Steam Greenlight is Going Away

Ultimately, I thinking a higher price will just mean that you have to prove yourself in smaller markets before stepping up to the "big leagues." I don't see this as a particularly bad thing, because there was a time when getting on Steam meant that you had "made it". Now that the barrier is lower, it doesn't really mean much. Although my game is doing horrible on Greenlight, so maybe it does mean something. Maybe The Slaughtering Grounds has something I don't. Or maybe the whole system is just screwy. I dunno anymore. All we can do is make the best game we can, sell it wherever we are allowed, and hope for the best.

 

Except the problem is that Steam has effectively made it so that the only "smaller markets" you can succeed on are the incredibly cutthroat mobile markets, which means pretty little if your game isn't suited to be a mobile game in the first place. You may go "Oh, but there's itch.io" but itch.io is actually pretty small when it comes to actually making revenue off your games. Most devs I know simply use it as a place where they can put the DRM free versions of their games. Next you might go "What about GOG" but GOG has an even more stringent review policy than Valve used to. Smaller markets are actually incredibly small when Valve has an effective monopoly on the game marketplace... market.

 

They figured if people are going to pay anyway, they might as well be paying Steam.

 

Boaty McBoatface disagrees.

 

I wonder if buying votes was ever really worth it? If people won't genuinely vote yes for your game on Greenlight, what are the odds of making decent money on Steam proper? I guess it depends on what the votes cost you. Trading keys for Yes votes is kinda shady, but it does indicate that people want the game, otherwise they wouldn't vote yes in order to get a key.

 

I agree that Steam is effectively a monopoly for PC gaming at this point in time. It will be interesting to see what the price point is for Steam Direct. If it is $100 per game, then Valve will largely kill off competitors like itch.io. If the price point is $5000 per game, then places like itch.io will have lots of new small games that Steam will not, which will pour a bunch of new users into itch.io. I am guessing Valve will chose $100 per game, so they can carve out an even larger monopoly.

 

Yeah, that's my thinking as well. If the price is too high for smaller indies to afford, then it will change the dynamics of the markets. Some people like the smaller indie games and if they need to go elsewhere to find them, they will. GOG also has a very strict policy for what is allowed, but as far as I can tell they don't charge anything for it. So my point about being able to prove your game in other markets without spending a large sum first still stands.

 

There are multiple other deal types than money. For example your mentioned key trading also works with nearly a zero risk in some cases. If the game gets Greenlighted the voting group gets x amount of free keys for the game, which cost the dev pretty much nothing or they get x amount of keys from the other game he already has out. I don't know the details but one of my friends were offered "help" from different groups or people when he had a game there. One of them ended up threatening with bad reviews after being declined.

 

It's per game though. At the moment it's free except for the first game, at which point devs are probably still on cloud nine anyway.
Frankly I think that even $100 game-by-game would make a measurable difference. We'll have to see though.

 

Oh, look!

EXACTLY what I've been saying they should be doing for years now.

Good!

Get rid of all the shovelware.

 

Total Biscuit has done a video on it now, some of you may find it interesting

 

I honestly don't think Steam is doing this to increase revenue, because they are already doing great. Stunts like that usually involves investors that want to maximize their investment in something - Valve does not have that issue. I am not that naive, that I am claiming it's not about making money - I'm just saying that Valve is also about supporting their ecosystems. I get that the rules of a long tail makes sense in a lot of digital store fronts, but I doubt that it's good for games, which have a different life cycle and behaviour than most other digital products. It's not an ebook, an MP3 album or a streamable movie. There's continued support, online multiplayer, communities etc. that are all vital.

The Long Tail is exactly why I'd prefer to steer clear of developing mobile games myself. Those markets are incredibly hard to get into, and I'd really hate to see PC go the same route. I wouldn't mind seeing other digital store fronts gaining momentum, but not at the cost of the Steam that I kinda like.

 

Love that pre-order system suggested one hour and thirteen minutes into the video.

 

Same. As much as I generally think preordering is a bad idea, having people actually put their money on game with a preorder instead of saying "yeah sure I'll buy it" with a vote could work out really well.

Have you gotten to the bit about giving out trial copies before the official release for free to see if it's good enough? I feel like if it's done right with a properly designed algorithm to get it to the right people that could also work out well

 

Shovelware (and it's hell-spawned instigator, mobile advertising) hasn't killed Play Store, so that isn't a factor blocking increased revenue potential.

Today a dev pays $100 once and can put anything out there. If a shovelware title doesn't sell, Valve makes nothing except that one-time sign-up fee.

New world, everybody pays some fee, call it $500, and can still put anything out there. If it doesn't sell, Valve has already made $500, equivalent to more than 1600 copies at a 30% cut of $1 shovelware-priced sales.

And at the same time they've reduced their own costs.

They'd have to work hard to avoid increasing revenue by opening the flood gates.

 

It hasn't killed it, but is has made it less attractive. The App Store has a far better ecosystem, partly (not exclusively) due to the higher cost of being on it. It is still a mess, though - and it is a problem. Perhaps not for Apple, but for new developers. At least Apple has a team curating the content, which is something Steam isn't doing (to the same extent).

The fee on Steam Direct is supposed to be discouraging to shovelware developers looking to make some quick bucks on a few lucky clicks or sales. If the argument for Direct is that is opens the flood gates for shovelware, they might as well get rid of the fee, since it will get more content - ref. the long tail earlier in the thread. This is why they haven't settled on a fee yet. This is why there is a fee. It's there for a reason - not to make them some extra bucks in case a crap product won't sell.

Valve has an interest in a good eco system for developers, because unlike pretty much any other software giant they are not driven towards accelerating the bottom line, securing money for their investors. I am not trying to paint a rosey picture here, but they're not necessarily motivated the same way other companies are. I mean, they don't even do budgeting for projects, they budget with their time, due to their flat structure. It's not about rapid growth before selling off chunks of the company. It's not a startup needing to deliver specific numbers or risk having their funding cut.

Any other company, I'd have agreed, but Valve has a completely different drive and position in the market - it's not just about counting the pennies on the bottom line.

 

Yeah I agree that Valve is not really doing these just to get more rich. Note that Greenlight fee has gone to charity since day one and the recoupable fee in Steam Direct would also indicate that they are not really all in for the money.

 

So I'll go off on a bit of a tangent here but I think it's relevant.

Healthy industries allow for people to be able to rise in them. They should be able to grow.

For the video games industry this means that a solid 7/10 game, or a really niche game, should be able to make enough money for the developers to be able to create bigger and better things in the future. A good but not great game should be able to be a stepping stone for the developer.

For that to happen, those games need exposure. And probably a bit more than a little. Amazing games might be able to flourish the moment someone lights a spotlight on them, since one site raving about a game, or one "influencer" creating buzz for the game, will cause a chain reaction of more exposure.

But a "it was pretty good", or "solid but nothing new", or "good if you like those kind of games" game, will not cause a viral like exposure. But it doesn't mean it's worthless and that it can't find an audience that really enjoys it. But if you're an indie and you can't rely on heavy paid marketing, the best way would be decent exposure from the store.

And these are the games that are hurt the most from the sea of asset flips, scams and bad amateur games. They are lost in a sea of games and they themselves don't shine bright enough to be able to rise above. And they should be able to. Because that developer has the chance to make a better game in the future. But if the game fails completely the developer might resort to scummy practices and predatory free 2 play games. And that's bad for the industry.

And I think the direction Steam is going will just make things worse.

Read this : https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/02/15/steam-new-releases/

TL;DR : New releases are now very hard to find on Steam.
.
Which I think is indicative of the solution Valve has for the flood of games, which started with Greenlight and will be even worse with Steam Direct: Hide them. Developers get to release their game on steam and if it doesn't do well it's completely their fault. Consumers only get to see the popular games, so they're happy. Hidden gems will manage to rise to the top and will eventually get coverage on steam, once their algorithm sees the rise in activity, so those won't be lost. But everything else remains buried nowhere to be seen.

And as I said, a healthy industry is one where new developers can grow in it. In the current situation, you either create a masterpiece with the clarity of vision only veterans usually have, or you resort to scummy practices to be able to sustain your business. And that can't be good.

So I really, really, really hope I'm wrong, but the more I think about it, the more I think that's the direction Valve is taking. (and the other stores will soon follow, it seems the PS4 store is also following in Steam's footsteps and is starting to open the floodgates as well).

(this post was brought to you by: Unity taking a really long time reimporting all my assets so I had a really long time with nothing to do today!)

 

Yes, and I have to admit on the topic of algorithms I was surprised when they mentioned that most people just don't see the asset flips or most of the shovelware with Steam's current discovery system. If that's true then I can understand why they're eliminating the voting portion of Greenlight.

 

They said that 42% (or something like that, it was in the 40s range) doesn't see them and the rest does see them. (but the rest was split in "I saw them and they were annoying" "I saw them but I wasn't bothered" etc)

 

I think developers flooding the market with multiple titles could be separated into a different solution, reducing the need for such a high barrier for those only releasing a single title.

My solution would be. $100 to release a game. But if you already have a game that has not reached the recoup threshold, the price is $1,000. If you already have 2 or more games that have not reached the recoup threshold, the price is $10,000.

 

Where I live, it costs $135 to form a new LLC. It takes about ten minutes filling out forms online. Probably faster than Steam's own paperwork, in fact. So all subsequent (failing) games would only cost me $235...

 

Where I live it costs a couple of thousand, you *have* to hire an accountant that can handle LLCs (which are rarer and more expensive) and it takes from weeks to months. Yay!

 

Love how y'all seem to think that shovelware is coming from people who can't afford an entry fee and not, you know, established companies churning out quick games based on low-cost design trends. It's pretty hilarious.

 

What people here probably really mean with "shovelware" might be "bad/low effort games" or what angry gamers often call "asset flips" (no matter if accurate, but the games often look like asset flips). If you mean rapidly itterated franchises like some famous horror games for example, or hidden object games and visual novels that seem to get cranked out at high volume, I doubt anyone really minds those as long as they are proper products and not some assetstore project with minor changes, or early access trainwrecks that never will get finished.

 

I never saw an issue with Greenlight. I don't remember even going on it or steam telling me much about it. In fact I couldn't even find it (Who actually goes under the community tab in steam?).

You had to actively participate right? Just don't look at or play 'asset flip' games or games you don't like.

 

I think that was/is a part of the issue. The vast majority of people regularly looking at Greenlight are not representative of the average Steam customer.

 

To build on this...

What this means is that if you want to get your game through Greenlight then you need to either:

• A: appeal to the people who happen to already hang out looking at Greenlight games, who will be a particular subset of people interested in a particular subset of games; or
• B: drive a whole bunch of people who wouldn't normally look at Greenlight out of their way to vote for your game.

Of those, case A is fine for people who want to target the kind enthusiast PC gamers who regularly see Greenlight, and it's a pain for everyone else, who have to resort to B.

For case B, you have to put in a whole bunch of marketing effort to drive people toward your game... which you may recognise as exactly what you need to do to get people to buy your game, except that they can't buy it yet. You need to come back later and do it all again to actually get sales. Isn't it objectively a whole lot better to have that effort driving directly towards sales the first time around?

I do get what I (think) they were trying to do. Prove you can get a small number of customers through the door to validate your product. If that works then welcome aboard, keep 'em coming! There's just a bunch of reasons as to why that hasn't worked out in reality, which we couldn't know* about until someone tried it.

* Speculation and hindsight don't count.

 

I dunno about that. I would be highly surprised if there were no precedents to suggest that a publicly open voting system on the internet could be gamed and exploited.

 

So basically, start nice but get more punishing the more failed games you release?

 

The problem with that idea is, while it may impact the asset flippers and poor quality games, it also punishes those who have a quality game that just end up with a bad luck on launch. Say you've got a multiplayer game that doesn't take off or you get overshadowed by a AAA title.

If you were going to employ that solution, perhaps reduce the cost after a time (6 months to a year? Enough time to properly make a new game). That way you could somewhat stem the flow of shovel-ware being churned out, but wouldn't be punishing those who just have an unfortunate launch.

 

My understanding from that video by TotalBiscuit is that you receive tokens from Steam that allow you brief periods of high visibility. If my launch were a resounding failure I would simply wait a period of time and then pop one of those tokens. If after I've done that the game still doesn't have good sales I'd wager there is something wrong with the game itself.

 

Thanks.

 

Then a $5000 fee per game would water down their business model. They'd be forced to concentrate their resources on fewer but better games.

 

No it wouldn't. Shovelware makes significantly more money than $5000 per title. Not only that, but the $5000 is recoupable, so it wouldn't mean anything. All this would do is shove out smaller devs.

 

How do you know?

 

Because if it wasn't profitable, people wouldn't keep making it. Hell, this is literally digital homicide's entire business model. People like to say it's the trading card thing, but DigiHom was making a profit off their game sales.

Edit: Hell, DigiHom and Winged Cloud are both two of the smallest shovelware developers and both of them make profits on their actual games because, as I said before, shovelware is the use of cheap design trends to produce low budget titles. Those aren't going to go anywhere, not just because Steam Direct as a system doesn't do anything about it, but because Valve as a company doesn't want to get rid of them. These games make Valve money and despite what you may think, they don't harm Valve's reputation in the slightest.

 

That's not a good reasoning. Currently with the cheap and one time fee people can keep on trying to push unlimited amount of titles and hope for the best with some of them. If they actually make money with the new system, after a high per title fee and all the refunds then that means there is some sort of target audience.

Trading card issue is a thing of it's own and can be managed by Valve outside and other time of this Greenlight/Direct thing if it will be an issue in the future.

 

I honestly don't know what's the profit margin of shovelware companies. Though I thought the whole foundation was low cost releases. So for example if the game makes $6000 and it took $1000 to make, there's a great profit. Add a $5000 fee and it's too risky.
I wont negate some shovelware developers do have enough margin to pay for the fee, though. But how many?

 

No, the reasoning is perfectly fine and Valve pretty clearly doesn't want to do anything to stem the tide of games going on Steam at all, hence them doing away with any actual gatekeeping aside from a monetary barrier. Monetary barriers, however, are pretty garbo at keeping anything but poor people off your service. Not "people making shovelware," just people who can't afford whatever fee goes up.

If Valve wanted to "stem the tide of shovelware/indie games you don't like" they'd implement an actual process that determines if a game was going on Steam through rigorous gatekeeping.

You know.

Like the old system.

That sucked for everyone.

Again, the $5000 cost is recoupable. It's not a "fee."

 

The original and old system was publisher based where they communicated with Steam. Publishers were also the ones who seek out prominent titles, did the filtering and were specialized in to certain genres or game types in general.

Now I've asked this few times in this thread without any comprehensive answers. People just say Valve should filter stuff but HOW? what is the definition of crap or shovelware? how much do they have to play a game to determine if it's one of these? how ugly or buggy the game can be before it gets rejected? how much gameplay there has to be? To avoid subjectivity there would have to be a board of curators all playing the same titles and then voting on them but there are hundreds of titles of submitted daily which would make it expensive and time wasting task. I can give multiple examples of popular games that are ugly and buggy or have minimal gameplay.

Now as a Steam customer I kinda liked the old system where almost all titles in the store were decent at minimum and it was easier or faster to find content.

 

Recoupable under what terms? ... Do you get to keep whatever profit you made if you recoup it?

I doubt the system is to pay $5000, recoup, and repeat. What'd be the point of that? It's illogical.

 

We don't know the details. but it's speculated that Steam won't keep their 30% until the fee has been recouped.

 

This is why i asked once or twice earlier in the thread what people are referring to by shovelware? If it is asset flips, quick n sloppy incredibly bugged & broken games that is one thing.

If people are simply calling every game that a developer didn't labor on for months or years shovelware that is wrong. Just because a game is tiny or quickly thrown together doesn't mean it has no value... it doesn't mean there aren't gamers who want it.

Sometimes I think people have certain expectations... basically if anyone isn't doing what they are doing... not laboring for years... not polishing forever... not making big games etc... they try to knock down those efforts by calling them shovelware.

 

I contend that shovelware should be defined by its actual meaning, which is "quickly and cheaply produced games designed to capitalize on popular low-cost design trends" which is what DigiHom and Winged Cloud are far more "guilty" of than asset flipping.

That said, there's no reason these games shouldn't be on Steam because there are people who still buy, play, and enjoy them, believe it or not. Like, there's so much hemming and hawing about how the quality of overall releases has "dropped" but in reality, it's just populated by more games that certain people specifically aren't interested in, which is why I put "indie games you don't like" in one of my posts.

People need to stop acting like Steam is some place where AAA titles and only indie games that made it through an approval process are allowed to be. By Valve's own hand that isn't true at all.

 

Shovelware, at least to me, and I largely go by the definition on Wikipedia, are products that are developed with a focus on quantity over quality or usefulness. My favorite example would be Ketchapp who are known for completely cloning games within a week or two of their release.

 

@Ryiah see that is the definition I've always thought of for shovelware.

It would be me just knocking out a mass of tiny games (and probably all of them quite similar so I could reuse as much of the existing code base and perhaps audio and some other stuff as well in the interest of speed) extremely quickly with my entire focus being on quantity. Period. Like I start now and my plan is to have 50 games released by end of year if not sooner.

That is shovelware to me. IF my entire focus is on just throwing them out there as fast as I can with the idea being to use raw numbers to either play the lottery or to simply build a business through raw number of products period.

And I am not so sure this is what many people are referring to when they speak of shovelware. Actually as @Murgilod mentioned shovelware is a viable business model. And there may be some such developers who even have large fan bases.

I might be wrong but I get the impression people are talking about simply "terrible" games, asset flips etc. Which I can understand the dislike for that stuff. I get it.

But really that may or may not be shovelware. If a person does one asset flip and then stops is that really shovelware? In some ways it can be seen that way.... very low effort... very quickly... or at least it is perceived that way... for all we know it may have taken these folks a lot of effort and a lot of time. And maybe I am just confusing the two... shovelware vs shovelware developer. My brain is quickly getting out of game dev so I probably should stop thinking about these things. lol

I suppose any cases of asset flips could be seen as shovelware but that doesn't mean it was a shovelware developer which I'd see as a developer who does it consistently as a business.

But just calling every game that is "poor" shovelware is not correct. Certainly calling every game that is not like AA / AAA striving shovelware is way off. I think there are folks here who probably see every pixel art game or at least the low res pixel art games as shovelware. And we all need to understand there is a difference between shovelware and BAD games and a difference between bad games and games we simply do not like for one reason or another.

I actually hate that term shovelware because to me the real definition is simply describing a way to do business that is not necessarily bad and in many ways is smart. And I don't think it is necessarily true the person knocking out a game in a week is thinking any more about money than the person who spends years making a game.

 

Ok! So it's possible that a game may never recover the fee.

So then it comes down to each shovelware title systematically returning profits largely above the $5000 mark ( or not). I wont deny some of them would! but I'm very inclined to say many wont, because they aren't great games.
So releasing a few flops in a row suddenly means a loss of profit. So shovelware as business becomes tricky.

 

The problem is that if the fee is that high, it will also discourage small indie devs.

And once you start dropping the fee, it quickly doesn't stop anything.

(and as others mentioned, the "pro" shovelware developers won't be stopped even at 5000$)

 

That is all true. The Greenlight delay was probably hurting some shovelware devs, but a fee per game will not. The key to shovelware is being able to quickly get something time relevant onto the store. If something is trending, quickly produced shovelware tries to capitalize on that trend. The Greenlight delay actually did cause a problem for shovelware devs, simply because the delay interfered with the ability to quickly put things on the store based on what was already trending. A per game fee but no delay (Stream Direct) should be ideal for pro shovelware devs.

By contrast, low quality games by inexperienced devs may suffer more from the per game fee of Steam Direct than those did with Greenlight. Anything more than $100 per game will likely be too much for the inexperienced devs, and even some indies with some existing experience.