Thoughts on death of Steam Greenlight?

[TheJerminator15]

Honestly, I'm glad they're doing aay with Greenlight. It was an infamous mess where devs could infamously just use bot accounts to push their asset store games onto the storefront. Not to mention the trolls. It was a good idea, but horrible in concept.

With Direct, they seem to be taking a far more hands on approach in order to whittle out those games which made Greenlight so infamous and hated, which in my opinion is a good thing. The main issue is the fee, which must find a compromise between affordable enough for indie devs, yet expensive enough to trolls won't just throw the money down in order to get their game through.

Honestly, I'm optimistic about it's implementation. I'm just hoping they manage to comfortably create enough compromise for indie devs. Valve is famous for being a data driven company when it comes to stuff like this, so I believe their choices will be well informed and work well for everyone.

EDIT: Forgot to add, they've said that the fee is more or less recoupable. So I assume that if your game is cleared then you get the fee back, so it's a deposit type situation to show that you're confident enough in your which you should get back.

[Zetsubou]

EDIT: Forgot to add, they've said that the fee is more or less recoupable. So I assume that if your game is cleared then you get the fee back, so it's a deposit type situation to show that you're confident enough in your which you should get back.

I was under the impression that you would earn back the money through a reduced sales levy.
eg. If Valve usually takes 30% of the sale, they might take a lower amount (say 15%) until you've recouped (through the lower percentage) the cost of putting the game up.

[SundownKid]

EDIT: Forgot to add, they've said that the fee is more or less recoupable. So I assume that if your game is cleared then you get the fee back, so it's a deposit type situation to show that you're confident enough in your which you should get back.

I was under the impression that you would earn back the money through a reduced sales levy.
eg. If Valve usually takes 30% of the sale, they might take a lower amount (say 15%) until you've recouped (through the lower percentage) the cost of putting the game up.

It would really suck if it was just reduced and not eliminated entirely.

In my opinion just removing their "percentage" of the take until the money is earned back by you would be a much better option.

[LateWhiteRabbit]

EDIT: Forgot to add, they've said that the fee is more or less recoupable. So I assume that if your game is cleared then you get the fee back, so it's a deposit type situation to show that you're confident enough in your which you should get back.

I was under the impression that you would earn back the money through a reduced sales levy.
eg. If Valve usually takes 30% of the sale, they might take a lower amount (say 15%) until you've recouped (through the lower percentage) the cost of putting the game up.

To my knowledge Valve has not provided ANY clarification on what 'recoupable' means in this case. Everything at this point is just speculation from outside the company.

[SupersizeMyHeart]

It certainly makes me second guess some of my decisions. Like a lot of people beforehand have mentioned, is this new system going to be feasible for an indie developer with a niche market to pay an upfront cost to get on the platform? And should they really get their pay-cut for every game sold, AND an upfront payout? I dunno, it seems like another way for them to make even MORE money without doing anything.

[indoneko]

it seems like another way for them to make even MORE money without doing anything.

Agree. They could make/outsource a team to test the new games instead...

[Imperf3kt]

I remember contacting steam once about their steamguard locking me out of my account even though my password was correct.
It refused to allow me access until I had contacted support, it took them 8 days to reply to my email.

Steam is very poorly organised when it comes to customer relations.

[Mammon]

it seems like another way for them to make even MORE money without doing anything.

Agree. They could make/outsource a team to test the new games instead...

I've suggested it in a post here before and now that I'm on the computer with Steam on it I can check my hypothesis. >1 minute search, they've got something called 'Steam curators'. Forget that 6million investment LateWhiteRabbit mentioned, get just one guy to look through those curators for reliable ones with a significant fanbases who look at Greenlight games and give them 'true Greenlight recommendation' passes or something. Make the people who know what other people want and who'll be harsh in judgement the Greenlighters rather than anyone and everyone. (Or instead of hiring one guy, make it a side-tasks for a few people with time to spare or the admins.)

[LateWhiteRabbit]

it seems like another way for them to make even MORE money without doing anything.

Agree. They could make/outsource a team to test the new games instead...

I've suggested it in a post here before and now that I'm on the computer with Steam on it I can check my hypothesis. >1 minute search, they've got something called 'Steam curators'. Forget that 6million investment LateWhiteRabbit mentioned, get just one guy to look through those curators for reliable ones with a significant fanbases who look at Greenlight games and give them 'true Greenlight recommendation' passes or something. Make the people who know what other people want and who'll be harsh in judgement the Greenlighters rather than anyone and everyone. (Or instead of hiring one guy, make it a side-tasks for a few people with time to spare or the admins.)

Which would truly be a nightmare. Just a few major problems with that:

One, since Steam is a financial storefront, letting non-employees decide who gets to make money and who doesn't could open Valve up to all sorts of legal headaches. Moderating developers' livelihoods is a lot different than moderating forum posts.

Two, Greenlight is already a mix of abuse and corruption, with whole groups extorting creators for cash, and executing vindictive take downs of creators and games, and taking bribes. Factor in random people who get to be all-powerful 'Curators' just because they have a large fan base, who can make you money or destroy years of work with a click? Some of those Curators will be shady and abuse the power.

Three, do you really want those sorts of people determining what gets on Steam? Because very few are favorable to the genres people create here on Lemmasoft. What if you get a Curator who hates any "anime - weeb - crap"? Is it a single Curator vote that blocks you? Do all Curators have to vote?

No, Valve needs to just HIRE more staff. Both support staff, and quality-tester / game vetting staff. One problem Valve has is that it doesn't "believe" in bosses or middle-management. I mean, that's fine for a GAME DEVELOPER, but running a giant store that serves millions of customers? You need people to set an agenda, hold employee's feet to the fire on getting support tickets answered, etc. instead of waiting for the "group mind" to reach a consensus.

[Mammon]

Which would truly be a nightmare. Just a few major problems with that:
One, since Steam is a financial storefront, letting non-employees decide who gets to make money and who doesn't could open Valve up to all sorts of legal headaches. Moderating developers' livelihoods is a lot different than moderating forum posts.
Two, Greenlight is already a mix of abuse and corruption, with whole groups extorting creators for cash, and executing vindictive take downs of creators and games, and taking bribes. Factor in random people who get to be all-powerful 'Curators' just because they have a large fan base, who can make you money or destroy years of work with a click? Some of those Curators will be shady and abuse the power.
Three, do you really want those sorts of people determining what gets on Steam? Because very few are favorable to the genres people create here on Lemmasoft. What if you get a Curator who hates any "anime - weeb - crap"? Is it a single Curator vote that blocks you? Do all Curators have to vote?

Of course the negative recommendations of a single Curator wouldn't be a death sentence, nor would all curators have to vote. However, your view of what could happen is a justified one as I forgot to mention a very important detail: genre/tags would factor in a role. You say that a Curator that is opposed to anything anime would not be a judge and you're obviously right. However, that's why the Curating would have to be limited to the kind of games they're judging. A curator specifically judging anime games (but being harsh enough about it not to be a weeb about anything animu-sugoi-desu) would have a say on #anime games, someone who's been granted Curator rights over games with #firstpersonshooter wouldn't be able to dislike it just for the sake of it being anime. Unless the game were tagged #FPS #anime, in which case his judgement would be righteous when he were to say 'Just another run-of-the-mill FPS, nothing special, also anime weeb shit'. So not only would the Curator have to be tagged, the developers would be urged to tag their games more appropriately and scarcely because adding too many tags will backfire on them rather than draw a larger crowd.

There would be some people who might have a too powerful position or whose judgement would be too unrelated to the games they're juding. F.ex. someone who'd be granted the right to judge #free-to-play would have a rediculously expansive range of games unbound to any genre or mechanic. However, that would still be a better system than hiring a staff of 'neutral' people as you suggested. Valve would hire people just to do that, okay. Do you think that they will be a diverse and neutral group of judges? They'll be from a specific pool of people who'll probably be distanced from the games they play and look only at profit projections. I find it more likely that their judgement will be negative towards certain games such as #free-to-play, #anime or #visual-novel than a group of Curators who'd consist of people who've through their actions proven that they know what a part of the Steam community wants and how to review it.

Let me compare the Steam hired people to book reviewers: The more prestigous the newspaper and the more popular the book, the less likely that the review was written by someone who actually read the book. If the review contains words such as 'insightful', 'riveting' etc, you may even assume that the reviewer only took a look at the book cover, description and the author's name without reading a single page. All they need to do is come up with an attention drawing one-liner to convince people to buy the book the same way clickbait works. Those reviews are a currency between the publishers and the newspapers; the publishers get impressive recommendations which they can print on their books and the newspapers get their name on the book cover and can freely mention and advertise the books. I've seen writers who I can honestly and objectively call crappy talentless fanficwriters, who became bestselling authors because of this system. (I could call names, but I think that would be in violation with Lemmasoft's rules.)

I see no reason to assume that Steam hiring staff to judge books would have a different outcome. Even if the staff member would dislike a profitable game they wouldn't recommend against it, and if they do like a low-budget game without expected profits they might reject it just to be on the safe side. If they play the games at all. At least with the Curators, they will be in touch with the people enough to have earned their rank to judge.

While I do agree that the time thing may be a problem when selecting Curators; It can easily happen that either too many people will be granted the right to Curate allowing those corrupted ones in, or too few are chosen so the Greenlight period may take too long, I do believe the scheduled and paid system of having staff members will lead to a less reliable and fair system of judgement based upon other such systems.


So:

• -Using tags, the Curators would be judging only games they're capable of judging fairly upon.
  -This system would most likely lead to developers being more frugal with their tags.
  -I highly doubt that a hired staff would be more objective than the Curators, in fact I'm expecting the opposite.
  -Similar systems with paid reviewers have proven themselves just as or even more corruptable, though their unfairness will be more directly be based upon popularity, profit and brand recognition.
  -No one is truly neutral and objective, so selecting people based upon these factors will not work.
  -The Curators will have proven themselves to know what a group of Steam-users want from a reviewer.
  -If the Curator is unfair in their judgement, then Valve can cancel their rights much easier than it would be to fire an employee, or the fanbase could disappear when it becomes apparent that the Curator is advertising crappy games for profit leading to the same result.

However:

• -It is true that this will need a well-designed system that both Curators and developers can understand and adapt to.
  -Valve will have to find a good balance between too many and too few Curators with rights.
  -Because of the point above, there will be a period of transition where many games may be negatively affected when published.
  -Judging the worth of Curators will indeed be tricky, although less so than judging the games themselves because of the greatly reduced workload.

[trooper6]

One problem is that Curators are not employees of Valve. I think Valve should stop off loading their work on the community in order to get free labor.

[LateWhiteRabbit]

One problem is that Curators are not employees of Valve. I think Valve should stop off loading their work on the community in order to get free labor.

1000 X this.

The most successful digital sale platform in the world should NOT be trying to get free labor from their customers. Valve has (at best guess) 308 employees currently, making $1 Billion a year off Steam.

You better believe if Valve charges $5000 a game to put a title on Steam, I expect them to use that money to do a proper quality check on the title. That's more than enough to afford to devote an employee to spending several hours checking each game. That wouldn't even cut into their $1 Billion a year if they did it that way.

No, as it stands with Steam Direct, Valve is just getting people to pay them more money to still not do any personal oversight on their own platform. It makes me angry, because, as I showed, it is a simple problem to fix. I even inflated the number of Greenlight titles they get a day. The average is actually around 50. So forget the 6 million dollar figure - they could get away with it for half that. That $60,000 a year salary is the average yearly salary for Washington state, where Valve is headquartered. That works out to a little over $230 a day for a 'game checker'. If we go with my idea of having one game checker spend all day checking ONE game submission, that would mean Valve would only need to charge a $250 submission fee and have ZERO expenses related to quality control on Steam.

Apparently, Valve thinks we are all stupid and can't do math.

[Barzini]

Hi everyone,

About 20 minutes after the news broke, I hopped onto my computer and straight away sent an email to Valve and we had a discussion on what was actually, a frank exchange on the industry's way of publishing games as a whole. In fact, they even asked me for detailed answers regarding what I felt of the visual novel industry. Honestly, I feel that if all of you aspire to publish on Steam, please make your voice known and heard.

[Pommy]

Hi everyone,

About 20 minutes after the news broke, I hopped onto my computer and straight away sent an email to Valve and we had a discussion on what was actually, a frank exchange on the industry's way of publishing games as a whole. In fact, they even asked me for detailed answers regarding what I felt of the visual novel industry. Honestly, I feel that if all of you aspire to publish on Steam, please make your voice known and heard.

I was unaware Steam/Valve had...actual HUMANS that even did anything/wanted to do anything even remotely considered interacting with their customers.

[Imperf3kt]

You got a response in less than 190 hours?
Please oh master, teach us how to converse with Valvecorp