Rust Dev Thinks Limiting Steam Releases is "Insane"

[evilnancyreagan]

Wait, Gary Newman is the maker of Rust and Gary's Mod?

:O

 

[LeQuack_Is_Back]

Sir, it's not a matter of "We need to limit the number of games getting put on steam". It's a matter of "We need to stop the shit-games from getting put on steam."

 

[Rariow]

steams sells more games than any store could ever hope to do, they have more games, therefore they hame more gems and of course, more garbage

But they don't HAVE to have more garbage. For a long time, they outsold every brick-and-mortar store, and they didn't have unfinished crap like Air Control going up on the storefront daily. It was this reliability, where every Steam game had at least some level of competence in it that put them above brick-and-mortar stores, and what gave them their market dominance in the first place. They're basically just throwing away one of the main factors that put them above everyone else. The only thing they really have left is their deep discounts. The games available on other digital distribution platforms don't include the shovelware that Steam now does.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

steams sells more games than any store could ever hope to do, they have more games, therefore they hame more gems and of course, more garbage

But they don't HAVE to have more garbage. For a long time, they outsold every brick-and-mortar store, and they didn't have unfinished crap like Air Control going up on the storefront daily. It was this reliability, where every Steam game had at least some level of competence in it that put them above brick-and-mortar stores, and what gave them their market dominance in the first place. They're basically just throwing away one of the main factors that put them above everyone else. The only thing they really have left is their deep discounts. The games available on other digital distribution platforms don't include the shovelware that Steam now does.

back then they didnt have the volume of games added to their store they have today, 2014 has already seen more steam releases than 2013, and in 2013 PC saw the biggest amount of quality releases, according to metacritic, most of these games were avaliable on steam

http://www.metacritic.com/feature/best-video-games-of-2013

plus great games have come from steam opening its doors, games such as rogue legacy, papers please and the stanley parable were accepted to the store via greenlight

and for that matter, how come people only talk about the obscure bad games? ive seen earth 2066 and air control get mentioned more often than FLY'N, teslagrad, and valdis story

 

[Hateren47]

Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing is a game legendary for hitting store shelves in a very obviously incomplete state. In the age of retail, the one game that made it through quality control in that state has become an inside joke for the gaming community. In the age of Steam's open door policy, there's games coming out on the service that are even less finished than Big Rigs. For crying out loud, the developer of Towns publicly announced that he wasn't going to bother finishing the game he was selling for money to people, and already had selling been for upwards of a year, and Valve didn't give the slightest shit about it.

How can you compare Towns to Big Rigs? I've spend 78 hours on Towns and no one would be able to do that on Big Rigs. Probably not even just to spite me. I think Towns was a great take on city building, your town being a town in a video game, having to attract and support heroes to clear out the dungeon below the town. Was it a good game? No it was broken. Completely. Was it finished? Yeah probably. I doubt it was worth working any more on considering the problems the (inexperienced) developers had, at least. Is it a shame? Very much so. I'd buy Towns 2 on early access for 20 euros if I could, though. And I would trust them to make it better too.

Besides, you have to realize, sure, game stores stock stuff like Barbie Horse Adventures. But you think if I walk into my local game store I'm going to see that on the big shelves right in front of the exit? No, it's going to be at the back, between Garbage Truck Simulator and Prison Tycoon under a sign that says "two for the price of one". These stores DO ensure the best, biggest games are easier to find. If I open Steam right now, I'll find a snooker game, Amputea, a joke game from a couple years ago claiming to have been released yesterday, and a bunch of other assorted crap listed under the "new release" section. Hey, remember that big, quality AAA title that came out a few days ago? Watch_Dogs? That's not even on there anymore. I can bet if I walked into a game store I wouldn't be able to get away from being reminded of its existence.

So if you like games about horsies (be it ironic or creepy), is german or like base building games like prison simulator you and your taste is second rate and should be banished from stores or at least culled and sent to the bin behind the huge card board cutout from the next big game with guns and lens flares.

And, finally, I recently got done playing Revengeance. I'm unlikely to ever want to play that again, as fun as it was, so I traded it back in at my local store, and was able to buy a different game for cheaper. I can't do it with Steam. Similarly, when I first bought Arkham City on Steam, I was unable to play it. In a normal store, no problem, I'd get a refund, if they didn't let me I'd trade it in, and no one would have lost that much. On Steam, I was stuck with the thing until I got a new PC a couple years later. This was alright before, because anything I could buy from Steam was guaranteed to be a worthwhile purchase to someone. Maybe not me in particular, and I wouldn't enjoy the game, but games on Steam pretty much always would provide a huge amount of enjoyment to some demographic. Now that that's no longer the case, Steam has to behave like a normal store. The way it is now, the only real benefit are the deep-discount sales and the ability to be a lazy fuck and get games without leaving home. That's just not good enough when I'm being sold Air Control and Guise of the Wolf. You can have either crappy customer service or crappy products. Once you have both, you're no longer worthwhile.

Now that you keep talking about Air Control and I have looked it up I'm more interested in that game than I am in Watch Dogs. I doubt I could get 6 hours out of either game but Air Control would be a lot better on the "1 hour of entertainment per euro"-scoring system I like to use.

He is not entitled to anything from me, right? I don't know if you're an expert on EU law, but if I (an EU citizen in an EU member state) order a pizza on just-eat.dk (restaurants sign up and sell food of already questionable quality there and Just-Eat takes a 10% cut), and I am not satisfied with my meal and want a 100% refund, I'm entitled to it? And who should reimburse me. The pizzeria or Just-Eat? The pizza is right here, untouched and in the original packaging.

Okay first... where do you get the idea he wants anything from you? He wants a money back guarantee from steam and not from you. So why do you keep talking about him wanting anything from you?

He did direct his demands at me. You can read the rest of the thread if you want to get up to speed.

Also your example is lacking in crucial information that makes it rather useless.

So is your response so far. what more info do you need?

But to give you an idea how things are actually handled in germany atleast:

Is the pizza simply not to your taste or they used a spice you dont like? Tough luck.. youre not getting your money back. (Wich would be buying a game and you say you dont like its gameplay... yeah thats indeed not steams problem... should have looked the game up before)

So Towns was not Steams problem? Cos people didn't like the gameplay, and all. And yet they're the bad guys?

However: Is the pizza not the one you ordered? Is the pizza made with rotten ingredients? Are there bugs crawling over it? Is there mold on the toppings? Have you gotten a case of food poisening after consuming said pizza? Then you bet youre entitled to getting your money back. (and damages in the last case)

The pizza is as i ordered it. It has pepperoni, green peppers, onion and chili. The ingredients are not rotten. The only insects on the pizza is the red in the pepperoni and I didn't get a food poisoning. I'm sure most people would eat the pizza without problems but it doesn't quite work for me just now. But some chicken would so I can just take the pizza to any grill bar i want and trade it in for half a fried chicken, fries and cucumber salad because I'm a consumer and I have rights, damn it!

And it should exactly be the same with software bought on/offline. Software doesnt run? Doesnt have the advertised features? False advertisement? Causes your PC to crash?

Software doesn't run on your computer but runs on mine? Your problem. Doesn't have the advertised features? False advertisement? The games industry bids you welcome to 2014. Latest example: Watch Dogs.

All these are legitimate reasons for getting your money back in any other industry in the world.. yet for some reason you say that software should not adhere to the same laws and standards as every other industry in the world... because... you say so...

Not because I say so but because you're running with your eyes closed down a road that leads to software patents (computer implemented solutions) on a large scale, lack of choice and general suck. You're not buying a chair or a car or a pizza you're buying bits and bytes and developer time. All things quite immaterial. Or do you think companies like reimbursing their costumers? It's a lot of work just because some dumb ass doesn't know the difference between DirectX 11 and Core i5. It would be easier and just as profitable to give your software away for donations. If you want to ruin some ones hobby why not knitting or crosswords puzzlers. Why mine? Why gaming?

Imagine if PC wasn't as strong as it was last generation and both Sony and MS could do as as they intended with this gens consoles. Remember how Xbox one was revealed? That is what you are advocating for when you want to sells software as hardware. In the end it's all going to be patents and locked hardware. Because if software and hardware is the same you have to respect the inevitable software patents and legal bullshit that's gonna come along with that. Software and hardware is not the same. Do you think this is okay? http://www.google.co.in/patents/EP0807891A1?cl=en . That Sun Microsystems owns(!) a patent on a "computer implemented solution" in this case online shopping baskets? And who is stopping the big companies from patenting their competition out if business if they could? And they can if software is to be sold as hardware. All warning lights should be flashing but every body is worried about their consumer rights.

As for who has to reimburse you:

Allways the people who took your money.

The people who took my money already sent most of it to the people who earned my money or vice versa. Either way it's split 90/10 between them. I placed the order online and paid with my card. I had to pay extra for the chili so i payed the rest cash.

It is not and should not be the customers problem how the website and the delivery service or steam and the devs deal with each other. Internet service/Steam takes your money, they are the ones that have to give it back after they sold you a faulty buggy product that doesnt work or was falsely advertisedon their service.

It's not the consumers or your problem. You don't have to use Steam. It's not taxes or a TV license. You don't have to spend an single cent on Steam. And I still think that if you want your money back it's between you and the developer. And their rights should be protected as well from the consumers. Steam is still just a platform to sell games as Just-Eat is a platform to sell take out and any problems with the product there is between you and the restaurant.

 

[Avaholic03]

Right...because indie developers often have a large marketing budget to "help their works stand apart from the crowd". In fact, the very definition of a "good developer" to me is someone who doesn't use their money for marketing, but instead uses it to better their game. So if anything, the shitty developers would have more marketing dollars to cloud the picture (since they obviously aren't putting as much effort into their games), while the good developers would continue to get lost in the shuffle.

Why are games different from anything else that is sold in shops? Marketing is part of business regardless of sector you are in for the simple reason, the more people that have heard of you product the more people that buy it. It doesn't matter how good your game is if no one knows it it exists.

Because in shops, people can still evaluate the completeness and quality of the product BEFORE buying it (regardless of how much it's marketed). A game, especially with digital delivery, can't really be evaluated until it's purchased and played (especially with the decline in free demos). So it relies so much more on marketing...and mostly that just involves what they put on the store page (since the average consumer isn't reading a ton of reviews or watching Let's Plays before buying a game). At the very least, Steam needs to crack down on games with dishonest marketing practices. I'm not saying they need to eliminate all mediocre or potentially disappointing games, but at least make all developers adhere to rules for honesty. That would significantly cut down on the number of shitty games published on Steam that bury the good games on the all-important "new releases" list.

 

[dochmbi]

You walk into a hardware store, get a new tool, it is completely broken and useless and you go back and they laugh in your face and say "sorry, no refunds, oh, and there is no warranty service either, so you are just fucked". That is the situation right now on steam. This is what it means to combine a policy of no quality control with no refunds. It should be illegal!

 

[Cecilo]

You walk into a hardware store, get a new tool, it is completely broken and useless and you go back and they laugh in your face and say "sorry, no refunds, oh, and there is no warranty service either, so you are just fucked". That is the situation right now on steam. This is what it means to combine a policy of no quality control with no refunds. It should be illegal!

...I am fairly sure for most tools I could tell if it is broken or not at the store. If you still bought that product, it is on YOU. Not the company that sold it to you. And it is the same thing I have a problem with when it comes to games. If you are pre-ordering games before they are out, if you are buying them on trust, if you are buying them just because you have spare money. It is on you if you get a bad game.

There is more than enough resources out there to give you an idea if you will like the game, if it will work for you, if it will x, y or z.

 

[Rariow]

back then they didnt have the volume of games added to their store they have today, and great games have come from steam opening its doors, games such as rogue legacy, papers please and the stanley parable were accepted to the store via greenlight

That's exactly the problem though. It's good that Rogue Legacy, Papers, Please and Stanley Parable got on Steam, I don't think anyone will deny that. The thing is, before Steam opened the floodgates, these games might have had more trouble getting through, but could still have done it. Steam was always a bastion for indie games. Awesomenauts, Reccetear and Rock of Ages all made it onto Steam perfectly fine. Sure, people might have missed out on a few games (Space Pirates and Zombies and Paranautical Activity are two that spring to mind as having undeserved trouble getting on the service), but a huge number of great indie titles that no one heard of before got on.

This used to be a big thing for a dev. Indie titles on Steam got a huge sales boost, and it was extremely beneficial for the devs. Now, with anything going on, the good stuff is just getting buried. When you see stuff like Guise of the Wolf on the service, you're discouraged from buying. This may be using anecdotal evidence, but I know since the floodgates have been opened I'm very reluctant to impulse-buy an unknown indie game just to try it out, because the marketplace is just so overwhelmingly full of shit. It's seriously hurting the discoverability of great indie titles that previously may have become hits by virtue of being on Steam.

and for that matter, how come people only talk about the obscure bad games? ive seen earth 2066 and air control get mentioned more often than FLY'N, teslagrad, and valdis story

Just because these are games that have gotten a lot of press. I only mention stuff like Guise of the Wolf or Air Control because there's been big controversies around them, and I expect people to know that they're terrible. I seem to have run into the other person on the planet who played FLY'N in the form of you, so it isn't really something you can expect people to know about.

How can you compare Towns to Big Rigs? I've spend 78 hours on Towns and no one would be able to do that on Big Rigs. Probably not even just to spite me. I think Towns was a great take on city building, your town being a town in a video game, having to attract and support heroes to clear out the dungeon below the town. Was it a good game? No it was broken. Completely. Was it finished? Yeah probably. I doubt it was worth working any more on considering the problems the (inexperienced) developers had, at least. Is it a shame? Very much so. I'd buy Towns 2 on early access for 20 euros if I could, though. And I would trust them to make it better too.

Don't get me wrong, Towns is an infinitely better game than Big Rigs, but the principle still stands. The game was allowed on Steam in an unfinished state, was still not fixed when the developer abandoned it, and Steam didn't care. Can you imagine going to GameStop, and buying a game that's not finished? The sole concept is ridiculous.

So if you like games about horsies (be it ironic of creepy), is german or like base building games like prison simulator you and your taste is second rate and should be banished from stores or at least culled and sent to the bin behind the huge card board cutout from the next big game with guns and lens flares.

Prison Tycoon was horribly reviewed, that's why I listed it. The point is, that all of the three games I mention are bad. No, I don't care what your tastes are. There's better horse-related games than Barbie Horse Adventures, and Garbage Truck Simulator is both a bad game and a bad simulation of a garbage truck. If this weren't enough, all of these games are old. Do old games not deserve a chance? Of course they do. But not at the cost of new, up-and-coming releases. Steam floods the front page with old, badly made crap. This means you simply can't find the good stuff. And sure, tastes vary, but when you're putting a game on the front page of the biggest digital distribution platform in the world, you're giving it a certain sales bump, and, with something like Air Control, extremely few people will get any glimpse of enjoyment out of it. If you put that on the front shelves at a physical store, people WOULD buy it, and then they WOULD come back to your store with complaints in droves. Just because you're digital doesn't mean you get to cover your ears to their complaints the way Steam's doing right now with their one-refund per account policy.

 

[Albino Boo]

Because in shops, people can still evaluate the completeness and quality of the product BEFORE buying it (regardless of how much it's marketed). A game, especially with digital delivery, can't really be evaluated until it's purchased and played (especially with the decline in free demos). So it relies so much more on marketing...and mostly that just involves what they put on the store page (since the average consumer isn't reading a ton of reviews or watching Let's Plays before buying a game). At the very least, Steam needs to crack down on games with dishonest marketing practices. I'm not saying they need to eliminate all mediocre or potentially disappointing games, but at least make all developers adhere to rules for honesty. That would significantly cut down on the number of shitty games published on Steam that bury the good games on the all-important "new releases" list.

The itunes store contains 26,000,000+ songs worldwide, 1,000,000+ podcasts (US), 40,000+ music videos (US), 3,000+ TV shows (US), 20,000+ audiobooks (US), 45,000+ movies (US), 1,000,000+ App Store apps. The kindle store contains 513000 books. Steam contains 3600 games. Why is one digital product not like the others?

 

[SadisticFire]

Apparently Mr. Newman is unfamiliar with his history because market over saturation is exactly what caused the great crash of the '83.

I think asking Garry to make any reasonable knowledge is asking quite a bit. But that's me because I'm from Gmod. And he messed so much stuff up :<
And yeah what a lot of people are saying, just don't put the shovelware on the front page, the actual good games, the ones that people were hyped for release on the front page.

 

[Eve Charm]

Well there won't be a crash, but the value of asking for games will go down quite a bit. What was your last 20 dollar impulse purchase that wasn't a game like transistor praised everywhere. Years ago if the game was on steam, there was a good chance it was good, Now it's lucky if you get what is barely considered a game.

XBLA indies if they aren't a dollar or two barely see sales, Moblie needs to be free or a dollar at most unless it has a hype train behind to with, then in app ads or purchases galore. That's going to be steam soon, How many games are we going to start seeing with in app purchases all over or ads, or hell even bitcoin miners.

A Market in which consumers stop spending more because it's too flooded of crap will hurt the devs in the long run.

And as far as Gmod and Rust go, How hard would it really be for someone to clone those and stick them up for free in an open market with ads?

 

[Raynor Stott]

Restricting the amount of games released is a very bad idea. When someone buys a game they should at least do a little research (read reviews from reviewers they like, YouTube game-play footage etc).
My feelings are more to do with the early access program that in theory is a great way for people to get their games seen. That is where quality control needs to come in, and I'm not meaning whether a person enjoys the game or not but the minimum technical aspects of the game IE: do the screenshot pictures match or even resemble parts of the game? is the game even playable? For a game to be placed on early access Steam should post up a minimum requirements that game developers have to agree to and submit the game to steam for a check over before its put up. This would stop alot of the 3 hour developers putting out shiny screenshots from google images to advertise their games,

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

back then they didnt have the volume of games added to their store they have today, and great games have come from steam opening its doors, games such as rogue legacy, papers please and the stanley parable were accepted to the store via greenlight

That's exactly the problem though. It's good that Rogue Legacy, Papers, Please and Stanley Parable got on Steam, I don't think anyone will deny that. The thing is, before Steam opened the floodgates, these games might have had more trouble getting through, but could still have done it. Steam was always a bastion for indie games. Awesomenauts, Reccetear and Rock of Ages all made it onto Steam perfectly fine. Sure, people might have missed out on a few games (Space Pirates and Zombies and Paranautical Activity are two that spring to mind as having undeserved trouble getting on the service), but a huge number of great indie titles that no one heard of before got on.

This used to be a big thing for a dev. Indie titles on Steam got a huge sales boost, and it was extremely beneficial for the devs. Now, with anything going on, the good stuff is just getting buried. When you see stuff like Guise of the Wolf on the service, you're discouraged from buying. This may be using anecdotal evidence, but I know since the floodgates have been opened I'm very reluctant to impulse-buy an unknown indie game just to try it out, because the marketplace is just so overwhelmingly full of shit. It's seriously hurting the discoverability of great indie titles that previously may have become hits by virtue of being on Steam.

unity of command also had a lot of trouble getting into steam, steam was in fact well known for being a bit problematic to get into, atleast for indie devs, with many of them failing numerous times to get into the store

but impulse buying a game you dont know nothing about was never a good idea, and nowadays you can check the user reviews to see if its actually good or not, go to the air control page or guise of the wolf, full of negative reviews, go to noitu love 2 devolution's page, positive reviews

and for that matter, how come people only talk about the obscure bad games? ive seen earth 2066 and air control get mentioned more often than FLY'N, teslagrad, and valdis story

Just because these are games that have gotten a lot of press. I only mention stuff like Guise of the Wolf or Air Control because there's been big controversies around them, and I expect people to know that they're terrible. I seem to have run into the other person on the planet who played FLY'N in the form of you, so it isn't really something you can expect people to know about.

you point out exactly what steam needs, not a smaller volume of games, but a system that allows good hidden gems to be discovered while letting bad games fade into obscurity

if it was up to me, id use tags and user reviews to set up a special "recommended section" on the storefront, maybe alongside the "new releases", "best selling", "comming soon" and "specials", this recommended section would be personalized, with games being selected according to the tags of the games you play regulary and the numbers of positive, helpful reviews users have given to those games

bad games would fall into obscurity and good games would get extra sales

the existing recommended section on steam is not located on the front page and is horribly outdated and inacurate

 

[Vigormortis]

I have a few questions for those who're screaming, "Valve should employ quality control systems! They should hire someone to distinguish the good games from the garbage!"

* Who gets to decide what constitutes a "good" game and what constitutes a "bad" game?
* By what metric(s) are we to gauge the quality of a game?
* Do these metrics include a user's personal enjoyment of a game, regardless of quality?
* Do these metrics include some method of gauging what a game is worth, monetarily?
* Does this gauging of worth factor into a forced pricing model?
* To whom do we grant the power and right to tell all gamers everywhere what games they're supposed to enjoy?
* Will you ***** and moan when that little indie project you're all excited for ends up being denied from Steam because it failed to live up to Steam's "level of quality"?

I detest shovelware as much as the next person. But where do we draw the line in deciding what games are fun to us and what games are fun to others? While you might love playing Bioshock, or Mass Effect, or Watch Dogs, someone else might derive far more enjoyment out of those dime-a-dozen simulator games, or those nostalgia-ridden remakes, or those "artsy" indie games.

You may not like games in the latter genres, but does that really give you, or anyone, the right to deny the developer of those games from releasing those games on Steam - to a dedicated player-base[footnote]Small as it may be.[/footnote]?

While I feel Valve should employ better filtering options and systems in how and where games are listed and displayed, the notion of them actively denying games based on subjective opinions of "quality" is out of the question.

 

[Lunar Templar]

um ... no

Steam should limit what gets on its platform, because most the stuff that gets release en-mass is total, irredeemable shit that only exists to make a quick buck off the ignorant.

 

[Hateren47]

How can you compare Towns to Big Rigs? I've spend 78 hours on Towns and no one would be able to do that on Big Rigs. Probably not even just to spite me. I think Towns was a great take on city building, your town being a town in a video game, having to attract and support heroes to clear out the dungeon below the town. Was it a good game? No it was broken. Completely. Was it finished? Yeah probably. I doubt it was worth working any more on considering the problems the (inexperienced) developers had, at least. Is it a shame? Very much so. I'd buy Towns 2 on early access for 20 euros if I could, though. And I would trust them to make it better too.

Don't get me wrong, Towns is an infinitely better game than Big Rigs, but the principle still stands. The game was allowed on Steam in an unfinished state, was still not fixed when the developer abandoned it, and Steam didn't care. Can you imagine going to GameStop, and buying a game that's not finished? The sole concept is ridiculous.

No I can't even imagine buying a game from GameStop at all. But I do own quite a few unfinished games on Steam, some that I wanted to play right away like Space Base DF-9 which I have played since Alpha2 and some I just wanted to support and follow like Star Forge because they look like good ideas that I want to play when it gets better.

Another thing, the current top seller on Steam right now appears to be The Forest, an Early Access game. Second on the list is The Stomping Land another Early Access game. Then in third place, completely finished and with half the promised features, Watch Dogs. So I'm not the only one who likes to get in on the Early Access action either.

So if you like games about horsies (be it ironic of creepy), is german or like base building games like prison simulator you and your taste is second rate and should be banished from stores or at least culled and sent to the bin behind the huge card board cutout from the next big game with guns and lens flares.

Prison Tycoon was horribly reviewed, that's why I listed it. The point is, that all of the three games I mention are bad. No, I don't care what your tastes are. There's better horse-related games than Barbie Horse Adventures, and Garbage Truck Simulator is both a bad game and a bad simulation of a garbage truck. If this weren't enough, all of these games are old. Do old games not deserve a chance? Of course they do. But not at the cost of new, up-and-coming releases. Steam floods the front page with old, badly made crap. This means you simply can't find the good stuff. And sure, tastes vary, but when you're putting a game on the front page of the biggest digital distribution platform in the world, you're giving it a certain sales bump, and, with something like Air Control, extremely few people will get any glimpse of enjoyment out of it. If you put that on the front shelves at a physical store, people WOULD buy it, and then they WOULD come back to your store with complaints in droves. Just because you're digital doesn't mean you get to cover your ears to their complaints the way Steam's doing right now with their one-refund per account policy.

I don't see any of those games on the front page just now though. And are there any "good" games that are missing from the front page in your opinion?

 

[cypher-raige]

And as far as Gmod and Rust go, How hard would it really be for someone to clone those and stick them up for free in an open market with ads?

They would not have the community that Facepunch/Valve has and their games would be called out for the ripoffs that they are, like with the WarZ.

 

[cypher-raige]

Also, I'll be blunt in saying that I'm not a big fan of people selling home-brew creations using things like SOURCE either, for similar reasons to why I have issues with RPG Maker. That said, I can see why STEAM supports their own engine this way. To me selling things made with RPG maker or Source for the most part is similar to someone selling things they made with say the toolbox in Elder Scrolls.

It's not homebrew. People use the Source SDK to make their mod. Then they get a license for the engine to make a full game. (Dear Esther and Stanley Parable being two recent examples.)
This can also apply to other engines like Unreal or Cryengine.
Without mods we wouldn't have CS, Dota, Killing Floor, Team Fortress, DayZ etc.

 

[Sight Unseen]

I don't think releasing more trash is going to help the market. I can barely tell what shit is coming out these days. There is just so much and I can't really get myself to care about it. All of these games coming out and not one of them is a good RTS.

I feel this every day I open Steam, I don't even bother with the front page any more and I only wait for what was tagged on my wishlist as a form of bookmarking for the few games I want to go on sale, apart from that there's nothing new on there that's made me want to buy it full price in an instant, last game I bought was Bioshock Infinite.

So far Planetary Annihilation seems like the only actual RTS game on there and it's still in early access, there's eventually going to be grey Goo but the RTS genre has gotten really small the past couple of years.

I'd also agree on the too much trash isn't a good idea, the guy is only singing this tune because his barebones game got lapped up by people that thought it was fresh but with lower standards of quality, the guy ignores this and thinks more crap is better, I didn't have to wade through steam 3-4 years ago for games I'd want.

Umm... There's way more RTS's than just Planetary Annihilation.

http://store.steampowered.com/tag/en/RTS/