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The market being completely oversaturated doesn't seem like a golden age to me
Seems more like age of slop no one sees or plays.
If you read the article, the percentage that reached that threshold rose.
90% of them are hentai AI slop garbage.
I saw one game that was a 5 minute black screen with someone talking teenage-level philosophy. There was a handful of clicks to make in the whole playthrough.
Steam has a lot of low-quality games. The volume of stuff shipped with Synty Studios assets from Humble Bundles is crazy.
Indie games are doing great. Shovelware is doing meh as it always should be.
The sad thing is that on some level indie games do get pushed out by shovelware on a certain level.
Number of games released was never really a good metric. Review count is probably a bit better, but people buy games released before the current year too.
Right? This just reminds me of how platforms were flooded with clones of clones of clones when mobile games started becoming a thing back in the 2010s.
A ratio between hours played and sale counts would be a better metric.
RTFA.
The hentai ai slop seems to make the front page, so it seems to be doing fine.
More likely "Simulator"s and AI-gen retro/2D games. Most are usually just copy and paste of something that was successful but with different skin/title/theme.
The proof is in the tags and search filters using Steam.
Although Hentai may appear at the top of New Releases it's because those trend with higher sales.
Visual Novels are probably in a close 2nd and most of those are now AI-gen now so the pump is flowing fast.
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Shovelware.
Your avatar reminds me i need to play neverwinter nights again when i get ny steam deck.
Deekin approves!
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With all the layoffs of tech workers, theyve been pouring into more creative outlets like game dev.
I bought a bunch of games in the last year that are pretty niche and fantastic, but also under 1000+ reviews.
What's a good Lemmy community to share them to people who will appreciate it?
Maybe something like patient gamers but for indie games?
Honestly something like that I'd personally like a monthly roundup in the regular gaming communities. No need for a separate one imo.
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Did you know? Reading the article explains the headline, I recommend doing so... well, to be honest, I recommend reading the report the article is based on.
He says "Indie golden age" since the number of games with 1000 reviews or more made a big jump from 337 in 2022. This is also an increase percentage-wise despite the huge increase in games overall:
This is all games, the article focuses on the indie portion (as decided by the writer, not steam tag) later on.
The problem is a lot of the games will be shovelware that no one in there right mind is interested in playing. It would be nice if we could filter out to only serious attempts. Because that's the metric that's more relevant. Of all of the games released by developers that were really trying to release a game, and not just an asset flip, how many of those games succeeded.
Like filtering out games with 1000 reviews by the end of the year? Like he says in the article?
No that's just filtering out successful games from the unsuccessful ones.
I want to filter out the shovelware from the data set so we actually know what the ratio of successful to unsuccessful ones are. Since it's not useful for me to know that shovelware isn't successful.
People stress out about having too big of a backlog, who cares? Support artists, buy indie games!
Hate to ask, but as an Indie dev, I'd love some support:
We made a cartoon network inspired RPG (am ex Cartoon Network dev). It's called:
Ink Inside
It gets lost in Steam discovery constantly as it's combat is too unique to classify as more than "action RPG."
Several 9/10 review scores. Brian David Gilbert as a lead VA, with 11 others
42 reviews on Steam.
Honestly, announce it on a gaming community here that allows promotion. And put it on GoG too. Some of use are trying to reduce our use of US tech or reduce use of monopolies.
Working on that actually! Specifically GoG and more outreach on Lemmy. And thanks for the advice! ๐
We're probably going to be deleting our Tiktok soon to likewise reduce use of US tech. Which really sucks because it's the only place we have any traction atm.
I have a question for devs. I don't want to support US companies, but I'd like to support US individuals artists/creators. I dunno if you're from the US, but is it possible for someone to wire money to a dev and the dev give me a free copy on Steam thereby avoiding the 30% cut? I'm assuming that's against the EULA...
It's against the EULA, but nobody is going to get caught. The main issue is that it's a pain in the ass and doesn't scale. You can do this for one person, but most people aren't going to be cool sending a payment to an address and just waiting around, hoping that they get a key. This is why Steam exists. There are other services that do the same thing that are not US based. GOG is based in Poland, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOG.com
Ah, thanks. I thought so. I use GOG for this exact reason but not all the games I'm interested in are available there. I'll just have to play my backlog for now haha.
Actually, it's not against the Steam EULA for me to sell Steam keys outside their platform. (As long as it's me selling directly from my website). There even used to be 3rd party services that provided a way for you to sell your own steam keys on your own website without STEAM getting a cut. Last I checked, that was still an option with them. It's somewhat of a loophole in their EULA, but they did use to encourage devs to sell keys themselves. Selling them through a third party is what breaks the EULA. But not private sales from the developer themselves.
Steam only has a problem is the dev sells more steam keys on their website then steam. Which I don't think has happened yet.
That's good to hear! Thanks. But I just realized I'd have to rely on PayPal or Wise (which I think are American too) to send devs money lol
I'll wait for your GoG release since they accept my JCB card! Good luck!
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I dig it. Wishlisted.
I have a rare disease where I can only buy Steam games that are on sale, but the next time that happens Iโm all over it.
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Looks kinda cool, wishlisted for later.
Btw, a new Fediverse instance was recently setup for Indie Games https://indie-ver.se/ Why not try creating a community there, or if it's a bit too small see if the creators of the instance can make a "this is my indie game" type of community for self promotions.
Wait, co-op RPG? Split-Screen Co-op?
I'll buy it!
I mean, I'll need to find a friend but I'll think about that later.
Yep! Co-op OR single player. Player 2 has an AI that scales as you level, so it's still very fun as a solo experience ๐
And it's a shared screen, kinda like a 2 player beat em up.
And co-op works over Steam remote play. Only 1 copy of the game needed!
Looks cool. I wishlisted it and will try the demo when I get a chance. How's it run on the steamdeck?
Thank you! ๐ Works great on Steam deck actually! ๐ Just need to adjust the auto aim a bit in the options to get the best results.
We don't hear that in any other industry.
"My word. There's too much cake in this cake factory! And there's too much music out there! Oh no, MORE comic books?!"
It's how I feel about anime.
Can't even watch everything.
๐ญ
I've said this about books, specifically since self-publishing and print-on-demand have saturated the market with garbage.
I say garbage and not slop because this was before AI even became a thing. I can't imagine how bad it is now, but fortunately I've broken my habit of hoarding books so it's not really something I notice anymore.
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I mean, I only have so much money free to spend on hobbies. I will gladly support indie devs when I want a new game, but I'm not in a position to just be buying them for the sake of buying them
Could be that or it could be AI slop games.
Yeah... It's not indie golden age.
I guarantee you less than 1,000 of those were made by actual indie developers.
I'd more than willingly bet the rest are vibe-coded slop or unity asset-flips designed to look just enough like an actual game that you buy it and hopefully never bother to refund it.
Steam has had this problem for years, and AI slop has only exacerbated it.
On one hand, Silksong, BallxPit, Peak, Expedition 33, Dispatch, Blue Prince, Morsels, Rift of the Necrodancer....
On the other hand, ~20,000 games that don't have anyone playing them.
I don't think the author knows what a golden age is
Have you read the article or the report it is based on? I think he makes his point quite clear.
Fair enough. Let me change that up. I don't think the editor who wrote the clickbait headline knows what a golden age is.
I miss greenlight. We should go back to that. I'm already tired of the endless amounts of crap being put on Steam.
It's a good thing for a marketplace to have many options. As long as steam keeps discovery working well then its totally fine. Lots of people throw up their first game (from a game tutorial) onto steam as a learning experience, they aren't expecting to make any money. Posting your highschool programming project on steam feels cool.
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this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2026
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