Steam Greenlight is Going Away

Via Gamasutra article.

I think I'm in favor of this, but I'm not positive. As much as it's nice having a lower barrier to entry, there's too much garbage out there. This should bring us back towards the days where only serious developers submit games again.

Thoughts?

 

I kinda liked the "diversity" factor that greenlight brought, as well as the opportunity for the little guys to get a chance, but I suppose at the end of the day, this means more quality and less quantity, perhaps fewer clones and knockoffs and more good games... Don't wanna see steam looking like an app store

 

It makes sense, though why not have both? Separate Indie and Greenlight categories. Leave Indie category for games made by more professional experienced teams so they can ensure a profit to cover the cost of making better games, and keep Greenlight for the diverse smaller casual games.

 

If its too low like $100 bucks a pop it wont mean much, but if its high like $5000 per game that will change things, on top of the 30% steam already gets.

It would definitely stop the crap from getting on steam no one is going to risk 5000 a pop on a crap game, and the games that did get through would simply do better anyway because you will have less games, and the games would be higher quality. I bet felix would have sold alot better under those circumstances

 

Gabe said in an interview (very shortly, like months iirc) after Greenlight was launched that it was not what they were looking for and planned to replace it with a more effective system. I thought they would have done it sooner.

I'm really curious to see what Steam Direct is going to do that Greenlight didn't.

 

That doesn't sound that bad. Imagine if you've invested several dozen thousand dollars in making a game . Not to mention the time. Then you have to compete for exposure in an order of arrival system. Wouldn't you pay 5 grand more to ensure your investment? Steam exposure is actually huge, you get millions of impressions, hundred of thousands of store clicks ... but at several games added every day, it's very diluted.

Though there should still be a Greenlight category, where smaller indies can still place their games without fee.

 

I think $1000 would be ok.
They have all the data on what the junk games make, so set it to that number and watch them disappear.

Then set up a totally different web site called "SteamingPile".
No entry fee, everyone knows what to expect when they go there.
After a while Steam could pull out a nice game and move it over to the regular Steam store.
No greenlight you just get on, on each store.

 

That's kinda what Microsoft did on the 360 with the Indie Games program, and it seemed like it was mostly a waste of time. Since they already had a somewhat hierarchical system of On Demand > Arcade > Indie, there wasn't much cause to even check out the lowest tier. And if you don't have them filtered out some way, there's no benefit to the different categories.

I love that descriptor of an amount of money. But to answer your question, I do think that the investment of paying for a smaller amount of competition is worth it, yes. $5000 is probably too rich for my blood, but $1000 would be doable, but reserved only for when I'm sure I've got a good game on my hands.

 

Yeah exactly. You could always get a crap job for a few months to help pay for the 5000 cost if it was a problem

 

But people do browse Greenlight games on Steam. There's a special diversity/crazyness that they can only find in that sort of low risk budget games.

Though a $1000 fee does sound like an interesting middle ground.

 

I'm not sure how to feel about this yet. It's good that Valve is finally doing something about Greenlight because the sheer amount of games that have come out in 2016 on Steam is unreal, and has rendered Greenlight itself completely useless as a tool to weed out bad games.

I guess for now all we can do is wait and see how it's going to turn out.

That's really soon.

 

I could see spending $500 to get a small game listed. Although I could afford to I wouldn't spend any more than that.

I'd just use the other places such as GameJolt and itch.io which will likely see an increase in gamers from this kind of change occuring on Steam. GJ is already growing quickly. Last year they saw a large increase in visits, registered gamers, game plays/downloads and the amount of time a person was staying on the site.

And depending on what Steam ends up as I expect that for people like me (as a gamer) it may not hold much interest. I want to see all of the small games and the wacky games not just AAA wannabe stuff.

EDIT: I must say I can understand that ultimately they had to go back to using money as a way to reduce the number of submissions. Of course that will also likely mean many great games may never appear on Steam until they appear elsewhere and generate enough cash to do so. And in some cases that process alone will weed out developers.

Ultimately it has to be done... as sad as it is money is the only real way to reduce the amount of the supply from the very start. Obviously the higher they set the fee the greater it reduces the supply.

 

In theory, absolutely. In practice, I'm not positive.

For every Surgeon Simulator and I Am Bread that came out, there were literally thousands of garbage games taking up shelf space and keeping me from seeing games I might enjoy. If there are numerous occasions where great games are made and the developer just can't find the money to get it on storefronts, I've not heard of them. As most of us know, money is comparatively easy to come by compared to the time and effort required to make a quality game.

I think you're exactly right, and I also think that's great in general. Startup indies should be using those platforms for their first games to build their portfolio up! Presently, it seems like everyone wants to whip together a skeleton of a survival game and throw it up on Early Access as their first project. I'd so much rather these other platforms -- for lack of a better term -- take one for the team and host all those unknown, unproven games, while Steam focuses on quality. If your game does well in the AA league, there's nothing stopping you from moving it up to the majors, after all.

 

Well the cost is recoupable.

if the cost is low enough I might just update some of my old games (that are on IOS) with steam trading cards and put them on. While at the same time working on my current project.

 

How does that work in practice? Do they set a straight number of sales that must be achieved, and you then get all of that money back if you hit it? Or are there milestones that you get refunded partial payments at various sales figures?

 

Yeah, this is kinda the big unknown to me at this point. There are ways to deal with the entry fee (Credit Card, Kickstarter, itch.io, GJ, Steam Loan Sharks, etc) if I know that recouping of that whole amount will happen and when.

 

I also wonder how the recoup thing works or what does it mean. Personally I think everyone should always have to pay upfront and a lot larger fee (>= $500) than the current $100 or else the "noise" filter tactic wont work. You only get your "hostage" money back if your game succeeds. If you cant trust your own game enough to pay the fee then there is either something wrong with it or you are not yet committed enough (marketing, etc.). In that case there are other alternatives to get started.

It wont work without any cost and $100 is way too low as we have seen in general or people like Jim Sterling has proven to us. Thank god for him

 

I think people are reading this wrong. This is not about reducing the number of games on steam. This is about fully opening the flood gates to make steam accessible to every single developer.

Under GreenLight there were still a lot of poor quality games rejected. Under the new system there is no provision for rejecting games based on quality.

 

Oh, gods. Then... No, I don't think this will be very good at all.

Edit: Wait... Ostensibly this is about opening up the gates to anyone without the curation filter in place, but isn't the subtext that the intended side-effect is that half-ass developers who throw tons of garbage onto Greenlight with their one-time $100 fee, that get their goofy or dumb idea approved by the community through luck, bot trickery, or just waiting it out... Those developers will no longer see the value in paying a large fee, and consequently, quality in general will rise?

I feel like it's one of those things that you say a certain way when addressing the consumer, but we all nod to each across the crowd, knowing the real intent.

 

It might be good if the entry fee will be a lot higher. Current Greenlight was not a high barrier to many anyways as there are organized groups for hire to vote your in, key trading upfront for votes, etc. or you just could get in for the lolz.

There will always be people buying their way in but with a bad product they wont get their money back so it will reduce the "noise" a lot.

 

Yeah and you got to remember they already have a few thousand greenlight games that havent been published yet so if you have a mix of greenlight games with games that paid (so it cant be that high).

 

Best case scenario it just restricts steam to those that can afford it. Which doesn't actually have a relationship to the quality of games they can pump out.

 

This is exactly the way I see it. Unless they are saying they will review each & every submission the only thing this does is serve as a filter to reduce the number of games coming in. It creates the standard barrier to entry... not skills... not quality... not ambition... but money. It does nothing as far as quality. It just means that whoever can afford the fee can put their games in.

I think there are likely a lot of people living in countries where coming up with $500 per game would be a huge obstacle. Just because they may not be able to afford the fee... that has nothing to do with the quality of their game itself. It will be interesting to see if the fee is different depending on where a developer lives.

Ironically it could actually be helpful to shovelware developers who have a lot of cash to waste. Because less games will be on there including less great games... which means each game that is should get more attention and be in greater demand.

 

Seems like a game changer to me. Look at digital homicide and the steam trading cards + bundles and bi monthly 50 cent sales you can make a S***ton of money and whatever barrier the cost is wont matter (unless its skyhigh). All you need is abit of money and some already completed games

 

I think almost everyone can agree that the current paradigm was broken. Jumping from $100 to $5000 is quite a leap though. Unless their data actually suggests that that really is the minimum bar to get rid of most the junk then it will probably swing the pendulum too far the other way. On PC though where you have choices it's not really that big of a deal unlike mobile. I'm sure those that loved the diversity will just switch over to itch.io so no harm no foul.

I would have liked them to choose a more middle ground fee though maybe 500 or 750 first and adjust from there if it had too little effect.

 

That's how it mainly used to be before a bit before Greenlight anyways with all those mini publishers?

Yes it will be easier than ever before if you have money but there is not really anything really to gain from it anymore. A long time ago getting a game Steam meant a lot more and was also "cool". After Greenlight it was still cool for few months if you had your game approved and everyone was doing gz dude. Now it's just meh.

If you are son of an oil sheik or a just a rich kid in the neighborhood there is no brag value by having something in Steam. Going for a profit you would just lose money with a garbage release. If you can cover your costs then your product had some sort of target audience anyways.

 

I think steam may be in the process of making a huge blunder.
If they introduce a publishing paywall, someone else will take their place.
Also, publishing fee AND cut from sales does not sound like a very attractive deal.

It'll cut off plenty of foreign developers. Maybe for USA $5000 is not a big deal, but in some other countries it is quite a lot. This kind of price tag would definitely be a steam's blunder.

 

I have a feeling itch.io is very excited by this news.

 

My gut feeling is that this is likely to backfire for Valve. It will probably give a huge boost to several other gaming platforms that compete with Steam.

 

I just visited itch.io that games looks amazing and its free

https://retrific.itch.io/shell-shift

 

Yes. I bet itch.io will benefit massively from this change at Steam.

 

$5000 is a big deal to some of us in the US too. I'm a master's student. I could certainly drop $100 to publish my game, $500, maybe $1000 (though that's pushing it), but $5000 is a heck of a lot of money to throw down right now.

 

Many will agree Greenlight do have issues, of course the "remedy" may be worse than the disease.

Fee could be adjusted by region.

But it's hard to keep it fair for everyone. That's why probably best solution would be to keep all options open.

Don't forget while a 5 grand fee is less expensive in other countries ... that means the profit they'll get from the game will also feel like less. They have to work twice or thrice as hard to get same perceived benefit. So maybe the others can work harder to pay for the fee?

Thinking out loud having a fee may be an excuse to run a kickstarter ... though I hear it's not easy to get a successful kickstarter even for 5 grand.

 

Well, my point is, that outside of US getting $5000 may require something MUCH bigger than a "sh*t job" (possibly even a bank loan), and then you'll probably want to use the money for something else.

Overall, I have impression that it is one of those situations where people have good intentions, but what they DO based on those intentions for some reason backfires horribly, with disastrous consequences.

----

Then again valve was experimenting with all kind of weird staff, like steam machines. Where are they, exactly? So, it could be one of those kind of ideas.

 

Oh yeah. If they had done this a year or two ago I may have submitted Atlantic Crisis and Treasures of Ali-Gar there. If the price was $500 per submission. $5k per submission I'd never submit anything and likely seldom visit which means wouldn't be buying anything either. lol I'd do that at GJ and io.

 

There is also the question of how Steam will handle the transition. For example, will games that have already been Greenlit but not published yet be allowed on the Steam store via Greenlight or will those have to go through Steam Direct? What will happen to games that are listed on Greenlight but have not been Greenlit yet? There are thousands of games affected by the specifics of the transition.

Beyond that, there is also the issue of publisher rules. A lot of the garbage on Steam did not go through Greenlight. A lot of the garbage was crap from some of the publishers back catalogs. Will Steam continue to let publishers post any games they want to sell (regardless of quality), or will Steam subject publishers to additional per game fees?

 

It wont be $5000 and most likely not even $1000 as those numbers were from their inquiries and also would defeat their variety comment. Many of VR games would fail for example right away due being a niche group for example and Valve is trying to push VR (or maybe the let them get in right away, like now pass the Greenlight).

 

Yeah, at this right price point this could be very true. For example, if it was $100 per game and that guaranteed the game will be on Steam, then that will massively open the flood gates. After all, even a completely garbage game could easily sell enough to cover $100. If the price is $5k per game, then it will probably move a lot of games away from Steam and towards itch.io or similar.

 

I am going to need more detailed information from valve before I can really form an opinion. Of course any company talking about a change in how they do things will try to present the best possible representation for it, so that's what the initial blog post is doing. We just don't know enough yet, and probably won't until we see things in action.

I do think it's interesting that Valve stated in the blog post that, "There are now over 100 Greenlight titles that have made at least $1 Million each, and many of those would likely not have been published in the old, heavily curated Steam store." For me, this is a hopeful sign that they will be looking to widen the possible base and style of games available on Steam, as compared to the more limited range chosen when Steam was still heavily curated.

Part of this would have to mean taking into account that some indies, especially in 'developing countries' will have a lot harder time coming up with a $5,000 fee for applying than someone in a country with a different sort of economy. It's not about the amount of time and effort put into the game that's applying, but rather about the direct dollar cost of paying for that many staff based on the appropriate job market and cost of living in your country.

While a "by region" adjustment could help with this, it also then could create an appearance of bias because someone like me here in the higher paying United States would have to spend a lot more to get my game on Steam than someone who has their game based in Elbonia or some real country with a weaker economy. Some developers and some lawmakers are already having issues with the idea that electronic goods are sold at different prices based on your country of origin. This could be a whole new set of complications for Valve.

Under Greenlight there were a lot of low quality games accepted as well.

If as part of this new process Valve has actual paid personnel who at least look at the games, then there is hope that some of the games which appear to be someone spending less than a day on them won't make it onto Steam. There is also the hope that with the steps a company must go through to register in order to release games, Steam may just stop taking games from companies that are intentionally just putting up garbage little games that make their money off of Steam trading cards.

That being just one possible example. Let's not derail this thread with that can of worms.

 

I'm not entirely sure it's a great move, however I'm happy to see that even a place like Steam, which has little in the way of competition as the go-to online store, is willing to do something risky for the sake of cleaning up the shovelware mess.

I have a feeling that the price, for the sake of being 'fair' might end up at some pretty ineffective level like $100, but then again maybe even that would be enough to stop some of the worst offenders.

Overall I like the fact that recouping the fee puts the focus on the post-launch period though, I think quite a few games get greenlit and then just consider that they can lounge around in 'alpha' state for the rest of the decade.

 

That's not what they are suggesting.

Basically the article amounts to:

• Killing curation and opening up GreenLight was great. It gave us a huge number of games that would have failed curation, but succeeded.
• So killing all curation by getting rid of GreenLight will let even more good games succeed.

I honestly doubt it. At the right price point, this has the potential to put the small stores entirely out of business. Itch has a couple of unique selling points. One is low barrier to entry. Which is going away with this change.

That's exactly the opposite of what they are doing. This opens the gate for more shovelware. Not less.

 

I agree that it definitely depends on the price point. Which begs the question regarding Valve's true motive with "Steam Direct". Is the goal to reduce the shovelware, or is the goal to increase revenue?

If Valve wants to reduce the amount of shovelware on the store, they will need a reasonably high price, but that will likely help Steam's competitors. If Valve's real goal is simply to generate more revenue from shovelware, then I suspect Valve will set the price really low for the per game submission fee and that could run some competitors out of the market. We won't know Valve's true goal until we see the price point.

 

Yeah that is what I got out of it. I thought perhaps I had missed something because people were talking about this getting rid of crap increasing quality. But if anything it may keep out some great games and let crap get in easier and get more attention.

 

It really depends on what you think was more effective in the current paradigm, the fee or getting your game through greenlight. There are numerous articles on bots and other various ways on getting crap through greenlight. They are entitled to their opinion but raising the fee by that magnitude and killing curation entirely, I think would actually reduce the shovelware. There are a lot of final details missing so I'll hold of judgement until then. Perhaps the $5000 amount was floated for precisely this reason to judge the reaction. Obviously nothing is final at this point.

I think the main point was if it does swing the pendulum too far the other way where it does get rid of the shovelware but also leaves out quality games that can't afford to pay, the other stores like itch.io are going to be very excited. Right now, they only have a cult following but if they have quality games that aren't on steam that can certainly change, regardless of how much of their store is junk.

 

It's possible, depending on the fee. There are certainly a number of 'game flippers' out there with a reasonable amount of capital who I could see jumping on this opportunity.

Ideally what I would like to see is a fee plus curation (either by Valve or by the community). I'm all for making it as difficult as possible actually. I'd rather have a difficult shot at getting a top place in a highly visible online environment, than 'rub shoulders' with shovelware and try to outcompete them in banging my drum.

Itch io can take the shovelware if they want it. I personally rarely go looking for games on Steam since so much of it seems to be made up of what looks like dubious escapees from someone's hard disk, and I think greenlight has failed as a rigorous testing arena. I'm likely to spend more time looking and probably buy more if there was some way to filter out the garbage. So I think Steam are doing right to do something about it, but I agree that making the barrier a financial one rather than a quality one may not turn out to be a good idea.

 

I think it is the revenue. They were all about the revenue for last few years. That's how steam sales started as well.

 

Read the article. The terms Steam uses are very clearly in the increase revenue school of thought.

It's also worth pointing out that shovelware doesn't actively harm Steam (or the App Store or play store). Steam still gets a cut of five sales as much as it does from a million sales. As long as consumers can still find the type of game they want, then Steam still wins.

The only people who benefit from restrictions on shovel ware type products are other shovel ware types who manage to get through the system anyway. Most arguments for curation boil down too 'because there is so much crap available, no one will buy my crap'.

 

The problem is you guys (and gals maybe) are looking at it like only people with lack of cash are making shovelware. Thinking well this will stop them from listing their games in the first place because they will be afraid they won't get their money back.

From what I've seen it the people who are eagerly spending money on assets to flip and otherwise who are making the stuff most would consider "crap".

It is the people who have spent $5 to $10k on game builders allowing them to quickly knock out junk games. To them it is like either an investment or just gambling for fun. I don't think you can really look at it like how much money a game dev can afford to lose has anything to do with their intentions or how good their game is.

 

It all come down to the price point. If Valve sets "Steam Direct" at $100 per game, that will lead to a lot more low quality games on Steam. There are people actively gaming the current Greenlight system, but it probably costs those people more than $100 per game to do that currently. If the price is only $100 per game, those people will pump as many games onto Steam as they can.

On the other hand, if it is a high price, the amount of new shovelware will get reduced, but developers of small games will ignore Steam and move to something like itch.io. I would be surprised if Steam Direct was priced at $5k per game. I think that number got floated just to get people discussing Steam Direct.

 

Ideally both?

Can they though? At least for me, the sheer amount of crap on there, that isn't always easy to spot, all but deters me from buying anything. I only go there to buy AAA games, basically, and I couldn't be bothered to spend the time looking for some good indie stuff in the rubble. I can't speak for anyone else but it's hard to imagine I'm the only one seeing things this way.

But, I'm not sure if you're saying this but I'm not entirely sure that Steam want to clean up the mess. Maybe their plan is to increase it and profit from it. But I'm not sure that there was a better way than Greenlight to do that.