Just a little quickie about Steam Direct...

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csjamen
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Just a little quickie about Steam Direct...

#1 Post by csjamen »

As you might have known already... Valve is finally shutting down Steam Greenlight. Replacing it is the Steam Direct which is supposed to launch at June 13.

https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110 ... 1514182595

Is anyone planning to launch their projects alongside the Steam Direct Launch?
Do you think it'll help your project? Or maybe we should just wait for the initial results?

What do you think?

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Re: Just a little quickie about Steam Direct...

#2 Post by Imperf3kt »

Isn't there a huge fee associated with releasing on steam now?
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Re: Just a little quickie about Steam Direct...

#3 Post by LateWhiteRabbit »

I think it is extremely funny that Valve specifically mentions visual novels in their post.

"We thought visual novels were too niche and no one would want them on Steam. But visual novels turned out to be extremely popular on Steam. Maybe we aren't very good at predicting what people might like to buy." :lol:

Over all I think Steam Direct is going to be an improvement, since developers will have to front $100 for each game they submit, rather than just paying $100 once and being able to flood Greenlight with games. But only time will tell. We'll just have to wait and see what this does to curb "bad actors" on Steam.
Imperf3k wrote:Isn't there a huge fee associated with releasing on steam now?
No, Valve decided on $100 per game you want to release. They were going to make it $500 per game, but they said indie developers gave them feedback that was too much, and they went with the lower amount.

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Re: Just a little quickie about Steam Direct...

#4 Post by Scribbles »

I kept checking for info on this, I'm so glad you posted this! Every few days I'd google around about it lol

it doesn't sound too bad, especially since they refund the fee if you sell $1k, though the waiting periods will be interesting, especially if the game is already available on itch.io

They talked about coming soon pages and such, I'll have to look to see if they have more detailed information. I wonder how much more they are planning to look into the games, or if they're just going to leave it up the the community and the fee as a main deterrent?
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Re: Just a little quickie about Steam Direct...

#5 Post by Imperf3kt »

I see they didn't mention free games. No more 'hobbyist' made games then. At least, not free unless the developer is willing to lose $100.
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Re: Just a little quickie about Steam Direct...

#6 Post by Aviala »

Imperf3kt wrote:I see they didn't mention free games. No more 'hobbyist' made games then. At least, not free unless the developer is willing to lose $100.
But the Greenlight fee was 100USD anyway, so I really don't see a big change here. The only change is that you need to pay it every time you want a game on Steam. And to be honest... If the developer isn't willing to spend 100USD, I'm not sure if the game they made is going to be of very high quality anyway. If you have a free hobby project, you can put it on itch.io or some other free website.

I think Steam has a problem with quality control anyway, so I'm just happy if there are less low quality hobby projects released on Steam. Not that 100$ will do that tho. I'm happy the price is so low, but Steam really needs to get some people to check the games that are released so that they at least get rid of the fake, broken games. The change on the trading card system will hopefully help at least a little, because it'll no longer be easy to release a fake game and make money on the trading cards.

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Re: Just a little quickie about Steam Direct...

#7 Post by Katy133 »

Valve seems to be trying to increase quality control with Steam Direct.

Basically, these are some of the main points I've read on their update posts:
  • The new submission fee is $100 per game (before, it was $100 per account, then you could submit as many games for free as you wanted.)
  • This $100 fee is recuperable after you've sold enough copies of your game to add up to $1,000.
  • Steam will have a moderator fact-check every game (to make sure the game wasn't plagiarised/isn't a fake game/isn't an "asset flip"/isn't a con)
  • Steam Trading Cards will not be available for developers unless they prove that their game is of high quality (this will hopefully deter a lot of devs who create shovelware/low-quality games to gain money through the Trading Cards--devs get a percentage of all Card transactions).
  • Volunteer Steam Mods will be implemented. "Steam Explorers" will be rewarded for curating games.
  • Steam's Store algorithms will be worked on by Valve to help "hide" low-quality games, and help players find obscure-but-good games that they would personally be interested in.
As one of the many, many developers who were affected by Steam Greenlight's lack of quality control (someone tried to sell one of my free itchio visual novels, posting it on Steam Greenlight without my permission), I hope Steam Direct will be an improvement, and I'll be keeping an eye on it once it's up on June 13th.
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Re: Just a little quickie about Steam Direct...

#8 Post by csjamen »

Isn't the $100 dollar per game, instead of $100 dollar per account, enough to properly filter the floodways of Steam?

I personally think that it's a good filter method. But only time will tell, I guess.

Judging from the replies, looks like no one here's going to try to squeeze their projects into the launch, huh?

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Re: Just a little quickie about Steam Direct...

#9 Post by SundownKid »

csjamen wrote:Isn't the $100 dollar per game, instead of $100 dollar per account, enough to properly filter the floodways of Steam?

I personally think that it's a good filter method. But only time will tell, I guess.
Depends entirely upon how good the moderation is. The addition of moderation, not any sort of fee or Greenlight, is what can stop the tide of zero effort games. If there is no moderation then $100 fee won't stop anyone. People will just put their games on Steam to put them on Steam, or find some other way to game the system.

The problem is that Valve can't seem to distinguish between "not being picky" and "having no standards". There's a way that moderators can weed out the bad without weeding out the good. It's ridiculous to pretend that human brains - the product of thousands of years of evolution and the strongest computing device in the known universe - do not have the capacity to tell a game - any game - is playable or unplayable. The fact that they disallowed visual novels before is not a quality control thing - it's just a function of the fact that they didn't know how to judge a visual novel, nor thought it was a legitimate game genre.

For Steam to really have standards, I feel there should be some sort of continuing quality control, where if a game has a net "negative" for a certain amount of time then a mod will review the game and determine if the reviews are legitimate, and if so, remove it from Steam unless fixed. It will only help sales in the end because people will be less quick to disregard the vast swathe of indies as poor quality. In my own experience, there are some good games with "Mixed" reviews but I've never seen a good game with predominantly Negative ones.

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Re: Just a little quickie about Steam Direct...

#10 Post by jack_norton »

Yes was fun that they explicitly mentioned VN. However, as I posted on twitter they forgot a keyword:
Image
because clearly they are referring to the various Sakura games, Huniepop, etc who are the topsellers VN on Steam :D :D :D

Jokes apart I think this system should be better assuming the quality check is really quality check. I mean they're a big company, I think if they just had 100 testers playing a game and then make a positive/negative review like they do in the site, and filter only the "extremely negative" rating, it should be already a big step forward.
While I'm not sure about removing games, this is absolutely true:
SundownKid wrote:In my own experience, there are some good games with "Mixed" reviews but I've never seen a good game with predominantly Negative ones.
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Re: Just a little quickie about Steam Direct...

#11 Post by LateWhiteRabbit »

jack_norton wrote:Yes was fun that they explicitly mentioned VN. However, as I posted on twitter they forgot a keyword:
Image
because clearly they are referring to the various Sakura games, Huniepop, etc who are the topsellers VN on Steam :D :D :D
Hey, Jack, you even said in one of your recent blog posts that you had that feedback from your fans on Patreon and elsewhere - more sexy-sex content, right? :mrgreen:

It seems like Sunrider did a lot better on Steam once customers discovered they could download a developer patch and add in ecchi content.

I'm personally gratified that it seems Valve is easing up and allowing more of that stuff in visual novels, rather than forcing a situation where the developer has to *wink**wink* direct a customer that there is a patch available....

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Re: Just a little quickie about Steam Direct...

#12 Post by jack_norton »

Yes I'm going to offer optional sexy content as well in future games (not one already in development) since it's what a good amount of the fanbase wants :)
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Re: Just a little quickie about Steam Direct...

#13 Post by LateWhiteRabbit »

jack_norton wrote:Yes I'm going to offer optional sexy content as well in future games (not one already in development) since it's what a good amount of the fanbase wants :)
Yeah, I really like the idea. It's what I'm planning with my own projects - sort of a "Premium Cable" version of the story versus a "Basic Cable" version.

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Re: Just a little quickie about Steam Direct...

#14 Post by csjamen »

Do we have some kind of statistics detailing about what really sells in Steam?

Ecchi or Non-Ecchi? Full Porn?

BxG? GxB? GxG? BxB? Some other kind? Parodies?

Honestly, I am new to Steam. This is actually first time hearing about the time when visual novel are prohibited in Steam. Can someone enlighten me on this? And also now that they have specifically said that visual novel are sleeper success in Steam, do you think we'll be able to get more support from them?

edit: typo

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Re: Just a little quickie about Steam Direct...

#15 Post by LateWhiteRabbit »

csjamen wrote:Do we have some kind of statistics detailing about what really sells in Steam?

Ecchi or Non-Ecchi? Full Porn?

BxG? GxB? GxG? BxB? Some other kind? Parodies?
Well, Jack is right in that the very best selling in the genre on Steam usually have ecchi or porn content. Hunipop has sold well over half a million copies on Steam (and they sell the game in many other locations too, like GOG and Humblebundle - that's just the Steam sales), and it is very porn-y. Not that it isn't a good game besides the nudity - I probably laughed, gasped, rolled my eyes, or stared in disbelief at the dialogue in that game more than any other VN I've ever played. And the arcade puzzle game it used for dates was quite addicting.

It would be interesting to see an actual detailed breakdown using Steamspy and tags from the store for the genre, but it does seem that VNs with the nudity tag outsell others.
csjamen wrote:Honestly, I am new to Steam. This is actually first time hearing about the time when visual novel are prohibited in Steam. Can someone enlighten me on this? And also now that they have specifically said that visual novel are sleeper success in Steam, do you think we'll be able to get more support from them?
It wasn't that they were prohibited on Steam, it's just that it used to be Valve employees that approved everything, and no one on the Valve game approval staff liked visual novels. And the criteria used to be that someone on Valve's team had to like the game for it to be sold on Steam. Or you had to show them that the game was already selling like hotcakes elsewhere.

Steam Greenlight got rid of this process by letting users vote on games they would like to see sold, and visual novels got a lot of votes, so they finally got onto the Steam Store. Once there, many of them proceeded to do really well, thus proving to Valve that they had been wrong to turn away so many of them when they were curating the store with a hands on approach.

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