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 12, 2017
As far as I know, the fee has always been $100, even when there weren't so many low quality games.Greenlight existed for about two months before the fee was added. Here's some commentary from developers on the fee when it was first introduced (which includes a prediction from Rami Ismail that it would probably rise to $1000).
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.For this article's comments specifically, you're probably right, but the attitudes that pop up in general discourse will have an impact. Robert Yang expresses this a bit better than I could:
To the people who say I'm "sensationalizing" the outrageous $5000 proposed fee, which is the hypothetical worse-case scenario that is thus unlikely to happen [...] Also, Valve quoted that number out loud, in public, precisely to gauge your reaction to it. If you just shrug, what you're actually saying to Valve is, "yes, a high per-game fee is good, please raise the fee as close to $5000 as your conscience will allow it." If I were a master of rhetoric, I would purposely say "5000" so that "500" seems "reasonable" in comparison.
Have you seen some of the crap on the store ?Is any of that really a problem? If card trading creates a self sustaining marketplace where stuff can exist, then why shouldn't it? As weird as I find it to be that they exist, I can't think of a reason why their presence can be seen as bad.
Have you seen how many "simulator" games there are that are just random joke thrown together unity assets ?
What about all the asset flips that are just a pre-bought unity project with a new name , no work on it whatsoever.
Sorry but have to disagree. That 100$ 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.
People who publish random joke games don't find meaningful success - outside of the Linux space where people still look at every single new release, there's little chance of them being heard of at all. Negative user reviews keep people away, and those that are overtly abusing the store and its customers get kicked off it the way that Digital Homicide did. More responsive actions to community reporting of problematic titles/developers would definitely be a good thing, but it feels like the people who are complaining about that instead are few and far between.
Some thoughts from Rob Fearon earlier this month on "abundance", which were almost prophetically relevant:
Discovery in the digital age is a big task and it’s one that’s not made easier by making a subset of videogames go away. It requires time, effort, focus on what a whole lot of different people need – from folks buying games to folks making stuff in an environment that near as dammit insists that they must learn in a marketplace now.
We don’t need to raise questions as to how lesser works are allowed on stores, we need to ask how they’re going to help us find the things we want to find. It doesn’t need to be done at the expense of others. There’s so many other, better, ways to tackle this. All of them more useful than that.
That people feel like Steam is full of "bad"/"junk"/"garbage"/"trash"/"joke" games is a symptom. The actual problem isn't the content that's on Steam, it's that even with the relatively recent discoverability themed updates to the storefront Steam still isn't very good at helping people find games that they'd be interested in playing. A fee (any fee) doesn't really address that directly at all.
One last thought from Robert Yang (whose article has a bunch of good points):
The shitty games are on Steam, and the shit is there to stay, so just embrace the shit and learn how to filter / curate / deal with it. For those indie business devs who cling to 2010, I'd say the days of scarce Steam storefront access guaranteeing sales are way long past. Now it's time to share the tent. This is not your golden platform anymore.
1 Likes, Who?
I'm ready to see thousands of crappy Visual Novels on Steam. But i'm not ready to see female nipples on them.
To be fair, while I agree on the principle, they would have to make their guidelines consistent. For now, there is a thin line between what's pornographic and what isn't. I seem to recall that this issue was briefly touched during Gabe's last AMA.
For example, you have games such as Genital Jousting, Watchdogs 2 and the Witcher (3). I don't see why nipples should be banned from visual novel while being allowed in the Witcher. I think it's a matter of consistency. But that's not an easy one, to say the least.
0 Likes
natewardawg Feb 12, 2017
As far as I know, the fee has always been $100, even when there weren't so many low quality games.Greenlight existed for about two months before the fee was added. Here's some commentary from developers on the fee when it was first introduced (which includes a prediction from Rami Ismail that it would probably rise to $1000).
Thanks Cheeseness, I appreciate your insight and the link. :)
Last edited by natewardawg on 12 February 2017 at 1:28 pm UTC
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Mountain Man Feb 12, 2017
When I buy from Steam, it's because I know exactly what game I'm looking for because I learned about it from somewhere else. I almost never randomly search the store looking for something to buy, so how the games get to Steam makes no difference to me.
0 Likes
Do not forget about free (gratis) games, including Free and Open Source games. Sure they can use itch.io and other stores, but the potential audience is so much larger on Steam.
And that's what they mainly want from what I know - a larger community to get contributors from, and in the case of networked games have a self-sustaining player base. Paid DLC could also aid in further development for the game in question. All this can be done without Steam in theory, but it gets even more difficult without it. $5000 or even $1000 would be out of the question for many gratis games.
And that's what they mainly want from what I know - a larger community to get contributors from, and in the case of networked games have a self-sustaining player base. Paid DLC could also aid in further development for the game in question. All this can be done without Steam in theory, but it gets even more difficult without it. $5000 or even $1000 would be out of the question for many gratis games.
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Do not forget about free (gratis) games, including Free and Open Source games. Sure they can use itch.io and other stores, but the potential audience is so much larger on Steam.
Good point.
I was happy to find these on Steam...:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/250600/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/272060/
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The debate is very similar if not identical to Apple's vs Google's vetting methods into their mobile stores. IMO, you can't say one is better than the other overall. I appreciate that it's a lot harder to get into the Apple Store because I can then be more confident in the quality and safety of apps. On the other hand, the extra freedom in the Play Store (and developer access to Android hardware controls) provides me with apps that simply don't exist in the Apple Store or have fewer features.
I'm leaning toward Steam Direct having an entry fee. I don't think it should be free at all. But I think a low fee should be tried first, like $50.
I'm leaning toward Steam Direct having an entry fee. I don't think it should be free at all. But I think a low fee should be tried first, like $50.
0 Likes
The day i heard this news i installed windows 10 the same day. Wow so this is what unreal market place looks like! VisualStudio already setup! No more compiling unreal engine 4 and setup codelite accessor.Valve created SteamOS as a response to the windows store. The Universal Windows Platform does not require $5000 to develop windows games and xbox games .Linux what a waste of time...
Just read the same on Steam, how often are you posting it?
And who wants 5000$ from you?
Last edited by Eike on 16 February 2017 at 10:34 am UTC
2 Likes, Who?
Just read the same on Steam, how often are you posting it?
And who wants 5000$ from you?
It's his first post. An aspiring troll, perhaps.
0 Likes
Just read the same on Steam, how often are you posting it?
And who wants 5000$ from you?
It's his first post. An aspiring troll, perhaps.
Already reported :)
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