Steam Greenlight to shut down in spring, replaced by Steam Direct
- Thread starter Corpekata
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JustSomeone
Member
You mean assembly. C is for lazy programmers
Depends, a group of students who truly believe in their project should be able to save and pool a thousand bucks for example.
not for some ones is trying to put up there first game.
Valve isn't obligated accept your game or keep a fee to a minimum. They know that they will lose a few good games, but they'll get rid of dozen shitty asset-swapped cash-ins. Garbage in Steam Greenlight is a wide known problem and Valve is doing good efforts to solve it.
That said, I think the fee should variable - if it's your first game, maybe a free game, the fee can be 300 - 500 $. The next game may cost you 1000$, but if you first one was popular, it shouldn't be a problem. Next game 2000-3000$. Should prevent scammers who put up dozens of games hoping any of them will sell.
Overall, if you can't come up with 1000$, take a loan. If you don't believe you'll make it back, your game is not worth to be on the store.
That said, I think the fee should variable - if it's your first game, maybe a free game, the fee can be 300 - 500 $. The next game may cost you 1000$, but if you first one was popular, it shouldn't be a problem. Next game 2000-3000$. Should prevent scammers who put up dozens of games hoping any of them will sell.
Overall, if you can't come up with 1000$, take a loan. If you don't believe you'll make it back, your game is not worth to be on the store.
I don't think you've actually read what Valve has said and what their views are on curation, but 1000$ per game or increasing fees for each subsequent game is not going to happen.
This whole "Valve isn't obligated to accept your game or have low fees" is a dumb argument. Yeah, they aren't obligated to accept any game at all and could have 20000$ fee if they wanted. How is "obligation" relevant?
I don't see anything that says that mentioned things are not going to happen in the announcement. I'm not claiming it will, it was just a suggestion from my side.
"Obligation" part was directed to some people in this thread talking like it's their right to have a game on Steam or comparing it to Microsoft's closed platform as if their right to speech is being taken away.
michaelius
Banned
That's a good idea to scale costs with next games - it doesn't block people from releasing their first game which is most risky and if they are successful it's easier for them to take bigger hit on their second production.
There are other platforms as well. Steam doesn't owe a free pass for every "first project".
Again, silly argument. They don't owe a free pass for anyone at all ever and could have a 20000$ fee if they wanted. What they owe or don't owe is 100% irrelevant here.
That remains to be seen. I can think of one publisher already established on the service, churning out low quality simulators. A fee for each is unlikely to make much difference to them unless it really is discouragingly high.
I hope the developers of those few good games that may not be able to afford to get onto Steam can find success elsewhere, at least initially until they have the funds to pay for Steam's submission fee (whatever it ends up being) - that they may need to will show that there is a fault with this new system.
Steam holds the 90% of the sales of PC games, so have success in others stores it's something really difficult.
if you cant sell 200 5$ copies for the cost of the exposure that a gigantic platform like steam SHOULD be providing, your game doesn't deserve to be on steam. Its clogging up the pipes if your game is so unspecial that it manages a paltry 20 copies or whatever thru steam, there is itchio and other services for indie scenes that small with plenty of room to grow.
budgeting 1-5k out of your kickstarter 20-60k budget is infinitely better then bugging your not-large-enough early investor base for months to try and get pushed through greenlight
If valve fucks up and leaves the fee at 100$ the shovelware will continue to accelerate as it always has
budgeting 1-5k out of your kickstarter 20-60k budget is infinitely better then bugging your not-large-enough early investor base for months to try and get pushed through greenlight
If valve fucks up and leaves the fee at 100$ the shovelware will continue to accelerate as it always has
Is that supposed to be a bad thing? Because it doesn't sound like it. Just sounds like I will still get more good games than we get now, and the bad ones I can just ignore pretty easily.
Mind you, 1000$ would barely do anything to stop any shovelware mass producers at all.
It would since their business model is about releasing as many shitty games as possible to gather small revenue streams.
Their revenue stream is bigger than 1000$
LordRaptor
Member
But there are no pipes.
There are literally no infrastructure reasons why there should be any barriers to entry.
I think any discussion on what the amount of such a fee should be, and whether it would discourage those shovelware producers while allowing competent indie games to pass, cannot be held with the information we have. I hope Valve does some serious research into the affected business models, average revenue, etc.
Right now it's just people advocating any number between $100-5000 based on their 'gut feeling'. That doesn't really get us anywhere.
Right now it's just people advocating any number between $100-5000 based on their 'gut feeling'. That doesn't really get us anywhere.
I wonder what that means for people like myself. My game passed Greenlight over a year ago now, but I am still yet to release it (and I really don't want to go the early access route). Does this mean I will have to resupply and I've lost the fee I paid before, or will I be safe as my game's already Greenlit?
You're fine - You've been Greenlit and allocated a Steam app-id.
If you release a hundred shitty flash games and make barely a living, you are not able to pay 100k by any means.
Indeed, this is because they don't want Steam to become google play store.
Well, you could argue that Valve's 30% cut on sales to fund infrastructure may not be enough at this point in time. Remember that even games no longer sold have to be held on the servers for people who have bought them to download them at any point. And that costs money.
This whole thing doe seem weirdly antithetical to how they've talked up to this point, which is lowering barriers of entry, and letting consumers and players surface good games, and ignore bad games. The Discovery Updates have been successes, so presumably this is a way to lower the amount of "trash" that gets released. But then we come back to how Steam used to be years ago, where the barrier to entry was Valve curating the store - this is still curation, it's just a financial barrier rather than an emotive "I like this game, let's have it on Steam".
More objective, but still does the same thing, surely?
Edit: Though this is actually close to what physical stores do, I suppose? They have publishers guarantee a certain amount of sales or something?
Well, most of Steam's content servers are actually run by third parties (ISPs, primarily) and Valve doesn't reimburse them or anything of the sort.
I don't think the idea is to improve the quality of games releasing on Steam so much as it is to make it more difficult for unscrupulous developers to release games that infringe on copyright or otherwise run afoul of policy, especially given Valve's regular swinging of the distribution agreement termination hammer in recent weeks -- it's grown tired of having to micromanage developers when they decide to do something stupid.
AusRoachman
Member
Saw this on twitter and thought it was a great idea
https://twitter.com/steam_spy/status/830915608527175681
"Steam idea: like Greenlight but people actually preorder the game. If it reaches $5,000, it gets released. Otherwise everyone is refunded."
https://twitter.com/steam_spy/status/830915608527175681
"Steam idea: like Greenlight but people actually preorder the game. If it reaches $5,000, it gets released. Otherwise everyone is refunded."
You can release shitty unity projects, pump them out, pay 1000$ and turn a profit quit easily, and move on to the next shovelware title. The 1k isn't going to stop it.
Unless they go for some of the crazy ass values people are stating here, this would be a more open system if the fee is something decent like 200$. A greenlight submission cost 100$ , and that didn't guarantee you would get on Steam.
Also like JaseC pointed out, many of the download servers of Steam are not run or paid by Valve.
That actually makes a lot of sense. The only downside I can see is exposure, by which I mean the sheer amount of games submitted may drown out something people may want, but would never know about. Although to be fair, that wouldn't be a new issue.
Ah, yes, I blanked on this... I remember reading something mentioning this in the SteamGAF thread.
Okay, yeah, I can see that. They're going to lose in the long-run, though, I think. Compare videogames (not just PC, but iOS and Google stores) to any other industry, and you have wayyyyyyyy more stupid/arrogant/copyright infringement going on, and I don't think that's got anything to do with barrier of entry to the stores. Self-publishing ebooks don't seem to have the same reputation as the iOS store does for knock-offs, for example. Maybe the barrier to entry for writing an "erotic short story" is higher than asset-flipping?
Random vaguely-related aside - shouldn't the industry trade-bodies be doing more to deal with developer/publisher stupidity. I mean, even if Valve succeed in cutting down on offending devs/pubs, they're just moving the problem around, not stamping it out?
Dunno, that sounds terrible. Who is going to be willing to preorder a unknown indie title with no reviews, at full price? Who is going to pay the refunds fees (refunds are not free to process)? What would be the arbitrary amount of time where you could preorder it? 1 month? 6? One year?
LordRaptor
Member
Greenlight fee is a flat developer fee; you would be able to submit any number of games to greenlight with its payment.
This is a per title fee, and would be an ongoing cost for every developer.
This action in particular is going to see an increase in unscrupulous publishers.
Oh, yeah, it's definitely a problem that can really only be mitigated rather than solved.
The fee is per title, not per developer.
I'm aware. You can turn a profit even when paying 1k for title.
HandsomeCharles
Member
If you're not coding on punch-cards then you're literally trash.
You can and you can also make a loss. The risk was minimal before, now you'll have to think twice about your shotgun strategy (which is what Valve wants).
As it is, the strategy is fool proof.
None of these are issues:
- Same people willing to Kickstart and you could use the refund system in case the game launches and turns out to be crap.
- Could set a rule that you could only do these Greenlight campaigns 6 months from proposed launch target. That's enough time for the dev to integrate Steamworks and set up the store page.
If the game turns out to be bad or it misses its proposed launch by months or years, that's not really a big issue and nothing new. It would instead boost curation (which is the main goal!). I don't see any shovelware producer passing through this system, while promising indies (even low-budget ones) would be able to get through.
Make a shit game on Unity or whatever
Release it with like 60%off as a launch discount
Put steam trading cards on it
Start contacting bundles like Groupees or Indiegala or DiF and peddle your crappy game to be on their bundles.
Put it on a week-long discount at 90%off on Steam
Then start giving it away in mass quantities.
Congrats, you just made more than 1000$ every single time.
But that's not the main goal. In fact, it's the exact opposite reason for why Valve is moving to Steam Direct.
"Thus, over Steams 13-year history, we have gradually moved from a tightly curated store to a more direct distribution model. In the coming months, we are planning to take the next step in this process by removing the largest remaining obstacle to having a direct path, Greenlight."
michaelius
Banned
I take you are a game developer with comfy revenue streams from steam.
Ah yeah, forgot about. Basically there is no risk for shovelware peddlers whatsoever then.
I'm quite in the know of much steam market items can move. Digital Homicide was making several thousands of dollars off their crappy games thanks to that.
I mean, curation in terms of aligning more closely what Steam users want to buy and what gets accepted on the store front. A sort of 'pre-order to get it on Steam' campaign seems quite reasonable in achieving this goal, more so than an arbitrary up-front fee.
Several thousands? So they would make a loss if they had to pay 1k for each title.
Well, a recoupable fee is still an expense. I'd say the goal here is two-pronged: removing Greenlight means less frustration for known quantities as being greenlit isn't a licence to upload new games as desired, and the higher upfront, per-title cost will hopefully dissuade at least some delinquents from releasing asset flips and the like.
Several thousand per month. And the fee would be recoupable.
Chairmanchuck
Member
Use (a non deviant-art) anime-style, get greenlit in a few days...
To be fair though, if it doesnt look like deviant-art, mostly the games themselves already look good enough.
Abilidebob
Member
Yup. It's also sad to see how many Gaffers simply outright hate developers from 3rd world countries.
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