So Valve has announced that Steam Greenlight (currently the solution to allow indie developers to launch their titles on Steam via community voting) is to be replaced by Steam Direct, one simple up-front fee per game to address the issues presented by Greenlight. The fee will be recoverable after a “modest” revenue goal is met. Valve is currently consulting with various 3rd party studios to decide on the fee, and have had suggestions ranging from $100 to $5,000, however are waiting on more feedback and consideration before settling on a number. Steam direct is currently set to release Spring 2017.
So far from the right solution I don’t even know where to begin. Valve seem to manage to always do exactly the wrong thing when it comes to any sort of non-technical decision. It’s baffling.
Cas 
I’m kind of worried this will mess up quality control for games. Part of the reason Steam is so attractive to begin with is because there’s not an overly massive pool of games on there, so everyone who makes it on there has a chance to be seen. Otherwise, you may as well just sell the game via your own means and keep the extra revenue percentage.
I hope they still keep indie devs in mind when they set that fee. I know we had to stop using AutoDesk anything because they changed their prices to be insanely expensive.
My understanding of what Valve wanted to accomplish with Greenlight is to democratize the content available on Steam, because for them to decide what can and can’t be on Steam would suppress their ability to fully utilize unpredictable market trends, and thus miss out on potential revenue. To have games that are of low quality on their platform would be a liability to them as it may obscure other titles. However, since the launch of Greenlight, Valve has worked on various systems to connect users to content, such as various store front renovations, the discovery queue, refunds and the user reviews system. They think that they are now ready to move the democratization of Steam from being simply being gatekeeping to a complete free market. Having poor content on their storefront simply won’t matter anymore because if it is poorly reviewed, then their various systems won’t attempt to connect it to users, and their systems will understand, for example, that CS:GO players aren’t likely to purchase Visual Novels. In theory, this is great. The poor quality content won’t matter about being on Steam because it simply won’t see sales, and will subsequently encourage devs to release quality content by market pressures, rather than arbitrary regulations.
However, given the backlash to Steam Direct, I think it’s pretty apparent that most Steam users aren’t as confident in the systems that Valve are providing as Valve seems to be. Valve’s statistics give them the right to be confident, with each user purchasing twice as many games on average than prior to the discovery updates. However, my anecdotal experience is that I’ve not purchased a single product with Steam Discovery, which, as a user with 350 games, puts me in the top 1% of games purchasers on Steam.
Its also worth noting that various communities and news sites have adopted Valve’s fee to be US$5,000 or at least of that magnitude. Personally, given Valve’s vision of wanting to democratize content, I think that a fee that high would be incredibly unlikely. I don’t foresee the fee being greater than US$500.
What would even $500 actually discourage?
Why even discourage it?
How is anything “being on Steam” any worse than it “being anywhere at all on the internet”? This mentality has got to stop - from both developers, and customers. Steam delivers binaries. It only delivers binaries you ask for. It could have 1 million titles on it, and it won’t make a blind monkey’s difference to you. It will have 1 million titles on it one day, and maybe they’ll all be brilliant - then what? Start doing an Apple, and just arbitrarily removing titles that haven’t been updated for a while, whether they’re selling or not?
There’s only one reason why anyone would want a $5000 fee: it’s us existing developers want to keep out the riffraff and keep all the exposure to ourselves. But that ship sailed years ago: there is no guarantee at all, whatsoever, of any exposure on Steam, ever again.
Cas
I don’t think its intended to discourage. While Valve have significantly reduced the liability they have when hosting a game on their storefront, its still a liability. Hosting a game on their storefront is an investment for Valve, and that $500 is to protect their investment, in the case the game can’t meet the expected revenue goals. Thus, why they give it back if you do.
EDIT: Its worth noting that I think the reasons people want Valve to move away from Greenlight and the reasons Valve are actually moving away from Greenlight are quite different. People are wanting to reduce poor content coming in while ensuring smaller devs with meaningful content can still promote their content.
Valve wants to make more money but continuing to develop their ecosystem to be friendly to everyone.
Valve already do not put games on their storefront. A few games a day make it on to the capsules on the front page. A few more games briefly live on the front page. A few more games still are briefly in the top ten lists or new releases. After that they are essentially forgotten - a matter of hours. How does the release of a title on Steam affect anyone, in any meaningful way? There is almost no investment from Valve whatsoever - the process of actually building a storefront presence and deploying binaries is now almost 100% automated or has no Valve employee involvement at all. The bandwidth required to deploy most titles worldwide amounts to literally pennies.
Almost no-one actually cares what content is on Steam, so long as they have a way to find the things that they like, and Valve have made a few small steps in the right direction on that front with curators (essentially community curation), and tagging. (The reviews and ratings systems are worthless to developers and consumers alike). What fees do is totally orthogonal to what Valve want to achieve. It simply presents an arbitrary monetary barrier which will only affect literally poor developers. For context the guy that made Steamspy bought a house in Ukraine only a few years ago for $3000. Put that into perspective now. There are a few economies in the world for whom $5000 is nothing. But for most of the economies in the world you can nearly buy a house for the amounts that some people are suggesting should be charged. (I don’t for one minute think Valve would pick $5000 but I’m arguing for the basic principle). What would that do? Well, it would mean no games would ever come from Ukraine ever again because no-one has that kind of cash in their bank account there. Even $500 is a fortune to a Ukrainian.
Can we perhaps think of what Valve are actually trying to achieve - which is getting games in front of the people who might want to buy them - and see if there isn’t an actual solution?
Cas
I read and commented on the article on GamaSutra.
Taking the stated goal at face value (to improve quality of submitted games), it seems to me it would be good to get some data on the distribution of how many games sell in a fixed period (say, three or four months–time enough for comments to affect sales) and what the comment rating average is and how it correlates to sales.
IF there is some sort of correlation, poorly rated games selling poorly, then they could make the deposit that corresponds to that magic number of games just beyond where the majority of poorly rated games peter out. Maybe it is 100 units?
Take that 100 and multiply it by the selling price of the game. Then, a $1 game would require a $100 deposit and a $50 game would require a $5000 deposit. These figures just happen to correspond to the range of deposits they are discussing. And I suspect there is a general correlation of game price with the resources of the team making the game and their ability to cover the deposit.
Some games are made with a minimum of creativity or effort, e.g., quick or easy variations on an existing mechanic requiring some surface graphics or programming changes. If there is a risk/reward ratio that can inhibit people that post things with the idea “nothing to lose” then maybe that would help fulfill the goal of reducing the massive number of games being entered.
I am not in a position to advance more than a couple hundred dollars at this point for an entry. I’m thinking about Hexara as being perhaps my first effort going to Steam. It is going to appeal to a subset (puzzle game players) and as I have no previous entries or track record, I don’t expect to sell a whole lot of units. Putting up more than a couple hundred dollars would be a considerable strain and risk. I will probably go to other venues rather than try to sell Hexara at Steam.
Anyway, these were my first reactions. I’m not sure if the intended consequences would play out as hoped.
There is only one metric to measure the so-called “quality” of games that is available to Steam, and that is the refund rate. Nothing else makes any sense. And even that metric conflates the marketing of the game versus its actual implementation (“I was sold a FPS and it turned out to be a visual novel!”).
Cas
Yes in Ukrainian in many Software Companies 500$ is middle salary per month
(For now, it was all different 3 year ago in 3 times more 
)
(some have more, some less, but surely 1500-2000$ is top what can get except really rarely situations)
Even pay 500$ from salary 2000$ - risky decision
(and other professions - do not have any chances with salary 200-300$)
IMO:
I hoped then when I finish any game I can pay 100$ to steam
and be hoping to: at least return this money
(it was my small dream task at end of this year to realize 1 small game)
*(100$ != 100 sales per 1$ it also Steam fee + taxes)
Now – if price will be 500$ - am surely can’t afford it
(same as many other developers except - they have, don’t needed 500$ to throw them away,
Or - they publishing game else where, and it gave enough profit to expand it on steam)
p.s I am from Ukraine :), and currently even 100$ is valuable for me (little broke)
So, life pushing me to: maybe, go to youtube for money ^^
Small info About: Ukraine
(because topic seems stuck)
It not so simple when talking about richness of people here:
We have houses for sale
1000-3000$
Like this:
https://s22.postimg.org/ifsx8yh2l/image.jpg
And for:
180 000$
https://s17.postimg.org/spiw22cy3/image.jpg
We even have even castles for 1-20 millions$ ^^
Like this:
https://s8.postimg.org/7qmkq5hw1/image.jpg
4 500 000 $
Its not India, but gap between poor and reach is big.
I don’t want go to details, but simple people with middle income
to earn 30k – 50k $ for apartment in City
need work 20-30+ years.
So, yes(one more) for 500$ steam fee - its will be really a challenge to see real indie games from Ukraine
and similar to it
Out of curiousity, princec, or anyone else, what would you do to replace/fix Greenlight?
Personally, I think adjusting the voting system Greenlight has to weight votes based on A) total $$ spent by the voter on Steam and B) how many, of the games they have voted Yes on, did they actually purchase once on Steam?
Suddenly all the dodgy “1 vote for 1 USD” companies need to invest lots of money into votes to the point it would no longer to be profitable to offer such services.
Furthermore, I’d add at least some incentive for people to actually explore the titles on Greenlight (say, you can get a trading card each day if you review 10 titles on Greenlight), as currently the only incentives to go to Greenlight are to vote on a project you want Greenlit, it isn’t connecting users with content that they wouldn’t otherwise discover.
Steam don’t have any problems with Greenlight
When game finds some amount of customers, it released in shop
and gives some minimum income to developer and Steam
Steam have, problems with game categories, and Tags for them
Tags like FPS – now, don’t have any sense, because - half games have it
FPS mean you see hands with weapon on screen and can shoot
Need more deep categories(tags)
Like: Sci-fi single player shooter with quests, leveling, craft, and random generated levels
So to fix all problems in steam they simple need hire 50-100 moderators
who manually add tags to games and move them to needed categories.
But increasing price for publishing game, is looks like Steam simple need more money,
Without Greenlight (I think) we shall see - even more trash – because some ppl simple do it
and have money to realize it (like billions Unity games maps with free contents from Asset Store)
IMHO:
I am sure on 99% that Steam wants more money – so they decide to monetize Unity / Unreal crap,
They don’t care about players, about developers
they care only about VR porno for Gabe XD
- wants make billions: selling places on shelve for trash games and % from their sales ^^
I’d ditch Greenlight altogether for a start, it only ever was a pointless barrier to entry.
I’d still charge a very nominal fee to register a title - but very nominal, just $100 say - in order to prevent scripted exploitation of a automated Steam resource. A little like what Valve are proposing but not in any way a barrier to anyone with enough time or money to actually create something that is worth releasing on Steam.
I’d also propose charging a nominal $100 fee to set up a “developer/publisher” account with Steam - again, so that it can be both fully automated, and not exploited by scripts.
I’d then completely revamp the review system in the following ways:
- Users could only leave a review once a game has passed the refund point.
- Reviews are text only, and no longer have a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” option.
- Reviews themselves can only be downvoted.
- Remove the rating altogether, including any ability to “sort by rating” or view “top rated” titles.
- Allow developers to entirely opt out of having a reviews section on a title.
And then I wouldn’t touch anything else at this stage. Tags work effectively. The discovery queue works effectively. Being on the Steam front page, or the capsule, or briefly appearing in any top ten lists, or the new releases lists, or most popular etc… that’s just gravy and pure chance. Developers can work on getting their own exposure using all the familiar means.
For stage two:
Allow developers to bid on the front page spots (capsule, homepage, above fold) in the same manner as Project Wonderful, which has a brilliantly un-gameable system for bidding for advertising.
Cas
Could you elaborate on the reasons you’re against the review systems as they stand? As a consumer, I’ve found the review system very good.
Also, would bidding for the frontpage not simply drown out all the indie games in favor of the AAA games that can afford the spot there?
Like all things on the internet, they are a platform for trolls to do their thing.
As they stand:
- Developers simply receive abuse through reviews. This can be flagged but ultimately requires a Valve moderator to decide whether to leave it there or not. Usually they disagree.
- Players are able to leave reviews whether they actually played the game or not. They can leave negative reviews after refunding a game.
- The current system allows review bombing, gaming, scamming, trolling, etc.
- Frequently negative reviews are left which are basically support requests that should instead be resolved in the community forums
- I could go on but fundamentally there is no place for a review system in a world of instant refund policy. None at all. To whit: you would simply not invite people into your shop to leave post-it notes all over your wares written by customers with stuff like “don’t buy this” written on them. It is not how you run a business. The hardest part of the entire industry is just getting people to try your products in the first place: why turn them away at the door? Let people make up their own mind.
Fine by me. The point is that the frontpage is not for us indies, it’s for big boys with big budgets. We need to knuckle down and do our marketing like we used to do in the old days. There was a brief golden era where “just being on Steam” would mean instant riches: those days are over. Relying on any kind of exposure on Steam is like betting your entire house on black. Fool!
Disclosure: all our games are very favourably rated and reviewed and sell just fine.
Cas
Small example why tags in steam works wrong:
https://s32.postimg.org/94f70br9t/rpg.jpg
Pay Day 2 DLC is Rpg?
Is - Quarantine – RPG? It’s even don’t have RPG Tag how it was added to rpg category?
And - The Wild Eight? Also don’t have RPG Tag
Its Survival – not RPG
- Not in canonic gender Role Play Game,
- Not in RPG like – Diablo and some other games with leveling and quests
And what about Grouping:
-Popular New Releases
-Top Sellers
-Specials
-New Releases
And all older games that not part of “Top sellers and Specials” – is buried far-far away
Its all wrong…
p.s Adding more categories and tags can’t harm sales in any sense
Agree, in place where you can get refund full money in 1 click without any question -
review system, is only harms public opinion and tricks the buyers
(except - you have low internet speed like download 30gb in 1-2 days to try game, or hi price bandwidth ^^)
@princec: isn’t getting rid of broken systems instead of fixing them how we got Steam Direct in the first place?
Steam Direct is Valve fixing Greenlight, yes, and I think it’s actually the correct thing to do… if they understand that the money aspect should literally be a token to prevent automated exploitation attacks. Anything over $100 will basically turn Greenlight into Paylight, presenting a fiscal barrier to most of the world, which is great for the massively protectionist era we appear to be entering, but shit by any other measure for everyone except already-rich developers wishing to monopolise Steam.
Cas
Having SHIT on your platform, weaken your platform and brand. Steam doesnt have to stay top dog forever and if a store with less crap than https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-m7jOos4IU willcome along, consumers would appreciate it.
After all, what do I expect from a store? I want to find my shit simple and easily and when I browse I expect discover-ability, relevant suggestions @recommendation engine and generally games with GOOD ratings. As in numbers, Because I dont have the time to read all the reviews, I just want to know if a game (or movie @rottentomatoes) has a GOOD consensus or a BAD consensus.
If a game has good ratings its usually at least of quality. It might be uninspired like COD games but its not objectively BAD.
A game with incredible faults but with a cult following might have bad reviews while being actually good (or at least appealing to some customers); like Deadly Premonition.
We all heard the news that “Nearly 40% Of All Steam Games Were Released In 2016”
90% of those games are rotten crusty ass trash. Asset flips, jokes, insulting pos.
In a world where entertainment and with that gaming is getting so hopelessly oversaturated, what you need bitterly, is control.
Gabe’s dream was it to have an open network system where everyone could just upload any game, with basic checks for malware.
Now, after knowing that 100 bucks flat for infinite games doesnt deter any of those freaking jokers and digital homicide type people, they are trying to do it with Steam Direct.
Having to be an actual company, having to pay a significant amount of money per title.
I absolutely do think this will deter much more people who are shit and yes it might make it just a tick harder for actual passionate indies with good games, but their passion will carry them over that hurdle, and with LESS shit flooding into steam their discover-ability raises, so its even economically worth it.
tl;dr
In a world with this many freaking games coming out. How do I find the good ones?
Steam should do that. Mainly because no one else can, because everyone goes to Steam for PC games. So there really isnt any other option, other than to just drown and never find anything because you got like 8956 assets flips per day and 1 gem.
If you dont already know a game you want, browsing for a new game should not show you stuff thats irrelevant to you. Which is the basics of recommendation engines of course.
Tags, numbers ratings and less trash-games will help this process. And seeing as valve wants to solve all this via algorithms and not Apple style manual curation, they need all the help they can get.
If Steam doesnt get a good grip on this mass flood of games coming in. The future will be very very blurry and now one will be able to benefit at all from being on Steam.