Every month there seems to be an unending flow of games being uploaded to Steam. Ever since they dropped Green Light for Steam direct in the summer of this year it feels like the overwhelming river has turned into a flood of games. What would seem like a good thing for the video game industry, due to the increase in competition and content, was filled with a lot of crap. There are types of games in particular like asset flips and shovelware that have made the problem worse.
If you are unfamiliar with what shovelware it is a "derogatory computer jargon for software bundles noted more for the quantity of what is included than for the quality or usefulness."(Wikipedia) When it comes to games a steam there has been a mass of games that just absolute crap that are being injected into the store by companies looking to take advantage the of the trading card and achievement system. Players buy these incredibly cheap games in bundles and basically let them run on their computer as they amass large amounts of achievements and trading cards that they can sell for steam gems. SidAlpha did a really good job of breaking this down.
Steam has been aware of this issue and have taken action against a developer who has been especially egregious. The "developer" under the name Silicon Echo who released such unforgettable titles such as Flipper Hazard 1 through 6. Polygon reported this isn't the first time they have done this but in they highest number they have taken down so far. These games are usually panned by the community but the people in on getting the massive amounts of steam keys handed out by the developer were making profits from trading cards.
While these games don't seem like anything but just garbage they are doing some damage. I will echo Sid Alpha's sentiment that not only are they inflating the cost of gems and cards but they are spamming the Steam store burying smaller far more legitimate studios in an ever-growing list of games. In seven weeks of Steam Direct around a thousand games flooded the market.(pcgamer.com) This is a substantial problem to anyone entering the field because now they have to show that they are not just another asset flip or garbage game coming through the pipeline.
It's good to see Steam doing something about this and I hope some positive feedback from the community will provide incentive for them to continue moving in this direction. There are still plenty of garbage games on steam but it really does not need to be inundated with shovelware that is there to provide some easy access to money at the cost of the rest of us. I am curious to whether they are going to set their eyes on achievement farming games next.(volume warning) Honestly, who buys this shit?
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