling and Totalbiscuit. Heck they've both ended up practically making mini series out of the embarrassing nature of the store's situation. These include old obscure games, knock-offs, broken games, and even outright stolen material that just gets dumped by the load in the exact same spot you would usually expect to see triple A releases and ambitious new indie titles. I was originally going to join in and write an article about the situation, but as I was doing so it felt redundant and out of my place. I actually felt ill when originally writing it out, and just scrapped it as it wasn't my natural sort of thing. However it got more personal today. Some ancient but slightly popular point and click pre-school games got a proper port job and dumped all over the front page right in between new games.... including Secrets of Raetikon, a game I was looking forward to seeing in the spotlight so that its fascinating style could get some well deserved recognition.
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| Why this betrayal putt-putt!? WHY!? |
Well now I have nostalgic ties to some of these games. I spent hours upon hours building mazes in freddie's maze game, and I remember bits of putt-putt. Regardless though that doesn't excuse them (and others, like Fate that re-released today) when they bump up the entire new releases list to the point where brand new and ambitious indie games get shoved all the way down to the 3rd row. Indie developers count on that sort of attention and spotlight. The sales of launch day are a big deal, and getting on that page used to mean something special. Now anything can get on it, and it looks kind of like a description of the old gaming crash. This especially bugs me since this was the day that Secrets of Raetikon released and was one of the games to see fall because a bunch of 15 year old children's educational games decided to cram their way back into the "new" releases. SoR was a refreshing title where you play within a mystical nature world as a bird, freely flying and interacting with the world around you. It was the first and still the only game I liked enough to go into early access with, and I was lucky to even find that thanks to how well hidden the thing was. It was worth it though, and quite a refreshing and nice game. There was good testing done for it, developers that cared to evolve the game in suiting ways and across a wide range of computers, and there was even a level designer built into its core so that you could re-design the game. Amazing concept, only it was going pretty obscure and unnoticed for a while. So I was really excited for when the world would wake up and see it new on steam. Obscurity is not really a problem when it gets that shiny position on the biggest PC gaming client out there, right? Well its all shot thanks how lazy steam has been with their management. I hope the indie team can still make it with some fundings, but it looks like they'll have to either count on TB or resort to a flashy sale to get noticed by those that don't dig through the newest 30 games. Again... slow clap to you valve. -_-
Now don't get me wrong, games of all kinds have a place on Steam. Old ones, new ones, obscure ones, ports, and of course whether or not they're good or bad is subjective. The only thing is, they need to work and be placed right. Steam does not check for these well. Steam will cram anything onto the store's new page, no filter, and almost never the appropriate release date either. Heck its so bad even the dump is being dumped over. Before the day was up even these children games were pushed away, because apparently the update wasn't finished kicking enough titles around. The answer to fixing this is so stupidly simple. 1) Make sure you know what the heck you're putting in your own damn store. 2) Put it in a matching category. Both of these could be fixed with either a toggle filter on new to steam vs new overall, or there needs to be a totally new tab. That's it, assuming the honest release date is included in the description to. Nothing else necessary. You've fixed a major problem. Do it already valve, and earn back the respect you're losing fast from the community. This crap needs to stop. Your damaging some wonderful games out there by this unmatched laziness.
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| I do hope the sun will rise again upon this one. |
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