I was watching Jim Sterling's latest video yesterday and it made me realize why I've been spending less and less time on SteamGifts.

Video

This chart made by Steam Spy shows that 4200 games were added to Steam in 2016. That's 40% of Steam's entire library. And 3000 games last year. Compare this to 2012-2013, when I reached my peak of SG activity. 380 games 565 games. The second half of 2014 started the decline for me. I think part of it was the deluge of shitty games and countless bundles that started happening.

When SGv2 launched, I had over 1000 games "Hidden", and I though that was a lot. Now I have almost 6000. That's 5000 shitty games I've had to look at review scores for, check out their Steam page, maybe watch a trailer. Just to find out it's another shitty shovelware title on Steam. It's not worth my time anymore. My biggest frustration now is trying to find out which games actually ARE worth it in this sea of garbage. I love great indie games, all of my favorite games from the last few years have been indies. But I'm not sure how to find out about them anymore.

I dunno, I'm not sure what the point of this post is. Maybe just to share my shock about the rate at which Steam's storefront is growing, and not in a good way.

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7 years ago*

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The way to fix green light would be to make into a kickstarter-like system. When you vote YES it reserves the funds and if the game gets greenlit, steam takes the money and you get the licence to the game (or a chest in steam inventory, which would turn into steam gift once the game gets released). They should even enable devs to include "greenlight discount" from 10 to let's say 30% so you don't actually pay the full price for your early support, right? This could be merged with early access of sorts, so you get to play alpha/beta if you pay the full price. Then you wait to see if it's actually gonna be released BUT they don't pay out the developer until the game has been released and tested by "inside people" to be actually working... and if it's not released in 500 days, all payements are automatically refunded to users steam wallet.

It's not the same thing to be able to give free keys to 1000 people to get 1000 votes... and to find 1000 people to pay for your game in order to get 1000 votes. Even if it's just $1.

If you like it or not, is another thing completely, because as several wise people already said, everyone likes different things and that should not be something that's used for "forbidding games access to steam marketplace".

7 years ago*
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I had over 1000 games "Hidden", and I though that was a lot. Now I have almost 6000.

IMHO, you should spend your time adding games to your wishlist instead of hiding trash games here, and then you only need to go to: https://www.steamgifts.com/giveaways/search?type=wishlist to filter the best giveaways. I can't imagine how much work it takes to manually add 6 thousand games to that list...

You can also use other websites like metacritic (sort games by user score) to find good games to add to you WL.

The only reason Steam has turned into a trash bin are trading cards. All those trash games earn money through cards and Steam will do nothing to stop that because they earn money too. Probably, next year there will be 8000 new games instead of 4000.

Also, take into consideration that collecting/hoarding games is a (meta)game itself. There are lots of collectors in Steamgifts community, read any Indiegala/Groupees/etc. thread from the 'deals' category and you will see users constantly saying: "missing X games from this one". Most of those bundles are pure trash but it does not matter to collectors.

7 years ago
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This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

7 years ago
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I think there are multiple reasons: cards (lots of games mean more chances to get boosters), e-penis, OCD and other psychological disorders...

7 years ago
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Actually it doesn't take too much time to hide uninteresting games - 1-2 second for each game since the hiding got easier on the site, just psending 5minute each day to cut back can make pages of giveaways to go away. For me personally this is the better way, as browing steam for interesting games and consider if I should wishlist them takes more time than hiding the obviously nope ones - this clears up the site for me, so it's easier to find new games on SG :) though I might add, I don't buy new releases, so actually looking for them while they are close to full price is meaningless

7 years ago
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Valve is doing that on purpose.
People are talking about how their store is full of shit instead asking really important questions...
Like: WHERE THE FUCK IS HALF LIFE 3 ?!!!1!!1!!!!!1!!11!1!!

7 years ago
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Shouldn't they finish Half-Life 2 first?

7 years ago
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HL2 episode 3 then xD
But seriously - whoever thought that releasing that game in episodes is a good idea should go to hell xD

7 years ago
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At least someone at Valve still had the decency and the sensibility to try and explain that massive tangled mass they tried to sell as a "plot" for HL2. Whoever wrote the base game, he really shouldn't have had an X-Files marathon before sending in the script.

7 years ago
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I'm slowly hitting the 1000 mark... Wow it's even weird to say it. I remember, when I had 300 games and everyone was amazed at that already, since... well, completing that backlog would take some time.
I had a point to say, but you just made me realize this... Damn.

7 years ago
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2017 will do the same. Every year will be bigger then the last, what do you expect?

7 years ago
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Yep, I removed a bunch of free games in my library that I got for the cards simply because even though they're hidden, they're still in my library and I will never play them and it bothers me. Plus selling cards is a massive pain and not worth the reward of a few cents. I only get games I actually want now, removed a lot of stuff off of my wishlist too. I decided also that I have plenty of games, if there's one in particular I want to buy I have to want to play it immediately before I get it, and never buy at full price. This has saved me a lot of money and time.

7 years ago
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10,000 games or 1 million games. Who cares.

7 years ago
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It doesn't affect me in the slightest so I don't care. I know how to navigate within Steam library anyway.

7 years ago
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I recently discovered the "hidden" flag of steam client. Now almost 1/3 of my library is hidden. Took some hours but it's way better now.

7 years ago
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Now I feel kinda proud about my numbers, Bobo!! ;P

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7 years ago
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