videogames

Steam Kind of Sucks

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It’s Steam’s Next Fest again which functions as a nice way to see some upcoming games that might be cool as well as a reminder of how difficult it is to actually use Steam for the purposes of browsing and discovering content. This isn’t about the downloading and playing of games which is mostly fine as far as things go, but rather the store side of things. The browsing experience. The layout. The usability. It’s bad.

Straight at the top of Next Fest page is an autoplaying video that plays automatically and is not even paused at all. Scroll down and you’ll see games. According to the sidebar, there’s 2,644 entries for the Next Fest of June 2025. Scrolling down and counting out, you’ll get fifty entries listed before needing to click a button that says “show more,” which will show another fifty, then you’ll need to click again, show more, another fifty…

If you wanted to see all of the Next Fest games you would need to do this fifty-three times. If you leave the tab or need to refresh or restart or whatever, you’ll have to start over from the beginning. Scroll, scroll, scroll, click, scroll, scroll, scroll, click. Where were you? Did you check that game already? Oh no, you clicked on a game without holding down the control key. Back to the beginning for you. Scroll, scroll, scroll, click.

There are no page numbers here. There are no cookies remembering how far you were. All you know now is scroll and click. How long have you been scrolling and clicking? Hours? Years? Is that the sound of the scroll wheel or you grinding your teeth? How many tabs have you opened now? And suddenly… no “show more button!” A brief sense of accomplishment before you realize… No… That was fifty games at a time and you clicked the button maybe ten times? That’s… That’s not even all the games! Where are the rest of the games!? You promised me the games you sadistic bastard! You stand up and shake the monitor, an innocent bystander in all of this. You crumple to the floor, defeated, in a pool of your own tears.

Or you just get annoyed at the whole process and write a blog post.

Steam, you are the number one most popular video game selling website store people from what people go and done got their games. There’s no excuse for this shit. Make it better. Make it all better. You have the power to make it better, and you’re choosing not to! What are you doing with all of that money!?

SolForge Fusion digital card game adds NFTs to the surprise of customers

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SolForge Fusion announced it would be joining the Solana blockchain network via Twitter on April 29th, less than two weeks after the game was launched in early access on Steam.

SolForge, a digital card game designed by Magic: The Gathering creator Richard Garfield and former MTG Pro Brian Kibler, was first released into early access in 2013 following a successful Kickstarter campaign that raised over $400,000. It stayed in early access for three years before its official release in 2016, but was shut down a year later with StoneBlade CEO and creator of the popular deckbuilding game “Ascension” Justin Gary citing only vague reasons for the decision.

The game was kept alive briefly until early 2019 by a group of dedicated fans running an unofficial server called ReForged. The unofficial client was taken down after the fans responsible were contacted by Gary and told to cease operations.

In 2021, a physical sequel called SolForge Fusion was announced on Kickstarter incorporating the unique algorithmically generated decks present in another of Garfield’s games, Keyforge. SolForge Fusion also promised that the same decks could be used online or in person by registering unique deck codes.

In November 2023, a campaign for the digital version of SolForge Fusion was announced and funded, but no mention was made within any of the campaigns that NFTs would be part of the game. Some users took issue with the announcement such as one reviewer on Steam who stated: “This is completely blindsiding. I do not play games that feature NFTs and I would have never given money to this project at any point had I known that’s what they were planning to do.”

I’m not sure if it’s required for these types of decisions to be disclosed ahead of time, but it certainly rubs me the wrong way. Crowdfunding has always been a very mixed bag. Paying for the possibility of a good game is a financial gamble that customers are willing to take because they want to believe in you. Not cluing in the people who made your game possible in the first place feels like a form of abuse. Of course, if you’re receiving a fat paycheck from investors to do it who cares about those chumps?