Big publishers won't have to do anything. Far Cry 3 and AC3 went up without Greenlight.
It would be insane to require that from established players.
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Steam axes submission process, ALL new pubs/devs must go through Steam Greenlight.
- Thread starter chubigans
- Start date
Big publishers won't have to do anything. Far Cry 3 and AC3 went up without Greenlight.
It would be insane to require that from established players.
killer rin
Member
Seems like a dick move to me, but what can you do.
Edit:Wait, wasn't it just Valve who was raging against Microsoft's draconian policies to get on Arcade/Metro Store?
Edit:Wait, wasn't it just Valve who was raging against Microsoft's draconian policies to get on Arcade/Metro Store?
XANDER CAGE
Member
Ah, alright, I misread that bit.
Still... seems really weird. I still think this could affect indie games' chances at ever getting onto the service.
yeah but they're pretty much the opposite of what they're doing here
plagiarize
Banned
All I want to see from Greenlight is Pinball Arcade on PC, and since they seem adamant on having it release through Steam are thus stuck with Greenlight. They have had their full fanbase voting it and are coming no where close enough to getting selected.
Greenlight leaves me with a bit to be desired in this situation, given FarSight has released the game on 360, PS3, Vita, Android, iOS, Kindle, Mac OSX, and Wii-U is on its way, yet they can't release it on Windows, probably one of the most open platforms on that list, because they are set on using Steam. Why Valve doesn't consider published games on 8 other platforms as something that expedites the process is beyond me. Oh and they also successfully funded around $125,000 worth of licensing in two separate kickstarters, but hey, pinball, who wants that!
and there is why I am glad the Windows 8 store exists. Not because I want Steam to die, but anything which scares Valve might get them to improve this stuff. Steam isn't going to get better if Valve don't feel it has competition. If Valve feel like the arbiters of what game succeeds and what game doesn't... then you bet I want them scared.
and please, don't see this as me saying the Windows 8 store is great and without problems. I'm glad it exists because I can actually play Pinball FX 2 on PC now, another game which Valve decided wasn't good enough for Steam despite it's success on multiple platforms and despite it sporting tables based on top licenses.
great finished PC games are being kept off Steam. Greenlight hasn't fixed that. if Valve can't figure out that a game which has reviewed well and had decent sales on other platforms is probably not going to dilute the 'quality' of Steam games (and can I just say... lmao at that suggestion) and if greenlight hasn't gotten those titles onto Steam... what hope do I have in this system?
If Valve are going to turn away good games and potentially send them to the Windows 8 store, and if Valve are scared of the Windows 8 store... then they need to do something about it. gamers win.
I hope you realize how your posts read to the rest of us:
It's still very, very painful to browse games on Greenlight, you don't have any 'intelligent' search engine for it, devs tick off all the boxes (so every game is a puzzle platformer shooter brawler RPG adventure at the same time) and overall clunkiness make the experience of the user wanting to help indie devs getting their games on Steam simply terrible.
Yup, pretty much all of this and more.
Warm Machine
Member
Then the Steam community has no interest in doing this job based off the number of unique visitors games on Greenlight get. When Greenlight started certain games saw around 100k. Now it has dropped to around 15k.
Barack Lesnar
Banned
As a semi-casual Steam user I haven't clicked it once, never even noticed it really. When loading up Steam all I do is check the Top Sellers and New Releases lists then go to the library. I'm skeptical these ancillary Steam features are getting much use. Don't have any proof or anything..
MesserWolf
Member
I am not an overly fan of these "vote" methods....
Greenlight was meant to be an instrument to give a chance to games that otherwise would have been overseen, but that instead they do have an audice, as of niche as it could be. With this tool these games had a teoretical chance.
Now i am wondering if it is becoming the opposite, with the risk that good stuff, but overlooked by the majority of the voters, won't ever make it to steam, while a "expert" selection would have put it, at least to bring more variety.
But overall, it is not a catastrofic thing. I am sure Valve will adjjust the process as it goes ..... They are there to sell to all of us after all.
edit: I think many here are misinterpreting this.
Any developer or publisher who is new to Steam and interested in submitting their game to the platform should submit their game through Steam Greenlight.
so do not expect activision's games to go through this. Moreover I am sure that in parallel to this, there will be still commercial decisions on what to sell and agreements with the big boys of the industry .....
Greenlight was meant to be an instrument to give a chance to games that otherwise would have been overseen, but that instead they do have an audice, as of niche as it could be. With this tool these games had a teoretical chance.
Now i am wondering if it is becoming the opposite, with the risk that good stuff, but overlooked by the majority of the voters, won't ever make it to steam, while a "expert" selection would have put it, at least to bring more variety.
But overall, it is not a catastrofic thing. I am sure Valve will adjjust the process as it goes ..... They are there to sell to all of us after all.
edit: I think many here are misinterpreting this.
Any developer or publisher who is new to Steam and interested in submitting their game to the platform should submit their game through Steam Greenlight.
so do not expect activision's games to go through this. Moreover I am sure that in parallel to this, there will be still commercial decisions on what to sell and agreements with the big boys of the industry .....
?? why would they read like that if that's not what I said?
changing one company for another completely changes the argument, we're discussing something specific here. Track records mean something
me stating that I trust Valve to provide a services that benefits users and developers more than what Sony/MS currently does is suddenly an outrage just because all of them are companies?
also: I agree that Greenlight is pretty badly presented in the store page.
Overall I just feel we desperately need a steam client overhaul. Hopefully it's coming
Right but instead of having draconian policies they went 180' in the other direction and said "EVERYONE CAN SUBMIT". Now, we just have 900 games with I don't know how many users voting. We don't even know who these users are, what they like or if those votes accurately represent everyone.
To be honest, it's a real mess right now. Indies have a hard time getting accurate data, I've seen countless comments about when the game is released, if voters are getting it for free or when it's coming out.
I hate being "that guy" but I figured this would happen with Greenlight.
Valve largely influenced distribution. Now they want to influence development. It's a bottleneck that's good for them and bad for everyone else.
I wonder if devs will speak out against this as times go on?
Valve largely influenced distribution. Now they want to influence development. It's a bottleneck that's good for them and bad for everyone else.
I wonder if devs will speak out against this as times go on?
not sure if I get what you mean
but similar to what you probably refer to: I think Greenlight needs to be divided between finished games and in-development games, and get greenlit accordingly.
If we're following Valve's track record, the amount of time it took them to take Steam from its initial release to successful, quality service - even if we assume notable improvement - would leave developers hanging out to dry for at least a year.
Steam Greenlight is not a highly frequented service. We can barely get half the U.S. population to vote for president. Getting hordes of Steam users to choose what games they want from a gigantic list without playable demos is like asking for a miracle for most indie games that enter.
Will the next Team Meat game make it through? Sure.
Will the next studio like Team Meat that's trying to break out make it through? Quite possibly not.
That would be a tragedy.
What does that even mean? How are they influencing development? I don't think Greenlight is an evil ploy to control the game industry. I just have the feeling that Valve wants nothing to do with the business side of things. They always had issue with submission and the approval process was a maze of unanswered email, uncertainty and outright confusion. Now, we have a 1k games that users are supposed to vote on. I'm sure it's a system that would work if the entire Steam userbase was involved. With the amount of people looking, you are bound to find the good stuff. But now, with indies competing for votes and a limited release of games each month, I doubt it's going to get any better. If anything, the number of active voters is just going to dwindle week by week. It's a really boring task to sift through mountains of crap in the hope of finding something that would suit you. Like Nirolak said, countries have issues with voting in order to decide the next leader! The one that is going to directly change the life of milions. I doubt that Valve can muster much more for some internet votes.
The worst thing is that some games on Greenlight are barely "games". Some of them are a few renders or screenshots with barely anything playable. How am I supposed to say "I want to play that" when I can't even play it in the first place...
MesserWolf
Member
I think the same, however.....
I expect the next sale of Steam to have an achivement for voting X games in Greenligh.
It is the Steam way to educate their audience
That's what a blind Sony/MS/Nintendo/EA/Ubisoft fan would say as well.
Also consider the amount of games Valve intends to greenlight - 10 to 15 a month - that amounts to 120-180 games a year which is not that much more than a service like XBLA...
I dont necesarelly disagree with this but I also dont think it would reach the levels of tragedy that a meatboy-like game not getting greenlit would imply. That kind of decision is still very much in Valve's courtyard when you consider they pick 10 out of hundreds. The only thing greenlight supposedly does is narrow down the process they already had before. Letting the users what's best for them to "review" before releasing. Now, if we were talking about a new game of Meat Boy quality, I really doubt that would get overlooked.
If this is gonna completely change in the future I dont know, but as I said what wadjeteye is claiming here has been at work for a while now supposedly and I doubt many of the newly released games worked out their release on Steam before they shipped greenlight, so this is still very iffy.
I'd at least say that if they're going through with what people seem to put together out of the twitter complains, then it'd be better if it came with an overhaul of the whole greenlight system.
also OT but your comment made me think: didnt they say something about demos? that and dividing betwen finished games and non-finished games is probably what it needs most.
I'm not a fan of this move. Greenlight is a good addition for an optional publishing route, but Valve needs to keep the current submission process for those that enjoy it. I see this limiting the library for Steam instead of expanding it which is what I viewed Greenlight as doing.
so? you could build a much stronger case with different arguments to those guys than you can to me, wich you're actually showing by basically just dismissing everything im saying and shouting "fanboy!". See Nirolak's post as to how you can do a proper response in the context of what we're discussing.
Warm Machine
Member
If they refuse pinball games, jrpgs, shmups and so on they are actively influencing development. The PC space is seeing a problem where by if you are an indie game that isn't on Steam you may as well not exist based off the sales you get.
Well, if an unfinished game doesn't make it through Greenlight, the gaming community could lose interest in that game as many people prefer to play and buy only through Steam.
So, in the long run game development trends may shift to reflect the wishes of the Steam Greenlight community.
It's simple, really. You have a huge user base that swears by your platform. Now have those people help decide what makes it to Steam and what doesn't. This can affect developers, too, in both positive and negative ways.
well, this is as opposed as to what otherwise would be Valve's taste affectively changing development trends
they just take themselves out (to a point) of the equation and try to let people decide what they want
I mean, there's always a process, it's not like the previous system was perfect. There's still many people out there swearing over games that should but didnt get approved.
cartman414
Member
How is it that pid didn't have to go on greenlight?
BudokaiMR2
Member
Well I would definitely say that La-Mulana is a game of Meat Boy quality. And although we aren't being overlooked completely we have been "blueballed" as Haunted has so eloquently stated.
The game is done and released. We want it to be released everywhere so that we can start looking at other games to bring over and so that the guys at NIGORO can have more resources to put into their current project.
Also as I said before this basically sets people up for some really hypocritical situations. Basically proven and established publishers can totally swoop in and steal the rights to games from people who have hit a stalemate in Greenlight such as smaller indie publishers like Reverb and us.
that's the sort of thing im refering to that conflicts with these claims
could also be that some of the devs behind it used to work at GRIN, wich already published games on Steam
but when you start going through that thought-process you realize that completely new devs with new games having to go through greenlight is exactly what's been happening since the service was released months ago, wich is why at first I said this thread was weird. There's nothing new here beyond what happened with WadjetEye, wich is weird.
Well your argument is "Greenlight is definitely going to be great because in Valve I trust" "I'm sure they'll sort it out one day" etc. There's not much to address.
I wonder if this could paradoxally help Windows Store (if it gains some traction) where devs are guaranteed to have their game published as opposed to shenanigans happening on Steam. It's a weird situation where Valve gets a potentially dangerous competitor and wants to give it an advantage early on.
Nah, not really. You just need a publisher to bypass Greenlight (like Capcom did for those two).
Wait a minute. Aren't we supposed to be diminishing publisher power?
Also encourages people to go through upvoting random games....
Pureauthor
Member
Theoretically not a bad idea. But using the Steam Greenlight system as it is with this would cause so many, many problems.
Read through the whole thread and didn't see any clarification on how 'new' a publisher has to be before being passed through Greenlight. Lack of information is the biggest problem for me right now.
Read through the whole thread and didn't see any clarification on how 'new' a publisher has to be before being passed through Greenlight. Lack of information is the biggest problem for me right now.
well I wouldnt mention something like this till it happens. Valve's still behind it and I would at least like to think they wouldnt allow it, specially if there's a proper outcry.
the La Mulana situation is weird. Didnt it came out in just one service before? is it out everywhere else now? it's similar to what happened with Escape Goat. I feel both cases would be helped by altering the 10 games per batch thing.
not really. That's the argument im using to discuss claims people are making on the service's future and what would supposedly happen if they go with this route. My argument for the current situation boils down to the fact that this has been in practice for a while now and many indie games still came out bypassing greenlight.
Valve should be clearing this stuff up soon, hopefully
BudokaiMR2
Member
Yeah we(PLAYISM) basically reworked the translation for the guys at NIGORO because the original work was a complete mess--I hope the Nicalis guy isn't on GAF lol. Then we released it on our own site for about a month or so before putting it out on GamersGate, Desura, GOG. It has also released on WiiWare finally thanks to another publisher.
And yeah I doubt it will happen to us as we have a good relationship with NIGORO, but it is definitely a possibility for smaller publishers like Reverb who are getting stuck in Greenlight Limbo.
They must have been approved before Greenlight went online. It's not like Valve were only approving indie games after they were fully done.
well, it's up to them to clear out, but given the timing i'd find it really odd..
plagiarize
Banned
Right. They're shooting down quality games based on their GENRE alone. fuck that. This almost seems to me like they want to wash their hands of the decision and just let the popular vote be to blame for how the indie game selection is.
idk if they ever refused as much as there's not much of that in the PC market. Shmups is the easiest one to dismiss as there are plenty now and Sine Mora just came out.
their efforts for japanese games getting in have been pretty good, but I think it's actually Japan that doesnt make the decision to take the jump into that market, not Valve holding them off.
plagiarize
Banned
Pinball FX 2 and The Pinball Arcade were both refused despite being popular decently reviewed titles on other platforms both featuring strong licenses (and in the case of TPA being able to point to two successful kickstarter campaigns).
The devs of both told us they were refused a place on steam because they were pinball games. Valve have never said anything to contradict that.
Especially when I've been waiting for Pinball Arcade to get greenlit for months now, when they promised kickstarter backers the availability of a PC version of their game. That's half on Farsight, but there's a story behind why they aren't on steam in the first place and I really don't want to see more situations like that happen.
edit: And that's what is being discussed, sorry.
yeah, that fucking sucks. Hope they get greenlit, was refering solely to the japanese stuff.
SteveWinwood
Member
Are they?
The one thing we all agree they need more of is clarity. Maybe their submission process involves making sure it works with steam overlay (this is an example as there are lots of games that don't work properly with it, and it drives me insane), but when they get an email from valve that says 'no thank you' and nothing else, that's a problem. It doesn't say what is the matter. Is it the quality? Maybe the genre? Maybe technical issues? Maybe Joe the game screener had his dog ran over that day and is taking it out on you? Who knows. Valve should be more transparent about some of this stuff.
Edit: I see you clarified more. How much of them knowing that is conjecture and Valve not saying it wasn't, isn't saying it was.
BudokaiMR2
Member
Yeah the comment about Japanese developers is 100% true. A lot of the big guys just didn't seem to see it as a lucrative market until really recently.
And the small guys(doujin/indie) are just not confident enough either in their own work or in their ability to make business deals in English.
It is one of the reasons we started out playism project to help the small guys make the transition at least but unless we are actually treated as a legitimate publisher we are basically being cut off at the knees. I can say fairly confidently that most Japanese shmup games would not make it through greenlight regardless of quality.
This is the main thing that concerns me. If Valve could take popular games from multiple genres/categories, then games like Pinball Arcade might make it to the top. Otherwise, what's to stop people from simply adding new games in more popular genres, often enough to prevent your game from ever rising to the comparative top?All I want to see from Greenlight is Pinball Arcade on PC, and since they seem adamant on having it release through Steam are thus stuck with Greenlight. They have had their full fanbase voting it and are coming no where close enough to getting selected.
Greenlight leaves me with a bit to be desired in this situation, given FarSight has released the game on 360, PS3, Vita, Android, iOS, Kindle, Mac OSX, and Wii-U is on its way, yet they can't release it on Windows, probably one of the most open platforms on that list, because they are set on using Steam. Why Valve doesn't consider published games on 8 other platforms as something that expedites the process is beyond me. Oh and they also successfully funded around $125,000 worth of licensing in two separate kickstarters, but hey, pinball, who wants that!
Also, as mentioned, the top 10-20 greenlighted (and Valve-approved) games can as far as I know be games that are not even completed, while games that are actually finished, and actively being sold on other platforms, and presumably even available for the PC, are still held back because games that do not exist are more popular than them.
I don't really understand the logic against allowing even niche appeal games on Steam either, when you consider that there are free games (Greenlight and otherwise) competing with them. Those free games benefit Valve by potentially pulling in more Steam users...but they take bandwidth to download. If it's a niche appeal game that doesn't take a lot of download bandwidth, how does it harm Valve? The small target audience of the game probably means there isn't even going to be a lot of download bandwidth, I'd think.