this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2026
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I get what they're trying to say, but it's a weird take.
If you know what you're looking for, finding a game on Steam is trivial. You type in the name, you find the game. Any company can do external advertising, and if someone finds out about their game and wants to buy it on Steam, they can do that.
The 'issue' is that there's tens of thousands of games on Steam so if you're relying on Steam to advertise your game, or relying on people just happening across it, you're going to be out of luck if you're not a big title, and honestly, I don't think that's Steam's problem. In fact, I'd argue that Steam is doing more than they could reasonably be expected to do - they're a storefront, and obviously what they want to promote visibility on is the products that're going to sell the best. The fact that they have things like curators and 'For You' recommendations and sales and things that smaller developers can use to increase visibility on their games is more than most storefronts offer. If you want to find something in itch.io, for instance, and you don't know what you're searching for, it's extremely difficult. Same goes for Humble, and to a lesser extent GoG.
So I guess my feeling is, yes, it's a problem, but it seems to be set up often times as Steam's problem, and I don't think it is.
You can discount it by 80% and have it featured in a quarterly Steam sale. That is a pretty good way to get visibility on the platform.
Honestly, my experience is that Steam's recommendation systems are not great. The average user rating usually more-or-less concurs with my opinion. If something is rated Overwhelmingly Positive, I'll generally like it. The "More Like This" thing has on rare occasions been useful, though usually human recommendations for similar games from searching Reddit or similar has given much better results. But things like the recommendations queue are just terrible. They never turn up anything that I like.