Discovery is a Platform Problem
In 2024 nearly 19,000 games hit Steam, yet two-thirds of PC playtime went to just five—most of them years old. That gap isn’t only about quality or marketing; it’s about how platforms connect players to games. As a Wargaming platform lead wrote recently, great games deserve discovery; players deserve help finding the right games. We agree—and we think the biggest levers live with platforms.
Players don’t choose in a vacuum. They choose inside stores, launchers, and subscriptions—systems that decide what’s visible and how costly it is to try something new. Right now the cost of a “try” is high: giant installs, limited drive space, long patches, and the cognitive load of choosing among tens of thousands of titles. Even subscriptions, which should broaden horizons, often increase storage pressure as players queue up multiple 100-GB downloads they don’t have room for. Streaming promised relief but still runs into latency, bandwidth, and catalog constraints—good for some genres, awkward for many others.
The time budget hasn’t grown either. Games now compete with Netflix, TikTok, YouTube, and everything else. If sampling a game eats an evening, most players won’t sample. They’ll play the familiar five. Marketing can’t solve this: you can’t out-advertise hours-long installs or the dread of uninstalling a favorite to make space.
Platforms can change that by lowering the cost of a try.
Make trials, free weekends, and F2P truly instant—from store page to gameplay in seconds, not hours. Let re-entry be fast, so coming back after a patch feels like a tap, not a chore. Keep patches and first-run downloads small. Respect storage budgets so sampling a new game never requires deleting an old one.
We don’t claim to have the whole answer. But we do know that reducing friction is a practical, immediate move platforms can make. ROCKITPLAY FastStart helps here by turning local play into near-instant access: start with a small preload, stream the rest as you play, and cut patch overhead. It preserves the reliability of local installs while removing some of the biggest costs of curiosity. Wouldn’t discoverability be easier if sampling a game took seconds?
If you’re building a store, launcher, or subscription, we’d love to compare notes on lowering the cost of a try—so more great games can actually be discovered.
Rockitplay FastStart is Now Available with the Xsolla Publishing Suite
Xsolla + FastStart eliminates download dropouts, increases conversion and revenue, and helps build a direct-to-consumer relationship. Reach out to discuss how FastStart & Xsolla can enhance your player relationships, improve discoverability, and grow revenue.