Support NeoGAF

[LectureMaster]

https://steamdb.info/stats/releases/

Of the games released in 2025, 2,113 received absolutely no player reviews. Another 6,595 games received only 1-9 single-digit reviews. Overall, nearly 48.7% (8,708 games) of games on Steam are in a state of near obscurity, receiving almost no player discussion.

There were only 1,092 games receiving 500+ user reviews in 2025, representing approximately 6.1% of all games released this year.

 

[GrayChild]

It's sad really. So much good titles remain unnoticed:

 

[Laptop1991]

Far too many to even look at and mostly poor games as well, ever since Steam opened their doors to this, i have always thought it was a bad idea and doesn't help PC gaming.

 

[Hawk The Slayer]

Most of them are way too basic and simple to attract anyone.

The indie ones that do have good effort, work, and solid content will end up being well reviewed and sold like Huntdown, Infernax, The Killing Antidote, Nightmare of Decay, The Vagrant, Iron Meat, Nuclear Nightmare, and many others.

 

[Fbh]

Go to Steam, sort by newest (not "new and trending"). See all the shit that releases every single day.

 

[Kacho]

In such a competitive market, you really have to catch people's eye at a glance. If your thumbnail art has some animal character I'm already out.

The growth on Steam is insane. The late 00s were not great if you weren't into Risen and shit.

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

17,889 games. That's more games in a single year than the entire libraries of multiple console generations, all systems combined.
People are still discovering games from the past that would have 0 reviews or mentions if YouTubers weren't digging into piles of shit games just to make a video or two with some content that hasn't been covered to death. Even 10 genuine user reviews for half of so many games is actually a miracle.

 

[Killer8]

The price of lowering the bar to get into game development was always going to be an infinite supply of slop.

 

[The_hunter]

In such a competitive market, you really have to catch people's eye at a glance. If your thumbnail art has some animal character I'm already out.

The growth on Steam is insane. The late 00s were not great if you weren't into Risen and shit.

I belive limited games are games that haven't made any money.

 

[March Climber]

This goes back to my argument that more curation services and content are needed more than ever.

People need to be more directly guided to the hidden gems.

 

[Kilau]

And it only needed this one.

 

[I collect VHS tapes]

This goes back to my argument that more curation services and content are needed more than ever.

People need to be more directly guided to the hidden gems.

People often shit on people who watch others play video games, but this is exactly why I watch "I played 20 souls likes so you don't have to" videos

Stuff like this



And often I'll find gems that there's no fucking way I would've ever heard of

There's so much weird wonderful stuff on Steam

 

[El Hee-Ho]

Just wait until I release my game, it'll be even worse!

This goes back to my argument that more curation services and content are needed more than ever.

People need to be more directly guided to the hidden gems.

That's true but I agree with I collect VHS tapes , YouTubers and overall word of mouth does a great job at feeding us the cool stuff.

Still, I'm sure a lot of good shit is gone unoticed...

 

[Botan32]

17,889 games, but how many are truly good and, above all, worth remembering?

The number of games on Steam is both a strength and a weakness.
You can find everything there.

This hides the visibility of many titles.

 

[Deerock71]

It's pure free market. The shit sinks straight to the bottom.

 

[Denton]

1,092 games receiving 500+ user reviews in 2025

That is still a HUGE number of fairly successful games, holyshite

 

[LectureMaster]

This goes back to my argument that more curation services and content are needed more than ever.

People need to be more directly guided to the hidden gems.

When my man said we need more curation:

Yes we need to stop the shovelware rampantly releasing on Steam.



But by curation, my man means promoting the slops to more players:

 

[pudel]

It's pure free market. The shit sinks straight to the bottom.

 

[ReyBrujo]

if YouTubers weren't digging into piles of shit games just to make a video

lol, they aren't digging, they requests keys for selling in order to "find" their games.

 

[LectureMaster]

If your thumbnail art has some animal character I'm already out.

My man is indeed the chadest chad.

 

[Brakum]

It's pure free market. The shit sinks straight to the bottom.

Exactly, there might have been that many games released in a year but i would never even know? And i browse the store quite frequently. I just see normal games on steam, it doesn't show me the slop of the slop.

 

[bender]

This goes back to my argument that more curation services and content are needed more than ever.

People need to be more directly guided to the hidden gems.

I've been harping on this too, but I also think Valve needs to raise the barrier to entry. We are at 54 releases per day and the prominence of AI is going to balloon the release trends.

 

[Guilty_AI]

That is still a HUGE number of fairly successful games, holyshite

Thought the same, half of all these games receiving over ten reviews is also quite a lot. We'd generally expect 90% of this stuff going completely unnoticed

 

[bender]

Thought the same, half of all these games receiving over ten reviews is also quite a lot. We'd generally expect 90% of this stuff going completely unnoticed

I'd be curious to see how much of that is the "influencer" Steam community groups that provide reviews for free keys which is a bit of a racket in of itself.

 

[Griffon]

Looking at the graph it looks like it's working as intended.

More morons releasing trash thinking Steam is a surefire way to make bank. Most of everything is bad. Only the good stuff will survive, as it's meant to be.

 

[T4keD0wN]

It's sad really. So much good titles remain unnoticed:

 

[Magister]

Shitty low-effort games are the norm for Steam.
Indie bangers are also the norm for Steam.
One often gets the recognition it deserves while the other is forgotten because it is shit.

 

[Guilty_AI]

I'd be curious to see how much of that is the "influencer" Steam community groups that provide reviews for free keys which is a bit of a racket in of itself.

I think its safe to say its a sum of parts of everything, from discovery systems to algorithmic recommendations or these groups or the dev just building a community from scratch off some part of the internet (all of which feed onto each other)

 

[Gameplay Gods Bless]

https://steamdb.info/stats/releases/

Of the games released in 2025, 2,113 received absolutely no player reviews. Another 6,595 games received only 1-9 single-digit reviews. Overall, nearly 48.7% (8,708 games) of games on Steam are in a state of near obscurity, receiving almost no player discussion.

There were only 1,092 games receiving 500+ user reviews in 2025, representing approximately 6.1% of all games released this year.

It's survival of the fittest but no matter what the consumer wins.

 

[March Climber]

When my man said we need more curation:

Yes we need to stop the shovelware rampantly releasing on Steam.


But by curation, my man means promoting the slops to more players:

There could be only 1% of games out of that almost 18k that are good, and that's still 178 good games, which is still far too many for people here to keep up with, let alone even know about, let alone play within the year. Per year.

When I make indie and AA threads, I am curating...curating from an already curated list from multiple showcases.

This is why even more curation is needed.

 

[Generic]

Slop store.

 

[Spukc]

Go to Steam, sort by newest (not "new and trending"). See all the shit that releases every single day.

Ah so steam got a hidden nintendo switch store function

 

[Kacho]

Slop store.

 

[calico]

I ruin the whole review system by thumb upping or downing based on whether I think the current score is too high or too low.

I kinda like that the bar for entry is low on Steam. Let people go through the whole process of bringing a game to market. Even if it's shit and nobody notices, maybe their next one won't be. It's not like it negatively impacts using the store, because you aren't going to end up wading through 0 review trash unless you go looking for it.

 

[Shadowstar39]

Sure but there are lots of great games that aren't super popular that are amazing. Usually by one or two people.

A few off the top of my head :
Gnomes.- tower defense style rogue like.

Tiny Rogues - twin stick indy rpg with 15+ character classes and unique runs and 1000s of weapons and items. Super fast paced action all gameplay. Game is great on PC or steam deck.

Gunlocked - auto scrolling ship combat /asteroids type rogue like shmup. Great on the deck.

Farthest Frontier - from the grim dawn devs. Medieval city builder with raider mechanic. Like banished but better

That's just a sampling. Ive found so many great gems that people on here would shit on because (reel graphics aren't cinematic or realistic or some shit).

None of these types of gems would come out of it was only AAA or AA type games. I do wish these were on the switch 1/2.

That being said we are lacking in some genres. Half life /undying era single player fps is still not being made. Same with heroes of might and magic strategy clones and no wizardry ultima style games either.

We do get deluged with hentai boob games and other click bait trash but there are good games that do get released by smaller studios.

This isn't just a steam thing. Eshop xbox and psn are flooded too

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

Matt Piscatella explaining how this is Fortnite's fault.

 

[Soodanim]

This was expected when Valve moved from Green Light to open floodgates. Most never see any of these, and the only loss to anyone is that there could be some diamonds in the rough.

Outside of that it's just Valve wasting their own server space.

And of course earlier this year when a cancer victim was drained of his funds because he installed a game that got a malicious update because of holes in Valve's security measures regarding game files/updates. But that's not only fixable by not having the bottom of the barrel scraped away.

 

[calico]

Farthest Frontier and Grim Dawn are probably in the top 1% for popularity on Steam.

But yeah when I think about decent games on Steam nobody else ever talks about, they still normally have at least a few hundred reviews, not 0 or single digits.

 

[mèx]

Given the gargantuan amount of games getting released on Steam, the curation tools are doing a good job at keeping the trash at bay, at least in my case.

Some good stuff still slips through the cracks though, which is a shame.

 

[Kacho]

Given the gargantuan amount of games getting released on Steam, the curation tools are doing a good job at keeping the trash at bay, at least in my case.

Some good stuff still slips through the cracks though, which is a shame.

Yep. Steam showed me Night Striker Gear on several occasions until the game art grabbed my attention. It does a surprisingly good job.

Other times it keeps recommending games I should like but don't have any interest in so I throw those on ignore.

 

[Grildon Tundy]

Whoever can crack how to automatically "play" these games to determine which is worth a human putting time into is going to have a well-needed niche in the market.

I'd pay money for someone or a program to tell me about unplayed hidden gems.

 

[Alexios]

Whoever can crack how to automatically "play" these games to determine which is worth a human putting time into is going to have a well-needed niche in the market.

I'd pay money for someone or a program to tell me about unplayed hidden gems.

I'll send you links to solid games for money. Damn, someone already made a(nother) thread, I posted some for free too, too late.

 

[Grildon Tundy]

I'll send you links to solid games for money. Damn, someone already made a(nother) thread, I posted some for free too, too late.

Gotta know your worth, homie.

And I'm talking specifically about those "no review" games.

 

[Alexios]

And I'm talking specifically about those "no review" games.

Black screen was released, on Steam and Dreamcast.

 

[Grildon Tundy]

Black screen was released, on Steam and Dreamcast.

Have you played it? How is it?

 

[Alexios]

Have you played it? How is it?

Like Asteroids trading RPG.