Steam Explorers: Valve Introduces Way To Get Rid Of Fake Games, Feature Overlooked Titles

Valve is launching a new program on its game distribution platform Steam called Steam Explorers that will task the designated gamers to play through games in order to highlight hidden gems and get rid of fake games.

News of the new program comes from YouTube videos posted by popular Steam curators—gamers who make recommendations of titles they enjoy— John “TotalBiscuit” Bain and Jim Sterling, who were invited to the Valve offices and given insight into future plans for the platform.

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According to the YouTubers, Steam Explorers will be asked to play through queues of games that haven’t been selling well in order to resurface games that have been overlooked and provide games buried in Steam’s massive library to be given a spotlight.

The Explorers will also have the less glorious task of sifting through “fake games”—titles that have been uploaded to Steam that are clear knock-offs of other games, poorly made and fully of bugs, or made by developers just looking to make a quick buck.

The addition of the Explorers role—which any Steam user can sign up for—is the latest effort by Valve to clean up the content that appears within Steam.

In February, Valve announced it would end its Greenlight program, which allowed any person to submit a game and allowed users vote for it to be made available on the Steam platform. In its place is a new system called Steam Direct, which will require developers register with Valve and pay an application fee to get a game on Steam.

The fee, which could cost anywhere between $100 and $5,000, is designed to create a barrier for entry for developers who were simply trying to work the system.

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Valve will also deal with a seemingly innocuous feature that has been driving the sales of fake games on Steam: trading cards. Each game on Steam has associated trading cards, and those cards are bought and sold outside of the game itself on the Steam Marketplace. Developers get 10 percent of each of those transactions, which means even if a game isn’t making money, its associated trading cards can generate passive income.

The efforts from Valve will also bring new changes to the curator system, allowing games curators to highlight games they like in new ways and see figures that show the direct impact of their recommendations on a game’s sales.