Big platform change for Engine: only 3-star games will now feature in Stake’s New Releases.
With the huge increase in submissions, it was becoming a race to the bottom. Too much focus was going into how many games could be released, with too little going into making each game worth playing. That creates a poor experience for players and makes it harder for great games to get the attention they deserve.
We want to work with studios who care about the player experience. Studios that put thought into their games, listen to feedback and spend time making something people want to come back to.
Those are the games we want to put in front of Stake’s player base and from 11th December, a wider audience as the Engine Network opens to more operators.
Publishing remains open under the current requirements. In the future, we may lower the minimum quality threshold to support a broader range of games, particularly simpler burst games, giving creators more freedom to build their own catalogue for their audience.
We also need to rethink the star rating system. Engine has outgrown the approach we started with, especially now that newer AI models can produce a game in a handful of prompts. We need to make sure our ratings recognise the thought, creativity and care that go into making a game worth playing.
New Releases is one way to get traffic, but creators shouldn’t build their entire strategy around Stake handling all of their promotion. Building an audience, working with content creators and finding your own ways to bring players to your games are all part of running a studio. The creators who figure this out will put themselves in a much stronger position.
We want to build a system that works for both creators and players. That means giving creators opportunities to succeed while making sure players get great games to discover and enjoy. Success should come from making games people want to play, rather than seeing who can push the most titles through the queue.