Abilidebob
Member
Oh no, whatever shall I do about all those bad games that I'll literally never see while browsing Steam! If only Jim was here to tell me about it!
Steam Greenlight to shut down in spring, replaced by Steam Direct
- Thread starter Corpekata
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Weltall Zero
Member
How about you don't have a clue if people will buy your game, regardless of quality? You know, as is actually the case in the real world rather than your fantasy black and white world?
YuriLowell
Member
Yeah I'm thinking something like 500.
jshackles
Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
I would pay $100 to put a fake game on Steam just for a) the possibility that someone would buy it and b) to get access to the Steamworks developer side of Steam. Hell, a lot of scammers would probably pay the fee just to get the "Steamworks developer" badge they could feature on their profile to make them seem more legitimate.
Yep, ultimately the real concern for the idea, so it will be very interesting to see how the manage it. Regardless for me personally, I am looking for greater breadth that comes without curation, and so far Steam does a good job of filtering out the shit so I don't see it, and since I'm not looking for it, that works out fine - especially with the new filters to block some genres that I know I'll never buy. There need to be better tools in place to cope with this both for developers and customers.
Yeah, another problem. They knocked off the points aspect of the badge but it still ads some form of legitimacy. Only solution I can think of is making that kind of access something that has to be earned through successive releases that show good quality / no malicious shit.
Basileus777
Member
That's the life of a youtube populist.
Garrett Hawke
Member
Yuuuuup.
"Oh no, there is a bad game on this store! My enjoyment of this platform has been forever ruined!"
exmachina64
Banned
Not at all, I understand and am sympathetic to the plight of indie developers. I can see how my comment would be upsetting to developers that are creating games with virtually no budget; no access to capital; no publisher; or are simply creating games in their spare time, for fun, or to serve a small niche. I'm also not in favor of curation nor did I endorse Desura.
I haven't read through whatever else Pestilence11 might have said after the post I quoted, but I'm responding specifically to what he said about visibility for either first-time developers or developers that haven't been successful. I also know that you frequently write about indie games on GAF and elsewhere.
What I am saying is that out of the tens of thousands of indie games released in the last several years, how many of those games have made enough money to recoup costs? For every game that sold hundreds of thousands or millions of copies, how many other games never became popular?
Yes, a higher barrier to entry on Steam might prevent some developers from releasing their titles. However, we've also reached a point where it's become increasingly untenable to release a commercially-successful game without investing in marketing -- and that costs money.
YuriLowell
Member
Whats Steam Greenlight cost now? 100?
Plus however much you spend advertising your game to get visible enough to get through steam greenlight.
Abilidebob
Member
Problem with consoles are the devkits, as those can be quite expensive, especially for 3rd world devs. I vaguely remember that a WiiU devkit was 3k dollars?
Please, no. I release niche games, and not all of them have made $1,000.
I understand that there should be a barrier, and that $100 might be too low, but you don't want to kill any possibility of hobbyist developers turning a profit.
When are y'all going to understand that Valve doesn't care how many games release on Steam? All they want to do is avoid the obvious frauds, scams, and copyright infringement.
Steam is never just going to be a list of the very best games according to what Valve thinks the best games are, and those are the ones that get to be sold. We had that once. It sucked.
There are going to be bad games on Steam, just like there's bad content on Amazon or iTunes any other online storefront. The solution is to get better at showing people the games they want, and they've already done that.
Valve's goal is to have more games on Steam, not less.
Steam is never just going to be a list of the very best games according to what Valve thinks the best games are, and those are the ones that get to be sold. We had that once. It sucked.
There are going to be bad games on Steam, just like there's bad content on Amazon or iTunes any other online storefront. The solution is to get better at showing people the games they want, and they've already done that.
Valve's goal is to have more games on Steam, not less.
More_Badass
Member
An entry fee that could costs more than the potential profits and dev costs of a niche game?
OK here's my proposition:
Two options for submission:
1) $1,000 fee - steam direct - go right to store
1) Psuedo-greenlight - Go through a submission process (very similar to greenlight). Devs post projects/concepts whatever they want. Users vote, and the top 100 or so each month are approved with the submission fee waived.
This removes the stupid greenlight barrier for devs willing to pay, while still allowing smaller devs with less money to get the fee waived. I still don't like the popularity contest aspect, but it's clear valve does not want to spend time actually looking at submissions.
EDIT:
Pros:
+ Greenlight would be less crowded, allowing smaller developers to get more eyes on their stuff, making it easier to get through
+ Devs that are locked and loaded to release with $1k don't have to worry about the greenlight process
Cons:
- Still allows crap if the developer of said crap is willing to put up $1k, albeit probably less than now
Two options for submission:
1) $1,000 fee - steam direct - go right to store
1) Psuedo-greenlight - Go through a submission process (very similar to greenlight). Devs post projects/concepts whatever they want. Users vote, and the top 100 or so each month are approved with the submission fee waived.
This removes the stupid greenlight barrier for devs willing to pay, while still allowing smaller devs with less money to get the fee waived. I still don't like the popularity contest aspect, but it's clear valve does not want to spend time actually looking at submissions.
EDIT:
Pros:
+ Greenlight would be less crowded, allowing smaller developers to get more eyes on their stuff, making it easier to get through
+ Devs that are locked and loaded to release with $1k don't have to worry about the greenlight process
Cons:
- Still allows crap if the developer of said crap is willing to put up $1k, albeit probably less than now
Hari Seldon
Member
It needs to be at least $1k. There is too much shovelwear on steam.
More_Badass
Member
Is that a bad thing if you never see it? Good games get highlighted, shovelwear and shit doesnt
Should Amazon and Barnes & Noble only allow "good" books/movies/etc on their stores?
Hari Seldon
Member
The problem is if you are an indy dev and you spend a couple years making a real game. In 2 years, an asset flipper can pump out 20-40 games that will drown out the actual game that people might want to see. The average consumer sees all of this as "indy crap" and ignores it.
I don't even bother looking at "New Releases" like I used to when Steam was curated. Now I just look at "Top Sellers".
Frozenprince
Banned
I make pretty good money from my job and have a bit of savings and even I would struggle just pulling out a grand to spend on something like this.
It's not an insignificant amount of money for 99% of people.
More_Badass
Member
Popular New Releases is curated. Top Sellers is the worst way to find new good games
Chainsawkitten
Member
"New Releases" is curated. Unless you mean "All New Releases" in which case, well yeah, if you're deliberately seeking out the non-curated section, expect non-curated stuff.
I don't disagree that 'shovelware' has a tangible impact on Steam, especially for developers rather than consumers. It's not as harmless as some may think.
But I also don't see how this $1000 fee is really going to fix that. It makes it worse for everyone and maybe even more so for that lone developer rather than the 'asset flipper'.
Hari Seldon
Member
Yeah All New Releases that is what I meant. I do like to check this because I play a lot of off popular genre stuff. Basically I want lots of Indies on steam, but not asset flippers. However Valve can make this happen I'm all for lol.
jshackles
Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
And the "All New Releases" tab is part of Enhanced Steam that was created specifically for people who didn't agree with Valve's curation tactics for their home page.
A lot of people use it (as well as clicking the provided button without Enhanced Steam) simply because their interests might deviate from the norm.
Chainsawkitten
Member
I tip my hat to you, good sir.
Frozenprince
Banned
5K isn't that much money? What fucking planet do some of you love on where that's the case?
I get that. What I'm saying is that (for me), I enjoyed Steam more when it was more restrictive on what hit the store front. I don't want to see the death of indie games, despite the flack I'm getting. To me, there is a difference between indie games and everything else: student and hobby projects, mobile ports and the truly vile garbage that is clogging up Greenlight.
If you aren't willing to sacrifice 5k on something you care about, then why should anyone look at it? And that is just the scenario where no one in the world buys your game, if you have confidence that what you have worked on is worth anything, then you will get your money back.
I think a lot of you guys have forgotten that Steam is a STORE. It exists as a way for developers to sell their games, not share their cool hobby projects. If you don't believe that your project can't meet absolutely tiny sales projections, you don't belong on a storefront, point blank. It is a waste of your time, Steam's resources and the consumer's patience.
Jubenhimer
Member
If this can reduce the amount of low effort shovel-ware on Steam, then so be it. I love Steam, but quality control has become almost non-existent thanks to greenlight.
Hari Seldon
Member
You are probably right. I just remember when I was looking into making iOS games years ago, I was doing some googling and looking into the average sales and things like that. I came across some guide by some numb-nut that was basically teaching people how to asset flip and pump out a game every few days with a small amount of money. Like buying a flappy birds template and reskinning it over and over and over. This situation has got to be terrible for any developer actually wanting to do something creative on that platform.
Frozenprince
Banned
Five thousand dollars is a months to almost two months salary to anybody of middle class income. Steam is a store, and people want to sell their project that they worked hard on and sacrificed their free time and energy for. Time is worth money, that's why we pay hourly. Recouping even a thousand dollars is vastly different than recouping five fucking grand.
Give grand is a RIDICULOUS barrier of entry. Stardew valley was a cool hobby project, started by one guy who did it in his spare time because he loved it and had an idea for a project.
Edit; and there are professional development teams of multiple people in foreign countries that can never hope to sniff five grand USD. That's almost a year's worth or wages, if not more.
This is an insane propositions.
But they don't say anything about quality-control, they only talk about an entrypay.
Edit: And I don't like the Greenlight. When we published our game on steam, we didn't know how many time it would be stuck here.
Yeesh. I wonder how many great games wouldn't be on Steam if Valve required $5k to be let through the gate.
That is by design. The urge to not be the gatekeeper. Shovelware, spam, asset flips etc, will still be a problem in such a system, and the same will be true with this new endeavour. The way around that is to ensure far better filtering and tools available for, discoverability, reporting and even algorithms for personalisation and showing the appropriate content to the right users. That is where the challenge lies for this kind of approach, but fair play to them at least for doing a far better job at this sort of system than most have.
Where are you going to draw the line? At 10K? At 20K?
Frozenprince
Banned
Tons, I can't imagine something like ladykiller in a bind would make it, or smaller team built games. Not a single visual novel would be on there.
This is one of the most naive things I've ever read of this forum. More to the point though, even if every project was guaranteed to break even, an arbitrarily high upfront fee would still prevent many games from being released because most people don't have that kind of liquid cash at one time. This applies to many aspects of life too, not just entrepreneurial affairs which is why being in poverty is so expensive.
Frozenprince
Banned
I don't have five thousand dollars in liquid assets to spend and I consider myself blessed enough to be fairly stable and doing well financially. I'm certainly not upper middle class but I'm not struggling in debt and have the ability to save. I feel lucky if I have a hundred dollars left over after budgeting.
This level of a price point would be classism. Gating the store entirely from lower class people with a passion project and a dream.
As an aside, $1-5K can be more usefully spent on contract work for an artist or musician to polish up the game's audio and visuals, and improve its overall quality. This is a beaucratic cost on the developer without any evidence that it would lead to a healthier marketplace, to the detriment of the consumers.
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