Four signs on Steam signal the downfall of gaming – at least that is what the community believes, having chosen 4 community tags.
There are now countless games on Steam, so there is something for every taste. Of course, many titles resemble each other or even display exactly the same mechanics. However, some descriptions of the games serve as a major warning sign for many – they are accepted by the community as the “4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse” of gaming.
Enshrouded falls into this category:
What has happened? In the Steam subreddit, the user Green____cat posts a small screenshot showing some tags on Steam.
The 4 tags referred to as “The 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse” are as follows:
- Early Access
- Survival
- Open World
- Crafting
It seems clear that this struck a chord with the community, as the post has garnered over 60,000 upvotes – a significant amount even for the large Steam subreddit.
What does this mean? The criticism is aimed at the increasing number of games falling into these categories and becoming more similar overall. The number of open-world games with crafting and survival aspects has dramatically increased in recent years, and the “Early Access” concept is being utilized more frequently. Particularly in this combination, it is common for games to linger indefinitely in Early Access status and (if at all) have their official release many years later.
At the same time, these games exert a tremendous fascination on many, making them willingly purchased.
“With a 95% chance of never leaving Early Access”
This is how the community reacts: In addition to the general support in the form of upvotes, there are nearly 1,000 comments, most of which agree with this view.
- “The cherry on top is then ‘In-Game Sales'” – Dont_have_a_panda
- “Don’t forget the zombie tag” – dunnoijustwantaname
- “It’s even better if it has multiplayer and you can invite your bros to play.” – filkos1
- “Sorry, I am that guy. I’m the one who buys all of them.” – Square-Emergency-531
- “They come with a 95% chance of never leaving Early Access and soon being forgotten.” – Tickomatik
However, a point of criticism regarding these games is the persistent farming aspect. In order to do the truly fun things in such games, players often have to farm materials extensively for many hours.
“[The games] always look so good, and when I dive into them, I find that I have to click stones for hours.” – WeaselSlayer
This actually seems to be the appeal for many, as UnwisePebble notes:
“And that’s the fun part! <spends hours sorting and managing inventory>”
That these games are becoming more noticeable is also due to the fact that the concept has proven itself and the success justifies these games. The principle of “collecting, building, surviving” has been extremely popular since Minecraft’s success and has been repeatedly transferred, refined, or altered in other games.
On Steam, you can also find many other great games – except when they are all gone.
