Steam Greenlight

We have had the most awful time in greenlight.

People actively hate you for your work there. Some are borderline stalkers.
I see only a handful of games being greenlit, probably not even 1% of everything submitted.
It is like jumping in shark infested waters wearing steaks for swimsuit because there is a 1% chance you might make it to shore. It wont even matter if you respond in the most polite way possible, people don't read past comments so they will just repeat the same things over and over.

I would recommend greenlight to anyone that wishes to pay $100 to get verbally abused on a daily basis.

We released our game in desura. While desura does not have anywhere near the same amount of customers, whatever you sell there is better than 0 you will likely get in steam (actually less than that since you have to pay $100).

</rant>

 

We'll just have to agree to disagree as to whether this is a problem or not. I don't see a problem with saying "Hello Developer, I'm sorry we cannot approve your project directly for sale on the Steam store; however, we have created an area by which you can demonstrate a level of community support that warrants our attention."

Here we are discussing two entirely different concepts. You are showing examples of products that have done incredible well in the App store; I'm not discussing the upper bound, I'm discussing the lower bound. Apple's entire market is designed around "anyone can enter, and a very - very small percentage of the overall products will succeed."

Yes, if you do big on the App store you have the potential to do very big - but simple entry to the App store does nothing other than provide the tools to garner that type of support. World of Goo was already a huge success by the time it launched on iPad - and above that it was the right product at the right time (awesome game that worked incredibly well on the tablet before there were very many "properly" ported titles on the tablet).

I'm not talking about the critical mass you can achieve on a given platform; I'm talking about the exposure you get simply for existing on said platform. You're trying to compare the great successes of one marketplace to the "average" product on another market place and it's just plain silly. I'm not saying you can't do insanely well on the App Store, nobody is saying that. That person will be equally silly.

To get that type of exposure you need either A) A large marketing budget regardless (just being submitted to the iOS store and getting approved doesn't get you diddly for exposure) - or B) A product of high enough quality to get on the "New and Noteworthy" or a similar hand-selected list of awesome projects.

Being on the App Store does nothing to market your game, you still need to market it. Simple admission to Steam absolutely is a huge boost to visibility; just being on that list is enormous.

We can argue all day about whether Steam is handling the Windows 8 trend well or not. The reality is that a first party marketplace pre-installed on Windows machines hurts their business model - and no, I don't think they've handled that concept gracefully at all. I also don't think their attitude towards Windows 8 is really relevant to the discussion of whether or not they should provide a marketplace with no barrier to entry aside from an admission cost.

Sure, it's about votes - but votes pretty much directly related to community interest. There's no guarantee that a specific % of overall votes will turn into paying customers, but I don't see why that invalidates it as a method to gauge community interest in a broader sense.

That's a tremendous amount of work though; they don't control the Windows platform like Apple does with iOS and Mac. They don't have anywhere near the same capacity for automatic unit testing of performance - nor do they have the ability to limit what API calls an app can make (yes, even Desktop applications on the Mac App Store are heavily limited in what API's they can use). The new Windows store operates the same way - the only way to make that type of store work is to create a close environment for applications to run on. You're asking Valve to do what nobody does - allow for unlimited submissions of software that runs outside of a strictly controlled environment. Windows 8 isn't going to open their marketplace up to general windows applications ever... it's entirely too risky.

Steam is important because it operates differently than the other market place. It curates a very specific type of product (quality games) and it does so with caution. Other marketplaces reject apps for doing something poorly and accept all others. Steam accepts games for doing something well and rejects all others. There's a place for both - Steam becoming the same as the other market places doesn't magically make the world a better place - it homogenizes the environment. Windows doesn't need an "anything that doesn't break something can be sold here" market place anymore - Microsoft has provided that (after creating an environment where they can automatically test products to a significantly greater degree than what's possible in the "Desktop" environment of Windows).

 

I think you are underestimating what Steam can do.

Amazon is doing about the same with Android (and android allow devs to do a LOT.) I will give you half a point on OSX, the OS is open enough to allow any dev to do anything they want, but Apple knows their OS and may be easier for them to create tools that monitor what APIs will be called and reject automatically. Such an effort may be harder for Steam, although creating a secure sandbox is not out of the realm of possibilities.

Heck, not only Amazon, but Barnes Nobles is also doing the same with Android. B&N! A bookstore has figured out how to tackle the technical challenge!

Where there is a will, there is a way. I just don't think there is the will.

Being told "you don't qualify, but you can have a dethatch to get in" is not an alternative in my eyes. Again, it's like tossing a single bone at a pack of hungry dogs. As Goldbug noted, it’s not shocking the environment is extremely hostile. I would generally ignore this if it was not for the fact that Valve loves to bring up indies on their Anti-Windows 8 store campaign.

BTW, on the Apple feature bit: I been featured. It does not take to be an amazing quality app, and although it won’t guarantee success to be featured, not making money while there should prove you that no amount of marketing will make a difference.

Side note: I find it VERY interesting that Angry Birds, an extremely popular game that has proven itself to be darn successful, is available on nearly every digital storefront BUT Steam. Last I heard (2011) Rovio was looking into it.

 

Amazon and B&N aren't doing the same thing with Android though. Even as open as it is (compared to iOS) it's not even remotely the same beast as the Windows platform. It's an entire operating system designed from the ground up to funnel every action into a series of tightly controlled API's (some public and available to third party developers, some private and not available to third party developers). While the "public" API list for Android is far more open than it is for iOS - everything still runs through that API. The review process is still capable of doing an automated source review and understanding what the application is calling - because the application has to interact with the operating system in a specific way. Windows was not designed that way, there is no one set of possible actions - you can do virtually whatever you want.

OSX allows you to do virtually whatever you want too, but apps submitted to the Mac App Store do not have this luxury. They have a strict set of guidelines they must adhere to (funneling them into a controlled, predictable environment) to be approved for the store. If your OSX app does something the automated testing doesn't understand, it rejects you (because you're clearly doing something outside the white-listed set of approved actions).

Microsoft, realizing that the base of Windows - and the backwards compatible nature of it - decided that it would be virtually impossible to create a closed marketplace platform as seamlessly as Apple was able to (when Apple moved to an Intel base they had a golden oppertunity to kill backwards compatibility beyond a certain point). They, instead, split the operating system into two portions (the wild west desktop and the tightly controlled Windows RT environment) so that they could enter into the "marketplace" market and join Apple, Google, Amazon and the smaller groups. You're asking Steam to do what Microsoft could not.

Now, of course Steam could say screw it and not assume anything about the software they sell - and there are absolutely Windows based marketplaces that do this (Desura for example let's pretty much anything that isn't known to be malware - and removes it once it becomes known as malware). Users who are interested in that kind of experience can find those marketplaces. Steam has curated a different market entirely, and that's okay. It has value as it stands.

You're saying to them "You became a large and successful distribution platform based almost solely on the quality of your content - now that you're too big to fail, why not loosen the requirements for approval significantly?" They're responding "We're going to test the waters with that, but we're not dumb enough to make an absolutely massive change to our entire platform overnight - so let's move things forward slowly with this Greenlight thing. If it's successful we'll obviously continue along this trend. We also have some really exciting things in store for user-generated content distribution."

They aren't going to be able to compete with the Windows store, or the Mac store, or any other first-party platform store in terms of raw users or raw developers in the long run. They are smart enough to realize this. The unique, valuable part of Steam is that they are continuing to curate a reasonable number of quality products. This all also plays directly into how valuable of a marketing force simply being on the platform is.

I can look at the "Specials" tab of Steam and right now there are 18 products on sale. 18. Running a sale on steam is awesome, but they curate those sales so that random Developer #5 isn't always running a sale and always getting that visibility. This takes work, this takes effort. If they had 100,000 products all asking them to run a sale every day they couldn't handle the volume - as large as we all thing Valve is they're a tiny company still.

I can look at the "New Releases" tab and on the first page I'm already back to December. Being released on Steam gives you considerable visibility for a considerable length of time. Being part of well curated sales gives you considerable visibility well after you've launched (and is largely used to give developers an opportunity to re-showcase their products after a patch or DLC release).

You're asking they dilute the waters, but their well curated - careful approach to running a market place is exactly what makes it valuable in the long run.

 

Being released on steam would be a dream for everyone here. But let's face it, winning the lottery would be a dream too and that does not mean that you should spend your money on buying lottery tickets.

As it is today, you spend $100, get abused, and never get greenlit. This is true for almost everyone here. Look at the list of apps they have greenlit, it is just a handful. Make no mistake: the cold hard truth is you will most likely never get greenlit. And Kyle, take it from someone who is doing a game in the same genre as yours, and already went through that heartbreak.

I have to be honest though, there is one upside: having the game in the "new games" section of greenlight for a few days is good exposure. So you might want to write off those $100 as advertisement money. My recommendation is to make the best out of it. Before you publish your game in greenlight, have it for sale in desura, then you can turn some of that exposure into actual sales.

 

Oh I'm not saying Greenlight is an awesome force for indie developers; I think it is for the cream of the crop, but not for the vast majority. My only argument is that Steam doesn't need to be in the business of trying to curate the majority of products released by independent game developers - that's all. Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Amazon are already in that business. Steam offers an entirely different experience to users and, if they want to stay relevant, must continue to do so. Microsoft's marketplace comes pre-installed on every Windows 8 PC, tablet, and phone. There is zero barrier of entry for customers. The marketplace also has a very low barrier of entry for developers. Steam will not be able to compete on either of these fronts - the only thing they can do is continue to provide a fundamentally different customer experience; and that's clearly what they're planning to do.

I may never get a product on Steam and I'm totally fine with that. There are several other market places we can pursue with our products.

EDIT: I also wouldn't say it's like winning the lottery though. Getting onto Steam isn't random, not nearly as random as being successful on iOS/Android is (for products that aren't designed specifically as IAP wallet openers at least). If you build a game of a high enough quality you will make it on to Steam, either through their own desire to have you or through Greenlight. If you have no hope of making it onto Steam (like the majority of us here) it's because you don't have the right product yet, not because you haven't hit the lottery yet.

Taking your product as an example, I think you've got some of the best voxel technology out there at the moment - and I have all the confidence in the world that Block Story is going to be an amazing game one day. If you guys run a kickstarter I'll be one of the first to back it. It's clearly a work in progress though, it's not Steam ready yet (closer than any of my personal projects by a large margin though!).

 

I'm not knocking your game here Goldbug but the problem you have is that its perceived as a Minecraft clone. The minecraft fanbase is already bad enough but when you throw that out there with the intention of selling it they're going to descend on you like a pack of rabid dogs. As far as they're concerned Minecraft invented the "voxel". Add comments and the internet in to the mix and you've got a recipe for disaster.

Windows 8 metro store is a F***ing disaster for indies. Heck its a disaster for everyone. I'm talking about the metro store and not the relegated legacy desktop microsoft tacked on to keep backwards compatibility.

Valve/GabeN doe not have some sort of hidden agenda behind his open criticism of Windows 8, his points are very valid. It is bad for indies. Want to sell on your own store forget it when the godawful Metro S*** becomes your only means of using Windows.

I do think Metro for phones and tablets is actually fairly good. Which is what is was designed for. On desktop its a bloody mess however. Watch this. He makes some very good points.

Angry Birds is so far from the typical audience of steam I'm amazed you think its interesting.

Question to the people moaning about greenlight in here. Would your tune change if you got accepted?

 

Not a bit. Would be like me complaining about poverty levels across the nation and shutting up the day I win the lottery. I'm not critisizing Steam's decision at not accepting me. My criticism is that Steam seems to brag about their indie support, but what they are doing sounds more like the Romans saying they suport Gladiators because they give the survivors food, shelter and fame.

The next Minecraft, Angry Birds or Temple Run will be very unlikely to come out of Greenlight, and much more likely to explode either in mobile phones or OS native app stores that don't restrict based on ideal perceptions of quality, just simple hard-rules.

If Steam thinks they can't handle the garage indie movement, then go ahead and say so. Greenlight is NOT useful.

Does this mean if I got into Steam with some future game that I would not appreciate being there? No, I sure would appreciate being there. Appreciating being there does not turn me into a hypocrite though. My statements are not about me, they are about the indie community.

As for Win8 and it's App Market: I used it. It becomes extremely good once you replace the stupid Start Metro Screen with a Start Menu Replacement (My favorite is Start8.) Seriously, the Start Screen is the ONLY bad thing about Windows 8. Such a "small" and "easy to fix" thing, yet such a big big problem indeed... Anyways, the store is not the issue with Win8. My only issue with Win8's market is not really with them, but that Unity still not (as far as I understand) able to export a desktop market compliant build.

 

Except they ARE handling the movement well. They're just handling it through a curation system, which is Steam's biggest benefit.

 

Fair enough about not changing your stance on Greenlight you make a good point.

I still don't see how Steam doesn't support "garage indies". What exactly aren't they supporting? They've accepted plenty of games in the past from small indie teams. Does Greenlight change that?

I wasn't suggesting that the next big thing would come out of Greenlight. Why would it? You've got to have a game already on the go. Not all games need to become that next big hit. You can support a niche making the games you want to make and still turn a profit. I've not got the fascination with becoming the next big thing personally. Theres been some promising games that have made it through Greenlight so far.

I also question the quality of Angry Birds and Temple Run. I really don't see the appeal but thats more down to my tastes as gamer and not a knock on the games themselves. They just aren't targeted at me.

I'm not talking about the legacy desktop in Windows 8. You can't say oh just go and use the desktop its fine when it'll be gone comes Windows 9 or 10. I'm talking about Metro and thats what GabeN and other critics of Windows 8 are vocally critical of. If you can't see that having the ONLY means of getting anything on your PC through the windows store is a bad thing then I just don't know.

 

I'm interested to know what people expect Greenlight to be if not a popularity contest? I mean, as I understand it that's the whole point of Greenlight - to let you put your game in front of the mainstream PC audience and see what they say.

I'm not saying you shouldn't expect anything else, I'm just interested in knowing what it is that you do expect, and/or what changes you think can be made to get different-but-not-crap games the attention you think they deserve without at the same time doing a disservice to developers who happen to be making stuff in the more mainstream genres.

 

I don't mind the popularity contest, as you say that is what it is supposed to be. I do mind the abuse a developer has to go through there.
I probably got it worse because in my particular genre one game dominates with some very passionate fanbase (minecraft). But pretty much all games go through that there in varying degrees. I was not expecting that.

I was not expecting to see only maybe 10 games per month get greenlit. I would have expected 10 times that, it is not a bandwidth problem, a single person could review hundreds of games per month. They are being so picky that it is virtually impossible for regular indie developers to ever make it there. Only a very few lucky will ever get greenlit, the rest of us are just wasting our time, money and sanity there. I don't know how they can claim to support indie developers when they approve so few of them.

I don't know if they can survive the avalanche of games that will come to the windows and mac stores. All of us who got sneered at in steam will end up in one of those, and they will come preinstalled on every single computer sold. So they are setting themselves up for some serious competition. I don't see that much value in having a super curated list of games, all you have to do is click on "most popular" in one of those other stores and you get the list of the best games based on actual purchases instead of just votes, many of which will be the exact same ones you can find in steam.

 

To be honest, though, 10 indie games per month is a lot.

When it comes to selling things, more variety isn't necessarily better. Having too many things on offer leads to harder decision making, potentially leading to fewer sales. The sales also need to be diluted amongst more sellers, which means that individual games are less likely to get the post-release attention they need to really thrive - essentially meaning that the problem is shifted downstream to where it potentially starts hurting the platform as a whole.

And yes, they are setting themselves up for competition when the other stores get momentum, but in my opinion they're setting themselves up very competitively - not the other way around. A lower barrier to entry means that the average quality of game on those other stores will be significantly lower. Everyone uses the iTunes App Store as an example of low barrier to entry and high quality, but they turn a blind eye to the fact that for every quality game there are hundreds (thousands?) of crappy ones that make virtually no sales. Even looking through the category lists on the App Store, the majority of games just simply aren't that good. Steam won't have that problem, because while there'll be far fewer games there'll still be more than enough, and the ones that are there will be reliably good.

And another thing... opening the flood gates leads to the "race to the bottom" of pricing that we've seen on the App Store. If a game on the App Store is $5 it's considered to be expensive, and maybe prohibitively so. On Steam a $5 game is as cheap as it gets before ducking into Freemium territory.

It isn't a bandwidth issue. There are plenty of other, perfectly valid reasons for controlling their sales platform.

If there isn't something already (there wasn't when I looked last) it would be cool if there were some way to categorise or group games to make the Greenlighting process for end users more targeted. It'd mean that everything would be one click further away, but then it'd mean that the first racing game is exactly as far away as the first FPS, which could be beneficial for everyone - people who are interested in FPSs or other highly mainstream areas aren't pushed away from them at all, but people who might otherwise stop after clicking past a bunch of FPSs they wouldn't ever be interested in can go straight to a category where things do interest them. So rather than cannibalising one area for the benefit of others, it might increase the total vote pool for the benefit of everyone. But that's based purely on conjecture.

 

And this is a problem how? Is it hard to find good games in apple store? not at all it is just a query away. Apple just reported having $7 billion in sales from the appstore 70% of which went straight to developers. Obviously this model works and works well.

Given the fact that the mac store and windows stores have the flood gates wide open, this "race to the bottom" will happen anyway, what Steam does won't make any difference. If they try to push developers to keep their prices high, they are just going to get washed away by the flood from other stores.

It is absolutely no good to us developers that the average price point in steam is $20 (I am just throwing a number), if we can never sell there.

 

The race to the bottom doesn't seem to have effected the price point on consoles. Different target markets mean different price points are fine. There are $500 pairs of jeans that sell just fine to their target market despite the fact that jeans are readily available elsewhere for as little as $15. As long as they have different games, I don't see the price in Mac/Windows/iOS/Android stores impacting prices on XBLA/PSN/Steam/etc. stores, because they're predominantly selling to different people.

The problem with a platform getting flooded with low quality games is that if it's trying to command a higher price point than the competitors (see previous paragraph) then there needs to be a raised quality bar. Also, see my second paragraph in my previous post, re: the potential downsides to simply having more products on offer.

The iTunes App Store is a good example of what happens when the barrier to entry is low. Sure, anyone can get on there, but how many people who do get on there actually make significant sales compared to those who manage to get onto Steam?

 

The better question is how many people get to actually make some sales in itunes app store compared to all the people that simply wasted 100 in greenlight. If you restrict to only the people that did get accepted in steam, you are missing the point, because the complaint is about how impossible it is to make it in greenlight. To be fair you would have to compare the average earnings of people in itunes app store vs the average earning of everyone in steam + greenlight (which just lost 100).

 

As opposed to how easy it was to get on to Steam in the first place? You know, with the 2-8 month wait to even hear back from Valve acknowledging you sent them something? I don't think you realise how broken the old system was for indies.

 

I'm not really sure what you're expecting here Goldbug. Seems you Steam to just become flooded with games so you can get on there.

100 new games getting greenlit a month is a ridiculous amount. Seems like you want it to be like the app store, play store, windows store whatever.

You mentioned Apple taking in the $7bn from the App Store. Apple does not give a rats arse about what it makes from there. They only care about in the sense that its there to shift more hardware.

What was that recent statistic? Top 25 devs/publishers make 90% of the revenue on the App Store?

Atleast other places where its not flooded with stuff in the race to the bottom you've got a fair shot.

 

as opposed to 1% of devs that are blessed by Steam making 100% of the revenue, while the other 99% end up in the red. They don't publish numbers, so no way to tell for sure, but the gap is obviously much bigger.

You don't have a fair shot in steam, you are never accepted.

 

As opposed to other stores. Why would I care about new steam vs old steam?

As you guys mentioned, it is a different business model: have relatively few high quality games vs letting everyone in and battle it out. The issue is that 1) this _really_ sucks for indie developers that don't have budget for high end marketing, and 2) you are greeted by a pack of angry wolfs in greenlight.

 

Stop acting like Steam owes you something. They don't. Your point about 1% being blessed making 100% of the revenue is wrong as is you saying you never get accepted.

You don't need a high end marketing budget to make it through greenlight. Few if any of the games that have made it through so far have had anything in the way of a high profile marketing campaign. They've made it through based on quality, word of mouth, community or some prolific youtuber promoting them.

Welcome to the internet. You've obviously never visited forums or viewed the comments of section of a youtube video if you're complaining about the comments section. You either need to develop a thicker skin or just avoid them completely.

 

it is wrong... because?
They don't owe me anything, I agree with you. I am simply warning people here about what to expect in greenlight: You pay $100, you get a lot of hate, and you will probably never get greenlit.
I recognize that games in my genre have a much harder time than others. Hopefully other people won't have such a bad experience with it.
I don't think steam deceived me in any way, and If I get burned in greenlight it is my own fault. They did not promise anything else other than what they have delivered: being put in greenlight, so I don't think they owe me anything at all.

Yes, some of the very few games they have approved didn't need marketing. But pointing to just a handful of indie games that got approved and saying "see they support indies", is just not realistic. It is like claiming that the lottery supports poor people because the winners normally don't have money prior to winning. Getting a prolific youtuber to review your game is very hard, it is equivalent to having a large marketing budget. I don't know if you ever tried, but all devs are competing for attention here.

I have quality (4.35 in google play), I have word of mouth (40K sales by just word of mouth, and I was featured free app of the day in amazon last friday), I have a community (thousands of subscribers in my web site). I have my app in about 7 stores (depends on how you count). None of this helps in any perceivable way in Greenlight.
I am just telling you, Greenlight is more hostile than all those stores _combined_. It is even more hostile than my competitor's forums (Including minecraft), which in general are very friendly.

But in all fairness, I would not call it a waste of money. Having your app featured in the "recent releases" of greenlight, even while you get grilled, is good exposure, and can help your sales in the other stores.

 

The whole point is that steam has quality control so it means if a new game is released that steam users will be more then willing to try it and pay a premium price (even without knowing anything about it because they know steam) has a level of quality unlike say app store, or google play. If they allowed anyone onto steam they would lose that trust.

 

Goldbug saying that Steam isn't supporting indies because they aren't greenlighting 100 games a month is silly. Look on Steam right now and you'll see theres plenty of indie games on there. Again I get the feeling your somehow angry and basing your steam isn't indie friendly argument on the fact you spent $100 to get on greenlight and are still there.

Why should having your game on other stores on other platforms help you in any way towards getting greenlit? The only way it would be is if you asked those players to go vote for you on Steam.

Take Unepic, rejected by Steam multiple times and even after community outcry and a petition to Valve to get it on Steam they still rejected it. Along comes greenlight and bam it gets on. This isn't the sole case just using it as an example.

Also saying that getting a big name youtuber to play/support your game is the equivalent to having a high marketing budget is grasping at straws to try and make some kind of point relevant.

I'll also re-iterate the point of growing some thick skin. Its the internet.