Steam Greenlight

Let's just say that Greenlight is tons more viable than the regular process, even with that price tag.

And everyone here is underestimating how many developers are barely getting by. The "I'd rather do groceries" comment is exactly the main complaint I've been seeing. Not to mention how it's $100 for the chance of getting your game onto Steam if some relatively enourmous amount of people like it. Even if I were to have a completed game I had confidence in and $100 in hand, I'd hesitate on that. You'd need a reasonably-sized marketing push to get any game through Greenlight after a while, much like Kickstarter.

edited 5th Sep '12 10:27:27 AM by burnpsy

Exactly, some people are saying "But you have to spend 100 to get on the Apple and Android stores". But in those the product actually MAKES IT there. Here, you're spending 100 dollars HOPING to get a favorable outcome in a VOTING PROCESS which may not produce good results (just look at all the complaints and downvotes directed at Gnomoria because it's a "Dwarf Fortress ripoff")

Would suck to have put in effort and money into a decent game, then be screwed over by the Fan Dumb.

At the same time, they've made it easier to find legitimate games on Greenlight. You can customize your queue to some degree now.

edited 5th Sep '12 10:40:29 AM by RocketDude

Neotokyo is in sore need of a larger player base.

Eh, I saw that one, but for some reason that game seems to be rubbing me the wrong way. Dunno why either, it's got a lot of stuff I like: cyberpunk, guns, robots, FPS action, etc.

Isn't that one a mod for HL 2?

Valve isn't adverse to publishing high quality mods, when they aren't hiring their dev teams to work for them.

Left 4 Dead also started as a Counter-Strike—which as you said itself started with a mod.

I think it was a good move to have the 100 dollar entry fee. It's nice that Valve is giving all the money from it to Child's Play and it keeps back the troll entries. There was one called "Live or Death" that had two screenshots consisting solely of a Half-Life 2 zombie on a fullbright map consisting of nothing but a floor and one wall, surrounded by a hall of mirrors effect. There was another one that had poorly recolored Sonic Advance sprites pasted over screenshots from Minecraft with things from a bunch of other games. We're talking more plaigerism than Limbo Of The Lost. I'm kind of going to miss the hilariously bad entries, but nothing of value is being lost.

As for source mods, bring 'em on, as long as they're original. There's a bunch taking place in the Half-Life 2 universe that people are putting on Greenlight, which I don't think will work out for them because of copyrights and what not (Black Mesa being the exception, as Valve has shown lots of support for it), but I'd like to see Neotokyo and a few others.

edited 5th Sep '12 12:08:39 PM by cfive

Dejobaan Games is willing to loan 100 dollars to one promising indie dev that doesn't have the cash and urges other indie devs to do the same.

...well that didn't take long. Nice to see someone else sees the problems with this fee.

edited 5th Sep '12 1:28:58 PM by Psyclone

And acording to his second update, a lot of people also want to help!

Also, something that wasn't made clear in that article that makes it SLIGHTLY more OK in my opinion: the fee is one time only. Once you have access you can post how many games you want. So essentially you're buying a "developer account".

edited 5th Sep '12 1:44:31 PM by Psyclone

Mmmm, then they shoud take the need to own a Steam game after all you would be validating your account by paying the entry fee.

Giant Bomb reports several indie devs' position on this. Good points on both sides of the argument.

edited 5th Sep '12 2:34:12 PM by Psyclone

One indie developer gives a very interesting statement about money.

edited 6th Sep '12 8:01:56 PM by Jimmmyman10

What's especially interesting about that?

oh good lord that word

the word "privilege" has a part to play in any debate about class and what the hell ever else, sure, but I have seen it used and abused so many times lately that it just shuts down the reasonable debate centers of my mind and, in its place, opens up the part that hits the red x and goes to play something soothing elsewhere on the internet.

Also, I dunno, is it even NECESSARY to use Greenlight now just to get your games on Steam? Can't indie devs still negotiate with Valve old style? Wasn't one of Greenlight's point is to point to Valve that "hey this game is interesting even though you aren't interested in it before" and make them look at it again? Or did I assume it wrong?

I do think $100 is rather expensive, but some of the argument is just...argh...

edited 6th Sep '12 9:22:38 PM by onyhow

I'm sure games can get on Steam the same ways they could before.

Also, while I still think $100 is a trivial amount of money compared to how much effort making a game takes, at current I could totally see someone refusing just because they think their odds are bad no matter how much effort they put into it.

edited 6th Sep '12 9:55:28 PM by thatother1dude

I know this sounds crazy but I think I may have rated every game on Greenlight. I went to build a new queue, and there were only four games, then I rated those, and when I went to generate a new queue, there was nothing and it said "you have rated all the games in your search criteria" (I had all the genres checked). I almost feel like I acomplished something.

Try to do same without having anything checked If you have everything checked, it means game has to apply for ALL of those categories.

But yeah, article has point in that downvoting is kind of stupid thing in this thing :P

Didn't the downvote system got changed already to the I'm not interested and won't be count against?

So its not negative vote anymore, it just hides game on list?

Yes