What most devs in the comments are saying, and what I agree with, is that this isn’t the full story. The main issue devs have been having isn’t in the “more like this” section at all, but rather in the “Discovery queue” visibility. Many people have seen up to a 50%-60% cut in views since then, and it hasn’t recovered. I talked to some devs about it, and there seems to be a general sentiment of uncertainty as to what’s to come for the future. There are also a number of people (possibly the silent majority) who think that this will help consumers find better games, so the long-term effects will be positive.
What are your thoughts on this?
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Of course I can only speak from personal habits, but the scrolling marquee recommendations of similar games is something I barely pay attention to. I’ll pay a great deal more respect to titles recommended within reviews, than games that Steam thinks are similar because if the review is good and I feel similarly to the reviewer then I think I’ll enjoy the games that are recommended there.
At the end of the day I think it’s tough being a dev because creating a game is only 50% of your job. The other 50% is the endless work promoting your work and keeping it in the public eye, with updates, news or sales. To rely on Steam to help your views seems like a gamble…
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I’m not a developer and i don’t use Steam to browse games so i don’t really care.
As far as i’m concerned, the Discovery Queue only exists to provide me with free holiday trading cards during a seasonal sale.
Steam can tweak the algorithm all they want but they’ll never be able to understand the way i think and recommend truly relevant games.
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That’s golden x) I also visit it during the sales, for the most part.
Still, it’s the discovery queue i have to thank for quite a lot of games that ended up in my wishlist - and, eventually, in my game collection. I’d say about 20% of my games got added to wishlist from the discovery queue, and then bought on a sale \ on a whim. Though some of them were titles I knew about already.
Concerning the op post. I remember that someday in October \ early November I tried using the Queue just for fun, and was very surprised. My favourite indies \ anime girls \ economic simulators were no longer there; instead, it tried to feed me the same titles that were promoted on the main page (I had less than 0 interest in them), and some big games from big publishers that are not launched yet (also not the ones I could appreciate). That was weird, so I’ve checked it again for 2-3 times, but the issue stayed inact.
Step 1: I’ve checked it now, still no indies. Instead, it’s trying to sell me Just Cause 4, Mostly Negative user reviews, card games and some big games that are not out yet.
Step 2:: I’ve checked all the games I’m not interested in, completed the queue and started a new one.
Step 3:: Hooray! The indies are back! Still, the most part of the list is something I don’t want to see.
I guess, even with the fix, it doesn’t work as it should. Wish they patch it soon…
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I think it’s heavily impacted by the last few games u played very recently, so i don’t know, maybe u haven’t been playing anything for a while so it defaults to what sells best (or what they want to sell most of)?
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Quite the contrary… Full Deponia adventure from beginning to Doomsday, 40+ hours of Realms of Magic, indie quests full walkthroughs, visual novels, some nice farming-crafting sims… It seems like a solid base for building up a list to me.
It’s great if the queue works for you as intended. I’m mostly dissatisfied because it was a convenient way to find nice indies without many reviews\media recognition, but still within my genres and preferences. I admit that I don’t have the slightest idea on how the algorithm works exactly: it just worked nice for me, and now it doesn’t. Maybe it’s for the better: the wallet won’t have to suffer so much for a while.
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Well, I used a lot the list when I came back to videogames (I just didn’t played them for a few years, no particular reason, I was busy doing adult things I guess) but I started using it less and less since barely showed me nothing of interest, and was filled with uninspired clones of other not-so great games eventually since the “good stuff” was for the most part showed in the past.
Today I barely use it because it takes too much time to find something I’m maybe interesed. If games had demos as a rule, then it would be way more interesing, since a few screenshots, a video which has barely nothing to do with the game and a bunch of flat reviews don’t really help me decide if I like the game or not.
When I was younger I used to pirate a lot, try, and uninstall or buy depending if the game was worth, even spread the word and buy more copies for friends, habit I took from my music fondness. I’m firmly convinced piracy benefits good works being “the ultimate promotion”.
I do understand however that relying on the moral code of people you don’t know to get paid or not it’s not something reasonable to ask to anyone in any industry.
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this
if it’s not on the frontpage/in my recommended i rarely discover games on steam otherwise, -and i almost never scroll to the bottom to check the "sorta like but really not at all like this game"section, much rarer bother to actually scroll through it
my main method of “discovery” is “others”, be it chronies, yoshi/maoski or just something that pops up in my recommended or from someone playing/buying in my activity feed
steam queue and "this game shares a similar useless usertag or initial letter"section is sorta completely worthless to me with steam’s lines of code behind it
^(especially when it shows you sht you already own lol)
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