Valve have finally announced what they suggested they would do at the first SteamDevDays, Greenlight is being thrown out. It will be replaced by 'Steam Direct', which may still require a payment from developers.
Steam Direct' is set to go live around Spring this year. They will ask all developers to file some digital paperwork, verification and tax documents. They will then need to pay a 'recoupable application fee' for every title they wish to distribute on Steam. Valve have asked numerous developers about the fee, the responses went from $100 to $5,000.
I hope they get rid of the fee altogether to get on Steam, they said it themselves they've made a fair amount of money thanks to letting these "smaller" game get on Steam:
I'm a little torn by the idea of this. Greenlight wasn't exactly a great system, as it was open to a lot of abuse by developers (voting for keys and so on), but this doesn't sound much better. Having a much more open system with no fees would remove a lot of the hassle while Valve is still likely to make a ton of money, I mean Valve do take a cut of all sales at around 30% anyway so what do Valve have to lose? Of course, even more trash will make it through, but that is why we exist, why Steam curators exist, Steam reviews and so on. Steam and the internet as a whole has many systems ready to help people sift through junk.
The amount of games on Steam has been increasing constantly, so it was time for Valve to do something at least. It's a step in the right direction to me, but not enough. They are going to need to do something about their "newly released" lists, as they will get rammed. Allowing only a certain amount per-day or some such system would help and not allowing developers to flood it with DLC will certainly help even more too.
Valve need to be very careful if they do introduce a fee per-game, since it could end up locking out less fortunate developers, who might have a really fantastic game.
Still, I do wish more people payed attention to itch.io. They have a great store and an open source client. Valve could learn a bit from them I think, but then itch could learn from Valve a little too. I do like the fact that Valve are being more open with their communication and their plans, this is good. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Steam Direct' is set to go live around Spring this year. They will ask all developers to file some digital paperwork, verification and tax documents. They will then need to pay a 'recoupable application fee' for every title they wish to distribute on Steam. Valve have asked numerous developers about the fee, the responses went from $100 to $5,000.
I hope they get rid of the fee altogether to get on Steam, they said it themselves they've made a fair amount of money thanks to letting these "smaller" game get on Steam:
QuoteThere 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.
I'm a little torn by the idea of this. Greenlight wasn't exactly a great system, as it was open to a lot of abuse by developers (voting for keys and so on), but this doesn't sound much better. Having a much more open system with no fees would remove a lot of the hassle while Valve is still likely to make a ton of money, I mean Valve do take a cut of all sales at around 30% anyway so what do Valve have to lose? Of course, even more trash will make it through, but that is why we exist, why Steam curators exist, Steam reviews and so on. Steam and the internet as a whole has many systems ready to help people sift through junk.
The amount of games on Steam has been increasing constantly, so it was time for Valve to do something at least. It's a step in the right direction to me, but not enough. They are going to need to do something about their "newly released" lists, as they will get rammed. Allowing only a certain amount per-day or some such system would help and not allowing developers to flood it with DLC will certainly help even more too.
Valve need to be very careful if they do introduce a fee per-game, since it could end up locking out less fortunate developers, who might have a really fantastic game.
Still, I do wish more people payed attention to itch.io. They have a great store and an open source client. Valve could learn a bit from them I think, but then itch could learn from Valve a little too. I do like the fact that Valve are being more open with their communication and their plans, this is good. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Cheeseness Feb 10, 2017
Greenlight's fee was added after the service was launched in response to the number of "Half-Life 3" and other joke/not serious submissions. IMO the fee was a fairly ham fisted way of addressing that problem, but it seems like it was embraced by the developer community and is here to stay.
The interesting thing about Steam Direct seems to be that there's no indication of there being a voting process involved. Maybe we're about to see Steam move entirely away from curation and embrace the kind of anything-goes approach that Itch.io has (this would be good IMO).
The interesting thing about Steam Direct seems to be that there's no indication of there being a voting process involved. Maybe we're about to see Steam move entirely away from curation and embrace the kind of anything-goes approach that Itch.io has (this would be good IMO).
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They are going to need to do something about their "newly released" lists, as they will get rammed.
There already is a list of "popular new games", though:
http://store.steampowered.com/search/?filter=popularnew&sort_by=Released_DESC&os=linux
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I'm more concerned about the trash that litters the store. Developers like Digital Homicide can just release utter garbage and not care about upkeep. There's a game called Sunken that's abandoned by developers (I can't find their website or Facebook page either). Fallout 3 is being sold broken on Windows and Valve isn't holding Bethesda accountable.
There has to be standards that Valve must enforce. If a game is in early access for more than a few years, the developers would have to prove that they are making progress on it. If not, their game goes bye-bye. If games are on the store with negative reviews (like when you search a game and you see a red thumbs-down), the developers would have to either work on bettering the game or the game gets taken off the store.
I hope that this is actual reform, but I know better so I won't hold my breath.
There has to be standards that Valve must enforce. If a game is in early access for more than a few years, the developers would have to prove that they are making progress on it. If not, their game goes bye-bye. If games are on the store with negative reviews (like when you search a game and you see a red thumbs-down), the developers would have to either work on bettering the game or the game gets taken off the store.
I hope that this is actual reform, but I know better so I won't hold my breath.
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I share your love for Itch.io, but I disagree that Valve should seek to emulate them, at least as far as putting out new games is concerned. I think steam should be more for the creme dela creme developers, or at least ones who have their shit together :P Itch keeps it open and welcomes new and old developers alike, which is awesome, but when I go to steam and anticipate spending more money I expect more polished products.
Personally I think the fee should go for at least $500-$1000. Not a perfect solution, but I feel like it will shift a lot of the games more suited for places like Itch, like the game I'm currently developing :B, and in turn result in a better storefront on Steam.
Personally I think the fee should go for at least $500-$1000. Not a perfect solution, but I feel like it will shift a lot of the games more suited for places like Itch, like the game I'm currently developing :B, and in turn result in a better storefront on Steam.
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The fee is a very good idea. If you can't dig up a thousand dollars to place your product in a distro channel like this then you're simply not ready to start a serious business yet, or are just joking about.
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The fee is a very good idea. If you can't dig up a thousand dollars to place your product in a distro channel like this then you're simply not ready to start a serious business yet, or are just joking about.
I agree completely, I think a fee will Improve the quality of games on Steam also developers will have to come more prepared. As others have said there is so much garbage on steam to the curators can't even keep up
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Cheeseness Feb 10, 2017
One person's garbage is someone else's personal touchstone.
There's no way that algorithms or teams of isolated curators at Valve can pick games that are a good fit for everybody. I think it's a fundamentally flawed thing to expect from a monolithic storefront that attempts to cater to all people. This role is better filled by communities who can have deep context/genre/culture specific focuses, and most importantly can have overlap with and contradict each other about what's valued and what's not in ways that aren't possible for a storefront.
There's an interview with Gabe from a few years back where he talked about the idea of moving away from a monolithic Steam storefront and instead allowing communities, individuals and companies to have their own "Steam storefront" tailored to their specific needs and tastes. If this is still a direction for Valve (I hope it is, and replacing Greenlight with Steam Direct feels like it's in line with that), then removing store-level curation and other restrictions on what people can publish through Steam is an important step.
There's no way that algorithms or teams of isolated curators at Valve can pick games that are a good fit for everybody. I think it's a fundamentally flawed thing to expect from a monolithic storefront that attempts to cater to all people. This role is better filled by communities who can have deep context/genre/culture specific focuses, and most importantly can have overlap with and contradict each other about what's valued and what's not in ways that aren't possible for a storefront.
There's an interview with Gabe from a few years back where he talked about the idea of moving away from a monolithic Steam storefront and instead allowing communities, individuals and companies to have their own "Steam storefront" tailored to their specific needs and tastes. If this is still a direction for Valve (I hope it is, and replacing Greenlight with Steam Direct feels like it's in line with that), then removing store-level curation and other restrictions on what people can publish through Steam is an important step.
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One person's garbage is someone else's personal touchstone.
Have you seen what is up on Steam Greenlight lately? Lots of the stuff can be objectively rated as garbage. Companies like Digital Homicide should be removed from Steam (thank god this one actually was), not given better opportunities how to plague the store.
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Just an FYI, Valve takes about 10~15% of the price. It's the consoles that take crazy numbers like 30~40%.
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natewardawg Feb 10, 2017
A one time fee of about $100 is probably a really good idea. This keeps absolute junk off of the store, but still allows for indie game startups who have already sank a ton of money into making their game, many of which just don't have $1000 more to pay to get onto the store. Absolutely free, I'm afraid, would probably allow many pretty good games to drown in the sea of not so good ones.
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Cheeseness Feb 10, 2017
Just an FYI, Valve takes about 10~15% of the price. It's the consoles that take crazy numbers like 30~40%.So far as I'm aware, 30% is still the default thing they offer. It's not something that many people are in a position to talk about though. A few years back, documents accompanying a backruptcy filing gave some pretty solid confirmation.
I have, and I don't think that it's really a problem. There's plenty of stuff that's of no interest to me and/or has no potential that I can see, but I find it hard to feel that my opinions should in any way impact on any of that existing on Greenlight/the Steam store at all.One person's garbage is someone else's personal touchstone.
Have you seen what is up on Steam Greenlight lately? Lots of the stuff can be objectively rated as garbage. Companies like Digital Homicide should be removed from Steam (thank god this one actually was), not given better opportunities how to plague the store.
Everybody likes to moan about games that they don't like or don't see as well made ripping off poor Steam users, but the truth of the matter is that this stuff wallows in obscurity and make no money, so it's not really as big an issue as has been suggested. In the case of something like Digital Homicide, are ejected from the store if they actually are treating their customers poorly. Having communities and individuals flagging stuff that needs attention is IMO a far better way to deal with that than pre-emptive guilty-until-proven-innocent culling.
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cRaZy-bisCuiT Feb 11, 2017
From the perspective of a customer I'd like to see LESS trash on Steam and not more of it. There's Itch.io where people could load of their garbage if they like to - Steam has had another way of dealing with games - now they want to grab an even bigger part of the Indie Games market. Why, just Why? I'd have no problem having one store selling major titles while others would sell smaller ones.
Don't get me wrong, I love good games! No matter if they're triple A or very little ones. But already right now it's hard to distinguish between good titles and garbage every now and then....
Don't get me wrong, I love good games! No matter if they're triple A or very little ones. But already right now it's hard to distinguish between good titles and garbage every now and then....
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cRaZy-bisCuiT Feb 11, 2017
I'm more concerned about the trash that litters the store. Developers like Digital Homicide can just release utter garbage and not care about upkeep. There's a game called Sunken that's abandoned by developers (I can't find their website or Facebook page either). Fallout 3 is being sold broken on Windows and Valve isn't holding Bethesda accountable.Full quote for a 100 % agree!!!
There has to be standards that Valve must enforce. If a game is in early access for more than a few years, the developers would have to prove that they are making progress on it. If not, their game goes bye-bye. If games are on the store with negative reviews (like when you search a game and you see a red thumbs-down), the developers would have to either work on bettering the game or the game gets taken off the store.
I hope that this is actual reform, but I know better so I won't hold my breath.
1 Likes, Who?
Cheeseness Feb 11, 2017
But already right now it's hard to distinguish between good titles and garbage every now and then....With the unconditional 2 week/2 hour refund system that Valve brought into effect last year, this is a non-issue. There's zero risk involved with picking up a game that looked good, but turned out to not be what you're after.
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Segata Sanshiro Feb 11, 2017
More quality control would be good. There's a thin line between a more open platform and one that's open to abuse from the likes of Digital Homicide and its sockpuppet companies.
It's harder and harder to find genuinely good games among all the shovelware and lazy asset flips, so I'd say Valve has let the floodgates open a bit too far. There's no guarantee that people aren't getting scammed anymore by buying into some promising early access title which the developers had no intention of finishing.
If Valve could at least test games to see if they run and have quality standards which don't allow for 100 different versions of ShooterGame with different assets then I would be far more content.
It's harder and harder to find genuinely good games among all the shovelware and lazy asset flips, so I'd say Valve has let the floodgates open a bit too far. There's no guarantee that people aren't getting scammed anymore by buying into some promising early access title which the developers had no intention of finishing.
If Valve could at least test games to see if they run and have quality standards which don't allow for 100 different versions of ShooterGame with different assets then I would be far more content.
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Comandante Ñoñardo Feb 11, 2017
This is another behavior of Valve that justifies my dislike for Steam as a whole. 
This new system will lead to more and more and more garbage than the actual bad situation. :><:
And for garbage I am not talking about taste.
For garbage I mean those games with serious technical issues, those games that don't even run and those games whose development wasn't finished.
If right now Valve wash its hands when a newly released game (or a re-released shovelware) doesn't want to run, imagine the future with this new system. You gonna have 200 broken garbage games per 1 good functional game... :(
I know there is a refund system, but that is not the point here.
The point is that Valve doesn't care anymore about the technical quality of the games sold in the Steam store: They release games without even test if each game works. (take a loot at Bioshock Remastered, for example)
And that is bad for the consumers.
Is not people's job to curate the games released at the Steam Store; that is Valve's job...
Is their store and everything that happen inside Steam is their responsability..
The problem is that they just don't want to be responsible anymore
They just want money (that 30% cut) without even working for it..
Steam is going to fall by its own weight.
(Please, save this post in a frame for future references :) .)
This new system will lead to more and more and more garbage than the actual bad situation. :><:
One person's garbage is someone else's personal touchstone.
And for garbage I am not talking about taste.
For garbage I mean those games with serious technical issues, those games that don't even run and those games whose development wasn't finished.
If right now Valve wash its hands when a newly released game (or a re-released shovelware) doesn't want to run, imagine the future with this new system. You gonna have 200 broken garbage games per 1 good functional game... :(
I know there is a refund system, but that is not the point here.
The point is that Valve doesn't care anymore about the technical quality of the games sold in the Steam store: They release games without even test if each game works. (take a loot at Bioshock Remastered, for example)
And that is bad for the consumers.
Having a much more open system with no fees would remove a lot of the hassle while Valve is still likely to make a ton of money, I mean Valve do take a cut of all sales at around 30% anyway so what do Valve have to lose? Of course, even more trash will make it through, but that is why we exist, why Steam curators exist, Steam reviews and so on. Steam and the internet as a whole has many systems ready to help people sift through junk.Of course NOT!
Is not people's job to curate the games released at the Steam Store; that is Valve's job...
Is their store and everything that happen inside Steam is their responsability..
The problem is that they just don't want to be responsible anymore
They just want money (that 30% cut) without even working for it..
Steam is going to fall by its own weight.
(Please, save this post in a frame for future references :) .)
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@natewardawg Most games take long enough to develop to make 1000$ a non-issue compared to the cost of living over the development time. 100$ might be too little a barrier to ward off junkware, aiming to collect some money before complaints reach Valve. Would probably require a field test though to find a good boundary value for such issues.
A fair solution might be to require a seizable entry fee, but then to count all or most of it against the 30% cut Valve takes.
On the other hand, there are games like "polycrusher", which was done as a students' project with the aim of not only developing a game, but also releasing it on a relevant platform.
A fair solution might be to require a seizable entry fee, but then to count all or most of it against the 30% cut Valve takes.
On the other hand, there are games like "polycrusher", which was done as a students' project with the aim of not only developing a game, but also releasing it on a relevant platform.
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natewardawg Feb 11, 2017
Most games take long enough to develop to make 1000$ a non-issue compared to the cost of living over the development time. 100$ might be too little a barrier to ward off junkware, aiming to collect some money before complaints reach Valve. Would probably require a field test though to find a good boundary value for such issues.
This is backward thinking. From personal experience, most indie games take long enough that the people making them are very exhausted and completely broke. If you're talking a mid to large sized studios, $1000 is probably no problem, but for indie devs, this is a very steep price to ask.
On the other hand, there are games like "polycrusher", which was done as a students' project with the aim of not only developing a game, but also releasing it on a relevant platform.
Do you think this student has $1000 to fork over to put their game up on Steam? This game looks like a great game!!! But... only has 9 reviews from the 4 months it has been on sale. Usually the first month or two are the best months for a game. This also means if the 30% fee was recoverable, they would have to sell a little over 330 copies at $10. I doubt this game will ever do that and this student would have just lost the remaining portion. Again, $1000 is a small risk for mid to large sized studios, but for indie developers it is a pretty big risk. Many of them have families and are living on their savings from previously working in the game industry where, again, $1000 is a large chunk of that savings account and an extremely steep asking price.
$100 is a high enough barrier that it will keep most shovel-ware off of the store without keeping everybody else out. I think even greedy Apple knows this, which is why the barrier to entry is... $100 :)
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A one time fee of about $100 is probably a really good idea. This keeps absolute junk off of the store, ...
Have you seen some of the crap on the store ?
Have you seen how many "simulator" games there are that are just random joke thrown together unity assets ?
What about all the asset flips that are just a pre-bought unity project with a new name , no work on it whatsoever.
Sorry but have to disagree. That 100$ is not stopping the hacks.
The vote groups doing it for steam cards get the games on the stores.
And that 100 is a one time thing , so people can flood garbage after they pay it. Not hard to get , think there was a system that would keep your games open till you got all the cards , so use that , sell the cards on the marketplace, and there you go.
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natewardawg Feb 12, 2017
A one time fee of about $100 is probably a really good idea. This keeps absolute junk off of the store, ...
Sorry but have to disagree. That 100$ is not stopping the hacks.
I don't disagree that this will raise the quality of games that are available, but it will also cut out many indie game developers including many quality games. Also, many of the poor quality games are because Valve opened the flood gates from Greenlight and stopped curating the games as much. As far as I know, the fee has always been $100, even when there weren't so many low quality games. If you really want nothing but high quality games, Valve must curate all games coming in and reject poor quality games. I don't think this is something Valve wants to do anymore, therefore tacking a $1000 fee doesn't make any sense either.
In all truth though, it really doesn't matter, any discussion in this forum isn't going to sway Valve one way or the other as to the cost. But, with that said... I highly doubt they will charge $1000, I just don't see it happening.
Not hard to get , think there was a system that would keep your games open till you got all the cards , so use that , sell the cards on the marketplace, and there you go.AFAIK, you can't use your Steam Wallet to pay for it since it goes through the partner site and not through the main store. I am willing to be corrected though :)
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