There is an elephant in the room. It has a nuke strapped to it.

[Zed Clampet]

Not AI related, and I would love to hear your thoughts and predictions.

I don't know if you've heard, but as it turns out, the floodgate for games coming to Steam actually wasn't fully open. Turns out, it was just a trickle. What is about to happen is likely going to take things to a whole new, unimaginable level. So what's the name of this nuclear elephant? s&box

s&box is a sort-of-game made by Facepunch of Garry's Mod fame. Using Valve's much mystified and adored Source 2 engine as a base, they have created a tool that can (easily?) be used to create games. I'm assuming the "easily" part, and also assuming you'll need to use coding or the free version of Claude now available to the entire world. In any event, it supposed to be very good, and the crazy part? You can upload the games to Steam for sale.

My understanding is that this is more than just another game engine and that it will open up game creation to the masses. My understanding could be wrong, but what would the purpose of this be if it were just another run-of-the-mill game engine?

This is going to be released to the masses on Steam on April 29. What havoc, if any, will this potentially nuclear elephant bring?

 

[neogunhero]

I'm going to be a defender of s&box because I immensely appreciate Garry Newman's work.

I doubt it will "open the floodgates", it is just a tool to get more people making games.

Publishing to Steam still requires that initial $100 fee and there may even be additional fees and legal hurdles you'll have to go through when using s&box. It's essentially Source 2 but heavily modified.

As far as I see it, there have been FOSS engines available for anyone to make a game and upload it to Steam. S&box would most likely focus on the games playable within the platform as they also have a monetization structure to get devs paid. The games being made there and published to Steam would, hopefully, be of much higher quality than ones you'll find within s&box itself.

 

[Pifanjr]

Steam gets about 50 new games a day I believe. Would it really be all that noticeable if that became 100 a day? Or 500? You're never going to see over 99% of those just like you don't see 99% of the 50 a day that get released now.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Steam gets about 50 new games a day I believe. Would it really be all that noticeable if that became 100 a day? Or 500? You're never going to see over 99% of those just like you don't see 99% of the 50 a day that get released now.

I haven't counted lately, but I believe we're at or over 100/day now.

Steam's algorithms do their thing, but my question is whether they will be overwhelmed. The algorithms use data from people like me, who wander around and find games that have no publicity whatsoever. We decide we like the looks of them, and we wishlist them. Valve use to have a name for these people, like Steam Explorers or something. I'm sure this group of people has grown through the years, but my question is when does the number of "Explorers" (that's probably not right) become insufficient for the number of games being added? This could impact everyone, from the more serious solo devs to any gamer who likes indie games.

The reality is that there are already too many games that have, by the looks of them, had tremendous effort put into them that never get even a single sale. I just feel sorry for these folks.

 

[Zloth]

If it ever gets to be too much for Steam, they've got a real simple solution: charge $10,000 to post your game. That will drop the number of games showing up. Once they catch up, they can drop the price down to $1000 per game to keep it sane long term.