Discoverability is a problem that will never be solved | Opinion

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It's almost twenty years since Steam evolved from being an automatic patching system for Valve's games into being a digital storefront for third parties, heralding the true arrival of the digital distribution era that had been forecast for years prior. We're now all living in the future that Steam ushered in, for better or worse.

Digital distribution is now essentially the default for games on all platforms; it's the only way to get games on smartphones and tablets, and some PC and console titles never get physical releases at all. There are even digital-only editions of consoles in this generation, flagging a potential future in which physical media will be dropped from game hardware entirely.

When this future was still on the horizon, there was immense optimism around its possibilities – and especially about the extent to which it would democratise the games business, eroding the authority of publishing gatekeepers and opening up market access to a much wider range of creators. It's fair to say that while the manner in which this has been achieved is deeply imperfect, digital distribution has more or less lived up to that goal; compared to the time before its introduction, when the very concept of an 'indie' game seemed rather wild, we now have vastly more open markets and accessible platforms, leading to a much wider variety of games from a far more diverse set of creators than would have been possible before.

Discoverability is a battle that never ends. There are areas that could be improved, but there's no magic wand to be waved

One big problem, however, emerged in the early years of digital distribution and has never been satisfactorily solved – not by any of the myriad platform holders on any of the devices in which digital games now hold sway. That issue is essentially the problem of too much success; there are too many games competing for consumers' attention, and this creates an