P.S.: The Last Federation is #49 on the new releases list now. It's #6 on GOG.com's new releases list. That is, quite frankly, stunning to me how much disparity there is.
Given the distinct markets and distinct distributor sizes that doesn't surprise me at all. Bear in mind that the difference in scale is over an order of magnitude, and that GOG's policies greatly limit which games they're willing to take completely apart from game-quality considerations.
Even TLF only made it up on there because at some point since Bionic (which, you'll notice, is not on GOG, and not because we didn't want it there) GOG relented on its no-DLC policy (which up til that point they had only sporadically made exceptions for, and were still telling us that games with potential later paid DLC were a no-go).
On the post itself I must resepectfully disagree: steam's increased release volume certainly has tradeoffs (and I could do with a bit lower volume and a bit lower tradeoffs), but I don't see it being nearly to the degree of "completely broken". For example, we're not at all angry about not getting more "front page time".
They choose the top-large-rotator-banner set on, I presume, what they believe will bring in the most money. For a time that meant TLF, and then sales cooled from stellar material down to just magma, and there were other games to feature with bigger potential for the spot (whether they were Early Access or not doesn't really factor in here; does it sell? Often: oh yes). Certainly we would have liked to hold on to that rotator spot longer, but I didn't see an objective reason why we should have. Other games had been booted from it before us, and judging by the front-page top-sellers list that's because they were demonstrating less potential. So it's not like we were first off the bus, etc.
The top-sellers list didn't suffer from curation problems at all, really, as it was just a straightforward expression of who was making the most money. Similar with the specials list.
Furthermore, the smaller "Featured" sets under the large-rotator but above the main list let them keep TLF in some capacity for a longer period of time (though I don't see us there now). Their fairly-new "Recently Updated" section is also a great step forward in giving developers a shot at front page time.
Anyway, the main "New Releases" list, which is the default display mode (which I think is superior to GOG's defaulting to the Top Sellers display mode, as otherwise TLF wouldn't have gotten any default-mode front-page-time at all on release)... yea, the "just the top ten spots" display doesn't work nearly as well when over 10 games (even excluding filterable DLC) are sometimes released in a single day. The idea that a game can be released and get less than 24 hours of that "free front page time" is definitely problematic and something we deliberately avoided. Getting something in the neighborhood of 84 hours in the top-spot of the new-releases list was very nice for us.
But showing more spots at the same time (beyond, say, upping it from 10 to 15) isn't particularly workable either. At some point people glaze over.
Which brings it back to the question of just not releasing so many games. There I think you're up their deliberate policy of wanting to step back from being the gatekeeper between developers and customers. Given some of the games I see up there, I think we could do with a little more gatekeeping. On the other hand, I don't see it as the kind of critical issue you do:
- Even if they'd been a LOT more picky, TLF wouldn't have stayed on the new-releases list for very much longer.
- If they'd been a LOT more picky, I'm not at all certain TLF would have made it in at all. I remember back when every time we got a game to the point of having a release date and we'd get in touch with Valve, we'd be extremely nervous about the potential of them saying "looks interesting, but not interesting enough to put on the store". Now we don't treat it as 100% given that they'll take something, but most of our concern is over getting a timing and situation that allows for a
good launch (like TLF had, largely thanks to Valve's promotion of it), rather than getting a launch at all.
Anyway, we're very happy with how TLF's launch went, and Valve was a huge part of making that happen. There are aspects of what they've changed in recent years that I wish they hadn't changed so much, but from other experience with their willingness to change and adapt I'm also confident they'll continue to improve in the future.
That said, we're also very happy to be on GOG and Humble Store, etc. They each have their advantages and disadvantages (same as steam) but the competition is good. I hope to see those two in particular increase in market share so that things aren't quite so steam-centric, but we'll see.
Best,
Keith
