[content note: Public shaming. I have apologised for this post. I am leaving it here because I believe in owning my mistakes.]

Hey, remember when Steam used to be a store for quality games?

I do.

Nowadays, Steam seems to have dropped its quality threshold entirely. Still, games on Steam always seemed to have at least some modicum of quality, even for games like Airport Simulator 2014, which revolves around you waiting for planes to land at an airport, then driving utility vehicles to the plane one-by-one, then waiting in real time for the jobs to be done, being able to do absolutely nothing else in the meantime, then driving the vehicles back to their original positions and waiting for the next plane to land. With the currency you earn you can hire workers to do some of those jobs for you, and eventually end up with all the jobs filled and you winding up with absolutely nothing to do other than exit the game.

It's not much of a game, to be honest. I've seen it called "the worst game on Steam".

I'm here to tell you that's not the case. I'm not defending the game, mind you. It's quite a horrible game. But you can tell that a fair amount of effort was put into it; the overall presentation of the game is nice, the graphics are relatively detailed, and the game obviously works the way it was intended to work, even if the actual game is somewhat lacking. That's not something you can get without putting a fair amount of effort in. I'm very forgiving when it comes to games, unlike many people.

There are other games that are low-quality on Steam, too. But none of them are as low-quality as the game I watched a video of today. It's called Air Control and it goes to show that Steam has absolutely no quality control these days. There has been pretty much a bare minimum of effort spent on this game.

I don't mean to say that the game is simple; simple games can be very fun if done correctly. (Think of things like Super Hexagon.) This is not a simple-concept game (although the gameplay is more-or-less simple to a point), and it is most certainly not done correctly.

I can't do justice to how jaw-droppingly bad this game is (though the fact that I'm even writing about this should say something to many of my readers), so let me link you to NerdCubed's video on the game.

This is being sold for money. Not a small amount, either - £4.79 as of right now, and not on sale. For a scale of reference, The Binding of Isaac (sans DLC) is £3.99, Terraria is £6.99, and Bejeweled 3 is £4.25. (All prices are without sales discounts; it helps that none of them are on sale right now.)

Now go watch the video, if you haven't already. Judge for yourself whether the price tag is justified.

Steam, what the hell are you thinking?

User: ninetydegrees Date: 2014-07-09 01:12 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

I may be cynical or simply haven't uses Steam long enough to remember such a time but I think it's a bit unfair to expect a store to do quality control. It doesn't seem to me it's their job or what they advertise.