Valve have have finally come to a decision on pricing for Steam Direct, which is set to replace the indie Greenlight system. They've also announced some changes for Steam Curators.
When they asked for feedback on pricing for Steam Direct, they were given figures by people ranging wildly from $100-$5000. The higher the cost, the larger the possibility that some truly interesting smaller games would never make it onto Steam. So it's pleasing to know Valve thought hard about it and have settled on a $100 price-tag.
This will be $100 per-game, which should hopefully limit the amount of shovelware where developers repeatedly tweak small things and release them as entirely new games, or just outright terrible asset-flips. That fee will be recoverable by developers though, if they make enough money.
Considering that's quite a low barrier of entry, I think it's only going to make websites like us and all the others more important than ever. You're going to need a bit of help to sift through the junk, so they're also upgrading the Curator feature.
One upside, is bad publishers will hopefully have a harder time locking less experienced developers into poor contracts. I've heard some horror stories over the years, so hopefully indies will have a better time.
Honestly, I hardly ever touch our Curator page since they just seem so utterly pointless right now, but maybe Valve can change my mind. They plan to allow you to include videos and make lists of games, so we can group together fantastic FPS games available for Linux, for example.
Valve are also planning to make it easier for Curator's to connect with developers, to request access to keys:
I like the sound of that one especially. Considering some developers don't even have a website or any contact details, that might help quite a bit.
See the full announcement from Valve here. A little late as always Valve, but reading stuff like that makes me understand how much thought they're putting into it. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
When they asked for feedback on pricing for Steam Direct, they were given figures by people ranging wildly from $100-$5000. The higher the cost, the larger the possibility that some truly interesting smaller games would never make it onto Steam. So it's pleasing to know Valve thought hard about it and have settled on a $100 price-tag.
This will be $100 per-game, which should hopefully limit the amount of shovelware where developers repeatedly tweak small things and release them as entirely new games, or just outright terrible asset-flips. That fee will be recoverable by developers though, if they make enough money.
Considering that's quite a low barrier of entry, I think it's only going to make websites like us and all the others more important than ever. You're going to need a bit of help to sift through the junk, so they're also upgrading the Curator feature.
One upside, is bad publishers will hopefully have a harder time locking less experienced developers into poor contracts. I've heard some horror stories over the years, so hopefully indies will have a better time.
Honestly, I hardly ever touch our Curator page since they just seem so utterly pointless right now, but maybe Valve can change my mind. They plan to allow you to include videos and make lists of games, so we can group together fantastic FPS games available for Linux, for example.
Valve are also planning to make it easier for Curator's to connect with developers, to request access to keys:
QuoteIt's often hard for Curators to get the attention of developers who build the specific kinds of games that a Curator covers, and it can be similarly hard for a smaller developer to find the Curators who would be interested. So we're building a system that will make that a painless process for everyone involved, which means that you should see more useful curations coming out of the Curators who like to explore newer titles.
I like the sound of that one especially. Considering some developers don't even have a website or any contact details, that might help quite a bit.
See the full announcement from Valve here. A little late as always Valve, but reading stuff like that makes me understand how much thought they're putting into it. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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The comments on this article are closed.
Feels like too low a barrier to entry for me. I sense troubled waters ahead! It sounds like they're putting the Greenlight onus onto Curators. Might work, but that low barrier still worries me.
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Mountain Man Jun 2, 2017
$100 is way too low. Junk games and scammers can easily make back 10x that or more before their stuff gets flagged and pulled. I think $1000 would have been better.
Last edited by Mountain Man on 2 June 2017 at 4:15 pm UTC
Last edited by Mountain Man on 2 June 2017 at 4:15 pm UTC
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Power-Metal-Games Jun 2, 2017
Quoting: Mountain Man$100 is way too low. Junk games and scammers can easily make back 10x that or more before their stuff gets flagged and pulled. I think $1000 would have been better.
1000$... really? Why not 10K?? or even more? In fact, why allow anybody to publish something on the platform that only purpose is publishing something?
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Quoting: Mountain Man$100 is way too low. Junk games and scammers can easily make back 10x that or more before their stuff gets flagged and pulled. I think $1000 would have been better.
I kind of agree. Not pushing the onus on smaller retailers but there are sites like itch.io, indie.db & gamejolt that allow for a game to get very early Alpha coverage and interest at little to no cost, this way they can build a following and receive donations enough to get themselves enough money to get onto Steam. If a game is not doing well on smaller indie content sites then what makes them think Steam will fare any better ? That's a red flag for sure that it could be shovel ware.
$1000 ? Perhaps $300 - $500 might of been a nice starting number. Maybe Valve will increase this over time to $200, $250 etc.. They probably low balled so as to not isolate some of their user base.
Last edited by on 2 June 2017 at 4:27 pm UTC
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Quoting: Power-Metal-GamesQuoting: Mountain Man$100 is way too low. Junk games and scammers can easily make back 10x that or more before their stuff gets flagged and pulled. I think $1000 would have been better.
1000$... really? Why not 10K?? or even more? In fact, why allow anybody to publish something on the platform that only purpose is publishing something?
Because common sense.
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Quoting: Mountain Man$100 is way too low. Junk games and scammers can easily make back 10x that or more before their stuff gets flagged and pulled. I think $1000 would have been better.
100$ for you is not much, but for some people, especially in poor countries, is a lot.
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Expalphalog Jun 2, 2017
I've been on Steam for, I think, 8 years now. I still don't know what a "Curator" is or what it does.
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My opinion is that Valve should do something like a combination of Steam Direct and Greenlight.
To be more exact I am thinking that Valve could collaborate with a completelly open platform (itch.io maybe). The idea would be that Steam Direct could have more cost as a flat $100 can not work well in all cases, but developers/games with good reputation on the other platform could have a free pass on steam. That I think would benefit everyone. It would benefit Valve as Steam would have better quality control, it would benefit a platform like itch.io as it would have more attention, it would benefit indie developers as they would have more choice.
To be more exact I am thinking that Valve could collaborate with a completelly open platform (itch.io maybe). The idea would be that Steam Direct could have more cost as a flat $100 can not work well in all cases, but developers/games with good reputation on the other platform could have a free pass on steam. That I think would benefit everyone. It would benefit Valve as Steam would have better quality control, it would benefit a platform like itch.io as it would have more attention, it would benefit indie developers as they would have more choice.
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Mountain Man Jun 2, 2017
Quoting: Power-Metal-GamesQuoting: Mountain Man$100 is way too low. Junk games and scammers can easily make back 10x that or more before their stuff gets flagged and pulled. I think $1000 would have been better.
1000$... really? Why not 10K?? or even more? In fact, why allow anybody to publish something on the platform that only purpose is publishing something?
Oh, cool, the strawman fallacy.
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Quoting: lucinosMy opinion is that Valve should do something like a combination of Steam Direct and Greenlight.I like that idea, but the collaboration with another site might not be something Valve wants
To be more exact I am thinking that Valve could collaborate with a completelly open platform (itch.io maybe). The idea would be that Steam Direct could have more cost as a flat $100 can not work well in all cases, but developers/games with good reputation on the other platform could have a free pass on steam. That I think would benefit everyone. It would benefit Valve as Steam would have better quality control, it would benefit a platform like itch.io as it would have more attention, it would benefit indie developers as they would have more choice.
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