[QUOTE=OmniConsUme;51804589][URL="http://store.steampowered.com/news/"]http://store.steampowered.com/news/[/URL][/QUOTE]
[url]http://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/558846854614253751[/url]
Might want to link the actual entry itself since your link will quickly result in it being pushed off the front page.
I think this is great. If you want your product on the service, you got to invest in your own product.
[QUOTE=NitronikALT;51804826]the fee was about 100€ iirc[/QUOTE]
Not talking about the fee but rather the fact that you weren't required to fill out legal forms to sell stuff.
[QUOTE=rndgenerator;51804973]Not talking about the fee but rather the fact that you weren't required to fill out legal forms to sell stuff.[/QUOTE]
you were when you got on steam, but not before
I'm taking art classes and learning Renpy now. I always hoped I could put a small game up for three bucks and maybe get things going, but I work in the food service industry. There's no way in hell I could afford 1000, let alone 5K.
I feel very crestfallen now.
Holy fuck my game got greenlit about a month ago, feels weird knowing they just cancelled it
Jesus Christ if they do $5K there's not a lot of indie devs that can afford 5K if it doesn't instantly get em on Steam.
Goddamn it I was going to buy a greenlight license
Thank all of the racketeers on green light for ruining it for everyone else, I think if they lowered it to $500 they would get rid of most of the asset flippers.
[QUOTE=AaronM202;51804782]When did they first mention this being the end goal? Was it after the Orange Box was released? I seem to remember hearing about it around 2010.[/QUOTE]
Yeah, it was around that time. Gabe said in an interview that eventually he wanted to see Steam as a marketplace where anyone could sell anything, games or movies or software or whatever, and there'd be no gatekeepers on it.
[QUOTE=OmniConsUme;51804589]Hope it's not just a rebranding, but they are not talking about reducing the shovelware and asset flips.[/QUOTE]
I think Valve's ideal vision is to catch the biggest trash and more importantly frauds with the re-evaluated money barrier and more detailed identity verification paperwork, but they also believe in "one man's junk is another man's treasure" as long as the available discoverability options can connect customers with the junk they're looking for.
Which is why most of the article was basically about how happy they are that some "junk" games they wouldn't have approved pre-Greenlight ended up being big successes, and how the current set of discoverability options seems to be doing its job well. The former is an affirmation of the Greenlight principle working and the latter is the prerequisite for iterating on it now that discoverability seems to be in a good place according to their stats.
Valve's obviously still figuring out the new details of the entry barrier, but I think they expect market forces/Discoverability features to bury most of the trash that still gets through.
Personally I'm hoping this won't mean the end of their continued work on Discoverability features - last time I heard, there were a lot of complaints about the Curator system.
[QUOTE=simkas;51804693]Is there any more info about how that worked? I figured that most crap got through by just having a bunch of fake accounts vote for it or getting people to vote through methods, I didn't know there was a way to exploit it without even needing to get votes.[/QUOTE]
A majority of free to plays that made it onto Steam via Greenlight have been around for years and have communities. All they had to do was promise some sort of incentive, like a month of double xp and drops, if they got Greenlit. Due to having existing communities that well exceed the current minimum vote requirement, literal trash got on Steam for just $100. Just one example of how the current system is flawed.
[QUOTE=Untouch;51804976]you were when you got on steam, but not before[/QUOTE]
So all the trash games still had to fill out the forms? Then what does this system change?
One thing that I see being an issue is idiots like DH will likely still get in by pretending to be a "REAL" game dev
[QUOTE=Marik Bentusi;51805265]I think Valve's ideal vision is to catch the biggest trash and more importantly frauds with the re-evaluated money barrier and more detailed identity verification paperwork, but they also believe in "one man's junk is another man's treasure" as long as the available discoverability options can connect customers with the junk they're looking for.
Which is why most of the article was basically about how happy they are that some "junk" games they wouldn't have approved pre-Greenlight ended up being big successes, and how the current set of discoverability options seems to be doing its job well. The former is an affirmation of the Greenlight principle working and the latter is the prerequisite for iterating on it now that discoverability seems to be in a good place according to their stats.
Valve's obviously still figuring out the new details of the entry barrier, but I think they expect market forces/Discoverability features to bury most of the trash that still gets through.
Personally I'm hoping this won't mean the end of their continued work on Discoverability features - last time I heard, there were a lot of complaints about the Curator system.[/QUOTE]
you have to fill out the tax forms to do literally anything involving generating revenue with valve, all those shitty greenlight games have to fill out all the necessary tax forms to publish your game. nothing has changed, all those shitty games on the store already did this.
i mean damn, [URL="http://harry.tf/pics/2017-02-10_21-42-50.png"]you have to fill out a tax interview and bank account form to submit to the tf2/csgo/dota 2 workshop[/URL] before you can upload anything and that doesn't stop anyone from making shitty content.
Steam Greenlight was kind of an double edged sword. We got some great games out of it like Undertale but for every good game there were a ton of bad games.
Goddammit I'm literally on track to have my game Greenlight-ready by this summer, really hoping the fee doesn't actually go up to $5k, if so I'm kinda fucked.
In the same boat as hippowombat. I'm expecting this game to be ready by May - but I definitely can't afford more than $500 as I'm already scraping by on savings right now. Waiting 2 months on top of a big initial price tag to see a cent of profit would put me into deep red negatives.
[QUOTE=hippowombat;51805527]Goddammit I'm literally on track to have my game Greenlight-ready by this summer, really hoping the fee doesn't actually go up to $5k, if so I'm kinda fucked.[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Firgof Umbra;51805536]In the same boat as hippowombat. I'm expecting this game to be ready by May - but I definitely can't afford more than $500 as I'm already scraping by on savings right now. Waiting 2 months on top of a big initial price tag to see a cent of profit would put me into deep red negatives.[/QUOTE]
i feel like you guys missed the key word "recoupable"
[QUOTE=DatHarry;51805603]i feel like you guys missed the key word "recoupable"[/QUOTE]
Still doesn't mean they have $5000 laying around, even if they can get it back
[QUOTE=DatHarry;51805603]i feel like you guys missed the key word "recoupable"[/QUOTE]
Recoupable still means I have to have that money up front to begin with.
[QUOTE=_Pai;51805606]Still doesn't mean they have $5000 laying around, even if they can get it back[/QUOTE]
Exactly this. Also they haven't mentioned what 'recoupable' even means in this context. What if it's "Pay us $500 up front, then you don't get paid until you make at least $3000". So that'd be however long it takes to get $3000 in profits - and then potentially another two months before I see a cent of those profits as that's about how long it takes them right now.
I have no real assets to seize. My credit rating is only decent, not amazing. Getting a SBL for $3000-5000 is all but out of my reach barring I happen upon a very charitable bank loan manager.
There's definitely other alternatives to Steam for small indie devs, especially very small ones. Steam was not originally intended as a distributor for very small indie games. That's not to say Steam doesn't have any indie games, but "indie" is a sliding scale. Steam has indie games, but mostly ones that were made by an actual company with employees and a "traditional" game design process which wouldn't be out of place in a AAA company.
For very small games made by one person or a group of people, there are other ways to get money and get noticed. For all its hype, Greenlight really didn't do much at discovering new games--most of the good ones I've heard about already had money, a website, and a successful kickstarter. Crowdfunding and self-promotion is what will get you noticed, not being 1 out of 100,000 games on Greenlight.
Nobody has the audience or reach of Steam these days. If you're indie and someone sees your game and sees it's not on Steam, they're not liable to buy it because it's not on Steam and they don't want to have to download an app/sign up for a service/et cetera just to play your game.
If you're not on Steam, you're not getting paid. (Unless you're on GoG I guess - but they're pretty tough on what they're willing to take)
[QUOTE=hippowombat;51805620]Recoupable still means I have to have that money up front to begin with.[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=_Pai;51805606]Still doesn't mean they have $5000 laying around, even if they can get it back[/QUOTE]
yeah that's completely fair enough, guess im just working on the assumption that it would never be that high, i'd be surprised if it's that much bigger than a couple hundred
[QUOTE=Firgof Umbra;51805621]Exactly this. Also they haven't mentioned what 'recoupable' even means in this context. What if it's "Pay us $500 up front, then you don't get paid until you make at least $3000". So that'd be however long it takes to get $3000 in profits - and then potentially another two months before I see a cent of those profits as that's about how long it takes them right now.
I have no real assets to seize. My credit rating is only decent, not amazing. Getting a SBL for $3000-5000 is all but out of my reach barring I happen upon a very charitable bank loan manager.[/QUOTE]
as i said above, an expectation of 5 grand up front is obviously unrealistic for one man teams so i'm with you there.
i doubt that valve would mess around with their 100 dollar minimum payment cycles for the entry fee, it's probably more straight forward than that. although im sure you've got more experience with their steamworks revenue payments, i've only ever dealt with their tf2 workshop payments.
[QUOTE=SilverHammer;51804659]I think this is the only time i've been happy there's going to be a fee for something. Digital Homicide wouldn't exist if they had to put up 500-1000 for each of their crappy games[/QUOTE]
There is a $100 fee.
I don't have a game on Steam yet but I paid it preemptively when I had the money, it'd kinda suck if I had to pay another, bigger fee :pudge:
-snip late-
I suppose you'll have to take a loan and bet on succeeding
I don't qualify. I don't have enough assets or enough credit to take out 3-5k.
I've got medical debts still on my credit report (because that's how that payment system works - they report it until you pay off your account in full).
Expecting garage devs to just be able to walk up to loan account managers in banks and walk out with $3-5k no problem is a major disconnect with reality. Most people don't have excellent credit. Most people don't have lots of seizable assets. Most people don't qualify for huge lines of credit with their banks. A lot of people are even living month to month and are spending the majority of their income on managing their debts and expenses.
They can't project how much they'll sell - they can only give rough estimates. They don't have access to the data or networks they need to paint a more accurate picture of their game. In addition not every game dev can even sell their game that well, despite being able to perhaps make a fantastic game, and a lot of that is going to come down to the discretion of the loan manager who's in charge of reviewing your request at [insert local bank here].
So really it's less 'bet on taking out a loan and succeeding' and more 'bet on even being able to take a loan'.
Yeah I am working on a game with a friend as a hobby that one day would be nice to potentially put on steam if it's good enough, but having to pay 500+ would be insane. We are both poor college students. It does depend on what "recoupable" means. Is it "you pay, then when you deliver a game and we 'review' it to confirm it isn't a shit asset flip you get it back" or maybe "you get it back after x$ of sales" it's tough to say.
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