[halomru]

Valve's platform full of shovelware is due to (perceived) consumer demand, not because of size or cost reasons. Steam used to be very selective in who gets in, and people complained that a lot of small developers were left out. So Valve added the greenlight system to let the community find the gems that Valve should let in. People still complained that too few games got in. So instead valve made major changes to improve recommendations and reviews and to establish a community of curators, and then opened the floodgates.

[oxide]

Over 40% of the titles on Steam have been added in the past year alone.

The floodgates need to close, now. As someone who has voted on hundreds of Greenlight titles, Greenlight is an abject failure IMO. It's flooded with garbage, the first few waves of approvals gave us some great titles that otherwise would have never seen the platform, but now it's a nightmare. There are no more approval lists. What's worse, it's the only way onto Steam. Your indie gem is just as likely to be lost in the shovelware noise as the latest idle game ported from mobile.

Anyone with $100 can post games there. Anyone with more than $100 can purchase a service which votes their pre-purchased unchanged asset pack "game" through Greenlight. It's ridiculous.

Tags and abandoned curator lists are not a solution to hundreds of shovelware titles clogging up the new releases section IMO.

Unfortunately, nothing will change until something comes along to replace the current system entirely. Valve will act when they are forced to act, not before.

[the8472]

> The floodgates need to close, now.

Why? The internet itself is an open, uncurated platform.

The basic ability to publish things and finding good content are two separate problems. Don't try to solve one by restricting the other.

[EpicEng]

Steam != The internet. No one is preventing people from marketing their crappy games on their own. I have to dig through a mountain of shit in hopes of _possibly_ finding something worth playing. It's bad for users.

[the8472]

But why should it be different from the rest of the internet? You also have to dig through mountains of shit to find, let's say HN.

[EpicEng]

...because we strive to make things better?

[the8472]

in my mind you're not making it better, you're just making a different tradeoff between openness and discoverability of high-quality content.

my point is that you should maintain openness while making it easier to discover good content.

[phil21]

So you're saying I should publish on the open/free Internet, and use a custom app to find good content?

[the8472]

I'm not proposing solutions. I'm saying that "restrict publication" does not follow from "I'm seeing low quality content".

Don't restrict other people for your own benefit. Instead a solution that lets them do their thing while you get the content you want is much more equitable.

[zepto]

Steam doesn't restrict anyone from either supplying or consuming any kind of content.