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[dionysus]

Just approve everything and let word of mouth "greenlight" games for high sales. Have a big disclaimer on the purchase on any game that Steam has no QA approval process and buyer beware.

Websites would spring up, just like they did for the app store, to try to separate the chaff from the wheat.

 

[Zemm]

How To Fix Greenlight

1) Look at the top twenty right now, and approve them immediately. Shut down Greenlight.
2) Is it available on GOG? Approve it.
3) Is it available on consoles (excluding Xbox Indies. There's enough junk on there to put on exception for it.)? Approve it.
4) (in case of iOS port) Has Apple ever given it free advertising? If so, approve it.
5) Open Steamworks API to everyone who paid the Greenlight fee, introduce a widget whereby it can be implemented easily on a developer's site, handle payment through Steam's servers and output a Steam key/instant addition to a Steam account, while Valve carries on creaming off 20% on top (less because it's not on Steampowered.com). Rebrand the Greenlight fee as "Steamworks access fee" and start keeping the money.
6) Use the widget data to invite the most successful games onto Steam proper, while the less successful games still get the money from the "no Steam no sale" guys. Everyone's a winner.
7) Oh, and start manually accepting games again, although most will probably be satisfied with step 5.

Hire this man!

 

[Alex]

Greenlight is probably not a good idea, and it doesn't seem very fair or kind to indies. That said, I think for my tastes, it's largely worked out thus far. It's gated games in a tasteful manner as far as I'm concerned. I do not believe that every single indie game needs to be on Steam, and I'm not going to lose sleep over a fairly mediocre game like Mutant Mudds not making the cut.

 

[Basileus777]

As others pointed out, Minecraft torpedoed his argument, having sold more copies on Notch's website than any game has ever sold on Steam (even including valve titles). League of Legends is F2P, which I am sure some posters don't count.

I'm pretty sure he was being sarcastic. If you quote his post, he even says "hint minecraft" hidden in email tags.

 

[kswiston]

To be fair it also outsold pretty much everything besides Nintendo exclusives and the dev take-home per copy was probably higher than full priced games.

I was mainly talking about the PC version. Either way, Minecraft is clearly a phenomenon and not a good measure of potential indie success. Starbound has raised over $1M in pre-orders from their own website (from over 40k people), so that's probably a more realistic example of an indie that was successful before even launching on Steam. Steam is obviously very important to the majority of successful indies though.

I'm not saying you should or you do. I am pointing out that people do use it as a complaint against the current selections getting greenlit.

My major complaint about what gets Greenlit is that there is no standardization for when a game will be ready after they get voted in. Some of the initial batch or two of successful greenlight games are not yet available on the store, despite having been voted in 7-8 months ago. Devs that far from release should not be eligible. All they are doing is tying up spots that could be used by people who are ready to go. If it was up to me, devs would have to have the Steam APK incorporated into their game before they were even made available for voting. That would be a more useful barrier to entry than some $100 registration fee.

 

[Village]

I don't buy the argument one has anything to do with the other. And I'm not begging for Steam to become a casual haven, just imploring they stop appealing solely to the WoW uber nerd with their selection choices.

There are plenty of non-wow uber nerd stuff on there.

You are going to have to be specific.

 

[Nirolak]

So I went to Greenlight to see what it's like now and I'm kind of confused.

As far as I can tell the games are either listed in an arbitrary order or by order of submission, given that Mutant Mudds is last and I can't imagine it has the least votes of anything.

I also didn't see an obvious way to see how many votes something had, though admittedly I wasn't logged in.

How are people able to tell what is and isn't in the top 30 as some people were mentioning earlier?

 

[spindoctor]

So I went to Greenlight to see what it's like now and I'm kind of confused.

As far as I can tell the games are either listed in an arbitrary order or by order of submission, given that Mutant Mudds is last and I can't imagine it has the least votes of anything.

I also didn't see an obvious way to see how many votes something had, though admittedly I wasn't logged in.

How are people able to tell what is and isn't in the top 30 as some people were mentioning earlier?

Valve deliberately obfuscates this information and doesn't provide sorting options. If there was a link to show the current top 20 games on Greenlight, it's likely that most people would just visit those pages and vote either way for those games, thereby suppressing the 'discovery' process that Greenlight is supposed to foster (and doesn't do very well).

To answer your question, this information is known to the developers of games in the top 100 and they can then choose to share it with the public. A few of them do, which is how it becomes common knowledge.

 

[SparkTR]

Steam's Grasp on the DD market is so secure that any indie game not released on its platform is DOA!
I challenge you to name me 1 indie game that became a success without steam!

Path of Exile.

 

[Nirolak]

Valve deliberately obfuscates this information and doesn't provide sorting options. If there was a link to show you the current top 20 games on Steam, it's likely that most people would just visit those pages and vote either way for those games, thereby removing the 'discovery' process that Greenlight is supposed to foster (and doesn't do very well).

But they provide all sorts of sorting options on Steam Workshop which basically works by the same voting system:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/browse/?appid=570

Most Popular (This Week | Today)
Top Rated All Time
Most Recent
Accepted For Game

Clearly they see a notable benefit in doing this for their own products, so why not Greenlight?

To note, anything in Accepted For Game is removed from the other categories.

 

[1-D_FTW]

There are plenty of non-wow uber nerd stuff on there.

You are going to have to be specific.

See post 338 if you want my detailed complaints.

 

[shaowebb]

Nowadays, yeah pretty much. Unless you have had a game on Steam before, Greenlight is about the only way.

Valve need to change things. Greenlight is a good concept that is currently hurting more than it is helping.

This. It was a good idea in theory to get certain stuff on, but what happens more than good surprises coming through is overhyped failures get in like Towns or War Z.

It bottlenecks content from coming in. I find myself jumping to other folks like GoG or Green Man Gaming and several others just to see whats current since Steam has made it a popularity contest to get games up causing things to release slowly or not at all simply because not every good indie project knows how to ad blanket enough to get on. How can some games get the kind of attention they deserve anymore? Its like a shout in a crowded room. At least they can list that a demo is available, but there should be more than one way in.

Blocking folks from using publishers to get their product on Steam? Thats wrong IMO. I say simply hire a larger testing department to help be able to clear more games submitted with greenlight as the alternative method of possibly pushing through that process faster.

 

[Uthred]

As others pointed out, Minecraft torpedoed his argument, having sold more copies on Notch's website than any game has ever sold on Steam (even including valve titles). League of Legends is F2P, which I am sure some posters don't count.

One random outlier like Minecraft hardly torpedos the argument in general. There are always exceptions, its more about general trends than unique breakout stories. It doesnt seem particularly contreversial to say that without getting onto Steam your indie game is likley to make significantly less money

 

[spindoctor]

But they provide all sorts of sorting options on Steam Workshop which basically works by the same voting system:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/browse/?appid=570

Most Popular (This Week | Today)
Top Rated All Time
Most Recent
Accepted For Game

Clearly they see a notable benefit in doing this for their own products, so why not Greenlight?

To note, anything in Accepted For Game is removed from the other categories.

I suspect that even if they did add top rated sorting options to Greenlight, it would not alleviate the biggest complaint against the service which is that there are good games that are not getting greenlit because they aren't popular enough. If they did have a 'top 20' page it would just send more Greenlight traffic to those games which are already winning the popularity contest. At least with random sorting, every game gets a chance to grab eyeballs from Greenlight visitors.

Either way, I doubt that any game that gets through Greenlight manages on the back of random voting. They usually have an existing fanbase (either it's a mobile game or a Kickstarted game or something that got instant popularity through Giantbomb quicklooks or RPS articles etc.).

As for the Workshop, there's an argument to be made that quality and popularity are more closely aligned for Dota or TF2 items than for games. If someone makes a cool looking armor set or weapon model, it's just better than one that's crap and will likely get more votes. Also, we're on GAF so we're discussing how this voting model isn't working out for games. I suspect that if there were a community dedicated to TF2/Dota modeling, they'd probably have similar discussions about how the Workshop voting system isn't ideal either.

 

[szaromir]

I told you guys Valve's DD domination would blow up in everybody's face sooner than later.

 

[Sentenza]

I told you guys Valve's DD domination would blow up in everybody's face sooner than later.

"Gunman Clive/Mutant Mudd doesn't get into Steam" =! "Hard hitting reality is blowing in my face" ?

 

[1-D_FTW]

I told you guys Valve's DD domination would blow up in everybody's face sooner than later.

How? The sane people who support Valve (which is the vast majority) always champion Valve because it's the least offensive option amongst a group of severely flawed candidates.

And as much as Greenlight sucks, and as much as I rail against it, it's still better than the competing services.

Unlike the other services, however, Valve at least acknowledges when they screw something up. And I'm sure they'll eventually clean this mess up. Though the sooner the better.

 

[alexandros]

And as much as Greenlight sucks, and as much as I rail against it, it's still better than the competing services.

And therein lies the problem. There are a ton of distribution services around, with a variety of submission processes, and noone has figured out the ideal model yet. If you let everything in you end up with severe discoverability problems. If you curate you end up with complaints from those who didn't make it in. Pointing out the flaws in each one of them is piss-easy, providing an effective solution is devilishly hard.

 

[Soule]

You mention Pinball which is a good one. But the thing really sticking in my craw at the moment is the racing sim genre. There are numerous highly acclaimed titles that desperately want on the service, but can't. They've got a shit ton of user comments on their Greenlight page. So what's the fucking point here? It's doesn't meet the hidden criteria because realistic sim games don't sell on Steam? Well maybe if the games were on Steam, and sim users started interacting with the service, this genre would suddenly start selling. It's gets to the whole chicken and egg argument. And it's irritating because there's no debate about the quality here. These are high tier games. It's just being cockblocked by some process that's all shrouded in voodoo. Meanwhile, Crappy Indie Platformer #234 and Tower Defense #532 just took up the latest Greenlight spots again.

Would you link or name a few games you're talking about? I'll gladly upvote them if they look quality.

 

[Delusibeta]

My solution: A transparent Greenlight process. Some type of transparent process that will allow a game with a sizable following to make it onto the store. Maybe it sucks, maybe it doesn't. But if a vocal minority wants it, so be it. This is the only way to ensure all worthwhile games make it onto the service.

If I, on the other hand, made a terrible game that couldn't generate any interest among established Steam users, then it wouldn't belong on the service. That's a good bar.

The problem is "how big is a vocal minority?", and we're back to setting bars again.

 

[lantus]

I'm not familiar with Greenlight, as I don't use Steam that much anymore. What is the process like to get your game on there?

 

[Delusibeta]

Would you link or name a few games you're talking about? I'll gladly upvote them if they look quality.

Pinball Arcade is the classic example, and they finally got Greenlight in the update where Valve obviously assumed direct control (why else would Agarest be greenlit in the first update were it not for Valve noticing it's a port of a console game from the EU publishers of said game).

I'm not familiar with Greenlight, as I don't use Steam that much anymore. What is the process like to get your game on there?

Step 1: pay $100 to Child's Play. This is a one-time fee to weed out spammers and jokers.
Step 2: create a profile page for your new game, include YouTube videos and screenshots.
Step 3: advertise like fuck. Get on as many YouTubes and website articles as you can.
Step 4: pray that Valve will take pity on you and greenlight you.

 

[alexandros]

The problem is "how big is a vocal minority?", and we're back to setting bars again.

Yup. This is why some devs are complaining now, because they have to do PR and attempt to amass a fanbase that will upvote them on Greenlight.

 

[1-D_FTW]

Would you link or name a few games you're talking about? I'll gladly upvote them if they look quality.

Two that specifically bother me are: Assetto Corsa and iRacing.

And maybe it's not Greenlight so much as the fact they have to go through Greenlight. These are games that should allow the developers to contract Valve, Valve says "You wanna be on Steam? No problem. Let us know when."

Which is why I keep harping about the quality issue. And not caring about it. Because both games have a sizable enough upvote they should be on it. You can't fake that amount of votes. After that, the market will regulate things as far as word of mouth. Which is what ultimately all independent games sell off of. It's either there or it isn't. Games don't get buried under massive inventories. They get buried because there's no word of mouth compelling people to look. Steam's breath will already will bury any game that doesn't have this.

 

[Sentenza]

Yup. This is why some devs are complaining now, because they have to do PR and attempt to amass a fanbase that will upvote them on Greenlight.

Which is baffling to me. If you aren't even willing to promote your own product to that bare minumum required to make some people notice you on Greenlight (and it really doesn't take much, if your game is somewhat interesting in the first place) then why are you aiming at a Steam release at all?
As someone nicely put sometime ago, people seem under the (deluded) assumption that Valve wants amateurish products on Steam, but they don't. They want products capable of selling *at least* thousands of copies.

I should stress that I'm not really a big fan of Greenlight myself. Yet, I find myself often defending it, simply because most of the complaints I read about it don't make much sense to me.

 

[Etnos]

Greenlight is a terrible idea. This is the problem with private companies, they are subject to one's man ideas, decisions and in some cases tantrums.

 

[Iadien]

I'm not familiar with Greenlight, as I don't use Steam that much anymore. What is the process like to get your game on there?

Pray that your game becomes popular with the very few potential customers that actually vote on games. It is not very well thought out, and needs to be fixed.

 

[AlphaProspector]

This is just in:

http://www.facelessgame.com/

Didn't this get approved on GL recently?

 

[Jac_Solar]

Horrible if true. Valve is not always the great company everyone makes them out to be.

They are responsible for establishing one of the worst trends in gaming -- by selling extremely restrictive digital games. They are locked to their platform. You need an AppID for every single game. If you uninstall steam, you'll uninstall all the games.

Compare GoodOldGames.com to Steam. GOG proves it's possible to sell games without restrictions.

 

[EVIL]

There is a nice piece about greenlight on indiegames.com from an indie developer
http://indiegames.com/2013/05/fixing_steam_greenlight_one_in.html#more
and is a standpoint that I can agree with.

 

[alstein]

Nowadays, yeah pretty much. Unless you have had a game on Steam before, Greenlight is about the only way.

Valve need to change things. Greenlight is a good concept that is currently hurting more than it is helping.

And even if you have, you can still get put in Greenlight hell- see Soldak and Drox Operative (which is really damn good).

THe problem is getting on Steam through Gamelight is more a function of social media savvy than actual gameplay quality.

 

[vdoggie]

So Valve decides to become more closed.. yeah.. smart move... NOT!

 

[Ravensmash]

Pinball Arcade is the classic example, and they finally got Greenlight in the update where Valve obviously assumed direct control (why else would Agarest be greenlit in the first update were it not for Valve noticing it's a port of a console game from the EU publishers of said game).



Step 1: pay $100 to Child's Play. This is a one-time fee to weed out spammers and jokers.
Step 2: create a profile page for your new game, include YouTube videos and screenshots.
Step 3: advertise like fuck. Get on as many YouTubes and website articles as you can.
Step 4: pray that Valve will take pity on you and greenlight you.

So basically, it's attempting to mass-market indie games instead of highlighting niche titles that do not always have mainstream appeal.

Seems to run counter to what an 'indie' section should be imo.

Damn popularity contest I tells ya!

 

[Momentary]

I love all this talk about Valve being an evil corporation with a monopoly on indie digital distribution...

A lot of people against Greenlight are speaking nonsense and it seems they are just hating on it because it's the "in" thing to do right now without fully understanding what the heck is going on.

It's not that hard to advertise your game and it's not like video editing programs and posting YouTube videos of your product is going to destroy a developer's wallet.

There are a lot of great games that have gotten Greenlit and a few turds that I don't see how they could. Although, I don't see how Greenlight is this abhorrent evil that everyone claims it to be. Hell yeah it can be improved, but to say its a blight on indie gaming is just ridiculous.

The one thing that does bother me is that they're Greenlit games list doesn't seem to be updated. A lot of games that should be on there aren't listed.

 

[alstein]

That said, if you really like a game, don't get it on Steam if it goes through Greenlight hell, get it directly from the developer. It won't make Valve any less crap for this, but you'll at least give the developer more of the money instead of Gabe taking a cut a few months later. Most indie devs would give a Steam key should they get on Steam.

Plus, if Steam ever goes down hard and something screwball happens, you'll have something in case you cant play any Steam game for some reason. Always good to have a backup option.

 

[Momentary]

So basically, it's attempting to mass-market indie games instead of highlighting niche titles that do not always have mainstream appeal.

Seems to run counter to what an 'indie' section should be imo.

Damn popularity contest I tells ya!

Name 5 games that are on Steam Greenlight that have been on there for more than 8 months that DESERVE to be Greenlit.

 

[ramparter]

Biggest problem with Greenlight is that I can vote whatever I want without being forced to actually buy the product in the end.

System should judge the voters in accordance to their purchases / votes. Buying what you voted for makes you a worthy voter.

 

[alstein]

Name 10 games that are on Steam Greenlight that have been on their for more than 8 months that DESERVE to be in the store.

Drox Operatve
Shantae
Suguri Collection
Bunny Must Die
War of the Human Tanks
7th Guest
Dominions 3
OOTP Baseball 13

Throw in 2 Winter Wolves/Hanako dating sims and you get to 10 easily.

there's 8 right there. I don't play a lot of genres, so I am sure there are 3 more that I don't know about at all. Those are no-brainers though.

 

[Korezo]

Yeah, I never visit greenlit unless I hear someone promoting a game to vote for their game. The only time I got on was to up vote Dive Kick because it was shouted out in NCR tournament and Game Dev Tycoon because I saw someone stream and liked the game, I saw it was on greenlit so I voted for it. I wonder how many people use this service? I became more aware of it when surgeon sim 2013 came out since I bought that game. I
don't bother wasting time browsing because it looks like there's more junk than anything.

 

[alstein]

Yeah, I never visit greenlit unless I here someone promoting a game to vote for their game. The only time I got on was to up vote Dive Kick because it was shouted out in NCR tournament and Game Dev Tycoon because I saw someone stream and liked the game, I saw it was on greenlit so I voted for it. I wonder how many people use this service? I became more aware of it when surgeon sim 2013 came out since I bought that game. But don't bother wasting time browsing because it looks like there's more junk than anything.

I think people have given up on Greenlight for the most part because of how pathetic it's being handled. In some areas, Steam is great- in others- well, you wonder if it's being run by ex- Buy-Rite Video Games or Planet Zero folks with how incompetently and inadequately some parts of Steam are being run.

 

[SteveWinwood]

oh that greenlight

 

[Delusibeta]

Name 5 games that are on Steam Greenlight that have been on there for more than 8 months that DESERVE to be Greenlit.

Mutant Mudds
Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land
Escape Goat
The Oil Blue
Gunman Clive
Death Ray Manta
Bleed
Heaven Variant
Race The Sun
Rawbots

Ten games, all been waiting more than eight months.

 

[conman]

I can think of some very good reasons why Valve would have this policy in place. Overall, it protects the "independent" part of indie games. If some indies just go around Greenlight (broken as it may currently be), then that would create a "caste system" that would do damage to the indie game scene on Steam (and on PC at large).

Greenlight is far from perfect, but policies like this are arguably more important than even the current Greenlight system. I seriously hope Valve is hard at work on an alternative. And that rather than rolling out gradual changes to Greenlight, they're going to hit us with a totally revamped system all at once.

 

[Deleted member 80556]

Greenlight is a terrible idea. This is the problem with private companies, they are subject to one's man ideas, decisions and in some cases tantrums.

What. Gabe doesn't run Valve, even if he's the owner. They have an organization where no one has the final saying, either a lot of people agree on implementing something, or it is not done.

 

[Hrothgar]

There seems to be a false sense of entitlement in regards to getting your game on Steam

 

[Sentenza]

Drox Operatve
Shantae
Suguri Collection
Bunny Must Die
War of the Human Tanks
7th Guest
Dominions 3
OOTP Baseball 13

Throw in 2 Winter Wolves/Hanako dating sims and you get to 10 easily.

there's 8 right there. I don't play a lot of genres, so I am sure there are 3 more that I don't know about at all. Those are no-brainers though.

Nice, and now, even pretending those all noteworthy titles, let's try to analyze what effort those developers actually made to give these games *any* visibility.
We could start with the usual Shantae, a game that promotes itself with the iOS trailer and was never announced *anywhere* outside of its own GL page, setting a standard about how doing it wrong.

There seems to be a false sense of entitlement in regards to getting your game on Steam

No kidding.
There were even developers here on GAF that argued they need to know *for sure* they will be allowed on the Steam store before even starting to work on their product, which strikes me as delirious.

 

[LiK]

Greenlight is a giant piece of shit. Worst thing Valve came up with recently.

 

[Coconut]

Seems like a reasonable thing to do to avoid a glut of terrible software.

 

[Stallion Free]

There seems to be a false sense of entitlement in regards to getting your game on Steam

Well they deserve the cash money that only Valve can deliver to indies *clearly*

 

[Ihateyouchris]

I really like the widget idea, In a perfect world I wish Greenlight would work like this:

• Open up the Steam API to everyone, approve games for distribution based only if they run, and don’t contain viruses, similar to the App Store.
• I can then sell my game on my own site using a Greenlight widget, similar to the Humble Store. Valve takes a 10% cut, similar to other payment providers such as BMT Micro or Fastspring.
• Anyone else can also sell my game using the same widget, anywhere on the web. They get a 20% cut. With this split, I’d get 70%, Valve would get 10%, and the person who referred the sale gets 20%
• Allow any Steam user to also refer sales with a link that works on Twitter and Facebook. If someone really likes my game, and essentially promotes my game to their friends, I’d gladly give them a 20% cut for it. Maybe give store credit instead of actual money?
• Valve then uses actual sales and usage data to determine what they allow onto the main store, as well as for holiday and daily sales. A sale from the main store gives a 70% cut to the developer and 30% cut to Valve.
• Instead of a “New Releases” section on the main Steam store, it would be labeled “New and Noteworthy”, with Greenlight titles being added as they are approved by Valve, as well as new releases from established publishers.

I think this solves a lot of problems for everyone, while also creating new opportunities.

• As a small dev I would be guaranteed to be able to distribute my game through Steam, therefore not losing sales to people who will only buy games through Steam. It also provides a trusted and safe payment provider for direct sales.
• It provides a great incentive for people to promote and talk about games, increasing sales for everyone.
• It provides Valve with great data to decide what gamers will ACTUALLY buy and play. Just asking if you will buy it at some unknown point in the future seems like junk data to me.
• Marketing isn’t wasted on something as silly as a vote. If someone is interested in, and has found my game, the best time to sell it to them is RIGHT NOW. Asking them to wait until it “might” get approved just means people are going to lose interest.