4 ms·

Asking review sites to sift through the dredges in the spirit of "more business is better!" is naive. Jimquisition comments regularly on this and it has turned

by ramy_d 10y ago

Asking review sites to sift through the dredges in the spirit of "more business is better!" is naive. Jimquisition comments regularly on this and it has turned into a longstanding and ever constant critique of Valve and its "Whatever goes" attitude to getting on their Steam platform. At 20 or 30 new games _a day_ consumers don't have time to go on review websites and see what's on the "do not touch list". What a monumental task for consumers! If steam would block games that, out of the gate, did not work, that would be great. As the author stated: This morning in half an hour I got through three interesting-looking games that didn’t have functioning controls. You can't even play them! How are unplayable games on Steam!? Additionally they should make sure that the min spec IS an actually min spec that run the game in a playable state. No studio should be immune to such a level of scrutiny (see Rocksteady's Batman Arkham Knight).

Retric 10y ago
Paying someone 10$ an hour to do a quick look at a game for 2 hours * 30 new games a day ~= 220k/year, double that to pay for games and your looking at ~450k/year which is not free, but that expensive either. Really this could stand on it's own as a product either as a review site or an industry group that supports several review sites. PS: An yes that seems like a high estimate the average is less than 20$/game and most of this junk does not need 2 hours.
- michaelt 10y ago
  Well, the article says the guy found three broken games in 30 minutes. Assuming Valve's reviewers took three times that, 30 minutes of testing per game, it'd still only cost them $55k - less than one developer's salary. Hell, they could charge $10 to list a game, and make a healthy profit out of it! Valve wouldn't have to pay for the games - vendors let retailers inspect their product for free /all the time/.
- ramy_d 10y ago
  You argument is that its cheap to review. Sure, but why should all review sites duplicate the work? Why can't valve do the review, stop the crap at the source. Stop apologizing for shitty content making it to the store shelves.
  - Retric 10y ago
    > or an industry group that supports several review sites. So, no I don't think any one site needs to take on this cost rather anyone can get it off the ground for a few months and then sell a feed to other people thus defraying the costs. Sure, steam could have higher standards, but IMO there is value in letting poor games into their ecosystem that may be improved with time. UnReal World for example been in development by one guy for 26 years and right now it's a solid game though dated game. But, 20 years ago it was a buggy mess that would only really interest a tiny group of people even though he had been working on it for 6 years.
    - ramy_d 10y ago
      There's "Early Access" (which wasn't even touched upon!) for titles like those.

by ramy_d 10y ago

Retric 10y ago

Paying someone 10$ an hour to do a quick look at a game for 2 hours * 30 new games a day ~= 220k/year, double that to pay for games and your looking at ~450k/year which is not free, but that expensive either. Really this could stand on it's own as a product either as a review site or an industry group that supports several review sites. PS: An yes that seems like a high estimate the average is less than 20$/game and most of this junk does not need 2 hours.

michaelt 10y ago
Well, the article says the guy found three broken games in 30 minutes. Assuming Valve's reviewers took three times that, 30 minutes of testing per game, it'd still only cost them $55k - less than one developer's salary. Hell, they could charge $10 to list a game, and make a healthy profit out of it! Valve wouldn't have to pay for the games - vendors let retailers inspect their product for free /all the time/.
ramy_d 10y ago
You argument is that its cheap to review. Sure, but why should all review sites duplicate the work? Why can't valve do the review, stop the crap at the source. Stop apologizing for shitty content making it to the store shelves.
- Retric 10y ago
  > or an industry group that supports several review sites. So, no I don't think any one site needs to take on this cost rather anyone can get it off the ground for a few months and then sell a feed to other people thus defraying the costs. Sure, steam could have higher standards, but IMO there is value in letting poor games into their ecosystem that may be improved with time. UnReal World for example been in development by one guy for 26 years and right now it's a solid game though dated game. But, 20 years ago it was a buggy mess that would only really interest a tiny group of people even though he had been working on it for 6 years.
  - ramy_d 10y ago
    There's "Early Access" (which wasn't even touched upon!) for titles like those.