This article originally ran under a different banner/website in November of 2018 and is now being here re-uploaded for purposes of convenience and consolidation. Please enjoy.
GATHER AROUND MY FOLLOWERS!!! QUICKLY GRAB A FACE MASK AND ANTIBIOTICS!!! THERE IS A PLAGUE AMONG US!!! It started in July 2017, around the Seattle area. It slowly began to spread out and infect the rest of the world. I am sure many of you have encountered people infected by this disease. They become completely apathetic. Their desire to care about their jobs, friends, family, personal health, and of course, their own life completely vanishes. I am almost positive patient zero was an employee from Valve. Symptoms of the disease infecting the company came around the same time Steam Direct was announced and put into action. A move that released a torrent of games onto the Steam storefront. While gamers believed they would have unlimited choices, Steam soon became infected with asset flips, games that would spam achievements, and games designed to troll Steam users with controversial topics. It soon became clear that Valve had abandoned all sense of apathy. The disease soon began to spread as fast as stories of the infected. Police were going to the homes of crying infants only to find the parents turning up the volume on the TV. People stopping in the middle of the street only to be run over by a car driven by an infected person. People literally starving to death as their cabinets are stocked full of food. While we can do as much as we can to stem the tide of the disease, I have no doubt, in the end, it will claim us all. My followers, the end is truly upon us.
Many scientists will tell you no such disease exist, but it has to be the only reason behind Valve’s decision to implement Steam Direct. Rather than have Steam users vote for indie titles they would like to see make it onto the Steam store page, Steam Greenlight, Valve decided a better barrier to the Steam Store Page would be a simple 100 dollars. As many could imagine, everyone raced to get onto the PC gaming gold mine set before them, leaving users with only algorithms and user curation as the tools to navigate the ocean of games. Many developers, including ones from Image & Form Games, developers who created Steamworld Dig 1 and 2, have been quoted saying Steam has become too crowded. In 2017, it was determined that Steam was on track to release more games in 2017 than all previous ten years, combined. To say Steam is flooded is an understatement.
An oversaturated market was the least of Valve’s issues. Asset flips and games that couldn’t start due to missing executable files seemed to become the norm. Many developers looked for any way to shine the spotlight on them, even resorting to insidious methods. In November 2017, Valve had to remove a game called Piccled Ricc, a game that blatantly infringed on copyright law with their protagonist being a shameless copy of the Rick and Morty character Pickle Rick. In May 2018, a game called Active Shooter, a game about being a school shooter, was pulled from Steam before it could be released. It was a bland asset flip that tastelessly followed the Stoneman Douglas school shooting. It gained mass media attention while making Valve look clueless. Now more recently, we have Bolsomito 2k18, a side-scrolling beat’em up where you play as a parody of Brazilian presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro as you fight through waves of minorities and immigrants. Brazil’s Public Ministry of the Federal District and Territories has reached out to Valve to have the game removed from the storefront. Along with the game’s removal, the ministry is also planning to investigate the game’s developers, Steam and Valve. The ministry felt the game falsely depicted one of the Brazilian candidates just days before the first round of the Brazilian election. Not a good look if you ask me.
Valve’s apathy has finally caught up to them. This strategy of removing the games after media outlets have run the story is not working. It does nothing but paint Valve as an incompetent company unworthy of the gold mine they have stumbled onto. Many might think the Brazilian ministry’s investigation might not lead to anything, but there is always a possibility that Valve would not be able to operate Steam in Brazil. This could lead to other countries following Brazil as well, leading to a spiral of Steam being banned which could lead to the collapse of Valve as a company. I know some might say it is a stretch, but I am a doomsayer. Farfetched predictions are what I am all about.
Now do games like Active Shooter and Bolsomito 2k18 have a right to exist? Sure. Do they have any right to be on the Steam store? I would say no. They can certainly be available on the developer’s own website or even on Itch.io, but I definitely feel like some standards need to be set so Valve doesn’t receive any more investigations. If I walked into highly rated restaurant’s like Alden & Harlow or Area Four and asked them if I could make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for them professionally, they would turn me away. I could make the best PB&J sandwich I can, but customers at those restaurants have standards. Sure Valve says they don’t want games deemed illegal or trolling, but those definitions are so loose, it has resulted in the same old story: games go on Steam, media is modified, Valve tries to stop the sinking ship by removing the game. Valve truly needs to get higher standards or else their end is most certainly nigh.
