Steam Killing Greenlight, For "Steam Direct" - Polidicks

This sounds great. Personally I'd like to see the existing games curated better (aka garbage culling)

[QUOTE=_Pai;51805606]Still doesn't mean they have $5000 laying around, even if they can get it back[/QUOTE] they're not going to go with anything above $500

[quote]they're not going to go with anything above $500[/quote] They haven't said as much.

they're not going to

Well that convinced me. If you're so sure, Toxx-clause it.

valv volva no the plan was to control the content, not let in more of it

Also, at first I also thought recoupable meant they gave it back after. From the sounds of it, Steam Direct skips the greenlight process entirely. As soon as you pay the fee, you can publish your game directly to the store. If the system is instant, it wouldn't make sense to instantly give people their money back, unless it's just to prove that you're not incredibly poor as most teenagers don't have more than a couple thousand. Alternatively, if they don't mean recoup from sales, maybe they'll give you your $xxx back after you sell a enough on the store, as a sort of bonus? That way Valve gets something from their 30% cut. Especially considering it sounds like the fee no longer goes entirely to charity. [QUOTE=Firgof Umbra;51806194]Well that convinced me. If you're so sure, Toxx-clause it.[/QUOTE] was thinking about it

[quote]as most teenagers don't have more than a couple thousand.[/quote] Where do you live?? What part of the world has teenagers who have 'a thousand' routinely let alone multiple thousands? I knew a guy in middle school who everybody saw as the rich kid because he had 1000 bucks in savings (that he couldn't touch until he was older). I don't think I've met a teenager in my life aside from him who had more than $400 to their name (which was then promptly spent on a console etc). Heck, as I've gotten older most of the people I know don't even have more than 1-2k in savings.

[img]http://i.imgur.com/MchKY2x.png[/img] every middleschooler who owns CS:GO has their own knife

Then I'd have been the middleschooler who wouldn't have been able to afford one and my family is lower middle-class (if you're implying that those knives are worth thousands of dollars). Also I doubt that anyone's going to get their game on to steam by selling their CS:GO merch. If that were true, I'd fund my own way to steam by selling my Excaliber Prime on Warframe. People say things are worth a lot - but people are also almost never willing to buy something for what it's worth. That goes double for digital goods.

1. buy CS:GO sticker 2. team disbands or is banned for hacking 3. [del]sell as lakefront property[/del] 4. get game on steam

I imagine any lakefront property you can get for $80 in Canada is in a location that's in the middle of absolutely nowhere, haunted by pants-ghosts, and comes with a free ragdoll bumping against your windows in the middle of the night followed by high pitch giggling over a 56k line that a modem is struggling to shove audio through. I'm still not seeing your greater argument though. This price raising is good because everybody's just got thousands of dollars sitting in their steam accounts?

5k might of been testing the waters for valve to decide whether or not it was too much. I honestly think it should be 1k and no higher or lower. It's high enough to stop shovelware but low enough for actual indie Devs to afford

[quote]It's high enough to stop shovelware but low enough for actual indie Devs to afford[/quote] I promise you that if you think 'most indie devs can afford $1k' you have a warped view of what the average independent developer has in their bank account. Unless you mean 'indie developers', as in the dudes who golden parachuted out from their AAA games companies to found their own studios. Yeah, they've got the money; we agree on that. I disagree with calling them 'actual indie developers' though, as if folks making games in their garages suddenly don't count.

Revisiting this after my initial panic, I'm feeling more and more like this is better in the long run, as long as things are balanced. Upping the fee from $100 to like $500 would likely halt a lot of the garbage coming through and pave the way for developers who are serious about trying to break into the marketplace by giving them a more audible voice that isn't being drowned out by trash. I'm not thrilled about having to pay more to get my game out there, but I've put so much time and effort and focus into it already, that even if the fee went up to $5k, I'd find a way to get the money to get my game out there.

I disagree. I don't think having more money means you're any more serious. Plenty of large companies hurling out shovelware by the pound will laugh at a $1k potential loss as they pay out $12k in advertising for the thing. This only hurts people who can't afford the money to begin with. $100 is enough to show you're serious - or that you're at least willing to throw serious money around. Some people have lots of money and aren't serious but are still willing to throw money around - this won't stop them. Even if I wanted to get my game out for $5k, it's not happening. I know this for a fact. It doesn't matter how much [i]I[/i] want my game to get out there, it's how much [i]the people who'd front me the money are willing to pay[/i]. And, presently, I'm unable to even get a raise on my $500 credit limit credit card so what chance do I have at getting $5k in loans with no job and no real assets of worth to seize/lien?

[QUOTE=Firgof Umbra;51806221]Where do you live?? What part of the world has teenagers who have 'a thousand' routinely let alone multiple thousands? I knew a guy in middle school who everybody saw as the rich kid because he had 1000 bucks in savings (that he couldn't touch until he was older). I don't think I've met a teenager in my life aside from him who had more than $400 to their name (which was then promptly spent on a console etc). Heck, as I've gotten older most of the people I know don't even have more than 1-2k in savings.[/QUOTE] I mean senior year of high school I was working part time and saving a lot and I had $1700 in savings but that promptly ended once I actually had expenses

I hope they just give the thumbs up to good devs without the need for money after they prove they're actually making decent shit. My first game was kinda shit but my second one was actually pretty good (89% Positive ratings rn) and I hope to keep improving.

[QUOTE=CakeMaster7;51806368]I mean senior year of high school I was working part time and saving a lot and I had $1700 in savingd[/QUOTE] I've never had that sort of money in my [i]life[/i] until my boss gracefully gave me a holiday bonus on sales of our game. Even now, having scrimped and saved as hard as I could because I knew our studio was going down, I was only able to get together about $4k in savings. That was in December and I'm now down to somewhere around $2.2k and still bleeding money fast while I keep sending out job applications that nobody in the industry gets back to me on. [quote]I hope they just give the thumbs up to good devs without the need for money after they prove they're actually making decent shit. My first game was kinda shit but my second one was actually pretty good (89% Positive ratings rn) and I hope to keep improving.[/quote] They won't. If you want to get on Steam without going through Direct/Greenlight your only choice is to go through a Publisher. They just straight up ignore requests/e-mails these days if you try to petition them directly, sending you a copy-paste e-mail to go do Greenlight instead. I've been on Steam as a developer for about 6 years now I think - having launched two titles that both were above 85% (not accounting troll-reviews) and sold over 300k units combined if I recall. I'll still have to go through direct/greenlight unless I publish under my boss' studio account.

[QUOTE=Firgof Umbra;51806373]I've never had that sort of money in my [i]life[/i] until my boss gracefully gave me a holiday bonus on sales of our game. Even now, having scrimped and saved as hard as I could because I knew our studio was going down, I was only able to get together about $4k in savings. That was in December and I'm now down to somewhere around $2.2k and still bleeding money fast while I keep sending out job applications that nobody in the industry gets back to me on. They won't. If you want to get on Steam without going through Direct/Greenlight your only choice is to go through a Publisher. They just straight up ignore requests/e-mails these days if you try to petition them directly, sending you a copy-paste e-mail to go do Greenlight instead. I've been on Steam as a developer for about 6 years now I think - having launched two titles that both were above 85% (not accounting troll-reviews) and sold over 300k units combined if I recall. I'll still have to go through direct/greenlight unless I publish under my boss' studio account.[/QUOTE] How does one become a publisher? I think Black Shell Media has a publisher pass and they just started like 1-2 years ago.

[quote]How does one become a publisher? I think Black Shell Media has a publisher pass and they just started like 1-2 years ago.[/quote] Afraid I can't help you there. I don't know much at all about the publisher side of things on Steam. Edit: Though, looking into it, it looks like you'd have to go the same route. [quote=Steam Greenlight FAQs]Any developer or publisher who is new to Steam and interested in submitting their game to the platform should submit their game through Steam Greenlight [/quote]

I don't get why the fee needs to be higher than $100 at all, its intended purpose was to stop people from shitposting in greenlight and it does a pretty good job at that. Raising the bar up to, say, $500 won't really prevent actual malevolent developers like DH from continuing their schemes. Raising it even higher than that is outright counter-productive for reasons listed above and still won't help anything. Only if the fee was like $10,000 [i]per game[/i] (as it stands the $100 is a one-time fee) you'd have malicious devs thinking twice before releasing their next asset flip, but so would pretty much every sapient publisher out there, and guys like Tom Francis with their Gunpoints would be completely locked out. The fee is just not a solution to this problem in any shape or form, it's there to weed out the trolls who aren't interested in releasing any games at all, and to that end it works. No need to change it. Come up with something different.

[QUOTE=Drury;51806428]I don't get why the fee needs to be higher than $100 at all, its intended purpose was to stop people from shitposting in greenlight and it does a pretty good job at that. Raising the bar up to, say, $500 won't really prevent actual malevolent developers like DH from continuing their schemes. Raising it even higher than that is outright counter-productive for reasons listed above and still won't help anything.[/QUOTE] But it doesn't stop that, there's still so much garbage no effort asset flips on Steam, so it obviously needs to be higher to at least stop those.

[QUOTE=simkas;51806436]But it doesn't stop that, there's still so much garbage no effort asset flips on Steam, so it obviously needs to be higher to at least stop those.[/QUOTE] Asset flips are still games. The fee was put in place to stop greenlight submissions that weren't games. It was not supposed to raise the bar for quality of the actual games.

[QUOTE=Drury;51806451]Asset flips are still games. The fee was put in place to stop greenlight submissions that weren't games. It was not supposed to raise the bar for quality of the actual games.[/QUOTE] Barely. They're no effort cash ins that get put up in the hopes that some people will get tricked and buy them and will get the dev at least a little bit of money. A higher fee would stop those.

So, steam direct, and now even Itch Direct [url]https://itch.io/direct[/url] In the same day I wonder if this a coincidence

[quote]The fee was put in place to stop greenlight submissions that weren't games. It was not supposed to raise the bar for quality of the actual games.[/quote] Exactly that. You're not stopping people from making asset flips. You're stopping people with genuine products from coming to Steam (which is tantamount to them committing suicide in the present digital storefront climate). This isn't harming malicious developers. This is harming [i]all[/i] developers. What's to say those asset flippers don't just say 'well eventually I'll make money'? What makes them any different from any other dev in that respect? You're not going to solve the problem with money because when you do you'll not just be getting rid of asset flippers, you'll just be getting rid of indie developers period (minus those who came from AAA studios).

[QUOTE=Firgof Umbra;51806472]Exactly that. You're not stopping people from making asset flips. You're stopping people with genuine products from coming to Steam (which is tantamount to them committing suicide in the present digital storefront climate). This isn't harming malicious developers. This is harming [i]all[/i] developers.[/QUOTE] It is going to stop asset flips, those devs will think twice before paying a $500 fee for every shitty game they put up when they're most likely not going to it back. And for real indie devs, there are now plenty of other places to sell your games that will get pretty decent recognition and when they sell enough copies there, they can then get their game on Steam.

[quote]And for real indie devs, there are now plenty of other places to sell your games that will get pretty decent recognition and when they sell enough copies there, they can then get their game on Steam.[/quote] Having sold products on most of the digital services out there (Itch, GameJolt, Desura, GamersGate, Direct2Drive, GoG, Impulse [way back when], and Steam), I'll have to disagree with that given that the only evidence I have on all that speaks directly against your point. The traffic spread between those sites is staggeringly different - as are the impressions you're likely to get on launch and the revenue you can expect.

[QUOTE=Firgof Umbra;51806492]Having sold products on most of the digital services out there (Itch, GameJolt, Desura, GamersGate, Direct2Drive, GoG, Impulse [way back when], and Steam), I'll have to disagree with that given that the only evidence I have on all that speaks directly against your point. The traffic spread between those sites is staggeringly different - as are the impressions you're likely to get on launch and the revenue you can expect.[/QUOTE] but would your game have done any better on steam?