Think about the last game you bought on Steam. How did you find out about it? Chances are it probably wasn’t because Valve’s platform somehow surfaced an otherwise unknown game to you. According to a developer who helped Valve with improving discoverability on the platform, finding games on the PC-centric platform is kind of a bust.
To be sure, Valve has a number of systems in place meant to help customers find more games they like. The company has a vested interest in ensuring people buy as many games as possible, as it gets a cut of every sale. However, if the prospective customer hasn’t seen or heard of a game they might be interested in, it’s a lot harder to sell it to them.
Steam has tabs like Top Sellers, New and Trending, and Popular Upcoming, all of which showcase notable games. The platform will dutifully tell you about any big sales or discounts. It hosts regular events themed around genres or concepts that cast a wide net, like Real-Time Strategy Fest and Animal Fest. Really, the more you scroll on Steam, the more you’ll see.
Valve is trying, in other words, and it wouldn’t be surprising to hear that the company is continually attempting new ways to inform its customers about new games. Industry veteran Ichiro Lambe acknowledges this much in his LinkedIn post where he discusses the discoverability issue on Steam. He would know, too — Lambe says he’s worked on that very issue at Valve.
“Steam’s discovery (my meager contributions aside) is miles ahead of every other media platform, but I also think — and I say this with love — that that’s like saying they’re the tallest hobbit,” Lambe writes.
According to Lambe, Steam might be full of attempts to highlight new games for players, but the reality is that most people don’t idly scroll on the platform — at least, not regularly. Fans might be tempted to look around when, say, they’re already aware of an event, or they receive an email telling them about a discount. But there isn’t that much incentive to poke around Steam just because. Here’s Lambe, on what he believes happens on Steam:
There’s the old ‘Rule of Seven,’ that claims that a consumer need to encounter something about seven times before it clicks. Whatever the number, our brains are kinda wired to want to brush up against things lightly a few times and see if they catch. That’s why socials/video play such a huge role in a game’s success. Notwithstanding the fact that gamers will sometimes impulse-purchase during sales, they generally have to have been exposed to a game a few times before it sinks in. The Steam Store page is the factoid-dense polar opposite of that. When you point a user who’s never heard of a game at this checkout aisle stage, they’re more likely to bounce than to want to learn more. And that’s true even if it’s an ideal game for them!
Instead, Lambe argues, most people find out about games they’re curious about through mediums like YouTube and Twitch, or from people whose taste they trust. This won’t be a shocker to anyone who follows the subject of how people find out about games, and Lambe doesn’t offer any solutions for what might be done in an ecosystem where games are competing against thousands of other releases every year.
Mostly, Lambe wants to challenge the perception that the function of a storefront like Steam is to help people discover games. The platform and its many functions might help someone find something new, and Valve does benefit whenever that happens. But ultimately, Steam’s primary function is to be a platform where people buy games. Anything else is just a happy side effect of that primary objective.
Besides, if it were an easy issue to solve, Valve might’ve done it already. It’s a tricky problem that has no easy answers, as evidenced by the excellent GameDiscoverCo newsletter. To give a random example: there’s a widespread assumption that coming out of early access presents another opportunity for games to get in front of people. But according to data collected in 2025 for the first 30 days of games graduating out of early access, only about 20% of the pack performed better at launch than they did while in early access. There are always exceptions to this rule, especially when it comes to games that already have a massive profile. But hitting 1.0 will be different for a game like, say, Escape From Tarkov — which was already popular — versus an unknown indie that’s having trouble finding an audience to begin with. Nearly anything you can name when it comes to game discoverability turns out to be more complicated than it seems at first glance.
But until a better solution arrives, we’ll keep arguing about the ways people find out about games.
“Based on the data, the outcomes, and what I’ve watched happen to tens of thousands of deserving games, and gamers who (as a whole) repeatedly say, ‘hey, how come I’ve never heard of this?,’ I absolutely agree with devs who feel that discovery is broken,” Lambe writes. “At the risk of sounding like ChatGPT here: Discovery ain’t just the problem. It’s THE problem.”
