Steam Greenlight is going to history, some developers are not happy about it
Steam Greenlight is a system by which community players are casting their votes on which games should be published on Steam, functional for almost five years. When we say functional, that for the first term means that already sailed its opportunity for huge number of indie games and their developers. For the second term, Greenlight is largely to blame for Steam last year being swamped with games of questionable quality.
In order to repair todays current situation by presenting a better system, Valve has announced that it will retire Greenlight and this spring will instead launch Steam Direct. As its name suggests, it will be a far more direct model of publishing games on Steam. Developers will no longer depend on the votes of players, but will depend on the monetary compensation that they`ll have to pay if they want to publish their games on Steam. In essence, Steam Direct will work on a "pay then slay".
The idea is that the game can be thrown out in three steps - filling out the form, passing a basic test of compatibility, then paying the compensation for the launch of the game on Steam. Unlike the Greenlight for which would be paid a one-time fee for the countless games, with Steam Direct developers will have to pay a fee for each game that they think of releasing. Price of access still is not exactly defined, but it will be somewhere between one hundred dollars and five thousand dollars. In comparison with the todays 100 dollars for Greenlight, this will be a significant blow to many developers.
Reactions to the announcement of Steam Direct therefore weren`t mild. Many indie developers have complained that this will be the last nail in the coffin of student projects and insurmountable barrier to all those who intend to independently enter the game development. Weak is consolation that the money for the launch may be returned to the developer, but on the condition that his game achieve aimed sales, or earnings. About which amount is, again - has not been decided.
In conclusion, it seems that the new system is partially depending a lot on what at Greenlight did not work so well, and that is for taking into account the criteria of popularity. Of course, there is a big difference between ordinary voting for something and buying something, and is certain just one thing - to the crooks will definitely going to be harder to draw attention to their games by buying votes and similar unfair tactics. At the same time the question is how much fair developers will suffer because of that.
Tagged with: indie, steam, Direct Steam, steam greenlight