Opinion on Steam Curator Connect Program for RPG maker games

What is everyone's opinion on Steam curator connect program that has been released not too long ago? Is it an effective method in promoting RPG maker game on steam by providing curators with steam key? If it is not, any other effective methods out there to promote RPG maker games?

Effective and good are two different things here.

Yes, this can spread your game around - but should only be done with halfway decent games.

A few years ago someone organized something like this (keys in return for good reviews) and it backfired for a lot of people when crap games used this to get good reviews, and then everyone associated got labeled as "crap game with purchased reviews".

Steam keys in return for good reviews is really, really shady practice. Steam should be taking down those reviews or taking down the game entirely.

I think it's totally fine, however, to give a person a copy of your game in exchange for an honest review. This happens all the time, especially in the book publishing business. They're considered advanced review copies.

They don't affect the score of the game at all. Haven't affected the score of the game for like 3+ years.

They changed that review system exactly because people kept giving keys and positive reviews for the free stuff, so nowadays only paying customers affect the game's overall score.

Frankly I have a rather low opinion of so called "Steam Curators" to begin with.

Steam as far as I can tell doesn't exercise ANY quality control measure as far "Curators" go from what I can tell. In point of fact all you have to do to become a "Steam Curator", is to form a community group, & then as the an officer in your own community group name yourself a curator.

There are "Curators" who essentially have no audience, whose reviews are no more comprehensive than those tapped out by random users, who go into community discussion forums offering to promote people's games, when they have no audience to promote it to. Frankly, I am not sure how many "Steam Curators" are actually writing worthwhile & honest reviews, versus how many are just looking for free additions to their Steam Library. However, I am inclined to think it is a decent number of so called "Game Reviewers" are fakes, using the "Curator" title to score free stuff.

Personally, I wouldn't give a Steam Key to any reviewer, that I hadn't been able to read enough reviews of, to determine if their reviews had any quality to them, or who didn't have an audience in at least the four digit range.

Steam as far as I can tell doesn't exercise ANY quality control for any part of its service, doesnt matter if your talking about curators, reviews or game submissions.

@VisitorsFromDreams You are correct. Did you see the video about the game that had a cryptominer in it that was sold on Steam? Or the many cases of games being released that had no .exe file so they could not even run? They don't even check to see if the game exists anymore, or much less runs.

quality control is the most expensive part of any product, no matter which one - and that is where companies start to short budget first as well, exactly because it is difficult to quantify "quality".

This is a true sentiment. But I think you mean "most valuable." There's no way it's the most "expensive" in a lot of cases. Like CoD, for example, some of the higher ups in Activision make eight figure salaries (on top of getting a bonus) while they outsource QA to the lowest bidder, and then use a tiny team of "internal" QA to vet their work.

On to the topic at hand, I have found Steam Curator Connect to be VERY valuable. Even for my free game! The key, though, is that you need to sift through the curators: find which ones sound good, are active, and show a possible willingness to play an RPG Maker game. Unfortunately there is that stigma that this engine has, but you can avoid that so long as you are thorough! (and your game doesn't embody that stigma, heh).

@woootbm no, I meant "expensive" - but I should have written it as "good quality control is the most expensive part".
That the managers try to get away with cheap quality control is one of the reasons why there are so many bugs in programs that were already sold as finished products.

And I didn't mean this only for programs, it goes everywhere - that is the reason why some people get "monday-devices" that never work while other people praise the same brand. In any production process there is always a low number of failures, and it needs human testing to find them.
Getting a production series checked for errors is very expensive because you'll have to hire people to find those errors, it can't be automated - and those people need to be trained to be able to find the errors as well.
So a lot of managers decide to skip quality control because it is cheaper to have the customer report the production error and exchange it as part of the warranty than to hire the people to make sure that there is no error in the first place.

And that is also why high-quality-products are often ten times as expensive as their cheap counterparts - because they had done the quality control needed to ensure the high quality of the entire production series.
Unfortunately some greedy manager even try to skip there, giving products that do not have that quality control the same high prices than those that really deserve them...

I used it a lot for my second game Knight Bewitched. Got a lot of honest reviews and some YouTube videos, which I'm sure helped the game's exposure a bit though I'm honestly not sure how much it impacted actual game sales.

As @woootbm said, it's important to actually sift through the curators and select ones that A) have an audience, B ) have made reviews recently, and C) most importantly, they actually play games like yours (i.e. 2D jRPGs). All of this info is listed in the curator's information and their description. They should also speak your language, though some curators accept english games and write the review in other languages.

It can be tempting to just send your game to any curator you think will play it, but then you run the risk of some of them writing negative reviews because you sent them a game they generally don't enjoy (best case scenario here is they just don't play the game or write a review at all).