That future is already long in the past. There are now so many titles on Steam - excellent titles - that whether only “good” ones (IYHO) are allowed on or not makes no difference to them. Valve’s idea for the Steam storefront is that users themselves bury the shit and the good stuff floats to the top, yet without penalising niche titles (which unfortunately is exactly what it does do at the moment, brilliant idea negative reviews, NOT)
Cas 
I totally disagree with your notion of reviews harming niche games. When a user hits your Steam page, you’ve only got a few seconds to convince them to stay. When you’re an indie who can’t afford to have fancy graphics or an awesome trailer, the only thing you can to hook a user is have a nice ~80/90% sitting on your page. I think a lot of devs don’t understand that you need a strong feedback and iteration loop to achieve this. Rayvolution’s Rise to Ruins is an example of a great feedback and iteration loop. Whenever he gets harsh feedback, he improves ASAP and pressures reviewers to flip.
I’m interested in some specific examples of games you think have been unjustifiably hurt by the review system.
I have several examples but unfortunately… I am actually bound by confidentiality that means I’m not going to produce any useful figures to back any claims up.
The anecdotal evidence is that a simple slip in Steam rating from “Positive” to “Mixed” hammers sales. That can happen purely by chance at the early stages of a game’s launch - say, a duff build or driver issue - and a good game will literally be buried never to rise again.
Cas
http://store.steampowered.com/search/?sort_by=Released_DESC&category1=998
Not best time for making games without big marketing:
15 – 30 game releases per day With many genders like: RPG, Strategy…etc
Many of them have 5-30 reviews for couple months – its something like 300-600 sales
p.s they not fully crap – many of them have good concept and idea,
but them so many… it’s hard even watch preview images 200-300 games for last month – not talking about try them out…
???
pp.s Offtop and you’re see current mods for games?
“left 4 dead” mod topic on steam – its have couple thousand mods - 99% of them its simple retexture or new models that simple ripped out from other games like StarWars or googled somewhere in free repositories….
…i remember starcraft 1 and warcraft 3 custom maps times :’(
(I try couple times starcraft 2 it’s loading time with 1-2 min map makes me insane – so I don’t know much about it)
I always chuckle a little when i see generic game descriptions that sound significantly less interesting than a recipe for pancakes.
“You are the hero AB, AB fights his way to XY, you have an inventory system and many weapons with many animations, there are many locations and there’s a quest system. The loot is distributed with getRandom(), so it’s totally different everytime, promised. Execute the file and play for 40 minutes, voila, you got ‘a game’.”
They list all the features, as if an interesting experience suddenly forms if you throw it all together.
And yeah, you’re right, the Workshop is full of garbage “mods”, also the filtering/search options were pretty bad last time i used it.
RIP the dream of making games without selling your soul to Satan
No-no-no don’t think seriously about that so)
Its possible – but you don’t have simple freebie by placing game on steam
You need make a marketing – and try make game on demand of customers hopes and anticipations
So technically you ruin your game by customers stupid ideas)
(its a joke, in many cases they have a point - that can improve your game significantly)
I am really don’t know how small companies will make profitable games now and in future
if they living in some expensive countries with 1000$+ spends for person in month, and this is sad ((
for other countries its ok, for now…
it’s like China goods, their prices simple destroy other productions
(it’s not only quality, its also quantity)
p.s I want give a hope, but this hope not help much when it hits a “wall of Reality”
but we have good examples looks on “path of exile” – do we need more games like it?
Yes, at least if they free to play many people will try them out
(except we made hundreds of them ^^)
pp.s
Or maybe forgot all this and make games for self, and for fun
And stop trying make profitable business from own hobby =)
Imho: personally I for hobby part,
One time I see hope of “profitable business” – I try, I fail, I no more care)
This is what I decided to do several months ago; I now only make games for myself and kids to play. All my new games (as shown in the WIP section) are simple multiplayer games that I can play with them. I really can’t be bothered with all the marketing stuff; a post to Twitter and this website is my limit. There are so many games out there, that getting noticed is next to impossible.
Show the average amount-of-time-played of it’s player base?
So important topic video
The only solution I may say - its lottery:
The more games you make (maybe even different genders and scale)
The more chances you will get to become profitable
games have a gender?
Sorry i forgot right word, the only similar word was “gender” )
that word was “genre” ^^