Steam greenlight going away - your thoughts?

I'm just getting started (Literally, my first game is going to begin it's creation process in the morning) and I'm fairly upset that so many asset flips and bad games have made it that much harder for me to get my game out there once it's done. I can't even afford an artist, and have to buy assets to bridge my gaps, I can't afford a couple hundred bucks just to have my game (potentially) just sit on a virtual shelf. I want the same fair shot that so many other devs got before me.

personally I hope this leads to less shovelware on Steam.. I hope they go for a high fee like $2000+

if your game isn't worth a $2000 fee into a professional curated marketplace.. theres still the iOS App Store, Googleplay, Amazon, Itch, Gamejolt etc.

IMO Steam has been polluted by shovelware, which makes it hard to find good games.. people might see a low or no fee as "more fair" and a good thing.. but I think it is short sighted, if anyone can submit shovelware to Steam it will devolve to iOS App Store free to play race to the bottom shovelware market where the only chance of being noticed is to be gifted a feature on the front page.

IMO this step is not surprising at all. In the first years getting through Greenlight used to be a real barrier that kept shovelware away, but at some point, I think it was in early 2015 Valve lowered the benchmarks and every ****ty game with more than a couple of votes somehow pushed through. The unique selling point of Steam compared to other platform like the Amazon marketplace had been a certain assurance of quality… these days are long gone already.
I doubt a submission fee will solve this problem in the first place. Also Greenlight will probably still be active until early 2018 - so 2017 will most likely lead to a horrible flood of shovelware as most devs will likely try to get their stuff on Steam before the doors close.
For sure in the future a high submission fee will most likely lead to less low budget games on Steam. Anyway, a low budget IMHO is not a predictor of a low-quality product, having a publisher with an established Steam pipeline on the other hand will not be a predictor of good quality. There already are a lot of suspect publishers on steam flooding the marketplace and I´m sure a fee will not stop them. In a lot of regions, for example in South America, a lot of great indie games are made and 5000USD is likely a neck breaker for most indie devs there.
I think the real mistake Valve is making is stepping away from the responsibility to look at the quality of Steam submissions themselves. They also should not step away from community curation and feedback processes, but making them even more important and transparent. Also, Steam is still lacking reliable search options. Users are just not able to filter the games they really want to buy; a lot of improvements is needed there.

edit: lol, the forum has a auto censoring feature for rude language, I never realized thatXD

Yeah it's good something is being done, it's crazy now! When I started with my first game on Steam I always went to "Weeklong Deals", it was great, around 70-100 titles there. You'd get okay exposure.
Now it's flooded. Good thing something is happening.

Though this is tricky, too low cost and it's the same... however too high cost and a lot of indie devs can't simply afford anymore. Think about devs coming from poor countries where 1000$ is a small fortune.
I personally wouldn't mind a higher fee if that's necessary to keep shovelware out, but there are two sides to this coin. We just need to sit tight and wait for more info, hopefully soon!

Oh, I was going to list on Greenlight next week, I wonder if it's still possible...? Once Greenlit I suppose that's enough, no need to list again even when the system changes...?
Also curious if current Steam partners will need to re-sign some of the documents etc.

Anyway, fingers crossed this goes to the right direction!

As other has mentioned it's a good step to maybe raise the quality.

But honestly this is just a snake move from Valve. Valve, much like nintendo, has a get out of jail card and can't do anything wrong in the eyes of the many. Not surprisingly, nothing wrong with this, Valve likes to make money. The one part of steam that wasnt monotized was the greenlight process of getting into Steam. Now that has changed, literally every part of Steam is a money maker now, selling games, mods and the pipeline. The evidence for this is that they STILL won't do anything about Early Access which is plagued by terrible games, games that never get finished and rip offs from the developers.

My guess is that they are feeling this out and will then decide the price. But anything above 1k is going to kill small time indie developers, most of us are still working in a "real" job and doing this in after hours trying to chase the dream. For these big scam companies 5k isnt anything big and they will just front that, publishers will have even more strength when negotiation saying they will pay the fee for another royalty point.

Good for Gabe tho, gg.

I've already posted about 10 times over the past 2 days on their main thread.

The main problem is that garbage games from shady publishers will still get through, regardless of the paywall.
Without a dedicated Valve QA team to review each submission, raising the entry fee only hurts us little guys.

I would be perfectly OK if they have it be $100 per entry, with submissions to be reviewed by the QA team.

I feel this is more than fair. Otherwise, I'll just have to hope my greenlight game gets through before the big change XD

Quote from zip2kx

The one part of steam that wasnt monotized was the greenlight process of getting into Steam.

It costs you $100 to use Greenlight. Although it goes to charity, it's not 100% free to submit your game.

Quote from Xtheth

I'm just getting started (Literally, my first game is going to begin it's creation process in the morning) and I'm fairly upset that so many asset flips and bad games have made it that much harder for me to get my game out there once it's done. I can't even afford an artist, and have to buy assets to bridge my gaps, I can't afford a couple hundred bucks just to have my game (potentially) just sit on a virtual shelf. I want the same fair shot that so many other devs got before me.

You should also be pissed at the sheer amount of devs who do backroom deals with 'keys for votes' guys, who got their games Greenlit that way in the first place.
It's crap like that that makes this move by Steam even necessary.

I never took a friggin' cheater's deal, and I could've very easily since you get bombarded with all sorts of IMs and mails from those guys as soon as your game goes on Greenlight (and again later once your game goes live, only this time it's keys for recommended reviews). It's total ****. Legit guys with a scrap of pride and integrity will get ****ed because of this now.

Sorry for the colorful language, but if they toss up a $5000 paywall which is almost more than TWICE I've been able to earn in a whole year through the service, I will be basically cut out because of a bunch of cheaters.

Quote from DaveC

personally I hope this leads to less shovelware on Steam.. I hope they go for a high fee like $2000+

if your game isn't worth a $2000 fee into a professional curated marketplace.. theres still the iOS App Store, Googleplay, Amazon, Itch, Gamejolt etc.

IMO Steam has been polluted by shovelware, which makes it hard to find good games.. people might see a low or no fee as "more fair" and a good thing.. but I think it is short sighted, if anyone can submit shovelware to Steam it will devolve to iOS App Store free to play race to the bottom shovelware market where the only chance of being noticed is to be gifted a feature on the front page.

The problem with this line of thinking is that companies who peddle tons of shovelware will easily be able to afford a $2000 entry fee, and totally bypass a community vote altogether. Without that QA team, any fee is pointless to prevent what they say they're trying to prevent.

I would personally have liked a solution that focuses more on the merits of your product and its overall quality or sales potential rather than the fact that you already happen to possess enough $$$ to get your foot in.

Worse is they haven't said anything about the games still in the voting process (mine) or the ones that have already been Greenlit but not yet available on the store (Jarvis)

I don't know how many fixed income developers there are, but anything much over $100 is a fortune. I think a lot of developers will be automatically shut out by fees. It is a shame that crooked/shovelware developers have ruined a good thing.

Marv

How about paying $2K for posting a game, and it won't sell? Steam is already taking 30% from it.. That's going to be a lot of sales then.
And if I want to sell 5 games that's 10K right there..
There is no way a beginner or medium person, is able to afford that now these days.
Sure you get rid of all the basic games etc... and then who is going to raise their $5 - $20 games to $30-$40 games, then you are really going into the High end games/companies.

A much better system for Steam would be a tiered-rating system. Ie:

Indie
Arcade
GreenZone

Indie being for starter devs, shovelware and testing.
Arcade being for even more cool Indie games with a following and
GreenZone for games that are worthy of a space there (ie: proper games with a good following and good support from the dev).

ALL games should start off in Indie and are voted up by users. To advance through the tiers, Steam have to manually review each game that has been voted up. That way they can look at the stats (for dodgy votes), review the game and liaise with the developer about upgrading to the next tier. If the user has made X amount of money on a lower tier, they wouldn't mind paying to be featured in a higher tier.

I think your idea Danny would be a great one for valve to adapt with while keeping the game submission price affordable!

Quote from Beejers

I agree with a lot of people's thoughts here, and I love Danny's suggestion. Also Del, I had no idea the Greenlight system was so corrupt, I hadn't got there yet myself. No wonder all those crap games got through, I always wondered about that. I hope the games that are in Greenlit currently or have already been Greenlit will be safe in a legacy program until it gets all cleared out.

It's sad it was ruined for everyone else. As the saying goes, this is why we can't have nice things! I agree with what Marv said as well, the fees cut out so many people and someone else said $1k is a fortune to some in other countries. Now we just need Steam to read Danny's idea and do that instead! Fingers crossed it works out in a good way for everyone!

Unfortunately it's pretty much a cess pool.

As soon as you put your game up there you'll get hit with mysterious friend requests who'll then PM you looking for you to let them "help" you, it'll only cost X,000 keys for upvotes to get through the process quickly. (I've gone through Greenlight submissions 4 times total and it's happened each time) I've never done these shady deals ever. In fact I've taken a bunch of screenshots and etc of these conversations in case I need them later for whatever reason!

Then once you DO get on the storefront you'll get hit up again for people looking for free keys for positive reviews and / or twitch streamers who may or may not be who they seem. And this doesn't take too long, I'm talking within 15-20 minutes of my games going live I got emails and all sorts of crap looking for handouts. One girl on Twitch had contacted me before for my first game, I said no and she insulted me, then contacted me again later for my second game because she couldn't keep her **** straight and forgot she had insulted me before HAHA! You will also get emails by "youtubers" who can't or won't contact you through their official youtube channel, because it isn't really them. Like I said, you'll see all kinds of turds looking to capitalize on your own hard work.

Bundle offers will roll in too. I just had one this morning in fact (I declined). I've only participated in one bundle ever which was with Indiegala at the end of Dec '16. I did this more because I wanted the expand the player base for Just a Cleric, to get people talking about it again which was an exciting time. I didn't do it for the money, and once I saw how much I was actually going to get from this deal I REALLY didn't do it for the money haha! Worse, of more than 8,000 units sold I got a grand total of FOUR new screenshots and the only new posts to its forums were card traders. Why? Because I'm a bundle n00b and apparently most people buy bundles for $1 or whatever SPECIFICALLY to idle for trading cards, who will then turn a profit for a couple bucks on the Steam trading market. So the entire reason I even wanted to participate in the first place was largely futile.

To give you an idea, with the full price of JAC being $4.99 I gave them 20,000 keys to use per request. That's $100,000 worth of units. Of those, 11,000 and change were not used and returned. However I had about 80 something that did not match the math and were missing (20,000 - total bundle sales = 80 less than what I should have had come back to me were returned.) I worked out that in value to $400 something, which is only slightly less than what I'm going to get for my participation in the first place. I'm guessing these were gimmies to their buddies or whatever. Think of that: $100K worth of games to use and to help my player base expand, and in return I'm getting almost nothing and no more new players to talk about the game with.

I can safely say this is the last bundle I'm going to be doing.

What a tangent!
RE: Greenlight cheaters: I might not make AAA titles but at least I know I got voted through the correct way and can feel good about myself lol.

The best thing to do for those offers is to ignore them. They have bots that automatically send the messages so most of the cases they dont even check them. If you decline they will at times do a downvote bot just because you said no. Ignore and only interact with the organic people.

thanks for sharing these insights guys... this system seems really broken