I've been playing TBH: Task Bar Hero and following the hype closely.
Its simplicity and polish are driving the success, proof that players genuinely want the freedom to trade items.
The volume of items dropped by players in an idle game is absurd. Endless builds, people uncovering metas, buy offers flying around on all kinds of gear, ofc driving more and more bots. The fact that Steam Guard acts as a barrier against bots, fresh accounts, etc. does help, but the game will still face a challenge in how it handles
Steam literally had to throttle the game's services, because every item dropped is a request hitting their servers, to the point the devs suspect Steam rate-limited them, forcing item drop rates down.
If this were a Web3 project, it would've been valued at a few million dollars for the sheer number of transactions it was generating. On Web2, that same volume becomes a problem.
Indie games, surprising like always.
I'll be putting out some content and guides if you want to start playing.
But I'll tell you now, keep an eye on this one ๐