I hope they make the entrance price high. Steam is already clogged with a lot of subpar stuff. Perhaps if a developer has to put down a chunk of change, he/she will think twice about publishing the 37th zombie-tower-defense erotic (but PG!) visual novel.
Please not, the 37th is the best of all!
Seriously, you are arguing that developers should be hindered from making software so that you don't have to make a selection from so many titles.
Alternative solution for your problem: Replace the generic ratings with ratings calculated only from my friends' and my ratings (or with people matched via ratings of games I played and rated as well).
There's also the argument that other providers are out there, too itch.io. This compels me to think that the problem isn't really that these software engineers/game developers aren't really hindered in terms of how they're exposed.
Which app store 'gets it right' and how close to do you feel it's use case is to Steam's?
If I cared enough about solving "all cases of the problem" I'd probably not post my solution here but patent it and live off royalty fees for the remainder of my life ;)
Honestly, my solution collides with the aim of any game provider: I want recommendations based on trust, games providers want to sell games. If steam implemented my solution, it might work out, but it also might lead to a decline in sales (because I suspect most people to buy stuff based on some arbitrary "rating").
> Which app store 'gets it right' and how close to do you feel it's use case is to Steam's?
None, because the store's and my goals are mutually exclusive (at least as far as "app stores" work for now): I want stuff I like, the store wants my money. There is no incentive to implement my solution because, as of now, there is no evidence that the store makes more money by not pushing unwanted apps into my face.
PS: Thanks for your feedback, it forced me to reflect upon and spell out things I usually take for granted because I live in my own filter bubble.
It reminds me of when Facebook was testing a redesign of the site. Users reported how much they liked it, and Facebook found that users had an easier time navigating around. But this also reduced the amount of time users stayed on Facebook, by quite a lot, so they never went forward with the new design.
Yeah, that will result in only pre-established games making it onto the store because no one will even risk having to pay that fee for a game there is no market benchmark for.
Have fun seeing only AAA titles and clones thereof in the store. But hey, at least you can be lazy and not have to put a little effort into finding cool new stuff!
Greenlight is a muddy mess of copycats, but imposing a barrier like this to all indie devs universally is a terrible idea. Most likely, it will never even work since indie devs will just move to the next platform where they can actually do their job; Steam will lose all its interest and become a sort of playstation store for PC
I used to be a compulsive Steam game buyer, but at some point Steam started showing me tacky anime-dating-visual-novel-high school-crap. I don't get it, what happened? I've bought a few Japanese shmups and a few fighting games, but that's the closest I can get to any possible reason why Steam wants to shove this sh*t down my throat that I'm clearly not interested in.
The store really has become useless for me, unless I know exactly what I want beforehand.
For example, if you don't like anime games, just add "anime" as a tag in the discovery queue customization dialog.
Unfortunately, they only seem to allow a maximum of 12 such tags. But it's far better than nothing.
If you are a manga artist trying to release the 100th iteration of a 'game' based on suggestive images, it may slow you down.
Not suggesting that $1000 is the perfect price point, just that $100 is far too low.
So as long as a game sells even reasonably well they could get the fee back in full while low quality shovelware gets discouraged.