https://www.techpowerup.com/253368/upcoming-release-list-on-steam-sees-abuse-by-developers
 
Valve's popular "Upcoming Release list" within Steam has become a bit of a hot button topic as the abuse of the feature becomes more widespread. As pointed out by Mike Rose, founder of indie game publisher No More Robots, on Twitter, the system behind the upcoming release list can be easily rigged by developers themselves. For context, the release list is created by Steam when it checks the release date for each title set in the Steam back end. Once it has verified the release date, the system then lists all titles that have been found on a fair number of wish lists, and displays them in the order they will be released. At this time, developers can continuously change the back end release date, thus keeping their games at the top of the list. This makes it easy for already popular titles to remain at the top, soaking up even more views.
 
It also shows another flaw in Valve's various systems, showing how vulnerable they have become in recent years as their omnipotence has been steadily fading. For now, Tom Giardino from Valve's business team has made it clear that they are looking to fix and or resolve the problem, but do not wish to give an ETA for when a said fix would come.

Valve needs to stop allowing exploitative measures like this from happening while adding better incentives for wanting to stick around. At this point I've developed more respect for Ubisoft, GOG, Origin, Battle.net and even slowly Epic. They all offer various reasons for wanting to use them unlike Valve. Yes I know they have their rare deal events however I no longer care about the events.

I remember seeing curators saying "I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite game on steam" for everything they review, without any more info, and a number of other doing the exact same thing, identical comments on everything, that say nothing.
That's the most visible form of gaming the system in steam that I've seen anyway.

transdogmifier
Let's just go to selling complete games on thumb drives (they're cheap enough) and get rid of 'store fronts', thanks.
 

+1,