Valve’s move to an ‘anything goes’ approach to deciding which games will appear on Steam is a controversial one, but the company defended the decision by offering up some hard numbers that help describe the scope of the problem at a games industry talk this week in Russia.
Earlier this month, Valve announced that the company would allow any game on Steam so long as it wasn’t either illegal or “trolling.” The move came after outcry over emails the company sent to the developers of adult-themed games, primarily visual novels, telling them to either censor content or have their games pulled from Steam.
Valve might not be doing much curation these days, but we still are! Here's our list of the .
Now, Valve is explaining the subsequent decision to cease curating games almost entirely. Jan-Peter Ewert, head of Valve’s business development, gave a presentation at the Business Conference for Games Industry that laid out some of the numbers the company deals with when it comes to the sheer number of new games coming through Steam Direct.
In one slide, provided via Twitter by , Ewert shows how the number of new games on Steam has increased with each successive indie discovery program. Before Greenlight, which launched in 2012, about five games were released a week. With Greenlight, that number grew to 70 per week, and now with Steam Direct, Valve is seeing about 180 weekly game launches.
Those numbers couple with an ever-expanding Steam playerbase. Ewert said 13.5 million first-time purchasers have arrived on Steam in January through April of this year. They add up to a daunting challenge, wherever you fall on Valve’s decision about curating games.