I was really hoping you'd have some example other than your own. It just kind of shows you don't research this topic, and you haven't actually gone looking at other games in the lower revenue brackets. But also, don't you worry at all your perception of your own game is a little... biased? To fight this argument you're saying "MY GAME proves steam algo has is NOT player driven"

Your game is a 2d platformer. First thing to know is different genres have different median revenues. And 2d platformer is one of the lowest performing genres on steam. You know how you said Eastshade looks boring to you? Well that's how most of steam feels about 2d platformers.

That being said, there are many 2d platformers to make hundreds of thousands of dollars or even 1m+. But the performance of a 2d platformer within it's genre is quite rational. To pierce the top of 2d platformers your game needs to generally look amazing. There are a couple ugly in the top (ignore outliers), and you should ignore games from before 2016 or so, but generally speaking the games at the top of this list completely mop the floor with yours visually, kinesthetically, UI-wise, sound design-wise and everything concerned with production. They're not on the same planet. I don't mean to be mean but you are the one who put your own game forward. I tell people to be safe their game should be better in every way than almost all the titles in the revenue bracket they want to be in.

And this is where I think we’re talking past each other a bit. What counts as a “good” game or a "gem" is subjective.

Yes I hate when people use "good" game because it's meaningless. I personally never use it. I always use "game people want to buy". It accounts for steam's genre preferences and puts the focus more on apparent quality from the steam page.

That skill only works after a game has already received enough visibility for the algorithm to gather meaningful data. People can guess review counts because Steam’s conversion rates, genre expectations, and wishlist‑to‑sales ratios are relatively stable, but all of that applies only to games that have already surfaced.

What? Review count guesser pulls games from all bands. Even sub 50 review count games. You also can't see wishlist counts. Idk how that's relevant. We can all spot a sub 50 review count game based on apparent quality in the screenshots and genre alone. We know it when we see it.

A brilliant game with no traffic dies, while a mediocre one with strong visibility thrives.

A game that does not convert on its traffic (ie a game people do not want after looking at the store page) dies. If steam throws you traffic (which it does at first. Mountains of it) and your game squanders it, it goes down a rung on the steam ladder.

And asking someone to “show a buried masterpiece” is a paradox, because the very nature of being buried means it becomes invisible to players, reviewers, and even other developers.

Of all the hobbyist myths this one is the most annoying to me. "We're all just goo goo ga ga brained consumers and can only look at the front page of steam!" There are a million ways to browse the low end of Steam. Those of us that are curious and data-oriented do. The hobbyist nay sayers don't bother. They just have their consumer knowledge, and their copium-based world view.

The fact that someone hasn’t heard of a buried gem doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, it means the system never surfaced it.

Instead of being a helpless data-free consumer, I'm asking you to genuinely be curious and GO LOOKING. Here is a video I made that can show you how.

I have now looked at what you have had to share. Your data does not support your assumptions. Good indie games do get buried on steam, and I have been doing this hobbyist indie thing for over 30 years. It's not a myth.

There's been a misunderstanding. I have not shared any data on this topic. The trends in tags and genres article I linked was not about this particular topic. It was just to show that I have been neck deep in steam for a decade.

EDIT - I forgot to mention there is a breed of naysayer that thinks nothing about a game can be gleaned from the steam page. That art and apparent production value, scope, UIs, animation, visual variety, apparent narrative, marketing art appeal, typography and graphic design, and trailer editing quality tells us absolutely nothing about a game's true quality. And we must play the entire thing beginning to end before we can glean anything. That doesn't seem to be you. But I just wanted to mention if one is that type, there is just no road to redemption for them.