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.
Indeed, cloners will find ways to flood the market, because that’s the effective way.
As someone who likes to discuss about solutions, time is something the cloners do not have. They are always trying to clone the currently trending things, so they cannot wait for three months or so for the trend to die out.
I would say a mandatory 3 month period of closed beta would help cull many bad actors, with strict requirements as what would suffice. Valve could in the meanwhile scan in case the assets are stolen from another games listed in their store.
Assets can be packed or otherwise obfuscated in all sorts of ways.
I’m less certain about the “3 month forced waiting period” thing… it sounds like a good idea on the surface, but I just wonder how it might affect small devs. Also, some spammers would still immediately schedule a listing for a clone and then vibecode it over the three months.
The 3 months won’t hurt developers. The time flies when you’re actually developing the game or managing Valve bureaucracy. :D
I didn’t really go to specifics in my previous comment. That would require making assumptions and make the comment too long to read. I’m sure you have an assumption as to why the idea would hurt indie developers. I’m happy just making a surface level assumption about using time to our advantage.
That might be true but it still seems like it might significantly hampers the trend chasing clone effect. Its not stopping the cloners from making the clones but throwing them off of the trend rhythm and making the clone less able to skim money from people. A legit dev will likely have to take into account the waiting period but that can just be part of their dev cycle now. Or maybe if your studio is partnered with an already established publisher, you can just release the game no waiting. I know that sucks for fully independent devs but there are extremely indie friendly publishers out there like Devolver Digital.
The 3 month period is not really effective if you can avoid it in any way. Which is why it needs to be strict, like not using a publisher to speed it up, but having the 3 month period for each different game. And that replaceable placeholders do not count for the 3 months by strictly requiring the game to have something that would reset the timer, like changing the genre tags or the name of the game.
Indeed, cloners will find ways to flood the market, because that’s the effective way.
As someone who likes to discuss about solutions, time is something the cloners do not have. They are always trying to clone the currently trending things, so they cannot wait for three months or so for the trend to die out.
I would say a mandatory 3 month period of closed beta would help cull many bad actors, with strict requirements as what would suffice. Valve could in the meanwhile scan in case the assets are stolen from another games listed in their store.
Assets can be packed or otherwise obfuscated in all sorts of ways.
I’m less certain about the “3 month forced waiting period” thing… it sounds like a good idea on the surface, but I just wonder how it might affect small devs. Also, some spammers would still immediately schedule a listing for a clone and then vibecode it over the three months.
The 3 months won’t hurt developers. The time flies when you’re actually developing the game or managing Valve bureaucracy. :D
I didn’t really go to specifics in my previous comment. That would require making assumptions and make the comment too long to read. I’m sure you have an assumption as to why the idea would hurt indie developers. I’m happy just making a surface level assumption about using time to our advantage.
That might be true but it still seems like it might significantly hampers the trend chasing clone effect. Its not stopping the cloners from making the clones but throwing them off of the trend rhythm and making the clone less able to skim money from people. A legit dev will likely have to take into account the waiting period but that can just be part of their dev cycle now. Or maybe if your studio is partnered with an already established publisher, you can just release the game no waiting. I know that sucks for fully independent devs but there are extremely indie friendly publishers out there like Devolver Digital.
The 3 month period is not really effective if you can avoid it in any way. Which is why it needs to be strict, like not using a publisher to speed it up, but having the 3 month period for each different game. And that replaceable placeholders do not count for the 3 months by strictly requiring the game to have something that would reset the timer, like changing the genre tags or the name of the game.