I think this is a pretty drastic take. Shitty products are not the problem of marketplaces, fakes are. Fakes seem hardly a problem in the market for digitally s

I think this is a pretty drastic take. Shitty products are not the problem of marketplaces, fakes are. Fakes seem hardly a problem in the market for digitally sold games. Steam solves that problem quite well (Amazon as a counterpoint). I don’t care about the 12k games published in 2023, I bought a few after reading reviews. The risk of the 12k (with say 100 gems) becoming 240k (with say 102 gems) is pretty low, even if we allow for more false reviews on Steam becoming a factor. Steam could happily start listing MetaCritic reviews and other external reviews as additional sources and then there is again no problem unless I am missing a part of your argument. (And then we still have the service Steam can deliver counteracting this risk by refunding purchases, which they do after filling in some forms in my N=1 experience.)