I have a question about that: Does that VR box filter out all games that support VR, or only games that require VR?
Steam Greenlight to shut down in spring, replaced by Steam Direct
- Thread starter Corpekata
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I have a question about that: Does that VR box filter out all games that support VR, or only games that require VR?
Geminosity
Member
I'm not sure why it follows that it should therefore cost even more of a pretty penny then if it's already expensive. If anything we should be trying to reduce costs for people genuinely trying to make good games, not crank the price up even further just to spite anyone who's not flush with cash.
Chairmanchuck
Member
You should wait till the end of february. There will be another Icey sale with the release of the english VA.
Fried Food
Banned
What about Routine!? Dammit!
exmachina64
Banned
What about Routine?
ScatheZombie
Member
I hope you realize that I ain't letting you slide on the fact that Bloody Boobs is the first damn game in that shot.
How you gonna argue you never, or even almost never, see garbage-tier shit when you personally take a random shot of the curated front page of the store and the very first game is like 5 seconds away from a Jimquisition episode.
Conkersbadfurday
Member
Valve have already proven that people will throw a hundred dollars at a stupid joke by putting the wedding ring up as a TF2 purchase.
If this is their answer, and a lazy one at that, then the fee needs to be up there. At least a grand.
The fact that it isn't an insignificant amount is why it's important. Now that people can "return" games after a set time limit, coupled with a big fee, that really should cut down on the horseshit.
And man is there a lot of horseshit.
I say this as an indie dev. I'll fork over a thousand to get my game on Steam if need be. I'll do that because after almost four years, I figure the game will at least make back that amount. If not, that's my fault and not Valve's.
If this is their answer, and a lazy one at that, then the fee needs to be up there. At least a grand.
The fact that it isn't an insignificant amount is why it's important. Now that people can "return" games after a set time limit, coupled with a big fee, that really should cut down on the horseshit.
And man is there a lot of horseshit.
I say this as an indie dev. I'll fork over a thousand to get my game on Steam if need be. I'll do that because after almost four years, I figure the game will at least make back that amount. If not, that's my fault and not Valve's.
BreezyLimbo
Banned
Mhm.
It's literally two extremes-
The first being that they just don't filter anything and allow everything in.
The second being that they just charge you and then you can put your shit in.
There is no curation involved in any case. It's just them putting a barrier to enter your game into their system.
Like for reference, a game like Undertale might've not gotten into Steam if it weren't for greenlight.(Granted they had a kickstarter for that but..y'know)
Chairmanchuck
Member
Its still far better than before when Valve execs denied games like german point and clicks for not having a market on Steam (while allowing american point and click games on it) or refusing to sell visual novels because "those are not games".
BreezyLimbo
Banned
Was that before greenlight? Cause there's like a shitload of visual novels on there now. Idk about the german point and clicks.
exmachina64
Banned
Yeah, that was before Greenlight. Valve was notorious for denying certain types of indie games from the store.
Chairmanchuck
Member
Yeah. Before Greenlight.
People might say even GL opened the floodgates, but even then I can still find the games I am interested in even though there is a shitton of shovelware in the store.
If this ends up being too expensive, then I'll cancel the PC and Linux versions of my game and release the Mac version on the Apple Store and the Wii U version on the eShop. My game has already been Greenlit, but it's not ready to go yet. If this changes, then I'll have to leave Steam behind. My funds are EXTREMELY limited. Can't even pay for music at the moment and trying to put together a Kickstarter campaign is just not gonna happen. The odds of my game getting Kickstarted is small. I'm not going to go in debt just trying get onto Steam. Just isn't gonna happen. So I hope they consider this fully.
As an indie dev I was shocked at first but the more I think about it, the more I'm liking the idea. Maybe 1k could be good enough to filter the noise while keeping it accessible for "serious indies" like me.
And please don't give me that "screw the poor" bs, I'm a solo dev from Southamerica, I know what is to be poor (like living-in-a-shack poor) but that doesn't change that making games is not a right but a privilege and the store is saturated (I still need to compete for space in the queue for example and it was this saturation that killed the visibility rounds as promotion tools).
Besides you can always save, that's how I started.
Now about the free games, maybe if the product is good enough they can crowdfund the fee.
And please don't give me that "screw the poor" bs, I'm a solo dev from Southamerica, I know what is to be poor (like living-in-a-shack poor) but that doesn't change that making games is not a right but a privilege and the store is saturated (I still need to compete for space in the queue for example and it was this saturation that killed the visibility rounds as promotion tools).
Besides you can always save, that's how I started.
Now about the free games, maybe if the product is good enough they can crowdfund the fee.
This is pretty exciting to me as an indie dev. Somewhere in the $1000 to $2000 range sounds about right.
It's a lot of money for a lot of people but it shows that you're taking things seriously. If you're making a game that you feel confident in but you don't think you can find a way to drum up $1000 to buy the shelf space then maybe you aren't actually that confident in your game having an audience.
It's a lot of money for a lot of people but it shows that you're taking things seriously. If you're making a game that you feel confident in but you don't think you can find a way to drum up $1000 to buy the shelf space then maybe you aren't actually that confident in your game having an audience.
This has nothing to do with confidence. Having that kind of money when it needs to be spent on the game itself is too much. Music costs, art costs, and now getting it on the store costs, too? That's just too much. There are good games that don't sell much since they get drowned out by all the noise. Having confidence in your product has nothing to do with this. Making a game (or any product) is a gamble. Some make it and a lot of people don't. That's just the name of the game, however, putting up $1000 or more just to be on the store is just pricing out the little man who may or may not make that back.
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
My point was that anyone already going that deep into development should know enough to budget accordingly for submission.
Haunted
Member
?
More like cost him thousands of pounds, Sterling has made a living out of covering shit games on Steam.
Or maybe you're a student paying 30k tuition. What's another $1000 on top of that right?
Dusk Golem
A 21st Century Rockefeller
Talking a bit personally here, I have released a few free games that have done well on Steam, and I would like to continue to occasionally make free games and release them on Steam. But as a free game makes no money back, they'd all be at a loss.
My family is in a terrible financial position right now, due to a poor decision my father made by trusting a Canadian oil businessman he lost his business and I've been having to help support my family financially for the last few months, so I barely have any leftover cash to get by as my parents are dealing with court cases to get their business back (long story), and prevent them from going homeless.
There has been a growing audience for my games, which I'm grateful for. I'm not an artist, so my games don't look immediately appealing but have surprised many who have played them. I just kind have made games I wished existed and experimented with things I hope people find an interesting experience, and thankfully many have. And while I am literally about to release a little game that's paid over this weekend (my first paid game ever, releasing after a few free ones to see there was an audience for them, though I'm only charging $1.99 for it), unless my little game turns out to be some massive success, there won't really be a way for me to continue doing this if there's any sort of additional cost on top of everything else already. I also wonder what Valve's solution is for free games, which is something they do permit at this time or at least did permit on their service in the past. The game is guaranteed to be released for a loss at that point then.
I think my biggest problem here is this "one size fits all" mentality. I actually think this is a step down from Greenlight. Greenlight was a one-time $100 fee and then a popularity contest, but a money paywall I don't think will fix anything. In fact, what I think it'll do is just make it so people who make passion projects that are poor won't be able to go on the storefront. Scammers whole point is to make a money through abusing tactics, so they'd likely have the money to bypass whatever wall anyways.
I think some other wall would work better than this money paywall. I think it offers zero solution to the problem and will hurt far more legitimate games than it'll hep fight against shovelware, and then make publishers the gate keepers for many poor developers. It feels like the zero effort solution on Valve's part. Valve isn't a charity obviously, but this doesn't seem like the right solution to the problem they've proposed.
I think something that would work far better is simply some sort of quality control that isn't a paywall. FYI, as someone who has a few games on Steam at this point in time, Valve actually has a review session for every game now as of a few months ago before you can release the game on Steam. Before you can release your game, you have to hit a button for it to be checked by Valve to see all is in working order... And it's right now mainly to check all appears to be in working order, ie, it launches, has the features it says it has, etc. But if they extended this to other aspects, like to eliminate something that's just pure garbage, and let there be a time banned or permanent ban on developers who do abusive behavoir or the like, I think it'd be far better than just some monetary wall. Weed out the problem children.
I know I'll be viewing this with some tint due to my own personal position, but I think a lot of people are underestimating how challenging it can be for many legitimate people with legitimate games to just whip up additional cost on top of other expenses upfront. For some it's zero problem, for others it's a serious concern, because everyone's in a different financial position.
I feel this won't fix anything, it instead will hurt a number of developers, I don't see how this will stop people releasing shovelware games for easy money or con artists who are more likely to have money on hand than someone struggling and making a game out of passion. I feel this doesn't solve any of Greenlights issues, FYI there was a fee attached to using Greenlight even if it was a one-time fee, and that didn't stop jack shit.
My family is in a terrible financial position right now, due to a poor decision my father made by trusting a Canadian oil businessman he lost his business and I've been having to help support my family financially for the last few months, so I barely have any leftover cash to get by as my parents are dealing with court cases to get their business back (long story), and prevent them from going homeless.
There has been a growing audience for my games, which I'm grateful for. I'm not an artist, so my games don't look immediately appealing but have surprised many who have played them. I just kind have made games I wished existed and experimented with things I hope people find an interesting experience, and thankfully many have. And while I am literally about to release a little game that's paid over this weekend (my first paid game ever, releasing after a few free ones to see there was an audience for them, though I'm only charging $1.99 for it), unless my little game turns out to be some massive success, there won't really be a way for me to continue doing this if there's any sort of additional cost on top of everything else already. I also wonder what Valve's solution is for free games, which is something they do permit at this time or at least did permit on their service in the past. The game is guaranteed to be released for a loss at that point then.
I think my biggest problem here is this "one size fits all" mentality. I actually think this is a step down from Greenlight. Greenlight was a one-time $100 fee and then a popularity contest, but a money paywall I don't think will fix anything. In fact, what I think it'll do is just make it so people who make passion projects that are poor won't be able to go on the storefront. Scammers whole point is to make a money through abusing tactics, so they'd likely have the money to bypass whatever wall anyways.
I think some other wall would work better than this money paywall. I think it offers zero solution to the problem and will hurt far more legitimate games than it'll hep fight against shovelware, and then make publishers the gate keepers for many poor developers. It feels like the zero effort solution on Valve's part. Valve isn't a charity obviously, but this doesn't seem like the right solution to the problem they've proposed.
I think something that would work far better is simply some sort of quality control that isn't a paywall. FYI, as someone who has a few games on Steam at this point in time, Valve actually has a review session for every game now as of a few months ago before you can release the game on Steam. Before you can release your game, you have to hit a button for it to be checked by Valve to see all is in working order... And it's right now mainly to check all appears to be in working order, ie, it launches, has the features it says it has, etc. But if they extended this to other aspects, like to eliminate something that's just pure garbage, and let there be a time banned or permanent ban on developers who do abusive behavoir or the like, I think it'd be far better than just some monetary wall. Weed out the problem children.
I know I'll be viewing this with some tint due to my own personal position, but I think a lot of people are underestimating how challenging it can be for many legitimate people with legitimate games to just whip up additional cost on top of other expenses upfront. For some it's zero problem, for others it's a serious concern, because everyone's in a different financial position.
I feel this won't fix anything, it instead will hurt a number of developers, I don't see how this will stop people releasing shovelware games for easy money or con artists who are more likely to have money on hand than someone struggling and making a game out of passion. I feel this doesn't solve any of Greenlights issues, FYI there was a fee attached to using Greenlight even if it was a one-time fee, and that didn't stop jack shit.
Why should the store be free? Isn't that incredibly entitled of you to believe? No one is owed a place on the storefront just by virtue of wanting to put a game on there.
If you don't think you'll even make $1000, a number 99.9% of games on Steam have surpassed, then it has everything to do with confidence. If you can't get any followers on Twitter with #screenshotsaturday, if your Kickstarter fails multiple times, then maybe people don't want your game.
Confidence isn't just wanting your game to succeed really really badly because it would be great if it did. Confidence is knowing that people love what you're doing and are going to be there to support you.
If you can take out a loan for 30k tuition then you can take out a loan for $1000 on Steam.
Dusk Golem
A 21st Century Rockefeller
FYI, being on Steam isn't free, Valve takes a 30% cut from all units sold on their store.
For the rest of your argument, you're applying the very flawed "one size fits all" logic that is ignoring various factors at play here.
Charging developers a flat fee per game seems, quite honestly, backwards. Greenlight had it's problems but it did help independent games grow exponentially, and made Steam essentially a defacto store front for all PC games. Suddenly if they start charging a fee of $5000 per game that's going to rapidly decrease the output. Really even a $100 fee is too much to stomach for some indie devs. I can't help but feel that innovation in the industry will suffer if this is allowed to go through.
Why should I though? Unless Valve feels like putting in a "you must be X rich to play" system, it's going to seriously decrease output from student game projects and one man indie teams.
Am I misreading it or is it not a fee? It's like a deposit. If you're putting shit onto the store that won't even earn that back then don't bother. We don't need more games on Steam, especially not more bad games.
Well that's ironic.
I meant practically free, not entirely free. The hosting is free, getting people to vote can be free, the current $100 asking price is essentially free.
I think the core of this division is people who prefer quality against people who prefer quantity. The internet is already quantity, so it would be nice to have corners of it be quality.
Because you believe in your game. If you're a good game developer then you'll make way more with the 1K Steam investment than your 30K university investment.
innervision961
Member
I think there should be tiers to this;
Unity/Unreal game with original content = $100
Unity/Unreal with asset store content = $500
RPG Maker game with any content = $5,000,000
Unity/Unreal game with original content = $100
Unity/Unreal with asset store content = $500
RPG Maker game with any content = $5,000,000
A game not selling doesn't mean it's a bad game
More like if I got extremely lucky, or paid a bunch of money to market a game. There are tons of good games on Steam that sell like shit.
And no, just having a good game isn't going to make me the 100k+ back the university investment will.
toddhunter
Member
I think that is pretty sensible but it would probably just lead to anime and visual novel developers migrating to other development environments. It is hence going to end up creating a big headache for Valve trying to stay ahead of the game.
It is a real difficult problem to solve, but ultimately this problem is bigger than valve and it may take change on a global scale before something can be done.
Anything good and worth playing would make more than $1,000.
Also, if your game is awesome, why not just put it up on Kickstarter? Set the goal to $1,000, say you just need that money to get it on Steam -- If it's a worthwhile game, you'll get it. If it even looks kind of good you'll get it.
This is a crazy hardline response. No one knows how their game will do and having people get behind your product is not a guarantee for success. Game studios close all the time even with people who follow and love their games. This is the reality and we're already giving Valve a cut of our games, so why should we have to throw down more money just to be on the store? You think this is going to weed out shovelware? It's just gonna make it a lot harder for those who are seriously budget constrained to get on the store. In truth, I think my game will sell enough to pay $1000, but I don't have that money up front. If I had that money, I'd spend it on getting some custom music made before I'd spend it on getting on Steam, because I think that would make more of a difference in the player's experience with my game than whether or not I put it towards paying Valve $1000+.
Having to rely on fickle Kickstarter stuff is just not the way to go. There should be a better way to vet projects and maybe Valve doesn't want to put in the man hours for this. Still, there are other options for developers including GoG and the Apple Mac App Store for Mac apps. Not to mention the console stores (PSN, eShop, and XBLive).
Dusk Golem
A 21st Century Rockefeller
It also takes subjectivity out of the picture. For example, what about people who like RPG Maker games? Like the RPG Maker games with huge fandoms that came to Steam recently, like Mad Father or OneShot?
(though given both games I posted above would skip this fee entirely since they both had publishers, hell one of them was published by Degica who is the same company that publishes RPG Maker, who is an authorized publisher on Steam.)
Why should specific engines have further fees for the Steam Storefront than the fees of the engine itself?
really it sounds like you think game making is such a roll of the dice that any fiscal investment is a risk.
Make a good game. Advertise it through the proper free channels like #gamedev and people will flock to you if it looks good. It might not happen immediately but it will happen eventually if you have an interesting game. People like to retweet and follow interesting developers. Once you get people following you then leverage them to help spread the word and/or fund the game.
If all you do is drop a game on Steam and hope for the best, then you're not in it to win.
innervision961
Member
I was just poking fun at rpg maker, there has to be some sort of way to sort content better. Maybe by a developer rating? I don't know really, on one hand, I kind of really like that Valve allows damn near anyone to sell on Steam. You end up with some gems that you may have not had otherwise, but I get the headaches some devs and consumers have by how flooded the market is.
It's more like, if I had $1000 to spend on Steam I'd rather spend that making the product better, not paying for the privilege of being lumped in a store with 10000 other games. Steam takes a 30% cut of profits anyway, that should be enough.
Well there wouldn't be 10000 other games if there was a high barrier to entry.
Also Valve doesn't keep the entry fee. It's recoverable, meaning their cut of the sales pays that back. This isn't about them fleecing you for more money. They just want to know you're taking this seriously.
One game - which presumably is different or novel enough to attract the views and attention to propel it to the popular new releases list - hardly constitutes "wading" through garbage games for good ones. And the rest of that list has some really cool-looking games.
Anyway, we should never be arguing for fewer games on Steam. Any barrier to entry potentially means one good game that doesn't get on the service.
GOG operates this way and it sucks.
Valve was rarely this direct about rejecting anything and that's what made people so mad--oftentimes you'd get a worthless rejection message telling you your game was rejected because someone thought there "wasn't a market for [x] on Steam" and it's like, what the fuck does that even mean?
Dusk Golem
A 21st Century Rockefeller
Your lack of insight is making your arguments very null. Your argument basically simplifies to Quality = Sales and put yourself out there, which is not only incredibly untrue, something that's been proven time and time again in every industry, no less the gaming industry and the indie scene and even on Steam itself, but it's a full of assumptions and misunderstanding of how games both release on Steam and the difficulty of marketing with zero budget. Paid Marketing is super expensive for a reason, companies use these super expensive marketing tactics with reason. It's not as easy as, "I made something good, buy my game" and posting it on discussion topics and people will 'flock to you'. If were that easy then no one would deal with marketing, it'd be useless.
Some games, very rare games, will become runaway successes over night through being in the right place at the right time through word of mouth and spread. Most games, even ones of excellent quality, won't. Business is not that easy.
Obviously dropping a game with no marketing will make it a silent release, and there are many things a developer can do to try to get their game out there, but I can guarantee what you're saying is so far from the truth that it goes into ignorance. The base of your argument isn't, IE, there is ways to put your game out there that may attract attention. But it's ignoring a lot of factors, a lot that directly impact the given method.
Indie developers will try to market their game, some will be successful, but there isn't some magic method to getting your game out there to the public eye.
There's other methods of content curation than "how deep are your pockets".
This is bullshit. Not every game that doesn't make money is bad.
But sales are a barometer for quality. I'm not saying the best games are always the best sellers, nor that they could or should be. What I am saying is that if no one wants your game, literally not enough people to pay for $1000, it's almost certainly not a good game by the metrics 99.9% of people use. Which is sad for the developer and the three people who want to play the game, but they're in the extreme minority.
You don't have to pay for advertisements. Figure out which hashtags people follow. Figure out what kind of screenshots people like to retweet. Figure out what people will like about your game and do your best to share that. If people aren't coming then you're not showing it off well enough or you're not making something anyone is interested in.
Not every brave and spirited developer is making something that people want to play.
Obviously. Usually worse ways or ways that are prohibitively expensive to Valve.
Dusk Golem
A 21st Century Rockefeller
Sales are not a barometer of quality. It's not that cut and dry, not even close. Many games of quality won't see sales due to unawareness and various other factors at play. You'd be surprised just how hard it is to actually spread awareness of... Well, anything. But in this case we'll talk games. Some people can be very good at making a game, but very bad at spreading the word about it. Many creative types of people in gaming development can be shy, introverted, or anti-social even. But even without that factor, you don't just open a store, or restaurant, or make an indie film or game, and people will come. Even if you go to public events, show your film off at a festival, post about it online, post posters around your town about it, most people won't take notice. Some maybe will, but most people won't. You can't just post something online and everyone will read it. And some games are extremely hard to pitch even if they may be fantastic games. Some of these find success after release through word of mouth, but most don't honestly.
The method you're stating will work for some, but again, it's not a "one size fits all" solution. In fact, it will only work with a very small percentage of people, and not just people who 'deserve it'.
There's so many factors in play, I don't even really know where to start tackling this without making this a super long post. But Sales aren't and never have been a barometer to quality. Something selling does NOT equal quality. Something not selling =/= it not being quality either.
The world doesn't work in such a way that quality and good efforts is guaranteed to sell back.
There are many games that fail at getting the word out. Steam Greenlight doesn't in and of itself help with that. If you can get the word out about voting your Greenlight project onto the store, then you can get the word out about funding the game or receiving other support.
Please stop acting like I'm unaware of the difficulties in successfully leveraging social media. I don't happen to think I've very good at it, certainly I wouldn't be employable for the skill, and yet I've still had remarkable success in several instances over the past seven years.
If you don't want to invest in learning how to spread the word about your game, then you shouldn't automatically get the same mindshare as people who are interested in that. There are a myriad ways to get the word out. It's just that most people make junk games. Most people are not the best at what they do, and thanks to the internet we're able to see all the better people. If you're not making ripples on social media then you're probably not as good as the people who are.
In the era of easy refunds, something selling on Steam absolutely means that it's quality. To argue otherwise without explaining why is delusional. Just because you like something the most doesn't make it a better thing. To you it does, but not in aggregate. And aggregation is what this whole thing is about.
Good for you. This isn't the case for everyone. Maybe you've been fortunate enough to do fairly well, I'm sure there are others who haven't. Even marketing your game won't necessarily yield results i.e. sales. A well made game isn't guaranteed to sell and a shitty game isn't guaranteed to fail. Maybe your game is coming out at the wrong time. It's a great game, but the gaming public isn't interested. So it fails. Maybe you release something just to see how it does and it's quality is dubious but its in a genre the public is chomping at the bit for. So it does well. There are too many factors involved and there are no guarantees. Anyone in business will tell you this.
Steam should just roll out a crowdfunding equivalent to get it on the store. E.g. Like Greenlight but to vote you have to fund it (money back if it doesn't reach the goal by deadline etc...).
Dev gets funding, game gets awareness and builds a community, audience get a say on if it reaches the store, Valve still makes money if a good games make it through. Everyone wins.
Sure I could just use Kickstarter but I think it will get more eyes via Steam if it were part of the system.
Dev gets funding, game gets awareness and builds a community, audience get a say on if it reaches the store, Valve still makes money if a good games make it through. Everyone wins.
Sure I could just use Kickstarter but I think it will get more eyes via Steam if it were part of the system.
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
Yeah, GOG is pretty snobby.
Of course, their entire premise is to cater to old skool gamers with old skool games, so it makes sense. But still, they are pretty snobby.
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