STEAM GREENLIGHT IS DEAD: VALVE INTRODUCES STEAM DIRECT

LockeZ
If you read Valve's actual post they never once claim that they're even considering the $5k value.

Valve
We talked to several developers and studios about an appropriate fee, and they gave us a range of responses from as low as $100 to as high as $5,000.

All they did was share some results from their initial research and people are flipping out. Welcome to the internet.

That said, I am apparently out of the loop because I don't actually know why everyone thinks Steam Greenlight is bad. I see a lot of posts stating that it's been demonstrated to be a failure and they're glad it's being replaced. Is there a problem with it?

Damn it, third party information! You've failed me again!

Exactly, poopy kids will still upload their shitty parody game if it costs 5000USD to do so, they can just ask their daddies ;u;)
butttttttttttttttttttttttttttt serious devs who happen to not be as fortunate or are creating niche content to small audiences will be completely fucked over
that sounds counterproductive, but then again, having valve invest the manpower to actually assess entry into the steam store a bit more rigidly would incur costs that would not justify passing a game that makes 2000USD in their lifetime maybe?
Steam stays with 30% of that I think, so that's 600USD valve gets. Out of that they'd have to pay salaries for the curators for all games, so that would too prevent niche / stuff with low profitability but good quality from happening I think

idk im dum nd not smert so but yea /;-;)\

author=Archeia_Nessiah
I think game developers have the right to be concerned if someone thought it was a good idea www. Because it means, the entry fee could be 500~1000 for all we know. And I know some Steam Games that don't break even and reach 2000 USD in their total lifetime.

My understanding is that the fee would be refundable after making a set amount of money.

Like, honestly, the money thing doesn't bother me much; I want to get on Steam, and I've got more than $5k saved up, anyway, so I would be willing to take a risk on achieving my dream. Other devs might not have as much saved up, so I'm not saying it's GOOD that they're increasing the fee, but, just from a personal perspective, I can make it work.

I'm more worried about the format. Greenlight has a built-in marketing component, where users fight to get games they believe in on, so you have a team sports kind of mentality that develops. Marketing is a frightening enough crapshoot as is, so losing that is what scares me. Maybe the rating system will be enough; I don't know.

author=Luiishu535
Since putting your game on Steam clearly isn't going to be enough, no matter how awesome your game is, we basically need to step up our marketing game even more!

This.

Game dev is 20% development and 80% marketing, unfortunately. Thanks to RM and similarly accessible engines, anyone can step up to make a game, so you really need to do a lot to stand out from the crowd. Release day is far too late to start marketing your game.

Really, we should all be doing this regardless of what program Steam implements. Get into social media, keep a regular development blog with substantial content, and network with your fellow devs to build your reputation and fanbase. It's a slow, iterative process that takes place over the course of a game's development, but a sizable following will give you a head above the competition when you finally hit Steam Direct or wherever else you want to go.

Regarding Direct: I think this is something I'm just gonna have to see in action before condemning or praising. I'm not a fan of the "getting out of the way" mentality Valve has considering all the garbage and joke games already on Steam thanks to Greenlight, but if the Discovery algorithm works the way they intend it, then maybe the quality games will be easier to filter from the jokes and garbage.

And while I'm dreaming, maybe world hunger will end, wars will stop across the globe, and my asshole neighbor will stop blasting death metal at 2 AM.

I agree with Nerdboy that Direct's success depends almost entirely on the discovery algorithm.

While it's a little disappointing to see Greenlight go, it's also a bit thankful as we may not get as much garbage flowing into steam. Too many a time have I seen games that were clearly just jokes or complete filth get greenlit and actually make it into the store.

Hopefully Direct will make it so it filters out a little more crap since according to the article, the submission fee is per-game. I wouldn't mind a high fee, but as long as it was reasonable on some level per game. I'm not sure I would be very willing to pay at most (thankfully at most) $5000 per submission. Thankfully it's only a range that they're considering and it most likely will not cost 5 grand per game. I have doubts anyone is going to pay $200-$5000 every time they wanna submit something along the lines of this, so hopefully people will think twice about the quality of their title before actually making some kind of submission.

I guess the per-game fee will help keep out the people who release a new crap game on purpose every three weeks, without having any meaningful effect on the people who toil away for years on their crap game.

You could take a look at Libby's Tales of the Submission Queue thread, that has some rubbish ones on it

author=Kloe
You could take a look at Libby's Tales of the Submission Queue thread, that has some rubbish ones on it

'Tales of Submission' this could be really good or...*re-reads* Ah. Still could be entertaining.

Unfortunately Steam Direct sounds like it won't fix the problem. I still fully expect to see boatloads of jank with minimal effort, asset flips, and shady microtransactions. Also porn. Lots of cheap porn.

author=Feldschlacht IV
I'm in that pool of people who hope to put my game on Steam someday, and I'm not really tripping about this. We'll see!

Same here.

Greenlight was a bad system; ended up being gamed repeatedly.

I'm going to assume Steam Direct is going to use some kind of sliding scale. If your game budget is less than $100k, it's $300. That kind of thing. Plenty of other tools and libraries have that kind of usage.