...and I thought it had bottomed out summer of last year.


Steam discovery queue has turned into spam queue. In recent weeks, it's been littered with VR games and movies. I have no interest in VR. The goggles are overpriced (no way am I dropping $600 on a peripheral device with almost no use outside of video gaming), and they prevent the user from seeing what's actually happening nearby. Movies need to be removed from discovery queue, they aren't games and mixing them in with a video game discovery queue is just a slap in the face to the users.

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As if that wasn't bad enough, the discovery queue is also spammed with pseudo-games (products framed as video games with few mechanics, if any). Examples include visual novels (why are those even considered to be games?), point-and-click adventure/mystery (no mechanics!!!), choose-your-own adventure (because a decision tree with no mechanics isn't a game).

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The recent indie game development trends have been utter [censored]. I'm seeing a lot of roguelikes (aka random everything to inflate a minimal amount of content and irritating non-features such as permadeath/no saves), lousy JRPG/Final Fantasy knockoffs (which also use the same antiquated boring combat system that remains mechanically behind Might and Magic II), "minimalist" games (probably what happens when someone learns how to develop games with Unity and throws the end result on Steam in the hopes of making a few bucks), point-and-click adventures/visual novels/non-games (see above section), maximum difficulty games specifically designed to be frustrating, RTS (that I have no interest in), more and more turn-based RPGs/D&D knockoffs (because most indie devs have no clue how to handle multiple player characters in real time and lack the creativity to think outside D&D).

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Oh, and Japan has (unintentionally) ruined a significant amount of video games for me. Nothing personal against Japan of course - they make great vehicles and some of their food is delicious - but IMO they should stay out of video game development.


All new scrolling shmups are now "bullet hell" with the Western developers copying similar Japanese games at every turn - maximum difficulty, color changes and similar un-fun nonsense, and having to dodge everything instead of providing intelligent mechanics to counter projectile spam. Whatever happened to the good old late 90's with armor and regenerating shields?


As mentioned above: visual novels aren't games. JRPGs are overdone, mechanically inferior to a game written in the late 1980's, and by now they are mostly RPGmaker shovelware.


Then there are the "fighting tournament" style games which I have no interest in. Those have no upgrade path, no storyline, they are usually 1v1 (or 2v2) combat with no level structure, and combos are clunky/opaque.


Finally, a lot of Japanese game developers seem to have a weird obsession with nudity (unacceptable by my standards), considering that almost half of Japanese games that appear on Steam have it.

Sturgeon's Law- 90% of everything is crap.

How is PC gaming taking a nosedive? Sure VALVe still has problems to solve with Steam, but in the last 5 years PC gaming has grown bigger than ever before. According to Intel and Nvidia there's like 800+ million PC gamers worldwide now as of their statistics in 2015.

Also gog.com is rising fast now in the last 4 years and have about 80+ million or so PC gamers who have made gog.com accounts and is competition with Steam and actually curates their store.

You might want to check out gog.com if you never have before if your interested in a digital distribution retailer store that curates their store.

Did you really just say point and click adventure games aren't games?


It sounds to me like you just don't like the kinds of games that are on Steam right now, which is fine? There are a lot of random indies, that's for sure, but what you're complaining about is genre taste, not PC gaming in general.

Full Throttle is a great game. If it's not a game because it's point and click, then I guess I don't like real games.

Numbers and popularity alone are irrelevant. If food production tripled but 99.9% of the food supply was of low quality/near-inedible, would that be good news or bad news? Quantity != quality. There's just more shovelware and idiots all too willing to support it.


I've know about them for a while. I keep yelling at them to provide a prepaid payment option in the U.S. and no one listened. Indie shovelware has also been creeping into gog.com lately as well - they recently added yet another indie roguelike and a bunch of their users accused them of letting in "Steam Greenlight shovelware".

Sounds to me more like "stop liking what i don't like!"

Oh dear, this again. There are no right answers, you must like/agree with what ever arbitrary goalposts Digital Ancient sets up or you are a troll or worth ignoring.

Y'all have fun with this one.

One has to separate their own personal tastes from actual facts. The gaming industry is booming. More players playing more games for more money. Just because you don't like the games (and I am in the same boat), doesn't mean nobody does.

What you listed is why I do not visit Steam unless I HAVE to.

I've been hearing this since the early 90s when the 8bit Nintendo came out, and PC gaming is still here.

Yeah PC gaming will never die.

I also been hearing that mobile phones versions of video games and tablets versions of video games will take over the video game industry as well in the last what 7 years? This is also not true.

Both PC gaming and console gaming will exist for decades, not even Virtual Reality (VR) versions of video games will take over either.

Virtual Reality (VR) video games need PC's and consoles to run and somewhat mobile phones as well.

Mobile phones and tablets will not yet be able to achieve to be developed to have what PC versions of video games have and what console versions of video games have. You will never see video games like Battlefield 1 run on mobile phones, until what 5 years from now? Then Battlefield 6 will be released for sale which will not be able to run on mobile phones, until 5 years from then.