Steam Greenlight is going away

I just read this:

Valve is set to drop its Steam Greenlight system — which allows customers to vote on small-scale and fledgling projects — in favor of a more streamlined system.

Greenlight will be canned this spring and replaced with Steam Direct. Greenlight was launched in 2012 as a way to gauge consumer interest in small projects. Users could express their interest in Greenlight games, without making a purchase commitment. Those games that received the most interest were "greenlit" and allowed to be published in full on Steam's retail portal.

Full article: http://www.polygon.com/2017/2/10/145714 ... ght-dumped

Seems to me like "the little guy" takes the hardest blow.. as usual.

Reactions/opinions?

"It's only 100 dollars" they said, "it goes to charity" they said, "you get to submit games indefinitely" they said.

"It's only 100 dollars" they said, "it goes to charity" they said, "you get to submit games indefinitely" they said.

You didn't read it properly:

"The fee is likely to prove a point of contention. Under Greenlight, developers pay a one-off $100 fee, under which they can then submit as many apps as they please. The new fee will be per project. Valve says that the new fee will likely be higher than $100, and is considering anything up to $5,000. The firm says it wants to find a balance between allowing struggling but talented creators to launch great new games, while discouraging multiple launches of questionable quality and seriousness."

My point was they won't be giving existing Greenlight developers their money back.

My point was they won't be giving existing Greenlight developers their money back.

Ah ok, sorry

So sad.

One of the negative things I see is that it's really just going to move the discussion away from the steam site and to kickstarter or some other fund raising platform. The process for devs will be basically the same, except instead of getting votes from people on steam who say they would buy the game, they will be getting 'votes' from people funding their kickstarter campaign to pay to be on steam. Another downside for that for devs is that steam recently updated their rating system so that games purchased through kickstarter and the like don't count in the product rating system anymore, making even the most popular games purchased through kickstarter and not directly through steam get much less exposure on the actual steam site.

So sad.

One of the negative things I see is that it's really just going to move the discussion away from the steam site and to kickstarter or some other fund raising platform. The process for devs will be basically the same, except instead of getting votes from people on steam who say they would buy the game, they will be getting 'votes' from people funding their kickstarter campaign to pay to be on steam. Another downside for that for devs is that steam recently updated their rating system so that games purchased through kickstarter and the like don't count in the product rating system anymore, making even the most popular games purchased through kickstarter and not directly through steam get much less exposure on the actual steam site.

That's exactly what I thought when I read the article. Small developers will need to raise the money somehow. I instantly was trying to figure out how I will get my game on steam and realizing that I might have to raise funds, and that kickstarter might be what I resort to using to do that.

[quote:27wvifyg]The firm says it wants to find a balance between allowing struggling but talented creators to launch great new games, while discouraging multiple launches of questionable quality and seriousness.

The issue I have with this comment, is that in a lot of cases talented creators get unfairly judged in the eyes of others that don't know how to recognize such talent or don't understand where their talent comes from, thus can't identify it. I've seen many cases where a game is under-appreciated just because of how it looks or what it entails, etc. A lot of times, if not all the time, the creators behind the products are not considered at all! If they really want to do what they are saying, then they need to be looking at the creators themselves and not the games they are making.

I'm extremely tired of having to fight my way to try and succeed my entire life- putting in all the endless hours advancing my talent, while constantly being overlooked, etc. At the end of it all, do they really care about me personally, or are they just caring about what I'm capable of? Can't they be more concerned about my potential and help me grow instead?

Also, another thing that strikes me is that greenlight was useful to determine whether your game garners a level of interest from gamers. Even if that feedback might be biased, it is still feedback. This new method they have sounds like they get rid of that feedback loop. They remove the ability for failure, so a developer can't learn from their mistakes in order to make their game better before they put the game on steam. It's either you pay and get your game on, or you don't. You essentially have to pay in order for failure, or to succeed, and you're left with a product that either fails or not, you can't change it because you need a completely finished game first.

So knowing this, I'm thinking I will definitely look into using crowdfunding as a way to at least understand if people are truly interested in my games. I need to know whether I am going the right direction with my games while I develop them- crowdfund while I develop so that when it does get crowdfunded, etc, I know it has a higher chance of success on steam. I'm not going to just shell out potentially thousands of dollars without knowing beforehand if my game will succeed or not- I have to know beforehand that it has to succeed.

The problem is, that it is difficult to know absolutely, especially when you have a passion for what you're working on- you sometimes overlook things, others might not feel the same sentiment towards the game, etc. So I'm concerned they are removing the feedback loop.

If they're going to do this, they should scale the pricing by size of dev team and type of game. Single indie retro stuff should be the cheapest, while larger teams with more disposable income pay the higher brackets.

I can understand why they're doing this, but small teams and single indies are going to be hit the hardest, especially those with little to no budget and have to turn to Kickstarts and GoFundMes which create even more work to deliver on a product.

The other options are smaller less noticeable platforms, which just aren't good options if you plan to make some money out of your work. Not sure where indies will turn to to reach a wide audience now. Perhaps the Nintendo Switch will continue it's dev program but right now there is no way to sign up for a dev kit unless they hand picked you personally.

Seems to me like "the little guy" takes the hardest blow.. as usual.

Why is everyone saying this? On Greenlight the "little guy" had to pay $100 so he could enter a voting system and MAYBE get his game on Steam. Right now, even though they say the price is going to be between $100 and $5000, it's very likely the little guy will still pay $100, but this time he gets his game on Steam ASAP.

So why is it that everyone is saying that?

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> Seems to me like "the little guy" takes the hardest blow.. as usual.

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>

Why is everyone saying this? On Greenlight the "little guy" had to pay $100 so he could enter a voting system and MAYBE get his game on Steam. Right now, even though they say the price is going to be between $100 and $5000, it's very likely the little guy will still pay $100, but this time he gets his game on Steam ASAP.

So why is it that everyone is saying that?

Well it's not a one time fee anymore.

it's also not guaranteed to be $100, it could be a lot more.

It's not going to be $100 anymore. If it were, they wouldn't be changing it. It's going to be somewhere in the $3-5,000 range I believe (speculation).

Yeah, this is pretty terrible news... This group just started on Steam to show support for keeping things similar to Greenlight.

steamcommunity.com/groups/keepsteamgreen

It isn't much, but maybe if enough people join and speak up Steam will listen? It's worth a shot.

The firm says it wants to find a balance between allowing struggling but talented creators to launch great new games, while discouraging multiple launches of questionable quality and seriousness."

I don't see why this is a bad thing. I think they want to protect their reputation and improve their portfolio with better quality games.