Hey that looks good actually. Wishlisted it for when I have more time.

Well, that’d mean missing out on some really cool stuff.

Games like Vampire Survivors and Stardew Valley were made by a solo developer. A couple thousand bucks is a LOT of money for some people. I’d hate to have missed out on either of those.

We certainly do need some quality control, but I don’t think the financial route is the way to go.

What is there to be solved? It’s not a physical store with scant storage space. It has been solved by the store algorithm. Games that do well in the first week will rise to the front page and will get recommended to other customers, while crap will basically become invisible. Does it really matter that these crap games exist when you’ll rarely see them and the storage space they take up is insignificant to Valve’s bottom line. Like when was the last time you ever saw shovelware on the front page? If you see shovelware then the algorithm thinks you like that stuff. You can solve that by giving shovel ware in your library low reviews and by curating the queue.

Sure this will hurt some devs who made a hidden gem, but these devs would have failed in the physical retail space as well. Studios have the responsibility to do the leg work of promoting their own game. That’s not Steam’s job. The Steam algorithm will basically give each game some visibility during its first few days of release and if a game can’t generate sales momentum the algorithm will drop it and basically becomes invisible unless you search for it. Games that do well in that period get pushed to the recommendations. And no the threshold isn’t millions in sales it’s basically a couple of thousand copies in the first days.

Raising the fee would hurt devs on a budget, like devs outside high income countries and students.