Steam Next Fest is being flooded with thousands of low-effort games, while developers are becoming reluctant to share their work for fear of seeing it quickly cloned.
Giardino suggested that developers can protect their work by first building a strong community around it, and then focusing on continual improvements: “Rather than relying on a single mechanic that someone can easily copy, you need to keep growing your game by adding features, personality, and creativity that stem from your own perspective.”
Not every game needs a fuckload of features. Not everyone has the time and skill to create and manage a community around their own game.
Steam could at least allow people to vote on whether some games are complete clone garbage or not, have the weight of the vote rely on the account level + age. Or let people indicate the original game on a clone’s page. Like any community feature, I can see this being a vector for abuse, but this AI bullshit is absolutely ruining online trust
Steam could at least allow people to vote on whether some games are complete clone garbage or not
This sounds like a version of the old “green light” system which people apparently hated. I didn’t love it, but I think opening the doors to every shitty thrown together app was already a disaster before slop made the issue so much worse. I think opening the doors to everything probably made them a bunch of money so there is no way we’ll see them shut it again unless they have to.
Not every game needs a fuckload of features. Not everyone has the time and skill to create and manage a community around their own game.
Steam could at least allow people to vote on whether some games are complete clone garbage or not, have the weight of the vote rely on the account level + age. Or let people indicate the original game on a clone’s page. Like any community feature, I can see this being a vector for abuse, but this AI bullshit is absolutely ruining online trust
This sounds like a version of the old “green light” system which people apparently hated. I didn’t love it, but I think opening the doors to every shitty thrown together app was already a disaster before slop made the issue so much worse. I think opening the doors to everything probably made them a bunch of money so there is no way we’ll see them shut it again unless they have to.
when has this ever been a thing?
It’s super ironic that online trust was much higher in dial up times, back when “don’t trust what you find on the internet” was the rule