Steam's library is out of control

Mobile pets and trash... We need more quality than quantity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kpv4KEOFcKg
?

The steamgifts stats page says that 8396 games were added to steam this year. I think this includes everything (like movies and programs), not just games.

INTRODUCE QUALITY CONTROL.

But it means less profit.

Valve cares about money after all.

Certainly makes it harder for us to find the actual indie gems that come out every now and again... makes me wonder what games may have really hit it off if it had not gotten buried under that mountain of dirt coming out of greenlight...

Could someone help ELI5 - why would you want to hide games in your library? What is the benefit?

I do not know if this is correct but i believe that the Greenlit system are the one to blame as any game can pretty much pass that system. You just need a few users probably through a group or an announcement in a friendly game and your game gets approved fast :/

to be honest i still love SG and been here for a while now. have entered almost 50,000 giveaways.

there are dozens and dozens of games i have won on SG that i ended up loving so much! like legit games that i would have never bought for myself cuz i would have thought they sucked.

so steamgifts has opened my range of gaming by like x10. and i highly appreciate it so much

Thank God for him. Jim Sterling that is, the guy who swims through all that carbage :) And he has quite good sense of humor too!

I personally like the large number of games and I think it is a good thing for the gaming community. As it becomes easier for the average person to create games, there will come with that a lot of really bad games, but this also opens up the door for really great indie games. I'm sick of all the cookie cutter AAA games where they just make the same thing over and over again for the sole purpose of making money, the movie industry does the same thing.

I wrote a couple comments about what I think of the "trash" on steam greenlight back when steam remove Digital Homicide's games. I will repost them here because I think they are relevant.

I'm happy these games were removed because the developer deserved it, but I don't think steam should remove any games without a good reason. Just because a lot of people consider a game trash doesn't mean that someone doesn't enjoy it. Also, none of these "trash" games have ever bothered me, as far as I am concerned they do not exist. It is just a digital product on a webpage I never have to visit, why do I care if it is on steam?

I along with a lot of other people do not like visual novels or most japanese anime games. This does not mean that they should be removed from steam. I'm sure there are some people that actually enjoy playing Digital Homicide games for the same reason that people enjoy watching really bad movies. People have youtube channels specifically dedicated to finding and playing bad games and people enjoy watching these videos.

I also think most RPG maker games are trash, but I don't think they should be removed. Some RPG maker games I would consider trash and others I think are really good, who gets to decide what is trash and what isn't? Once they start removing games what will stop them from removing something you may like? I personally like walking simulators, a lot of people think they are trash.

Steam should have almost no say in what games are released. People should have the right to buy and play what they want and not be restricted based on someone elses opinion. If the game sells, that means someone wants it for one reason or another. Obviously steam can do whatever they want, but I think to make the platform the most diverse and enjoyable, they should allow anyone to release any game they want as long as they do not violate any laws.

I don't think there should be any quality control. It is up to the developer to make a good game. If they don't make a good game, they will not make money, that is all the incentive developers should need to try and make their games good. Also, I consider games art and I don't think anyone should be able to put quality control on art.

Yes, people will be taking a risk by buying an unknown game, but that is there choice and there are a couple things to help with that situation. First, there are people that make money by buying new games and reviewing them so that other people do not have to waste their money on a bad game. Second, steam now allows refunds. If you bought a game before it had reviews and it turned out to be really bad, get a refund.

I use the reverse approach with wishlist-only, never even check all or bother hiding stuff. Somehow I catch most good ones at some point to add to WL, but I also like to check-out games too.

I'm generally in favor of less restrictions, but sad though that thousands of new (bad) games come in but so many great old ones are missing.

To me it started way before that. It started the moment Greenlight became a joke. There's just too many damn people trying to make games, and the market is super-saturated with a deluge of stuff that no one could possibly have the time to play anyway.

Other contributing factors that do not help are:

• all the bundle sites going crazy and operating the bundle machine essentially on overdrive. Sometimes less is more, and to me this is one of those cases. It's also why I prefer Humble far and away.
• the proliferation of Steam trading cards. Let's face it, some people are buying and 'supporting' stuff that they wouldn't give two shits about if not for the cards. What that says about the games themselves is frankly sad.

Yes you are so right, i registered on SG 8 month ago and had 150 Games in my Library. in this 8 month my library increased to over 1000 games now. i am so done with sg and bundles, i will never play all these shitty games and the Games i really want to play i buy it anyway.
and most of the time i play on my ps4. i think about to quit buy bundles and be active on sg too. this hunting at games i had the 8 month are such a waste of time. well atleast i have so many games my family can play forever haha :)

I'm deeply disappointed by the thought that most of my library will stay unplayed, however I don't really have a problem with finding good games, even if imy library consists of mostly games from bundles.
I don't actually mind "shovelware" on steam and although I buy way more games than I need through bundles, I do buy them with the intent of playing at least one game from a certain bundle.

I'd rather have a better way to sort my library and make it more enjoyable to browse my acquired games.

There's been a serious decline in quality control on Steam roughly around the time Greenlight became a thing. The idea of allowing developers and users to choose what gets accepted on Steam is good, but a certain level of curating from Valve should be in place.

Just think about it; Digital Homicide released 21 freaking games from August 2014 to March 2016, before finally getting wiped off the face of Steam. And only because they took it a bit too far with their lawsuits threats, not because of the repeated upvotes farming on Greenlight, moderator abuse, censorship and a whole fucking lot of other questionable activity, and most certainly not because of the god-awful quality of their games.

Greenlight is a good idea, and I wholeheartedly support the concept of allowing unknown developers to get a chance at releasing a game, but let's be real here - Greenlight is broken. It never quite worked as intended, still doesn't, and will continue to be a failure due to being very poorly implemented and managed. Maybe something more similar to Kickstarter should be considered.

I feel you - 8,530 games hidden and counting! But then again I only own >1000 games less than you own :)

My SG frontpage is usually 3-6 games. Right now it's 27 games because there were 2 wishlisted games in HB monthly and I'm not subscribed! :-(

Dose this mean it's time for GoG to finally replace steam? open source advocates have been saying that for how long now?

Yes, most of Steam is trash right now. Yes, it's bad. But for some people it has a good side, because from all the money you make little by little selling the trash, you actually get some good games in the end.

I have 7,906 hidden games in SG, and always climbing. (Some of them are probably games I have, though, mostly because I didn't realize you could automatically hide owned games when I first started with SG). My giveaways page is seldom longer than a page, and most of those are just games that I haven't entered, but they haven't quite reached that point where I hide them.

I certainly agree with your assessment. I'm getting faster at hiding new games that come out, though....that has helped.

I have some lists my biggest one Favorites with most AAA games and my indie favs
then i have remastered list
and valve list :3
patch/test list for games with no icon
and then so many games i dont care on the bottom (:

Oh yeah, I know that feel. I like indie too, when it started for me it was almost a synonym to "great". And now for most of people "indie"="shitty". And for a reason! I have to explain to people that there are good indie games... It's a shame. What to do? Well, answer is pretty obvious: be sad. I do this pretty well.

While i can see the problem in a way wouldnt change anything...
The main reason being, i actually tend to try out all those "shitty" games i get (not all ofcourse) =) I mean for 30 minutes to an hour almost anything can be enjoyable =)