Valve's online service Steam used to be rather heavily curated, then it opened things up a little with a crowd-sourced approval system, Greenlight. Nowadays, the floodgates are open thanks to Steam Direct, and it's easily apparent to everyone what this means.
An analyst of Niko Partners, Daniel Ahmad, has made a statement on Twitter saying:
"Year isn't over yet and there have already been more than 6,000 games released on Steam this year.
That's almost as many as the number of games released between 2005 and 2015."
Around 1,300 of these 6,000 games come from Valve's Steam Direct as it has replaced the old Steam Greenlight. Steam Direct was launched back in June.
Time will tell if Valve plans to do anything about this, as quality titles can go unnoticed due to the added noise. Clearly, Steam could benefit from improved discovery tools, but perhaps Steam Direct wasn't the best way forward for the store.
Does Steam have a problem? Let us know what you think...
Thanks, Games Industry.