Great change imo. The new & trending tab feels a lot more useful now that it isn’t 50% demos.
This is why console demos are so rare anymore.
Try before you buy means fewer sales on launch day.
Informed consumers are careful with their money. And that’s bad. Apparently.
When your core gameplay loop is all of 15 minutes long that feeds into a 40-60 hour repetitive grind to unlock a slightly better item, new title or recolored cosmetic, combined with a complete absence of quality or competent writing, innovative mechanics while it’s apparent most of the budget went into marketing and pre-rendered cutscenes that can be just watched on youtube, yeah it’s bad to give potential customers a 30 minute demo that displays everything your game is without hinting any additional benefit for purchasing the full game.
I like free games, eg Shattered Pixel Dungeon, Minetest, Unciv, etc. Why would people be against free games, especially here where people are generally FLOSS advocates?
I’m not against free games, and if I was interested in a free game I would actively search for one. But usually if you’re searching for trending games it’s because there’s a sale going and you don’t give a shit about the free to play games at that time. Especially considering that the big free games that are “trending” are the same games every single sale.
I like the better separation between the two for sure
Who is against free games?
It’s less that I hate free games, it’s more that a lot of games on Steam that are free are either the freemium model, where they are basically mobile games with inapp purchases you’re expected to buy to make progress, or some some shovelware trash that’s a one trick pony and generally just a knock off of something more popular and better executed.
Yes there are examples of great free to play games, but overall so many of them on steam are not worth downloading and clog up the trending list since if someone really wanted their game full of microtransactions to get noticed, they can just work a bot net to register new accounts and download the game to cause the steam algorithm to pick it up and put it on the trending page despite it having a poor user count.
Oh my God this is so much nicer. I was getting so sick of trying to navigate the category and having the same live action free to play games appear every time. I have some games that I can remove from my ignore list now
To imagine there was a ;pmg time games didn’t offer enough demos anymore, and now we get so much that they need to be filtered 😂
I have a feeling a lot of these demos were just trying to game that very “new and trending” page, and this change will produce fewer demos.
It’s the current Steam publishing meta. A free demo will create traffic for the newly created Steam page of your game, resulting in more Wishlistings, which is usually the only way to be featured and seen anywhere before release for indie developers. And that’s how your Wishlistings really explode and you make a lot of sales. Getting a demo out is by far highest priority for game publishing in 2024.
Hell yeah. Valve is making consumer friendly practices the industry meta!
this is the best timeline
Shovelware demos are useless.
I remember the time I played the demo for farming sim and DOA:Dimensions to death on my 3DS. Those were actually good demos.Yeah it doesn’t compare to old-school demos like stuff that came on discs with magazines, but at least it’s a lot better getting the option to try something instead of buying and refunding everything. And at least some bigger studios and indi games are picking up on this as well.
For sure. But I hope they use the Steam Demo feature (same game page with a demo install button) instead of doing a free and premium type of publishing like they do with phone apps
instead of doing a free and premium type of publishing like they do with phone apps
It’s not just phone apps, look at this shit on a big-name Steam game:
Calling your free trial “definitive edition” and having the “base game” as a paid DLC is purposely misleading
:(
Why thoPresumably for the free marketing of appearing in the free-to-play list
This was more meant as a rhetoric question but it’s most likely as you said. A bit annoying indeed.
I mean… Aoe3 always had some sort of a demo version. Even the original base game had it. In fact, this is actually better, as now you are able to use 3 rotating civs, not just the English and the French, which you were forced to use before.
I am not sure what demos you mention in particular but the one I recently played is news tower and I am hooked. Just waiting for a good sale to snag the game and even stopped posting the demo mid way. I for one appreciate all the demos being put out even if it is short. Their only purpose is to showcase the full game and they do a decent job of that.
This is just great!
Yeah I can’t wait to try some new games today! Usually it’s impossible to find a good F2P game unless it’s really popular. Like Once Human, for example. I see why it’s popular but the gameplay loop isn’t for me. Too much gathering/crafting, and dungeons aren’t fun as a solo player. I was bored after 2 days.
Thanks to this new category, now I can just go down the list until I find something I can enjoy.
This is a shameless self-plug but I post a lot of free games in !freegames@feddit.uk. They’re primarily limited-time giveaways, but I also tag some with
[]which might be more what you’re looking for.
bUt sTeAm iS mY gOd! hOw dArE yOu!!!
This is literally an example of why Steam gets praised as the only good game store. They make a change, users complain that part of the change sucks, and they listen to the feedback
Steam does provide a good product, no critique there. My point is the fact that they too are employing anti competitive measures and serve a billionaire. I wont stop criticizing that.
But that was nowhere close to what you wrote though. It is perfectly fine to remind people that Valve is not the customers friend.
Well, I might wanna be more direct in my critique in the future. Thanks for giving constructive criticism.
I wont stop criticizing that.
When did you start? Because that’s low-effort trolling irrelevant to “your point”:
bUt sTeAm iS mY gOd! hOw dArE yOu!!!
Your point is irrelevant to this post so you’re just being obnoxious by forcing in criticism
My point is everything but irrelevant. Sorry you cant see that.
No one is seeing it. It’s not there.
I dunno man you’re like the people that insert politics into every thread, and I say that as one of them.
Sometimes we can talk about a Russian person doing something nice or we can talk about a cat in Istanbul without bringing up genocide.
EDIT: or that They Might Be Giants song
I see your point. A reason why I brought this up is because valve does not see criticism for the things they also do wrong and especially on this platform, rarely does anyone look at them from a non favorable view. Thats not because they dont do wrong but because they are good at marketing and other gaming companies are a lot worse than them.
What? Isn’t this a common W for steam? This seems like a good thing to me.
I was referring to the very vocal crowd that can not ever accept steam being criticized for dominating the market and serving its billionaire owner, however „less bad“ he is. There are no ethical billionaires.
It could be viewed as a measure to get free games away from the main focus so valve can make more money.
puts free games into focus in their own tab
It could be viewed as a measure to get free games away from the main focus so valve can make more money.
incomprehension
Putting them in their own not the main tab does add a click to viewing them, no?
There is litterally an “all the freebies here” button on the page now
The only reason they are in their own tab now is because users complained about how they were on the main tab, that’s the whole point of this thread. Get your head out of your ass.
Nice wording. Blocked.
Because your criticism sucks. You want to take something good from people Because “rich man is rich”, who cares as long as product good and not overly taking my money.
Thank you for your opinion.
This would’ve been a useless comment even if it were relevant.
Whatever mate. I wont stop criticizing anti competitive companies, there billionaire owners and the crowd that worships them.
I mean, comments are free. If you believe that’s a decent enough use of your limited time on this Earth, who am I to argue?
The underlying issue here is that we are in this mess because our parents and grandparents didnt do this (enough). So yes, going against corporations is kind of my hobby.
I don’t see how posting to lemmy in general is going to influence people that disagree with you both because I don’t think there are many people here that do and also I think that your comment in particular is so far removed from the topic of this article that it borders on being a non-sequitor entirely, and I’m worried you may get the feeling that the people downvoting you are against your message and not the fact that your message isn’t relevant beyond being a knee-jerk reactionary cry against Valve, one of the only privately owned companies that seems to listen to user feedback as thoroughly as the article demonstrates.
I don’t believe Valve is a monopoly and I’ve directly been able to talk to Gabe Newell via email multiple times over multiple years. Maybe some of their inter-business dealings could be better for their business partners, but as a lifelong steam user that so far has felt comfortable buying almost every hardware product they’ve put out I continue to feel comfortable supporting them because they seem to actually care about their customers from what I have directly experienced.
I don’t mean any of this in a confrontational tone, and I apologize for the general shill vibes of that second paragraph. I’d be happy to continue the discussion, I think your message is correct and good and I think there are better more effective ways of acting on it.
I do appreciate you taking the time to write this up and I didnt get a confrontational vibe from you.
But excusing it by saying „could be better“ makes you part of the problem.
Billionaires are the cancer of this world and anti competitive actions have evidently been committed, if you like to hear it or not.
Tell your friend gabe to start making a real difference in the world because he actually can and then you can say its not that bad.
I don’t know what a solution would look like here. In your opinion, what should be done to stop Valve from being anti-competitive? What specifics should I be raising awareness of and looking into? What should be done by/about Gabe Newell?
I would like to know more about what you believe the solution here is, because at its core I see Valve as the end result of very talented and self-driven people doing an amazing job at delivering a very good product. I would hope that would lead to success, and I am given to understand that Gabe (to focus back in) is not a disinterested corporate figurehead as the position is with other software companies.
There’s some amount of anti-competitive behavior that is just… Doing business in a space with competitors. I write private code that I use myself and within the company I work for that I choose not to share with my competitors, is that anti-competitive behavior? This is a dumb example, but also I haven’t seen a direct convincing argument as to what Valve is doing to deserve the label.
In many ways, to provide my viewpoint, they’ve directly supported both unofficial modifications to their storefront by users (Decky Loader, for loading steam deck mods), modifications to their hardware (OLED screen mods, replacement parts on iFixit for reasonable prices), and even support Windows on the deck and are beginning (through reading commit logs) to support competitors’ hardware in their custom OS. They’ve singlehandedly pushed gaming on Linux into the mainstream eye and are doing well with it.
All that to say that I don’t think the way that Gabe became a billionaire was bad, and while I would prefer he use his personal wealth to better society I both don’t know enough about what he does with his money to know whether or not he’s already doing that and don’t know and think that any solution here would genuinely go against fundamental liberties and personal freedoms that I personally agree with. I’m not an absolutist on this, but enough of what I do know about the history of Valve and Gabe in specific lead me to lend him some amount of goodwill, because he has through his works and actions earned it from me.
I don’t disagree that billionaires are bad. Personally, I strongly believe in a Star Trek post-monetary future.
I wouldn’t call Gabe Newell a friend, although I suspect I don’t disagree with many of his opinions.
You are able to email him at gaben@valvesoftware.com, as is anyone else. I’ve emailed twice. Once when I was 13 to inform him of a bug in portal 2, and once a few years ago to inquire about steam being ported to arm.
There was a lot to explain about my position there and it may be a bit disjointed. If there’s anything I can clarify on my thinking, I’d be happy to.
The irony of someone who uses “AI” and spicy autocorrect to rank employees trying to complain about a company people love to work at, and provides a good product.
Let me see if I got your statement right: you took the comment I made on another post to spare people having to click a link as me talking about myself?
In any case, steam does provide a good product but it also uses anti competitive measures to stay on top of the market and is owned by a billionaire. There are no ethical billionaires, sorry.
What anti competition measures do they use?
So I was right about you trying to use something against me that you didnt understand. Good to know.
Points 1 and 4 are the same case.
Point 2 hasn’t even started.
And point 3 isn’t even a case, it’s defending Steam.Fun was had, thank you.
Whatever you‘re doing, you might wanna do less of it. Valve has been doing these kinds of things for a long time and anyone who understands markets knows that there is no monopoly without taking out the competition.
In any case, I know you wouldnt admit it if I presented you with rockhard evidence that they did it and thats okay. I‘m not doing this for you.
Your the one that cares, dude. Not me.
What?
You should evaluate why you came to a barely populated thread, and made up a complete straw man to get upset over.
You’re manufacturing outrage for yourself. That’s not healthy.
Instead they decided to ignore your comment and rile up people in sibling comments…
