[Article] F*** Steam

Link to article is here: http://www.sophiehoulden.com/fuck-steam/

It is interesting to see a different perspective on Greenlight and the 'damage' that Steam does. Peoples thoughts ?

Comments

  • Wants to have cake and eat it too, I reckon.

    Greenlight is still more of an opportunity than no Greenlight. That's what it boils down to. The net result is that Steam have just moved into a slightly *less* elitist position than the one previously held, and yet we've got people complaining because this happens not to be *exactly* what they want. Entitled much? And the so-called responsibility of Steam to be fair to ALL indie developers (phrasing that like it's a trivial request, no less) seems to clash hard with Sophie's simultaneous declaration that indies should, uh, not be dependent on Steam in the first place.

    Yep, Steam is a business. It will probably look out for its own interests. You won't change its approach with an empty rant about the injustice of it all, you need to provide good reasons for them to open themselves up in the same way that leads to, you know, that horrible mediocre mess we now call XBIG. And no matter what platform you look at, oversaturation has never done anybody *any* favours. There will always be a % that rises to the top, often through luck and timing, and while it's nice to think that the ideal gaming audience would -- when provided with a somehow perfectly "democratic" indie showcase -- spend the time and effort trawling through countless titles to find the gems themselves (in interest of absolute fairness), this is assuming that *everybody* who plays games takes the pasttime as seriously as we do.

    And that's just plain arrogant. We're developers, we're passionate about the craft and about the work produced by our peers, but seriously? In what universe does it seem realistic that everyone else should feel the same way? It would certainly be nice, but humans like throwing their time into different things, too.

    I don't like it when I see what's effectively an extended olive branch / helping hand being slapped away due to perfectionist bullshit like this. I expect better from our professionals. Fuck Steam for providing this new avenue of opportunity and potentially increasing the percentage of indies who can make it aboard, right? Heck, I'm not about to worship the ground they walk on for simply making this move (again, business), but I'd feel really stupid about *getting angry* about it.

    In all fairness, maybe a disclaimer is needed. It's difficult to comment without seeming biased, as our community is quite specifically benefitting from Steam right now, and BroForce itself looks set to (maybe?) reap the rewards of its profile on Greenlight. This is probably the most elitist rant I've ever made and I'm not suffering directly at the hands of this system but, well, you know, I need to see a counter-argument that rises above a seemingly "sour grapes" attitude before I can take the bitterness seriously.
  • Of course, I post that and after a few seconds already realise that my commentary is quite unnecessarily bitchy. Apologies to anyone who sits on the other side of the fence.

    I do stand by the basic ideas, however. I need more than that blog post to sway me. More specifically, a better outline of why this move causes more harm than good, or somehow worsens the indie position compared to before, rather than a simple (out of context) declaration of the damage it causes to the community.

    Peace out.
  • I agree with what @Nandrew said basically.

    There are ways it could be better, but we should be thinking of how to improve the system to be less "elitist" or "steamist" or whatever-label-suits-you, you cant say something is bad and/or wrong for any reason if you cannot point out a single way that the system could change for the better, and it needs to be something valid for that point. All I got out of people's opinion was it was bad BECAUSE it was Steam (Valve) running Greelight, rather than looking at proper flaws.

    For instance the voting system is somewhat strange if it only votes in a positive favour if you down/up vote other things relative to it, rather than having the activity mean your vote counts. As an example I have only upvoted projects that I am interested in and havent downvoted yet, but does that mean my vote shouldn't count? (From what I understand how the system works, I may be misinformed)
  • So I was busy typing a very well thought out response that would have been kinda long and ranty. But then I realised that I could be spending that time making my game. So I'll just say that I disagree with the author, but there are probably ways to make it better. And hopefully I will have a game in the near future trying to feature on green light.
  • I agree with nandrew, when we clicked make broforce public on steam, we waited about 15 seconds and pressed refresh on the page, we had over 150 views. Can't complain about that.
  • WOW. That sounds amazing. What was it that the article was saying about people not being able to browse Greenlight then? Don't understand.

    I'm not that big into the PC gaming scene (contrary to EVERYONE here), but I tend to agree with @Nandrew in that companies CANNOT let anarchy rule, for that is what will happen if they wanted a complete free-for-all. Like Android. Look at THEIR market - it's MUCH more open, and really, it's not conducive to greatness.

    It's like going to the flea market or the designer boutique shop. If you think your product is worth it, you'll put in that little extra to get it into the designer boutique. $99 is really fuck all, and a good gatekeeper price that prevents the market becoming flooded with crap.
  • Well I have voted on about 400 items (I can't tell exactly since quite a few seem to have left Greenlight) and according to Valve 30 "games" have been removed because I, and some others, reported them.

    So now that I have my Greenlight credentials in order. I like the concept of Greenlight. Unfortunately the use, and community's response has been something else all together. If nothing else it has given us a view into the things that have been submitted to Steam, and given us an understanding of what they have to deal with and why gems like Offspring Fling had a hard time getting on steam.

    Reading comments on Greenlight has made me realize that there are a lot of Steam zealots, and I can't help but feel that I have contributed to this culture.

    If a game is on Steam I, and many other people, assume that the game is of a certain level of quality. As Nandrew put it rather rightly the openness of XBLIG means that it is a mess, but XBLA is far too closed to develop for; Steam is in the sweet spot between the two, or so I like to believe.

    The influx of utter-crap™ on Greenlight meant that the community had a strong reaction. Part of this problem may be because Valve suggested that people could post early prototypes, but there was no method of separating games that were just "Hey this is my idea", and "Hey we're trying to get this onto Steam".

    Due to the extreme volumes anyone trying to get through all the 750 or so games had a very hard time. Often I would make up my mind using only a mouse over text and a few screen shots. If it seemed interesting I would watch the video, and if I thought it wasn't good enough I would downvote.

    I had a rather poor, although I would say necessary, approach to Greenlight: when in doubt downvote. Given that, by my very rough estimates, 7.5% of submissions to Greenlight were trolls and /r/equests. It was a rather frustrating environment for someone to find interesting content. I believe that around 15% of the games I viewed I up voted.

    To be honest Greenlight is a popularity contest, and Valve outsourcing their work to their, rather large, fanbase. Greenlight is actually a win-win situation. The fanbase can feel a part of a game by helping bring it to Steam, as well as feel a sense of pride of curation of content.

    I do believe that the entrance fee makes Greenlight a better place. Requiring an entrance fee removes the spam and crud from the service. It requires the developer have a commitment to bringing their game to Steam. Kickstarter is very similar in the matter, you have to promote yourself and get people to invest in your game to make it successful. (Admittedly we have yet to see a successful Greenlight game: so this is assumption)

    The next thing is the question of is the price right. Personally I feel they could have accomplished the same thing with $50, but there is still the standard Steam submission process.

    Greenlight is far from idealic, but so is just about everything. And in the short time since it's launch I believe it has shown a good amount of improvement, and I assume it will continue to improve.
  • edited
    I don't understand why people feel entitled to having their particular product being specially placed in a global storefront. You wouldn't expect your game to be on shelves in an actual shop, but because Valve do indeed go out of their way to try and facilitate indie developers, the indies that they don't manage to get to through sheer volume turn around and act like assholes.

    There's a business aspect to making games if that's what you want to do for a living. Steam is another channel to market. Saying they have a monopoly on PC gamers is stupid because it doesn't actually change the reality of how you have to compete in the marketplace. Especially when Steam actually does stuff to promote direct sales that they won't see any income from. Case in point: DD pre-orders; Everyone that pre-orders direct from us gets a Steam key; Steam makes no money from that, plus it's definitely helped us make more sales.

    Steam also tries to provide feedback on submissions - giving advice that would make a submitted game be something they would carry. I mean, that's their right, to pick and choose, but giving actual feedback? That's wonderful! Even if they don't manage to get to everyone.

    Basically Valve has been swamped for a very, very long time. All the indies with Steam contacts know this. Providing something like Greenlight as an additional Steam submission option is a great idea and it allows people to focus more on what they're supposed to be doing: Developer relations. I'm also pretty sure that the "upvote/downvote" thing is not the only metric that Valve are using with Greenlight - they're smart data people, I'm certain they'll do stuff like nucleate around specific groups of "reviewers" with good taste and downplay the impact of negative mobs.

    I have no idea why people seem to think that the answer to anything game related is "bitch and moan" instead of "make your games better".
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