YouTuber NerdCubed Denounces Steam, Plans on curating own store

[Bleedman0xx]

TB's videos on bad games still sell them since people will buy it just to see how bad they are or because they think it's funny. It's not like TB doesn't also heavily criticize Valve and how shit the Steam store has become. NerdCubed is a huge gaming channel and publicly pulling support for Steam might have a ripple effect among his subcribers and cause some of them to abandon it as well. Let's be honest here, Valve does not give a single fuck about customers anymore and the only way to change things is to vote with your wallet. What he is doing is simply a different way of trying to get people to do that. There is nothing uncivilized about it, in fact I'd argue that putting your foot down and sticking up for what you believe is a very civilized thing. Why should he feature videos of bad games? Why should he give shit developers, thieves, and scam artists money in order to buy a game and showcase it? 

I would be interested in a video or discussion on if there is any real noticeable correlation to spiked sales of a bad game that TB made a video of. Hopefully he is able to research that given that he can look at his Steam Curation/Youtube stats. I remember him talking about how even though the game "I Am Bread" got really popular on YouTube for a while, he found that very few people actually playing the game via a Steam stats page.

 

More than that. Simply raising awareness of a product increases sales. There was a TV advert in America that simply repeated the name of the product over and over. Incredibly irritating, but effective enough. All an advert has to do is get the product or company name stuck in peoples heads, make people aware that it exists.

Head On! Apply directly to the forehead!

 

That's a brilliiant comment, sir.

 

On topic: Dan is right, steam used to be like a humble bundle, GoG, a place where only good games come out, now we have things like dayz... 2 years in early access if a recall correctly, its sad he quit steam curators because i have bought games that he recomended and turned out to be terrific games!

I find it sad too. He obviously has a big following, yet he just decided to take his ball and go home. His reasons for leaving it are just silly, imo.

[Victorious Secret]

You mother fucker. I thought you were a trustable YouTube persona but this was what you all were from the start. You aren't doing this because you care about people or your integrity. You are doing this because you want to take a cut from every game you review. And Humble Store will do exactly that something which Steam would never do for you. Fuck you Nerdcubed. You have lost all your credibility.

 

He said he won't take any cuts or profit from the Humble Store for anything he does... he's doing it on his own and for free as far as the Humble Store and his own curation is concerned...

[StingBull]

He said he won't take any cuts or profit from the Humble Store for anything he does... he's doing it on his own and for free as far as the Humble Store and his own curation is concerned...

 

And Humble Bundle started out as Humble Indie Bundle where only the indie games would get a chance to find audience. That didn't last long now did it.

[zappian]

Early access killed a steam star.

 

Bonus points if you get the reference of my horrible joke.

[EChondo]

Obviously, this YouTuber doesn't trust people to vote with their wallets. Which, more often than you'd think, many people are more than capable to do so. So, how does he deal with it? Does he deal with it like a civilized person and educate his viewers about games that might possibly be bad like say TotalBiscuit? No... Instead, he denounces Steam, takes his ball and goes home. This guy is a loser in my book.

 

Uh, didn't he just do this by removing his curating page, making a video as to why, and is now making his own curating website for games? Isn't that what this video and article is about?

 

From the article;

 

Hardcastle's plan now that he's left Steam? To create his own storefront by way of Humble and do his own curation there. He does not plan to take any sort of cut from it—no money whatsoever. In his eyes, that means everybody wins. Developers get more money, and he doesn't have any conflict of interest. He added: "Basically what I've done is gone, 'I'm gonna build my own Steam, with blackjack and Hooker Simulator 2015.'"

 

So he is basically doing what you're suggesting he do, and more, but you're labeling him a loser? Did you even read the article and/or watch his video?

[Derangel]

I would be interested in a video or discussion on if there is any real noticeable correlation to spiked sales of a bad game that TB made a video of. Hopefully he is able to research that given that he can look at his Steam Curation/Youtube stats. I remember him talking about how even though the game "I Am Bread" got really popular on YouTube for a while, he found that very few people actually playing the game via a Steam stats page.

 

I really wish Valve published sales numbers. It would be interesting to see what effects people like Pewdiepie, TB, etc have on game sales.

[EChondo]

I really wish Valve published sales numbers. It would be interesting to see what effects people like Pewdiepie, TB, etc have on game sales.

Actually there have been articles about this, no sales numbers from what I can find, but it's quite a good read. Gamasutra covered this just last year, Aaron San Filippo, creator of Race the Sun, told Gamasutra that;

 

 

"When DanNerdCubed played Race The Sun and linked our Greenlight page, it had a bigger impact than all of the website coverage we'd had up to that point, combined"

 

"I'm also pretty sure that TotalBiscuit's coverage on our Steam launch day helped increase our week one sales a lot, which probably helped keep us on the Steam frontpage longer. If we're smart, we'll try to arrange this type of event more intentionally next time!"

 

And from Cliff Harris of Postitech Games said;

 

 

While it can be difficult to see any real correlation in the long-term, YouTuber coverage appears to trump traditional press coverage. "I'm not really aware of any games site for whom coverage of your game will result in an immediately noticeable sales spike," he notes, "but I have seen that with a YouTube Let's Play."

 

Another from UK dev Dan Pierce;

 

 

"Specifically, getting covered by Total Biscuit gave us a sales spike that roughly mirrored the game being on sale for a week. Getting covered by Dan NerdCubed brought in a bump of about half that, despite his video having roughly 100k more views."

 

It's a pretty long article, but it really goes on about what happens when smaller and bigger YouTubers play games.

[Bleedman0xx]

Uh, didn't he just do this by removing his curating page, making a video as to why, and is now making his own curating website for games? Isn't that what this video and article is about?

 

Not in my opinion. To me, that's the same as taking your ball and going home (I've said this too many times now, it's getting stale.)

 

So he is basically doing what you're suggesting he do, and more, but you're labeling him a loser? Did you even read the article and/or watch his video?

 

I'm not familiar to how Humble's curation system works. Are you able to list any game or just games that Humble is allowed to sell? If it's the latter, that could leave out a lot of decent stuff. Anyway, as I've said before, he obviously wants things to go back to how it was with Steam; Harder for devs to sell their games. Harder to find hidden-gems. Harder to promote creativity overall. No system is perfect. But I believe, the best system is an open one. People just need to stop whining, learn to take the good with the bad (as it is with pretty much everything in life) and learn to vote with their wallets. If people are buying shit-tier things in their life, then that's their prerogative.

[Derangel]

Not in my opinion. To me, that's the same as taking your ball and going home (I've said this too many times now, it's getting stale.)

 

 

I'm not familiar to how Humble's curation system works. Are you able to list any game or just games that Humble is allowed to sell? If it's the latter, that could leave out a lot of decent stuff. Anyway, as I've said before, he obviously wants things to go back to how it was with Steam; Harder for devs to sell their games. Harder to find hidden-gems. Harder to promote creativity overall. No system is perfect. But I believe, the best system is an open one. People just need to stop whining, learn to take the good with the bad (as it is with pretty much everything in life) and learn to vote with their wallets. If people are buying shit-tier things in their life, then that's their prerogative.

 

Harder to find hidden-gems? It's much harder to find those titles now than it ever was. It SHOULD be harder for developers to get on Steam. Greenlight and Early Access are fucking broken and shit these days. Valve seems to allow any half-assed publisher to mass offload their shit games to the store with no care. Valve only gives a damn in the incredibly rare case where they are FORCED to respond by mass public pressure. It's pretty much impossible to just run across something cool unless it's a highly featured indie-darling game. As a store front Steam is complete shit.

[Bleedman0xx]

Harder to find hidden-gems? It's much harder to find those titles now than it ever was. It SHOULD be harder for developers to get on Steam. Greenlight and Early Access are fucking broken and shit these days. Valve seems to allow any half-assed publisher to mass offload their shit games to the store with no care.

 

 

I believe I can see your problem. You want Valve to curate their store. Now let me ask you: Why should they? They have said plenty of times in the past that they want their service to be more open. They simply chose not curate it any longer and it's their right to do so. They have zero obligation to baby you when it comes to your taste or anybody's taste in video games. Just keep in mind that Vale doesn't revolve around the "hard-core" gamer audience. They simply want to become the storefront that Gaben himself envisioned and sell video games and software. They have the right to do whatever they damn well please within the confines of the law. That's it. It's really that simple

 

Valve only gives a damn in the incredibly rare case where they are FORCED to respond by mass public pressure. It's pretty much impossible to just run across something cool unless it's a highly featured indie-darling game. As a store front Steam is complete shit.

 

Valve is a company. No company is immune to scandals or controversial events. You can stop putting Valve on this pedestal now...

[EChondo]

Not in my opinion. To me, that's the same as taking your ball and going home (I've said this too many times now, it's getting stale.)

 

 

I'm not familiar to how Humble's curation system works. Are you able to list any game or just games that Humble is allowed to sell? If it's the latter, that could leave out a lot of decent stuff. Anyway, as I've said before, he obviously wants things to go back to how it was with Steam; Harder for devs to sell their games. Harder to find hidden-gems. Harder to promote creativity overall. No system is perfect. But I believe, the best system is an open one. People just need to stop whining, learn to take the good with the bad (as it is with pretty much everything in life) and learn to vote with their wallets. If people are buying shit-tier things in their life, then that's their prerogative.

Fair enough, I'd say that since he is still trying he isn't going home, but he is taking his ball elsewhere.

 

I am not sure if it's just Humble Bundle games only, but a good example to look at is Yogscast's Humble store. From their information pull down;

 

Featuring games we’ve played on our channels, in livestreams or just with friends after a hard day at YogTowers, everything you see here has the Yogscast's deal of approval

And if there are upcoming games you'd like to see on here then please let us know at *Facebook page*

So it seems that games could be added there that aren't Humble approved, but I'm not 100% sure.

It seems NerdCubed would have his own storefront of approved games, but must be not taking a cut of the sale. Yogscast;

 

Yogscast will take a five per cent cut and Humble Bundle ten per cent. The remaining 75 per cent goes to developers, a better cut than they could expect from Steam itself.

 

So either the possible 5 percent cut will either go to Humble Bundle or back to the developers. On Yogscast's page it says that 10% goes to charity, but I'm not sure how that gets calculated unless Humble Bundle just gives their 10% cut to charity instead of getting anything.

 

As for Steam's Greenlight/Early Access systems, personally I don't mind an open system, but I'd still like it to be regulated to a certain extent. WarZ and Day One Garry's Incident should not have been on Steam from the get go. I don't buy Early Access games, but I'll vote on Greenlight if I believe the game is truly good, like Risk of Rain that was Greenlit and has been getting free updates/content constantly, and even has been moved to another engine for better compatibility and stability. I don't think it even touched Early Access because the devs were confident enough that it was a complete game by then.

 

Also I'd think it'd be more fair if Steam promoted their curation pages more, or at least the entries on certain games. The curation area on a game's page is very small and looks like it's part of the game's description sometimes. However, I won't go as far as to say that Steam is outright crap, but it definitely needs some updating.

[Trik'Stari]

I'm going to go against those hating on Steam Greenlight for a moment.

 

Yes, I bought DayZ, and yes, I was sorely disappointed with it.

 

However, it's still more enjoyable of an experience than what comes out of most publishing companies these days.

 

The reason we have an early access craze as of late, comes as a direct result of the state of the rest of the gaming industry. We have developers sacrificing quality and fun because their publisher's crack the financial whip and scream "get it out before CoD!!!!!!!@!@#@#!@#@". Sure. there have been a few bad eggs in the mix, but we should remember that it's a new format for making games, and that it's one of the very few ways a game developer can get something out, without selling their soul to the corporate whore machine. Sure, I'm kinda mad about the money I paid for the DayZ standalone, especially considering the plethora of 3rd party mods to the original mod, that are better in almost every way, despite having almost no financial backing;

 

but it still beats paying $60 for brokenfield # and CoD 1237187461723698127398175163785628374689124371289479.

 

I'm not saying "leave the devs alone!" I'm saying "give greenlight a chance". That's all.

 

The only unforgivable sin it has committed, is the spawning of depression quest and the ilk that came from it (you know who).

 

Take your pick, corporate whore's, or indie Dev's. That's really the choice that needs to be made here.

[Derangel]

I believe I can see your problem. You want Valve to curate their store. Now let me ask you: Why should they? They have said plenty of times in the past that they want their service to be more open. They simply chose not curate it any longer and it's their right to do so. They have zero obligation to baby you when it comes to your taste or anybody's taste in video games. Just keep in mind that Vale doesn't revolve around the "hard-core" gamer audience. They simply want to become the storefront that Gaben himself envisioned and sell video games and software. They have the right to do whatever they damn well please within the confines of the law. That's it. It's really that simple

 

 

Valve is a company. No company is immune to scandals or controversial events. You can stop putting Valve on this pedestal now...

 

There is a world of difference between not catering to a single market and letting any broken piece of shit on Steam with no care. Are you seriously going to defend games like Air Control, WarZ, Slaughtering Ground, Gary's Incident, etc? I like that Valve offers up a wide variety of games (and software for that matter). I want that to continue, but I also think games should have an approval process. Of course this would be less of an issue if Valve had better customer service and a real refund policy. Say what you want about EA, but they are miles a head of Valve in that area. I really don't like Gabe's vision of Steam being a place where anyone can put up anything they want with absolutely no approval process. I honestly believe doing that will flood Steam with so much shit that it will kill the service.

 

I'm harsh on Steam because they are by far the largest and most powerful force in PC gaming right now. I'm incredibly passionate about gaming, especially PC gaming and people don't tend to have mild opinions on things they're passionate about.

[AxelRantila]

What's so bad about having a store maintaining some level of neutrality on what content they allow? I'm not saying Valve is prefect when it comes to Steam, but I actually like that Steam tries to maintain some level of neutrality.

 

And with regards to Early Access. Sure, this system can be better but some games on it are some developers that actually take it seriously (The StarBound team posts near daily progress updates now on their blog and have nightly builds). And did people complain nearly as much about Dota2 being in Early access for quite some time.

[Derangel]

What's so bad about having a store maintaining some level of neutrality on what content they allow? I'm not saying Valve is prefect when it comes to Steam, but I actually like that Steam tries to maintain some level of neutrality.

 

And with regards to Early Access. Sure, this system can be better but some games on it are some developers that actually take it seriously (The StarBound team posts near daily progress updates now on their blog and have nightly builds). And did people complain nearly as much about Dota2 being in Early access for quite some time.

 

For as much as I call Early Access fucked it can be fixed pretty easily. Simply treat Early Access titles as pre-orders and allow no questions asked refunds. I know that can be easily abused by people but it's a way to fix people getting burned in cases like Spacebase DF-9 or other games that massively fail on updates or delivering promises.

[Bleedman0xx]

-snip-

 

There is a world of difference between not catering to a single market and letting any broken piece of shit on Steam with no care.

 

The more I think about this, the more it's becoming an issue of taste in video games which is largely subjective. Looking at Yogscast's store, and what do I see? Hatoful Boyfriend! A game about dating pigeons... This begs the question, how long until what's happening to Steam happens to Humble? I feel like Nerdcubed traded one "evil" for the same evil. Just maybe not as relevant.

 

There is definitely room for improvement when it comes to Steam's services and there always will be room for improvement. 

 

 Are you seriously going to defend games like Air Control, WarZ, Slaughtering Ground, Gary's Incident, etc?

 

And how much commercial success did those games actually get? Sure, they got a lot of publicity, but thanks to people like TB, those games got what they deserved. I'll doubt we'll ever see a Gary's Incident 2...

 

I honestly believe doing that will flood Steam with so much shit that it will kill the service.

 

I really don't see how it would kill the service. Valve has been adding features and other services to Steam left and right lately. Now that I think about it, how often was it back before Greenlight/Early Access did Valve actually update the client with worthwhile features? I'd go as far to say it's because they opened the flood gates, Valve was able to concentrate on adding onto Steamworks itself. Streaming, Family Sharing, Broadcasting. Thumbs up to Valve, imo.

[EpicAdom]

"Wahhhhh, i'm mad that Steam has become more open for devs. Wahhhhh, I'm mad because i bought Air Support when i knew it was a bad game to begin with. Wahhhhh, I want Steam to go back to being a AAA haven."

 

Obviously, this YouTuber doesn't trust people to vote with their wallets. Which, more often than you'd think, many people are more than capable to do so. So, how does he deal with it? Does he deal with it like a civilized person and educate his viewers about games that might possibly be bad like say TotalBiscuit? No... Instead, he denounces Steam, takes his ball and goes home. This guy is a loser in my book.

 

Sure, Steam's Greenlight and Early Access is an easily exploited service but this guy is doing nothing to fix the problem. All he can do is whine about it and hopes it'll go away. Spoiler alert: It won't. This guy doesn't seem to understand that if you want those great, hidden-gem indie titles, you have to sift through piles of coal to find them! This can be applied to any entertainment medium.

 

If people really feel the need to fix Steam, the answer is simple; vote with your wallets!

You sir, are damn right. I couldn't agree more.

 

People should stop bitching and moaning and try to help instead of harm.

[D3MON]

i dont like nerdcubed personally (friend does)

but he's right.
browse trough 7000 indie games (with no good search filter) that even if 2 are identical ones £1.95 and not worth it its twin copy is £14.99, no thanks

my steam library consists of payday2
and because it was free sniper elite 2 (havent bothered downloading since reinstall)
(and arms dealer)

origin gave me bf3 for free, tried hardline for free a year ago, bf4 digital deluxe for £12.50, simcity for £15 (was £7.50 recently damnit), moh warfighter for £5, crysis 3+crysis2+all the dlc for £7.50 and today i got theme hospital for free...just because

ive managed to buy my friends bf4 DD and warfighter purely because it was so cheap, yes theyre origin only titles but nothing on steam has made me want to buy it for a friend, few make me want to buy them at all.

[Derangel]

The more I think about this, the more it's becoming an issue of taste in video games which is largely subjective. Looking at Yogscast's store, and what do I see? Hatoful Boyfriend! A game about dating pigeons... This begs the question, how long until what's happening to Steam happens to Humble? I feel like Nerdcubed traded one "evil" for the same evil. Just maybe not as relevant.

 

There is definitely room for improvement when it comes to Steam's services and there always will be room for improvement. 

 

 

And how much commercial success did those games actually get? Sure, they got a lot of publicity, but thanks to people like TB, those games got what they deserved. I'll doubt we'll ever see a Gary's Incident 2...

 

 

I really don't see how it would kill the service. Valve has been adding features and other services to Steam left and right lately. Now that I think about it, how often was it back before Greenlight/Early Access did Valve actually update the client with worthwhile features? I'd go as far to say it's because they opened the flood gates, Valve was able to concentrate on adding onto Steamworks itself. Streaming, Family Sharing, Broadcasting. Thumbs up to Valve, imo.

 

Humble could very well become the same. I don't know if NerdCubed did the right thing, but that's something we'll see down the road.

 

You're right, but we need to make noise to get Valve to notice and hopefully work on making those improvements. If they're pressured enough they'll have to react. I might be a bit harsh saying they don't care, but Steam exploded in popularity and Valve has gotten really swept up in it.

 

WarZ was fairly popular I believe, since it was one of the first commercial games to take off after DayZ's success. As for the others, no idea.

 

Well think back to the early 80s. A flood of crap killed the console industry for a few years. I don't think it will be that bad, but if it becomes impossible to find the good games it could drive people away from Steam. I don't like Steam's store front, but yes those other features are great. A lot of those are why despite my complaints I still like Steam and really want it to improve.

[Sharp_3yE]

Why does it matter? If people want to spend money on terrible games that's their fault. Why should steam be the ones to say what we can and cant buy? It's up to people to decide what kind of game and how good of a game they will spend it on. Besides its about having fun and you can't tell me that I cant have fun playing a "bad" game. Bad is subjective first of all. Secondly, some are funny where you'll get the game simply because it is bad. Also, we have more ways to find the games we want to spend our money on then ever before with tons of reviews and play throughs of games.

[cesrai]

Steam sucks and GOG.com is da best.

[catbutts]

"Having people vote [on Greenlight] means that if one semi-decent YouTuber of any kind of size goes, 'Hey look, I like this game'—even if it's a piece of shit or has a funny video with it—that thing's gonna get greenlit to the fucking moon,"

It could be anything. I mean, I think with the current setup of Greenlight you're more likely to get on Steam if your game is a screaming, howling piece of donkey piss. A good-to-OK game has no chance. If a game is fantastically, endlessly brilliant or awful, it'll get on. Nothing in the middle will. That just doesn't work as a system. That's a broken system."

This I agree with and I think the system now feeds itself: More views → more votes → more sales → new game → more views

 

For most games on Steam I just consider them "YouTube games"--made specifically for you to make your video, make your money, quit. Control schemes that are awful on purpose/graphical glitches made on purpose/broken game mechanics on purpose/etc make for [HAHA FUNNY REACTION VIDS]

 

I think it's highly exploitative of younger audiences. Those "good-to-OK" games won't get as much attention because they won't generate the same engagement and audience interaction as screaming and yelling at a broken game. Popular videos of garbage games will naturally get more spotlight/votes, so it's not a "neutral" system as people claim, but there's really no way to help it (you can't just not allow content creators to create content right?). 

Also, every single one of us has a list of games that we bought and never played once, so the "people are voting with their wallets--it's ok" argument doesn't seem to fit here.

 

 

While I really do love the idea of Greenlight and allowing devs to branch out/take risks/do whatever the hell they want, the relationship between YouTube and Steam seems to actively stifle that creativity in order to pump out shit games.

[qwertywarrior]

or u know

u could just use desura

[Albatross]

Who is this? I never heard of him before so i don't care what he thinks.

[XTankSlayerX]

As some one named Daniel.

 

I'm right. 

 

 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Anyways, Steam needs help. People groan and bitch at me for liking Origin.

 

 

 

 

Who is this? I never heard of him before so i don't care what he thinks.

He's just a person with 2 million subs on YouTube who makes lets plays... 

 

He's a nobody.

 

/s