Valve doesn't sell ad space on Steam so it can make room for surprise hits: 'We don't think Steam should be pay-to-win'
Valve doesn't sell ad space on Steam so it can make room for surprise hits: 'We don't think Steam should be pay-to-win'
"We're surprised all the time" by which games take off, says Steam's Erik Peterson.
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It's kind of odd, because it feels like they do sell promotion at the very least. For instance, Immortals of Aveum (the new EA game) is constantly shown on my store homepage, despite it being more or less a commercial flop. I know that page is customized, but I would have figured that game would be replaced by others now if the selection was fully organic. I had just assumed EA paid for some agreement that would promote the game on the main page for a set amount of time.
I'm sure it's just coincidence, but their statement just surprised me since the store feels like it promotes specific games already.
Never seen that game in my homepage... You may have played similar games
Yeah, meanwhile the front page often shows me the forest, and have so for like the last few years lmao
Mostly because it's similar to other games I've played and is good, I'm sure. I just never bothered to really interact with the game in either direction.
It could be that part of their algorithm involves significantly weighting past sales by a publisher/development studio, especially early in the life cycle.
They definitely give curated preference to companies that have had successful games on steam. I wouldn't be surprised if they have something worked out with EA.
Honestly, I wouldn't try to gotcha Valve on anything. They are a games distributor, and they will do and say anything to promote games that are selling well, and the developers and publishers behind them. They don't give a crap about games or devs that aren't selling. Nor would/should they.
They also run huge banners at the top for new releases - currently it's Diablo 4.
I assume that's a paid spot.
They could be promoting it with the expectation that sales will benefit them through their share. A banner for Diablo 4 benefits Valve directly just by making people aware they can buy it through steam.
There was just an article about this. Its not paid - its curated. There is supposedly a soft revenue requirement for the studio/publisher to be considered.
Valve really has it made. They say, you can "buy" these spots by selling a lot of games, which they take 30% of. Idk why you would mess that up.
Also a “commercial flop” for EA is still selling orders of magnitude more than popular indie titles
It's actually quite good, IMO, and I am doing a melee/bash run at the moment at the higher difficulty. That's from a player haven't re-run a game in almost a decade.(Last game I did a rerun is Zelda:The Wind Waker HD.) And the devs said they are going to release NG+ later.
Why am I considering it good?
- no mtx at all
- very light to no grinding mechanism(unless you are like me doing specialty runs at high difficulty, you don't have to grind at all)
- the control is pretty tight, reminds me Q3A era control. You can't go crazy speed but you can do that initial strafe run jump thing to speed up quickly.
- some late game enemy/encounter design is actually not bad. It's annoying/boring if you do the regular FPS peeking/kiting and beat them, but it's actually satisfying if you use the provided mechanisms to do beat the same encounter but more involved.
- skill tree customization is actually quite interesting when combined with gear selection.
- enemies design are actually quite fair, there are no "this is BS" enemy types, and the enemy progression is actually pretty gradual no sudden difficulty spikes here and there.
Any cons?
- some mechanism aren't explained properly in game.
- if anything I think they are tuned still a bit toward the easier end even on high difficulty. Might be too easy/boring for season FPS player.
- some spells aren't really that useful to your play style, or have some design oddity that I don't really know it's "true" purpose. ie there is a spell that slows both you and enemy, I felt like wtf when I first acquired that and used it in a group fight.
- default KBM bind are pretty bad, it's control is more focused for controller/console.
- back tracking to open chest locked behind ability seems a bit boring
- there could be maybe a couple more enemy types, I wish there are another 2 creature type enemy and maybe 3 more humanoid types to mix up the battle even more.
- edit: forgot to mention Denuvo and EA account required.
Now graphics and system requirement. I have a 6800XT and mid range CPU 3900X, I pretty much run the default at 1440p upscale to 2160p and average around 75~85 fps for most part of the game. There are reports and whatever says "this game doesn't look that good compare to other non-UE5 games", why the spec requirement? Well, I guess that's very player specific judgement but unfortunately most people care about the fps number and be able to run all "ultra" with native pixels, instead of actually checking what's the core difference between UE5 vs older gen DX11 game engine results. Games developed with UE5 or modern tech will suffer from initial high spec requirement, but will age much much better later down the road. Some of the in game asset details are really unmatched by whatever I've seen so far even up close.
And, at recent sale price I think it's worth buying if you don't have a side game to play with. edit: I just checked my steam store page, this game isn't even showing.(I purchased on EGS) So probably your game selection matches their suggestion algorithms. I checked:
- landing page all the feature/recommended "slides"
- recommended for you
- top seller
Yeah, I thought the homepage and pop up every time you open it were ads
If you watch the video in question, they detail which parts of the store are algorithmic and which parts are "curated" by Valve. My guess is that falls into the latter.