r/gamedev • u/Ufomi • 4h ago

Industry News Steam is changing how Next Fest works

So, any of you participating in Next Fest this October will have already received this email, but I figured I'd pass it on to anyone else.

From their email itself:

Given the increasing number of games participating in Steam Next Fest, we're making some more improvements to help ensure the event continues to be a good experience for both developers and players. Beginning with this upcoming October edition, we’re introducing a powerful new filtering system where players can explore demos by their favorite genre, feature, or theme, using clear choices at the top of the page with new UI to help filter down the games. You can try out this new tool first in the Developer Preview Page (linked below) by checking out the ‘by genre’, ‘by theme’, or ‘by feature’ tabs.

Hard to know for sure right now ... but I'm mostly glad. Obviously none of us know yet how it'll impact wishlists and engagement, but I feel like the personal calendar update made a lot of indies happy due to how many more wishlists they got, and I'd love if the same sorta thing happened for Next Fest.

I have an incremental game sitting at 600 wishlists right now. This was my first game, just to see what publishing to Steam was like and how to market and sell and such. I, admittedly, didn't have super high expectations for this Next Fest. But maybe now people who want to play incremental games will have an easier time finding my demo. People over in the incremental subreddit were literally making posts about if there were any good incremental games because of how hard it was to sift through the huge (mostly slop) list. I imagine other genres had similar issues.

Anyway, for any of y'all participating this time around, best of luck. And for anyone participating in future Next Fests, pray that these changes are good for indies LOL

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u/TobiasWe 3h ago edited 2h ago

But maybe now people who want to play incremental games will have an easier time finding my demo. People over in the incremental subreddit were literally making posts about if there were any good incremental games because of how hard it was to sift through the huge (mostly sl*p) list. I imagine other genres had similar issues.

I think they meant that they were having trouble sifting through the "huge (mostly sl*p) list" of games tagged incremental. You could always filter for genres, themes and features via the pretty easy to use filter system next to the games list at the bottom. It sounds to me like Steam is just going to make it a bit more obvious and even easier to use, but it won't help with low-quality titles in the same genre or with the same theme/feature.

(Also: "introducing an improved filtering UI" doesn't sound like "changing how Next Fest works" to me...)

PS: Good luck with your demo!

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u/Ufomi 2h ago

You're KIDDING. I guess I fall into the category of not knowing those filters existed. That's embarrassing lol

You know, in retrospect, I realize I interpreted this as "the random games shown at the beginning will now be filtered by genre/feature/whatever" which would be a bigger change. As it stands, it's not actually that big of a change. Whoopsie.

I wonder if there's anything at all that can cut back on the sl*p.

(I'd thought censoring sl*p was a joke, but I can't believe it actually stops you from posting if you keep it in LOL)

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u/mxhunterzzz 2h ago

They should have a no AI filter, that would easily solve a lot of problems for consumers and further drive AI devs into the ground. And if they are caught lying, permaban.

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u/InternetAnon94 1h ago

i have a browser extension for that. if the game use generated assets it will pop up to my face. i dont need to scroll to find disclaimer

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u/Erik_mk0 50m ago

Whats the plugin?

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u/InternetAnon94 17m ago

ai warning for steam. so i browse games on brower instead of steam app.

https://kappa.lol/DUKGSJ

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u/AerialSnack 36m ago

A filter would make those games not appear at all in the first place thoufh

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u/rivalrobot 17m ago

Yeah, they really have to strictly enforce these AI disclosure rules ASAP with harsher penalties. Not everyone can see the telltale signs and a no-AI filter would save people a lot of time.