To me, the interesting bit here is less about Steam in particular, but about the industry overall.
Fourteenthousand games. That’s insane. Sure, the vast majority is going to be asset flips and shovelware crap, probably a lot of AI generated spam games in there, too. But the sheer amount is still staggering. That’s a fair few games compared to when I started gaming in 1987, playing Squirm on a C16 with a tape drive.
In an algorithm world, the only games you would see on your steam homepage are games that are made to suit the algorithm. The only games that Steam would recommend to you are games that suit what the algorithm wants first.
I don’t know how to explain this better to you. In an algorithm world, you have to make something for the algorithm first and the consumer second. If you want an example, I’ve given a lot with youtube, which is the prime example today.
I don’t know what part of this you aren’t getting, but this is all it is. Refunds and reviews don’t matter because you have to make things for the algorithm for anyone to even get to that point.
What I was only saying is that for games it doesn’t work the same. Because if the game is bad it doesn’t matter shit if appears on the frontpage they won’t sell it anyway. On other platforms they can game the algorithm all they want and that works because is usually free content for the user and at least part of it will be watched and they will get some ad revenue, for games won’t matter… they still have to make a good game not just adjust the game to the algorithm, otherwise they don’t get any money.
An exception could be gamepass as at least they could get some money of people trying a game and then giving up if is shit, since is a subscription service and they might get paid by minutes played or similar.
There are a few important things here.
1, most platforms don’t have refunds 2. Youtube clicks that immediately result in not watching the video negatively affect the algorithm. So, the comparison is even more valid.
But ultimately, the game doesn’t have to be good. It has to be good enough. And the actual point I’m making that I want you to understand is that games will need to be made for thr algorithm first, and for the player second. Refunds, which are not available on most platforms, are not solving anything there.
Let’s agree to disagree, I do not see that happening games, you think will happen let’s leave it at this.
Then regarding the refunds availability nowadays I would say that most platforms have it available, they are on epic, steam, gog, Microsoft, Google Play/App Store. Sony offers but it’s more for mistakes when buying or for games completely faulty/broken, cannot test games so not very useful.
The only big exception is Nintendo which you could get one contacting support on rare occasions but it’s not usually the case, and when it is usually is a faulty case similar to Sony. And of course third party sellers keys.