It’s really sad to see in this place among others so many people defending a for profit corporation that belongs to a billionare and his centralized closed third party software launcher. Anyone arguing this is the law of nature should take a break from videogames and go outside to enjoy nature.
In a vacuum it sucks, but we’re grading on a curve here. The nice thing about valve is that it’s asleep at the wheel. Yes they’re making ridiculous amounts of money but they could be making more if they decided to “develop” their platform, and it would be bad for everyone. Cthulhu sleeps and I for one would prefer the situation continue.
As for the billionaire…. I have no strong opinion about him, but again we’re grading on a curve here, it’s amazing how few countries he’s ruined or pedos he’s been in photos with, I have limited hate to spread around and I don’t have sufficient justification to smear any on him.
It reminds me of the manufactured hate on Taylor Swift.
Yea, she’s rich; but being rich alone, and using a plane, is not the direct cause of everyone’s misery. It’s often a red flag, yes, and can point to other things. We can argue they should pay more taxes, but even more we argue that they shouldn’t have intense control over our politics. And from what I see, Gabe and Swift don’t.
Candy Crush makes about a billion dollars a year. GTA V makes about 500 million from selling shark cards. Whatever happening at the steam store to warrant an article like this isn’t on steam, its 100% on consumers being dumbasses.
I really dont get this, there have been and still are things you can very much criticise valve for but people come up with the most insane shit to criticise them for. “Uhh yeah this problem affecting the whole game industry is steams fault”. Also the top 1% are prolly aldo much much more expensive to produce so i dont think its as bad as it sounds at first but yeah.
Alternative Headline: Sturgeon’s Law Continues to Exist
Barely make anything compared to multi million companies
Solo dev games can make a fraction of what those giant games and the dev can live a very comfortable life. Etc: balatro
Very pointless article.
But that’s the thing. It’s incredibly rare that a indie game becomes successful enough to sustain even a single developer. It’s like with every other entertainment industry. YouTube, OF, Twitch, TikTok, you are competing with millions of other people in exactly the same situation as you. I think it’s OF where you need to be in the top 25% to earn $1k per year.
Hard work and clever marketing can improve your chances of a success, but you still need to be extremely lucky to be noticed enough to make a living out of it.
I remember this talk about a developer making a living as a game dev. Not by making inspiring or “good” games, but by pretty much endlessly reskinning solitare games.
Talking about statistics is not pointless, it’s quite interesting sometimes even.
Games like Balatro or Stardew Valley are absolute unicorns. Most smaller teams and solo devs that have a constant stream of some revenue through Steam need to work on the side to earn a living.
The point they’re making is pointless. Should have clarified my self better. I think this is an issue of behemoth companies are eating the big chunk of market and not leaving anything for the smaller creators to make a living. Same like McDonald’s is everywhere squishing smaller burger shops.
This a market problem not steam. The article points it like it’s steam’s fault. IMHO steam does its best to support indie devs. they even patch their games so they’d have a smooth release (sorry its a Reddit link)
80-20 rule still holds true, huh?
This is why I follow reviewers and curators that sift through the bottom 99% to find interesting indie stuff. It’s absolutely jaw-dropping what never shows up on Steam’s store landing page or queues.
Splattercat is one such reviewer. He tends to prefer dystopia and post-apocalypse style stuff, and clearly works hard to bring interesting titles some more exposure: https://www.youtube.com/@splattercatgaming
It would be weird if it didn’t follow a power law distribution.
Aka the Pareto Principle. Aka “80% of everything is shit”.
Aka “80% of everything is shit”.
That’s Sturgeon’s law (originally 90%). If you want to condense Pareto, it’s “80% of value is created in 20% of the time”.
Thats why steam is filled with indie games, because they dont make a dime and enjoy it.
Really topics against Steam are getting ridiculous.
Like ok. Is Steam supposed to force players to buy shit games too so that the distribution curve flattens?
I’m gonna pump so many AI shit games so I can get my fair share 🥰
Really topics against Steam are getting ridiculous.
Less ridiculous than the people defending a corporation who makes money promoting gambling to kids and that is owned by a billionare with multiple private yachts
It’s called Zipf’s Law and it’s a fundamental statistical probability formula found in many, many things, from languages to distribution curves.
VSauce had a good video covering this too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCn8zs912OE
Would think that could apply to most markets. Almost the weird 80-20 “rule” that goes for most things.
Arguably more striking is the rate of Steam’s growth. “Steam’s catalogue grew faster than its revenue,” the report says, and this has seen those earning extremes widen. A massive 19,714 games were released on Steam in 2024, and 2025 passed even that at 23,107.
Go back just five years and Steam looks very different with 7,427 games released in 2018 – more than even 2019, and the highest on record at the time. 2026 has already doubled that at 15,814 games released, and the year still has several busy months ahead of it.
How many of this are AI garbage? It seems like no coincidence that the number of games corresponds to the increased AI push.
I would love to know how this breaks down with you cut out all the slop products.
I think this is really where it’s at. If this article was supposed to criticize Steam, the criticism should be that they will need to do better QA to fend off the waves of crappy AI (or otherwise low-quality) games in the future that are beginning to inflate the catalog, and not an economic one that makes this sound like some uneven distribution of wealth (which it really is not).
Maybe I’ve been lucky but I didn’t see AI garbage games in Steam yet.
However, ultra low quality copycats or “XYZ Simulator” with barebones scenarios and basic assets have been flooding Steam for years.
The adult category is even worse, very badly made games, some clearly being taken from a tutorial for learning the game engine, sparkled with some few hentai images in the background and sold by a very low price.
Yup, asset flips have been a problem for over a decade. Nothing to do with AI.
Income inequality! We need to do something!
As you can see from about 2020 onwards, there was an absolute DELUGE of trash games. Of course the majority of games aren’t going to make anything, Steam makes zero effort to curate anything. A thousand games can get released per day and the vast vast majority of them you never even notice.
