4 ms·

Well, the quality of the games that reach some level of commercial success has indeed gone up. On the other hand, ~50 brand new games release on Steam every day

Well, the quality of the games that reach some level of commercial success has indeed gone up. On the other hand, ~50 brand new games release on Steam every day and a lot of them are gonna be first-time releases from amateurs for whom the level of quality & polish achievable with a small team & publisher support is just out of reach. The best indie games are amazing these days, but they hide a long tail of disappointed developers.

Sohcahtoa82 1y ago
> On the other hand, ~50 brand new games release on Steam every day and a lot of them are gonna be first-time releases from amateurs for whom the level of quality & polish achievable with a small team & publisher support is just out of reach. I'd wager a lot of them are money grabs from someone who followed a tutorial on how to make a certain type of game in Unity, swapped a few assets, and put it out there hoping to make a few dollars?
- shortrounddev2 1y ago
  Yes but it's difficult to distinguish your game from theirs in the search results. It's not like people play a demo of every game and then buy the best one
- GoofGarage 1y ago
  Someone on YouTube recently looked at exactly what those 50 games are. She tried to give all the ones she bought (she looked at most of the 50 in the store) a fair shake, tried to "find the fun" and give it an honest assessment while trying to at least get a laugh out of it. Video here (fun watch!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6_qbe26m9E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6_qbe26m9E -- ----- Though I'll summarize what she played that was released on August 4th, 2025, of what she chose to buy: * "The Last Mage" was a game produced very cheaply by apparently a lone gal (the videographer found the dev diary) that was a fan of K-pop, levered heavily on existing assets, to produce a campy idea as best she could. * "You Suck at Football" levered existing "viral game" ideas like "Only Up". Very much someone's early attempts. * "Velocity Racing 1000" was a racing game that appeared like someone's early attempts. Very wonky controls and physics. * "Potato Cop" is a simple action game in an deliberately "amateur style", likely produced very quickly and cheaply. She had fun with it though. * "Escape from Amazonia" is an horror game with a quirky plot premise that did elicit some actual screams. Again, produced very quickly and cheaply, but she had some fun with it. * "Descent" was a horror game with some genuine attempts on the presentation side, and again elicited some screams. Some clear effort there. Someone was on to something with this one, and it's a shame they didn't refine it further. * "Agu" is a crude, early access, challenging platformer. This won't go anywhere, but the videographer made the best of it and had some fun with the sheer difficulty of overcoming the physics. * "Bee Simulator: The Hive" had some FANTASTIC presentation and assets. Localized for 14 languages. Great voiceover. Somewhat educational. It's apparently a re-release of a previous game which is why it has poor reviews. Some quirks and bugs, but some might really enjoy it. -- ----- So are you really "competing" with 50 other games if you put out something extremely high quality and polished? No. You might be competing with 5... at most. If you put out a genuine banger and took the time to market it in advance, you should get noticed. Steam's algorithms clearly are doing a good job and ensuring most of this stuff isn't getting much visibility outside of release. Though it's there to find if you deliberately look to unearth all of it.
  - Sohcahtoa82 1y ago
    > If you put out a genuine banger and took the time to market it in advance, you should get noticed. The emphasized part of this quote is probably far more important than you give credit for. I imagine a lot of solo game devs simply don't have the money to pay for marketing, and with many communities having rules against self-promotion, combined with the latest Discord phishing scam being "Hey can you try my game?" and delivering a trojan, it can be hard to get your game in front of people. Even if you're in a community for game devs, most of members are there to get people to play their game, not someone looking for a game to try. I bet there are some real diamonds out there, hidden in obscurity, lost in the landfill of early attempts at making a game.
  - ThrowawayR2 1y ago
    Even if a prospective developer were competing with only a single quality indie game release per day, that's 365 games per year, every year and people generally don't finish any given game in a day. The odds are still stacked quite heavily against them.
    - deadbabe 1y ago
      Only if it’s in the same genre.
Buttons840 1y ago
I'm always on the lookout for the highest quality game that was a failure. I'm open to hearing some here. To potential game developers: Do not despair based on reports of a difficult market, despair based upon games you have personally looked at that failed. Personally, for almost every failed game I can see a good reason why it failed. Sometimes games succeed and I don't understand why, but so far I haven't seen a game that failed and I don't understand why. If what I'm saying is true, then to succeed you simply need to build a game that does none of the things that lead to failure.
- ByThyGrace 1y ago
  If the market is spread so thin that, say, fairly original games released today would have been sure hits 15 years ago, where is the failure? Lack of six figure investment in marketing campaigns? Is creating success simply already having the capital to make a successful game? Is it being in the influencer "meta" (see right now e.g. PEAK)? I don't think success/failure should be framed in any other way than "did the game break even for the dev/publisher" and that's beyond what any player perceives. Because crossing that line will send devs into despair, as you mentioned, it's just not sane.
  - gwd 1y ago
    I took "I can see a good reason why it failed" to mean, "There was an obvious flaw in the craftsmanship of the game": The story wasn't good (if it relied on story), the mechanics weren't good, the graphics were sloppy or ugly, it was buggy or incomplete or something else. The claim is: Make a solid game - a solid story, solid mechanics, solid graphics, no bugs, etc., and the game will succeed. And that's an easy claim to refute -- point out just one game that was at least "solid" on all those fronts which nonetheless failed. He's asking you to show him one, so that he can update his beliefs. "They didn't spend $500k promoting it" doesn't seem like a "good reason why it failed".
    - meheleventyone 1y ago
      What I’d suggest is taking a look through the games published by a company like Raw Fury that has a stellar reputation. There are plenty of good games by that definition that didn’t do well commercially on their books. https://rawfury.com/ https://rawfury.com/ For one other example I know of because friends made it is Phantom Spark: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1924180/Phantom_Spark/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1924180/Phantom_Spark/ Making a good game is table stakes for success not a guarantee.

Sohcahtoa82 1y ago

> On the other hand, ~50 brand new games release on Steam every day and a lot of them are gonna be first-time releases from amateurs for whom the level of quality & polish achievable with a small team & publisher support is just out of reach. I'd wager a lot of them are money grabs from someone who followed a tutorial on how to make a certain type of game in Unity, swapped a few assets, and put it out there hoping to make a few dollars?

shortrounddev2 1y ago
Yes but it's difficult to distinguish your game from theirs in the search results. It's not like people play a demo of every game and then buy the best one
GoofGarage 1y ago
Someone on YouTube recently looked at exactly what those 50 games are. She tried to give all the ones she bought (she looked at most of the 50 in the store) a fair shake, tried to "find the fun" and give it an honest assessment while trying to at least get a laugh out of it. Video here (fun watch!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6_qbe26m9E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6_qbe26m9E -- ----- Though I'll summarize what she played that was released on August 4th, 2025, of what she chose to buy: * "The Last Mage" was a game produced very cheaply by apparently a lone gal (the videographer found the dev diary) that was a fan of K-pop, levered heavily on existing assets, to produce a campy idea as best she could. * "You Suck at Football" levered existing "viral game" ideas like "Only Up". Very much someone's early attempts. * "Velocity Racing 1000" was a racing game that appeared like someone's early attempts. Very wonky controls and physics. * "Potato Cop" is a simple action game in an deliberately "amateur style", likely produced very quickly and cheaply. She had fun with it though. * "Escape from Amazonia" is an horror game with a quirky plot premise that did elicit some actual screams. Again, produced very quickly and cheaply, but she had some fun with it. * "Descent" was a horror game with some genuine attempts on the presentation side, and again elicited some screams. Some clear effort there. Someone was on to something with this one, and it's a shame they didn't refine it further. * "Agu" is a crude, early access, challenging platformer. This won't go anywhere, but the videographer made the best of it and had some fun with the sheer difficulty of overcoming the physics. * "Bee Simulator: The Hive" had some FANTASTIC presentation and assets. Localized for 14 languages. Great voiceover. Somewhat educational. It's apparently a re-release of a previous game which is why it has poor reviews. Some quirks and bugs, but some might really enjoy it. -- ----- So are you really "competing" with 50 other games if you put out something extremely high quality and polished? No. You might be competing with 5... at most. If you put out a genuine banger and took the time to market it in advance, you should get noticed. Steam's algorithms clearly are doing a good job and ensuring most of this stuff isn't getting much visibility outside of release. Though it's there to find if you deliberately look to unearth all of it.
- Sohcahtoa82 1y ago
  > If you put out a genuine banger and took the time to market it in advance, you should get noticed. The emphasized part of this quote is probably far more important than you give credit for. I imagine a lot of solo game devs simply don't have the money to pay for marketing, and with many communities having rules against self-promotion, combined with the latest Discord phishing scam being "Hey can you try my game?" and delivering a trojan, it can be hard to get your game in front of people. Even if you're in a community for game devs, most of members are there to get people to play their game, not someone looking for a game to try. I bet there are some real diamonds out there, hidden in obscurity, lost in the landfill of early attempts at making a game.
- ThrowawayR2 1y ago
  Even if a prospective developer were competing with only a single quality indie game release per day, that's 365 games per year, every year and people generally don't finish any given game in a day. The odds are still stacked quite heavily against them.
  - deadbabe 1y ago
    Only if it’s in the same genre.

Buttons840 1y ago

I'm always on the lookout for the highest quality game that was a failure. I'm open to hearing some here. To potential game developers: Do not despair based on reports of a difficult market, despair based upon games you have personally looked at that failed. Personally, for almost every failed game I can see a good reason why it failed. Sometimes games succeed and I don't understand why, but so far I haven't seen a game that failed and I don't understand why. If what I'm saying is true, then to succeed you simply need to build a game that does none of the things that lead to failure.

ByThyGrace 1y ago
If the market is spread so thin that, say, fairly original games released today would have been sure hits 15 years ago, where is the failure? Lack of six figure investment in marketing campaigns? Is creating success simply already having the capital to make a successful game? Is it being in the influencer "meta" (see right now e.g. PEAK)? I don't think success/failure should be framed in any other way than "did the game break even for the dev/publisher" and that's beyond what any player perceives. Because crossing that line will send devs into despair, as you mentioned, it's just not sane.
- gwd 1y ago
  I took "I can see a good reason why it failed" to mean, "There was an obvious flaw in the craftsmanship of the game": The story wasn't good (if it relied on story), the mechanics weren't good, the graphics were sloppy or ugly, it was buggy or incomplete or something else. The claim is: Make a solid game - a solid story, solid mechanics, solid graphics, no bugs, etc., and the game will succeed. And that's an easy claim to refute -- point out just one game that was at least "solid" on all those fronts which nonetheless failed. He's asking you to show him one, so that he can update his beliefs. "They didn't spend $500k promoting it" doesn't seem like a "good reason why it failed".
  - meheleventyone 1y ago
    What I’d suggest is taking a look through the games published by a company like Raw Fury that has a stellar reputation. There are plenty of good games by that definition that didn’t do well commercially on their books. https://rawfury.com/ https://rawfury.com/ For one other example I know of because friends made it is Phantom Spark: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1924180/Phantom_Spark/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1924180/Phantom_Spark/ Making a good game is table stakes for success not a guarantee.