• Valve reveals Steam Direct fee, upcoming changes to the store
    49 replies, posted
[url]http://www.pcgamer.com/valve-reveals-steam-direct-fee-upcoming-changes-to-the-store[/url]
So it's just like Greenlight but without any community involvement? I don't really see this helping at all.
It's $100, so you don't have to click the link. Doesn't that completely defeat the point of trying to keep the digital homicides off of Steam by raising the barrier to entry compared to Greenlight?
100 is not nearly enough, the apple store's fee is 100 and that doesnt stop anything
You will still get trash regardless of price. Some of the most notorious garbage examples from Greenlight did not come from just poor solo indie projects, but relatively affluent developers. Raisng the price ceiling would do nothing but hurt well-meaning poorer devs trying to break into the market. I guarantee some of the best things to come out of Greenlight would not have been were it at a [I]$5K[/I] entry point. The only way to remove the trash from Greenlight is to completely overhaul how it works. That would take a lot of effort to do correctly, so it is expected that Valve has not done that here.
[QUOTE=LuaChobo;52304112]100 dollars is already the fee for greenlight literally just removed the voting from it set it to 5grand like it was initially speculated thanks[/QUOTE] Thus fucking over the poor devs? No thanks
Correct me if I am wrong, but this means it is now $100 [I]per game[/I] instead of a one-time fee? Valve also mentioned that they are shifting their focus to making the store algorithm better instead of "what gets into the store", so I think this is fine? (altho I wish they'd keep Greenlight) This means while garbage still gets into steam store, they shouldn't be appearing in suggestions or store front for most people.
The $100 fee is per game now instead of $100 to push endless trash onto the greenlight system. Plus they're working on reducing the visibility of said trash and making it harder for those devs to get trading cards to profit from.
From what I can tell they don't want to rely on the entry fee deterrent as the primary solution because it hurts small devs. They've tried to make it as low as possible while focusing on Discovery and Curation and fixing Trading Card exploits for banishing trash games to unprofitable oblivion. Which may not work out as intended, but like Valve said, they're being optimistic here. If there's at all a way for iterations on Discovery, Curation etc to achieve more or less the same thing as a high entry fee, then the approach Valve is currently taking should be much healthier for Steam's ecosystem in the long run. And if nothing else, Valve likes playing the long game. So I can't say I'm surprised by their decision here. Guess we'll have to see if their optimism pays off tho.
Between 500-1000 is perfectly reasonable, even the poorest of developers can afford it, and if the game actually is worth anything, they'll make the money back soon enough. 100 is bullshit
[QUOTE=Laserbeams;52304220]Between 500-1000 is perfectly reasonable, even the poorest of developers can afford it, and if the game actually is worth anything, they'll make the money back soon enough. 100 is bullshit[/QUOTE] imagine having to pay 1000 dollars per game, that would absolutely screw over poor developers.
1000 is completely unreasonable. That's about an entire months' salary for the average person.
A quick inquiry: what does [I]$100 recoupable[/I] mean? You can get back that $100 how?
[QUOTE=Noob4life;52304289]A quick inquiry: what does [I]$100 recoupable[/I] mean? You can get back that $100 how?[/QUOTE] By selling your game?
[QUOTE=Onii;52304277]1000 is completely unreasonable. That's about an entire months' salary for the average person.[/QUOTE] That's the cost of business. You shouldn't be able to fork whatever you want to the platform. It's there to prevent the low end cash grabs.
[QUOTE=Revenge282;52304370]That's the cost of business. You shouldn't be able to fork whatever you want to the platform. It's there to prevent the low end cash grabs.[/QUOTE] Except it won't. They'll still do it because it's easy to flip and make back, and many of them are actually stable enough to do it easily because it's one person taking a few weekends to slap together a unity game while working a day job during the week. I'd rather have ten thousand trash games for one great indie game. It's a jackass dumbshit thing to prohibit smaller devs from ever getting a game on the biggest market in the world simply because, "UHHGGASSETFLIPSJIMSTERLINGGREENLIGHT". You can ignore the trash, but you can't play a good game that never comes to market.
[QUOTE=Laserbeams;52304220]Between 500-1000 is perfectly reasonable, even the poorest of developers can afford it, and if the game actually is worth anything, they'll make the money back soon enough. 100 is bullshit[/QUOTE] "even the poorest of developers can afford it" and where do you get that information from? because kickstarter exists solely so people can afford to even make the game in the first place, letalone pay half a grand fee to get their game uploaded. by the time the game is done being made, they have nothing left. assuming they were being honest.
[QUOTE=Noob4life;52304289]A quick inquiry: what does [I]$100 recoupable[/I] mean? You can get back that $100 how?[/QUOTE] [QUOTE=VenomousBeetle;52304306]By selling your game?[/QUOTE] Alright then, so it just means it will cost $100 up front. Kinda odd that they had to use the wording 'recoupable'.
[QUOTE=Laserbeams;52304220]Between 500-1000 is perfectly reasonable, even the poorest of developers can afford it, and if the game actually is worth anything, they'll make the money back soon enough. 100 is bullshit[/QUOTE] I can barely pay 100€, let alone 500, 500 is almost the minimum salary in Spain!
[QUOTE=Loadingue;52304134]Thus fucking over the poor devs? No thanks[/QUOTE] If you cant raise $5k in a first world country, or even get a $5k loan, to finance your business venture you've presumably spent years of your life developing, you're either a criminal with shit credit and are unloanable to, or an idiot that has 0 idea how to build a credit history.
[QUOTE=Noob4life;52304808]Alright then, so it just means it will cost $100 up front. Kinda odd that they had to use the wording 'recoupable'.[/QUOTE] No that's not it, valve said recoupable, but not how, it could be that if your game gets accepted you can somehow get it back directly.
I'm curious as to how this will be without community voting. I say this being well aware of how the less scrupulous have abused voting via selling/trading game keys for votes, paid shills or in the case of f2ps, bribing the existing community with in game bonuses if they got greenlit.
[QUOTE=Sheer Visor;52304850]If you cant raise $5k in a first world country, or even get a $5k loan, to finance your business venture you've presumably spent years of your life developing, you're either a criminal with shit credit and are unloanable to, or an idiot that has 0 idea how to build a credit history.[/QUOTE] ...or a non-criminal non-idiot who wasn't magically blessed by the credit fairy and fell upon hard times in life that negatively impacted their credit score? Perhaps?
And I'm sure banks would just be dying to hand out 5k loans to random indie devs who may or may not actually make that cost back.
[QUOTE=bdd458;52304930]And I'm sure banks would just be dying to hand out 5k loans to random indie devs who may or may not actually make that cost back.[/QUOTE] As someone who just had to get a business loan (granted, for a significantly higher sum), banks are [i]not[/i] eager to just hand out business loans.
[QUOTE=Noob4life;52304289]A quick inquiry: what does [I]$100 recoupable[/I] mean? You can get back that $100 how?[/QUOTE] Valve will 'pay it back' by reducing their from game sales by that amount in total.
Not really related but I wish Valve would swallow their pride and start taking smaller cuts of each game sale. 30% is way too much for doing very little, 15% is more realistic imo. They'd still be reeling in money like no tomorrow.
[QUOTE=Untouch;52304101]100 is not nearly enough, the apple store's fee is 100 and that doesnt stop anything[/QUOTE] Wrong? Apple charges a $100 fee per developer, unlimited apps The itunes app store uses the same system as greenlight minus the voting process, just an in-house review process from Apple themselves Steam Direct is on a per-game basis, meaning churning out shit at $100 a pop isn't going to be a profitable model. Definitely not as much as a one time fee of $100 and setting up some vote bots. The way the devs abusing greenlight the most are operating is by consistently throwing together a basic game with attention grabbing themes and empty promises, cards, and tossing more and more out almost weekly (monthly?) like these guys [url]http://store.steampowered.com/search/?publisher=ANPA.US[/url] [editline]4th June 2017[/editline] More often than not they give keys to their alts and farm the cards and sell them to get the money they need. Valve have also recently started cracking down on this by trying to find a way to keep cards from being utilized until it's certain that a certain amount of actual people bought and played it
[QUOTE=bdd458;52304260]imagine having to pay 1000 dollars per game, that would absolutely [B]screw over poor developers[/B].[/QUOTE] First of all, games cost money to make. If a developer is poor the game's got a pretty high chance of being underdeveloped, underfunded trite to begin with and should not be on steam. Second, a thousand dollars is a small bank loan - one you're going to be able to pay back real fucking quick if your game is actually good and sells. Like if you make a game but you're not confident enough to pay a thousand dollars to put it on steam then perhaps it isn't that good a game to begin with and shouldn't be on a platform that's in dire need of a higher standard of quality.
[QUOTE=Ganerumo;52312246]First of all, games cost money to make. If a developer is poor the game's got a pretty high chance of being underdeveloped, underfunded trite to begin with and should not be on steam. Second, a thousand dollars is a small bank loan - one you're going to be able to pay back real fucking quick if your game is actually good and sells. Like if you make a game but you're not confident enough to pay a thousand dollars to put it on steam then perhaps it isn't that good a game to begin with and shouldn't be on a platform that's in dire need of a higher standard of quality.[/QUOTE] No, it does not cost any money at all to develop. It only costs you your free time and your passion. At least from experience and from an indie standpoint. 1000 dollars is not a small loan, for 1000 dollars i can buy a good car where i live. If i have to waste more money on developing stuff than i earn from it, then what's the point in being a good developer? A skill not everybody has or is interested in. I might as well work as a taxi driver or a waiter and get paid more.
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