Name: スチームの本当の問題点 (The Real Problem With Steam)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T08:01:05.000Z
Duration: 15 min 42 s
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

Hi, I'm Hamish Black and welcome to Writing
on Games.

First off, I'm not trying to attack anyone
here.

程度の副詞

If I mention names, I'm not angrily singling
anyone out, they're perhaps just the most

relevant to or prevalent in this particular
situation.

I'm going to criticise some of Jim Sterling's
ideas, for example, but he's not guilty

I also think that dude seems cool and I could
see him being very fun to hang out with, so

on the off-chance you're watching this Jim,
I assure you it isn't personal.

So yeah, Steam has been kind of broken for
a while.

As many before me have pointed out, the mere
presence of a game on Steam used to be a marker

In the past, it led me to trawl the platform
constantly to see what new games had been

Cut to a few years later, a tradition of hyper-reduced
sales prices leading to a library full of

games I will likely never play and an opening
of the floodgates to any shmuck with an executable

to throw up on the store and, well, yeah.

For some people, however, it's far more
than just a lack of interest.

People are legitimately angry about the state
of the platform, with some people more or

less dedicating their careers to trying to
get things fixed.

Notable problems include the ways in which
Valve has let curation slip; that they've

foisted responsibility for managing it onto
consumers and algorithms.

This leads to games that used to get visibility
from their presence on Steam now being completely

There's also systems like Greenlight which
have been gamed by rogue developers to get

their games on the service illegitimately,
as well as the ever-irritating asset flip

(where store-bought assets and Unity tutorials
are uploaded to the platform without any creative

Each has become more prevalent over the years,
as well as gradually lowering Steam in the

As a result, a lot of things have been shouted
very loudly again and again that Steam needs

to stop letting bad games onto their service
and start giving us good games, damnit!

And at least on the surface, anyway, it seems
that the years of shouting have worked.

Steam has already announced that they're
ditching Greenlight in favour of Direct - a

system which introduces a paywall in an attempt
to stop devs abusing the platform.

In a somewhat more surprising move, however,
Valve recently flew consumer advocate YouTubers

Jim Sterling and John Bane (otherwise known
as TotalBiscuit) over to their offices to

Well, unfortunately, a lot of it boils down
to a more concentrated focus on what they've

already been doing: doubling down on algorithms
and crowdsourcing curation (hey, wanna do

You can call yourself an Explorer if ya want,
buddy!), and I guess sating the weird desire

of your TotalBiscuits to have everything perfectly
categorised.

A good few minutes of TB's video is spent
lamenting the ever-so-urgent problem of Steam

that they didn't recognise your specific
distinction between the terms Rogue-like and

As you can probably tell, I don't think
any of this is very convincing.

In fact, I don't get the feeling Jim and
John are particularly convinced either.

Maybe of the fact that that Valve is aware
of its image problem?

It doesn't mean they're going to enact
any kind of meaningful fixes however.

Even flying the guys out there is more of
a symbolic gesture than anything else.

More importantly, I don't think it's possible
for anything to come out of those meetings

That's because the issue itself is far bigger
than just fixing Steam's front page.

And that's just it - these people, these consumer
advocates, were brought out to fix Valve's

A problem Valve caused for themselves through
their desire to control as much of the PC

market as possible with little regard for
how they were going to manage that eventuality.

The problem is that we're viewing this in
terms as black-and-white as “once we fix

Steam, we fix the PC gaming landscape!”

It ignores the more uncomfortable reality;
that Steam is kind of a monopoly, and these

acts of contrition afforded to very specific
(if vocal) YouTube communities all amount

to how they can maintain that absolute control.

All my games are in one place, so obviously
I want that platform to thrive for the sake

I don't want a million Uplays and Origins
clogging up my desktop, confusing my flow

It's the age we live in, where we're constantly
seeking out new ways to condense as far as

The problem is that it gives Valve no real
reason to improve.

Game devs are making far less sales, customer
satisfaction is through the floor, but Gabe

Newell's net worth is the highest it's ever
been.

Even if individual games are selling less,
Valve is making just as much across a larger

And now there's going to be a ubiquitous
paywall I guess, locking out even genuine

It just doesn't work, because there's
no competition.

The solution is not to congratulate Steam
on the appearance of contrition, of their

supposed catering to the specific whims of
the audiences of two specific YouTubers.

The solution is to perhaps forego some of
that unity of experience, for the sake of

supporting other platforms offering different
services.

Whilst Uplay and Origin offer little in the
way of unique selling points other than “you

get to launch this launcher from Steam, which
is itself a launcher”, there are other similar,

but bespoke platforms that are worth examining.

For example, instead of trying to find that
tiny indie diamond in the gargantuan pile

of shoddy mobile ports that is Steam, why
not look for that experience on somewhere

It's a service curated by actual human beings
which offers smaller developers the means

to distribute their unique, fun and experimental
experiences that they might not be able to

It's so different from Steam that its founder
Leaf Corcoran has in the past altered things

on the backend to accommodate the quirks of
specific games, for instance.

This is a platform that really cares about
a specific kind of experience.