Over 8,000 paid games analyzed never received a single Steam review
  • w3dd1e@lemmy.zipEnglish
    183·
    13 hours ago

    Arguably more striking is the rate of Steam’s growth. “Steam’s catalogue grew faster than its revenue,” the report says, and this has seen those earning extremes widen. A massive 19,714 games were released on Steam in 2024, and 2025 passed even that at 23,107.

    Go back just five years and Steam looks very different with 7,427 games released in 2018 – more than even 2019, and the highest on record at the time. 2026 has already doubled that at 15,814 games released, and the year still has several busy months ahead of it.

    How many of this are AI garbage? It seems like no coincidence that the number of games corresponds to the increased AI push.

    I would love to know how this breaks down with you cut out all the slop products.

    • rustydrd@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      3·
      8 hours ago

      I think this is really where it’s at. If this article was supposed to criticize Steam, the criticism should be that they will need to do better QA to fend off the waves of crappy AI (or otherwise low-quality) games in the future that are beginning to inflate the catalog, and not an economic one that makes this sound like some uneven distribution of wealth (which it really is not).

    • ILikeTraaaains@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      7 hours ago

      Maybe I’ve been lucky but I didn’t see AI garbage games in Steam yet.

      However, ultra low quality copycats or “XYZ Simulator” with barebones scenarios and basic assets have been flooding Steam for years.

      The adult category is even worse, very badly made games, some clearly being taken from a tutorial for learning the game engine, sparkled with some few hentai images in the background and sold by a very low price.