[YesBox]

The majority of games released on steam are not serious games. There are tons of amateur, ugly, content-lacking games that are people’s first (toy) game.

Marketing (both the product part and the promotion part) are required, but in most cases all you (indie) need is a quality product (by far the hardest part) and some a small chunk of time or money devoted to marketing. Indie marketing mostly consists of social media posts, streamers playing their game, and trailer reveals (ign et al)

Steam then does its own thing and will promote your game internally after around 300 sales, and will continue to boost if it converts

[EncomLab]

This is true - but the scale is beyond what most people imagine. STEAM revenue last year was nearly $11B - while the median revenue for a game that makes it into the top 8% is estimated at $799. So 17.5k releases earned less than $800, with something like 10k making less than $100.

[pdw]

Those statistics won't be a surprise to anybody who has ever tried a "random Steam game" picker.

[noobermin]

I hate to be so mean, but I'm surprised a crash hasn't happened yet because this situation of saturation right now is far far worse than 1983. As a gamer, there are just way too many games now, a slow down would be nice because may be then only passion projects or ones with actual investment can rise to the top.

I sort of understand the difference though...essentially steam's income stream is somewhat from gamers but you also make money from developers, and so there's no real incentive for devs to try too hard. That's why the "crash" hasn't happened yet.

[hakfoo]

Part of the reason for a crash was that the deluge of low-quality games hit a wall of limited retail space.

The retailer had to be much more of a curator. I'd be unsurprised if plenty of them lacked the knowledge and foresight to pick winners, so they ended up with racks full of lemons (like the famously bad 2600 Pac-Man) that eventually had to be flogged off at clearance prices. This also made it hard to have a breakout hit-- even if you did everything technically right, was it going to be in the right stores in the right quantity when lightning struck?

Part of it was also, of course, that the 2600 was running out of gas as a platform, it was going to be harder and harder to keep interest up, but that could have been more of a gradual fizzle (like how 8-track tapes or pre-revivial vinyl faded from the market) instead of a dramatic pop.

With digital distribution and a "pay on purchase" selling model, Valve can stock 170,000 titles without any real risk on their part. At worst, the search tools get a bit clumsier, but it's easy enough to put "trending/popular/liked by friends" features in place, and "Lamia Princess Dating Sim XVI" is still there waiting for the 6 people who want it... until it goes viral and sells six hundred thousand copies.

[noobermin]

So the lament in this comment and from the parent post I made is from a gamer perspective. I understand your take on why it isn't crashing giving the situation...namely I get why steam and the devs don't pay any price. As an (albeit older) gamer though I definitely feel fatigue. In a normal market demand pressures exist and are natures way of correcting suppliers but in the modern steam world it's like demand doesn't even matter anymore.

[BlueTemplar]

But why is this a problem ?

Were you complaining about too many crappy Flash games being available at its heights ?

More generally, are you complaining about too many people, most of them amateurs, making their art available on the Internet ?