Steam curation, we aren't going anywhere

Dan aka Nerdcubed is a lovely bloke. He just shut down his popular Steam curation page. That's entirely up to him. We're not going to do that though and here is why.

Steam has a great deal of problems. It has market dominance yet refuses to exercise even the most basic forms of quality control. It stocks games that flat out don't work. It stocks games that lie to their customers. It stocks games that contain illegal assets. As I write this Spartans vs Zombies Defense, a game that ripped off the likeness of Gerard Butler from 300 but also literally stole sound effects from the movie, is still on the service. It relies on Greenlight a system that even they've admitted is borked and yet have not replaced. All of that said however, our view is always going to be determined by one thing.

Consumer First.

We are in a position where we can help consumers make better choices, encourage developers to make better games and do at least something to help make the Steam store a bit easier to find decent stuff within. I take that responsibility very seriously. I took my knocks on Day 1 for recommending Planetside 2, a game I did a paid promo deal for publicly and with good reason (though next time try contacting us for a quote first ok journos? I do good quotes, trust me). All our recommendations have associated videos for further information, we try and make the tiny quote space matter in some way and give pertinent info (such as Advanced Warfare having no dedicated servers, regardless of if I think its a good game). It's not a perfect system, not at all, but it does help, at least a bit and a bit is more than enough to justify doing it.

Whether we help Steam make more money despite not fixing some of its glaring issues isn't our concern. We can contain to pressure them with videos on the subject as best we can and hopefully they eventually sort things out. Our number one concern is always going to be "are we providing a service that helps the consumer?". If that answer is yes, then we keep doing it. If Steam curation from us helps even one person buy a good game and puts money into the pockets of a good dev who will hopefully then continue to make good games, then it's worth keeping around.