There are 1000 new games per month and 90% of them are crud, sure. But the end result is that we have more original and innovative games than ever before (and cheaper, too). I certainly wouldn't want to go back to the days of big publisher gatekeeping. Would you?

My original point was meant to nod towards survivorship bias. I won't argue that choices are great now, with tons of niche offerings that are a delight for many. But using Stardew Valley as an example doesn't hold up well for creator success; many (if not the majority) fail in the Steam store despite their efforts and quality.

I think this is generally true for much of the gaming industry in general. There are indeed so many titles that several very big releases years in the making can drop off the scene shockingly quick, if only because new ones show up so often now.

> I won't argue that choices are great now, with tons of niche offerings that are a delight for many. But using Stardew Valley as an example doesn't hold up well for creator success; many (if not the majority) fail in the Steam store despite their efforts and quality.

The argument was "This single person hollywood replacement dream is something to be really afraid of, at least as far as the quality of the content", and the likes of Stardew Valley (provided it's not a unique case, and I don't think it is), prove that wrong.

Making games is probably an even worse way to make a living than it was prior to the indie-dev explosion, sure (not that it was ever a great way to make a living). But top quality content is still being made, and I see no reason to think that won't continue.

And yet Steam is a shining example of curation compared to, say, the App Store or Google Play.

Excellent curation will be critical to gen AI. The window for such curation to be established feels extremely small, otherwise "app stores" will take hold and we will end up with a sea of unnavigable spam.

Hard to argue against that. There's clearly a higher bar in Steam. Hopefully that will continue.