Hacker News Reader

Comment by binlog | Hacker News Reader

So what people are really complaining about is the lack of an approval or curation process on Steam’s end. AI is exposing the problem by making it worse.

View on HN

This is like seeing someone get mugged and saying clothes lack stab resistance. The mugger simply exposes the problem.

What? The onus is not on me to wear stab proof clothing, the onus is on society to create a world where the floor is high enough that mugging isn't worth it.

I still stand behind what I said back when they moved to direct publishing. Fee to get on Steam is too cheap. I think it is 100 dollars. Should have been five or ten times of that. And even then I suppose that would have slowed things only a bit.

How genuine indie devs from 3rd world are supposed to release their products then? It places many people in disadvantage to wealthier countries.

Use some other marketplace. Offer some type of pre-order campaign. In the end that is not so many copies to sell via other ways if you have something good on your hands.

When Valve had a strict curation process, many years ago, there were widespread complaints about indie games being kept out.

Yes, abuse of a system with some reliance on trust does expose the reliance on trust.

Valve is just as much of a victim.

Valve takes a 30% cut and makes eye watering profits. I don't feel it's fair to characterize them as a victim for having to put in some effort to mention a basic standard of quality on their platform.

Valve is a business but they're also a brand. It doesn't help their brand to be bombarded by slop created by a third party. The initial money is a trifle compared to how many refunds they'll have to dish out. It's like a brute force attack, AI is doing it to a lot of industries and fields including mathematics.

I really want to see how this plays out. The impossibility to identify AI work and thus keep users happy, vs profitability and steam actually trying to make things work.

How are they a victim? People aren't going to leave Steam over this. Valve will continue making money regardless from these sales, just as they don't care that they got children addicted to gambling because it also made them money.

How?

Valve is getting bombarded by slop too.

They have the money and the margins to do something about it. How about a review process?

As with most app stores, Steam does not aspire to be a curated collection of "good" apps, and discovery features have never been sufficient as substitutes for traditional marketing mechanisms.

AI undoubtedly hurts slop hurts small independent developers who rely more on Steam placement and internal reviews than traditional marketing more than it hurts Steam itself, so if I were a small independent developer, I'd be looking elsewhere for solutions, treating Steam more like larger publishers do, primarily as a distribution mechanism rather than a marketing tool.

Slop makes it harder to find good games, both in terms of discoverability and customers being less willing to take a chance on purchasing an indie game, resulting in fewer purchases and less income to Valve. Slop games also mean an increase in customers asking for game refunds.

Yes, and Valve has the money and control of the marketplace to do something about it.

They've got a solid return policy, if you've played less then 2 hours they'll refund. They can probably derive a ratio to mint a hiristic and bobs your uncle.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com