Someone on YouTube recently looked at exactly what those 50 games are. She tried to give all the ones she bought (she looked at most of the 50 in the store) a fair shake, tried to "find the fun" and give it an honest assessment while trying to at least get a laugh out of it.
Though I'll summarize what she played that was released on August 4th, 2025, of what she chose to buy:
* "The Last Mage" was a game produced very cheaply by apparently a lone gal (the videographer found the dev diary) that was a fan of K-pop, levered heavily on existing assets, to produce a campy idea as best she could.
* "You Suck at Football" levered existing "viral game" ideas like "Only Up". Very much someone's early attempts.
* "Velocity Racing 1000" was a racing game that appeared like someone's early attempts. Very wonky controls and physics.
* "Potato Cop" is a simple action game in an deliberately "amateur style", likely produced very quickly and cheaply. She had fun with it though.
* "Escape from Amazonia" is an horror game with a quirky plot premise that did elicit some actual screams. Again, produced very quickly and cheaply, but she had some fun with it.
* "Descent" was a horror game with some genuine attempts on the presentation side, and again elicited some screams. Some clear effort there. Someone was on to something with this one, and it's a shame they didn't refine it further.
* "Agu" is a crude, early access, challenging platformer. This won't go anywhere, but the videographer made the best of it and had some fun with the sheer difficulty of overcoming the physics.
* "Bee Simulator: The Hive" had some FANTASTIC presentation and assets. Localized for 14 languages. Great voiceover. Somewhat educational. It's apparently a re-release of a previous game which is why it has poor reviews. Some quirks and bugs, but some might really enjoy it.
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So are you really "competing" with 50 other games if you put out something extremely high quality and polished? No. You might be competing with 5... at most. If you put out a genuine banger and took the time to market it in advance, you should get noticed.
Steam's algorithms clearly are doing a good job and ensuring most of this stuff isn't getting much visibility outside of release. Though it's there to find if you deliberately look to unearth all of it.
> If you put out a genuine banger and took the time to market it in advance, you should get noticed.
The emphasized part of this quote is probably far more important than you give credit for.
I imagine a lot of solo game devs simply don't have the money to pay for marketing, and with many communities having rules against self-promotion, combined with the latest Discord phishing scam being "Hey can you try my game?" and delivering a trojan, it can be hard to get your game in front of people. Even if you're in a community for game devs, most of members are there to get people to play their game, not someone looking for a game to try.
I bet there are some real diamonds out there, hidden in obscurity, lost in the landfill of early attempts at making a game.
Even if a prospective developer were competing with only a single quality indie game release per day, that's 365 games per year, every year and people generally don't finish any given game in a day. The odds are still stacked quite heavily against them.
It was Goodyear, specifically the Eagle VR50. The advertisement featured a Ferrari 308 GTB.
Ferrari had only adopted radial tires in racing a decade earlier. I'm curious as to what deal they got with Goodyear at the time, as radial tires (including high performance versions) were already long ubiquitous in the United States by the time that commercial came out, which I believe was actually after the end of the 308's production run.
Yep, moreover they cost a whopping $7. Not only can you ensure things are in a safe range, but also not too cold to further improve efficiency.
An oven thermometer is another one I’ll recommend, as the temperature the oven claims it’s at is a function of where the sensors are. It’s not uncommon for it to be consistently off by 5-6%, which can really matter if you want the best results. Again, about $7 can solve that one too.
Figured I'd mention an open source guide of mine here, as I expect I'll have a way to disable these ads without any third-party tools, as I have done to address all the other things so far:
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So I had many of the same concerns regarding Windows 11's nonsense when it came out, but I sat down, learned how to clean it up, and put a Creative Commons open source guide for others to follow. I knew many other reluctant friends who are senior devs at prolific companies in the tech space, and with my guide they seem to have no real remaining complaints.
It covers both the initial installation, as well as all my post-install recommendations. It eliminates I believe all the tracking, adware, suggestions, Cortana, feeding the Bing/ChatGPT machine, telemetry, etc. Absolutely nothing breaks. No need for a Microsoft account. It should be straightforward and to-the-click/keystroke.
So I had similar concerns regarding Windows 11, but I sat down, learned how to clean it up, and put a Creative Commons open source guide for others to follow. I knew many other reluctant friends who are senior devs at prolific companies in the tech space, and with my guide they seem to have no real remaining complaints.
It covers both the initial installation, as well as all my post-install recommendations. It eliminates I believe all the tracking, adware, suggestions, Cortana, feeding the Bing/ChatGPT machine, telemetry, etc. Absolutely nothing breaks. No need for a Microsoft account. It should be straightforward and to-the-click/keystroke.
This is gods work. But it also convinced me to not install windows 11. In particular the post install notes is such a massive amount of labor to get what I get out of the box with other OS. I’m now 100% convinced to not upgrade, and hold hope that Linux gaming as driven by valve matures into something usable by the time win10 becomes non-viable.
I don’t disagree. In terms of wall clock time, I do run through my entire guide prior to every release and it’s about one total hour including the installation of the OS itself, and I’d say 40 minutes or so is part 3, which is the bulk of the guide.
I don’t disagree that it shouldn’t be necessary, though thankfully it’s a one time cost.
Is there a fix for the insidious problem of updates changing your settings to less secure/privacy conscious ones or is that a constant fight we just have to fight if you're on windows?
I've bookmarked your guide, and will use it when I setup a W11 machine in 2025. I haven't used 11 yet, but I understand the taskbar is no longer full length and is now more like the mac dock.
Is there a fix for that other than installing something like OpenShell?
Honestly I don't even use the win10 bar because it wouldn't let me ungroup applications even if the setting to do so was checked.
I have two monitors, and might want some distances of the same application to be on separate taskbars with two monitors, and it just wouldn't respect that at all.
I use OpenShell currently, but I really shouldn't have to.
It’s not that it’s not full length, it’s that it’s center aligned by default. It’s a very quick change to left-align it again, and that’s in the guide.
You cannot drag files onto it to open in other programs or copy/move them, last I checked. This is a showstopper for my workflow. I just want to drag a file over my explorer icon, choose the window from the popup preview that I want to move it to, have the window get focus, and drop it in the window to move it. Or drag a file over a program icon, have the program get focus, and drop the file on it to open it. Apparently, that is too difficult to port from every previous version of Windows into v11. It sucks.
Does the preview not open up? I run Windows 11 but I'm so old school that I don't group taskbar buttons and you drag a file to the taskbar it will bring the app into focus and I drop it on that app.
But I noticed that I don't get the preview when dragging over the button but that might also have something to do with my particular setup.
I just made a very cursory look into this, but this is possibly that a Group Policy default that has changed to a different setting in Windows 11 than it had been in previous versions of Windows.
It absolutely does work if you disable UAC via Group Policy, but disabling UAC in my opinion is much a step too far as that loosens security in too many areas and would greatly increase Windows 11's attack surface.
I'll open an issue to investigate trying to identify the Group Policy setting to change to specifically re-enable this behavior without disabling UAC. Be advised that it'll be a few weeks as I'll be waiting until the January patch to drop (should be January 9th, 2024) for me to test prior to the January 2024 update to the guide.
I’ve put a text-based guide out on GitHub for people to follow. It covers both the initial installation, as well as all my post-install recommendations. It eliminates I believe all the tracking, adware, suggestions, Cortana, feeding the Bing/ChatGPT machine, telemetry, etc. Absolutely nothing breaks. I’ve had some seniors at some very prolific companies vet the guide by using it themselves — should be straightforward and to-the-click/keystroke for Windows 11 22H2 as of 2023-05-02.
I went with just text, point-and-click directions initially so people can at least intuit how they’d reverse any changes. I may consider making a scripted solution in the future, but no promises ;)
The majority of things can be done via the Settings app. Some are Local Group Policy settings. There’s a few PowerShell commands to remove pre-installed packages. There’s only 2 or 3 registry tweaks.
If there’s any bugbears, create an issue. I’ll be responding to them every few weeks.
I degarbaged mine by installing linux and calling it a day. Why would i want to pay for a product that constantly pushes for things i dont want, doesn't respect my privacy, runs ads on my desktop and looks horrible? Worse, microsoft, an extremely profitable corporation relies on the goodwill of people like you to turn it into a positive experience. Shame you dont prefer linux because your help would be greatly appreciated in making it an even better experience.
I have used Linux since 1996. Since before the 2.0 kernel. Back when GNU Hurd was coming out any day now.
Heck, I’ve used Debian since Debian 1.0.
Most of my home infrastructure is Linux and BSD. I’ve used MacOS very heavily since 2004. I used to daily-drive VMS on both VAXes and Alpha. I still miss parts of Solaris. Amber was the better terminal color.
I do have to use Windows quite a bit in a professional environment - even if simply as a window manager - so when I had to create environments for myself, I made sure it wasn’t ever a hindrance. Moreover, I’ve had people ask to make it easy for them. Historically I distributed guides as a one-off to friends and colleagues, but yesterday finally released it for everyone to take advantage of.
Damn that's impressive. I should have guessed you had an open source background since you saw a problem, found a solution, then you shared it. In my set-up for the rare occasions when I do need windows, I run it inside Qemu and PCI Pass-through my laptop dedicated GPU and on my desktop a second GPU. I just can't stand what windows does in terms of privacy and nagware. It feels like it's run by the very same people that used to spread malware back in the day.
I dunno. Any time I've tried to submit a ticket for a GUI related problem on Linux the answer has been "talk to the hand".
You'd think allocating enough space for text labels to fit (and not overlap with each other, fall off the edge of the container, etc.) in the user interface is "blub"
I don't know but the ui in KDE looks good to me. It may have been the case that linux users didn't care about looks but it seems like that's changing. I would totally not want to use an ugly looking os - that space is dominated by windows.
Video here (fun watch!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6_qbe26m9E
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Though I'll summarize what she played that was released on August 4th, 2025, of what she chose to buy:
* "The Last Mage" was a game produced very cheaply by apparently a lone gal (the videographer found the dev diary) that was a fan of K-pop, levered heavily on existing assets, to produce a campy idea as best she could.
* "You Suck at Football" levered existing "viral game" ideas like "Only Up". Very much someone's early attempts.
* "Velocity Racing 1000" was a racing game that appeared like someone's early attempts. Very wonky controls and physics.
* "Potato Cop" is a simple action game in an deliberately "amateur style", likely produced very quickly and cheaply. She had fun with it though.
* "Escape from Amazonia" is an horror game with a quirky plot premise that did elicit some actual screams. Again, produced very quickly and cheaply, but she had some fun with it.
* "Descent" was a horror game with some genuine attempts on the presentation side, and again elicited some screams. Some clear effort there. Someone was on to something with this one, and it's a shame they didn't refine it further.
* "Agu" is a crude, early access, challenging platformer. This won't go anywhere, but the videographer made the best of it and had some fun with the sheer difficulty of overcoming the physics.
* "Bee Simulator: The Hive" had some FANTASTIC presentation and assets. Localized for 14 languages. Great voiceover. Somewhat educational. It's apparently a re-release of a previous game which is why it has poor reviews. Some quirks and bugs, but some might really enjoy it.
-- -----
So are you really "competing" with 50 other games if you put out something extremely high quality and polished? No. You might be competing with 5... at most. If you put out a genuine banger and took the time to market it in advance, you should get noticed.
Steam's algorithms clearly are doing a good job and ensuring most of this stuff isn't getting much visibility outside of release. Though it's there to find if you deliberately look to unearth all of it.