Looks like steam is going to change Steam Greenlight to Steam Direct. i.e. It’s going to be a flat-fee to publish your product on their store.
Welp, there goes the last tiny bit of quality control steam had.
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It’s being replaced by a system that requires you to pay $100 to $5k (recoupable) to submit your game . I’m inclined to think that’ll likely increase the quality bar substantially - especially if the number they decide to use is closer to $5k.
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You can’t have quality control if there is no quality to begin with
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The true power of Greenlight was giving very niche games with raw ideas an equal opportunity at a low price. This change might get rid of a lot of low quality games, the ones that are not worth releasing for the fee. But it will also kill the unfunded indies that genuinely have good ideas, the true source of innovation.
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Putting something on Steam and not making at least $5k kind of defeats the point of releasing it … or not?
There are a lot of other places you can release a extreme niche game or “raw” game. The problem was that people got exposed to games they didn’t really ever want to get exposed to.
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Having $5k ahead of time is the issue, then making less than $5k, it’s a loss rather than a small profit. Deadly for someone without a budget.
I generally do agree with the sentiment and what they are doing is the right thing, but the entry fee should be accessable, not prohibitive.
To be fair Valve haven’t yet determined what an acceptable entry fee would be (which they have stated is recoupable - I’m assuming if the project fails). They acknowledged that the $5K and $100 amounts each have their own issues.
IMO 5K is too large. However, if a person is struggling to provide $500-$1000 for a project that they are committing a large chunk of time to then it might be an indication that the project doesn’t have a good foundation to begin with. Also that amount could easily be gathered from relatives or friends.
It also seems that game ideas will no longer have to be popular enough to gain access to Steam. The devs just need to prove they are serious about it via the application process. This might actually allow more devs to enter the system without having to be arbitrarily verified by popular vote (which often become obfuscated by the torrent of crap flowing through the system).
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Submitting a game to greenlight for community voting already cost $100 afaik. If steam continue their push for long-tail sales, they’ll keep the price low.
I would imagine that a sensible idea would be to have tiers of cost based on the amount developers want to sell their game for.
So small, indie games selling for <£10 ('scuse British currency, internet conversion is available) would be eligible for the lowest charge tier. Games aiming for the £30-40+ bracket should be the highest tier, as that’s getting into AAA territory.
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Yeah $5k is quite high, I think $500 - $1k would be more appropriate. Just enough to limit bored teenagers for submitting mountains of crap.
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It is almost to were there’s porn like games now. Quality of that site is going down the toilet.
I remember when I got HL2 Wayyy back then, yep those were the days.
Back then I think the process of applying to get a game onto steam involved some sort of human sacrifice.
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Oh you mean like developing a video game?
h-hue-hue-hue-hue
The Giantbomb folks talked about it a bit on their previous podcast so I was reminded of this thread.
https://youtu.be/W1FDg5Xv5Io?t=1h14m41s (<-- direct link to segment)
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I remember too, back then when people were still (rightfully) mad at the concept of binding a game to a drm system that was account-based.
I also remember the days before steam, were there was no online account on an arbitrary site forcefully linked to your purchase just to play that offline game, and were the best copy-protection was the slow internet speed. Now THOSE were the days.
I’ve gotten tired of the double-standard were people would on one hand happily feed their children games where they can outright slaughter hundreds of peoples in a shitton of ways, but would go into berserk mode once even the tiniest speck of naked skin shines through. The rating system exists for a reason. There’s no reason to keep a platform like steam exclusive to a certain type of mature/adult games (in my opinion).
On the topic, it seems to makes it easier for commercial games to get on steam, so I guess it’s a good thing?
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BUMP.
It’s a bit of old news now, but $100 admission fee for direct.
Exactly as expected. 
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I don’t really get the hate for steam: I’ve not seen their servers suffer any sort of reliability issues, and they have drastically fixed offline play.
If you’re fine with not playing online, you can even copy your friend’s library and a couple other files, and play all of their stuff offline as well. If the chief complaint is that you can’t pirate it for yourself anymore, then you really don’t have much of a leg to stand on.
I know I’m a bit behind the times with this thread, but it certainly was discussed.
Well, some guys are kind of vocal against Steam.
But truth is, the vast majority of gamers are happy to go along with Steam : automatic updates, games are easy to install, now there’s the mod shop for the games supporting that feature (although Nexus Mod is still the guru for big games).
The only drawback of Steam lies for the game developpers: Steam’s fee are kinda expensive, and the advertissement is not always paying back for its cost.