Over 19,000 games have released on Steam in 2025, with nearly half seeing fewer than 10 reviews
(www.gamingonlinux.com)
I'm not sure if the takeaway about it being hard to be a game developer is accurate. Because I know for a fact that there are some really low-effort games that get released on Steam (I've seen some), and I would assume that there are a lot more of such games that I have not seen. I don't know what percentage of those 19,000 games are low-effort slop, but it could be significant, and if those slop games get low engagement it's just the system working as intended.