I Thought Steam's Greenlight was a Great Idea... Not Anymore

@rebgav said:

@dudy80 said:

Your telling me pinball arcade, which HAS been shot down by Valve and has had to turn to greenlight is not worthy of being on the store?

And yes, you can sell games on the internet other ways then steam, but steam is a major factor in success now days for most digital games.

I'm saying that if people aren't interested in the product then it need not be in the store.

Steam is often a factor in the financial success of a game, which is why games which have a realistic chance of selling-to and entertaining the consumer should get their fair chance at success rather than being shunted off the first couple of pages of new releases by games that aren't going to sell. Greenlight is not even a question of the quality or value of the games in question, it's purely about getting the games that people want onto the service quickly so that they can purchase them. At the moment, it seems like the primary criticism of Greenlight is "people are not voting for the games that I want," which is unfortunate for the individual but a completely irrelevant criticism of the service itself.

I suppose your right, but in some cases its hard to judge if a product will sell well.

Seems that between Greenlight & this $20 piece of software for doing bench checks on pcs called 3dMark Vantage (which just seems silly to buy), I believe more & more that whoever is making decisions now at Steam is picking choices off a dart board covered in post-it notes or some other kind of madness.

Everybody should just click yes on every single game. It doesn't cost anybody anything and it would make Valve come up with a better system.

Isn't Greenlight optional? I was under the impression Valve still retained it's original submission process but added Greenlight as a way of getting approval when the developer either did not have the clout, polish or money to make it through the "official channels". If that's the case are you saying there should be an upper limit on funding and quality for a game to be greenlit? or do want Greenlight not to exist at all? No one has this stuff figured out yet. Digital distribution is still in it's relative infancy. At least Valve is trying something to see if it works.

I would stab someone if it got Jets'n'Guns Gold greenlit.

Other than that, I haven't paid much attention to Greenlight.

yeah I dunno about Greenlight, seems badly ineffective and wildly misrepresentative of true market potential for games. Hope Steam continually improves it like they have just about all their services.

Yeah, between Greenlight, Early Access and the traditional approval process for games with publisher support, Steam just aren't offering enough ways to get a game on their service.

I'm not sure I mean I kinda agree with you that it sucks when games don't get Greenlit you want but... I mean a shooter from 2004? A baseball sim? Not exactly games I think would do well even if they were on Steam. (Then again I would say that about Football manager and I guess that does well).

Greenlight was never an 'Indie Portal', it was never branded that way, but sites and people called it that themselves. Greenlight was and still is branded as a way for developers and publishers to get their games on the Steam distribution track by having people vote for it. Nothing more, nothing less. As far as I know, they still have to pay the entry fee to be added and anyone who does so is allowed to put their game up, regardless of quality or state of development. Greenlight does not mean low quality, it's does not mean high quality... It means that they either don't have the time or don't have the connections with Valve to get their game up in an alternative fashion. Even big devs are starting to go with Greenlight, because of just how long it can take Valve to approve a title to the service. I've heard many-a-stories of people simply not hearing back from Valve what-so-ever after putting their original application in and after a few months and a hundred unasnwered emails... Can you blame them for wanting a chance to skip the line?

Now the real issue isn't with what Greenlight is... Which is what alot of you are focusing on. No, the real problem is how Valve handles those titles that are on Greenlight and are voted for positively, quite possibly games that they personally feel will fail to net them income. And that's where stories like Dave Lang's and others will pop up, people with games that have probably gotten hundreds of thousands, if not more, upvotes and still they haven't been told they're being Greenlit, yet broken games, exploitative or even worst, misleading titles are being approved on a daily basis. Where are these games coming from? Who's voting for them? How did they get approved yet some of the most popular titles on the net have failed to do so yet? Valve is a great company, don't get me wrong, but they lack any semblance of transparency and with that comes a responsibility to uphold their ethics and virtues towards gamers / their consumers. When that stops happening, then their system, one that claims to give the consumers power, isn't working properly or as intended, atleast in the eyes of those consumers that are using it. So while I don't see it as a 'bad' thing for developers, I do think it needs to be greatly improved, explained and for statistics, requirements and interest / sales to be properly shown.

Steam was the only way I could get a finished working version of Bastion after buying it off humblebundle. All the menus were garbage in the game installed from the setup.exe that humblebundle provided even with the patch. However I think I still prefer games as a product over a service but it's pretty hard to curb the trend unless your EU or something.

Anyways it is presumably a free market so if you don't like Steam there are plenty other digital download services like http://www.gamersgate.com/

that sell almost any game you can think of e.g.

Suspension railroad simulator 2013

New York Bus simulator

Here it is, the reason why some games don't get voted in Steam Greenlight: A majority of Steam users don't want ports of games already released from other platforms, mostly handheld devices like iOS, 3DS, and Android. Why? If it wasn't specifically designed for the PC user in mind, a port will not live up to what a PC user wants. When Steam users get bad ports, even console ports, they go nuts. Read the spite in the Steam forums, the fury. Steam users don't want ports.

well there are other services they could release on. It's not like Steam is the only shop in town for the PC. If the games are good and there is enough of them, they can help carry another service to prominence. I'd say GOG and Greenman are already pretty good alternatives.

But maybe, just maybe the games not getting thru greenlight aren't actually worth the trouble. Working as intended.

@mento said:

This would be cool, if instead of just one game, they put up a portfolio of games to look through and decide whether you want to greenlight the developer.

Stupid? WHAT? Larry is an Icon and Legend in the gaming world. Seriously how old are you?

As for Green Light Some developer or publisher even try to see with greenlight if its even worth putting it on steam and how the reception is. Agarest of War is such an example. They could have gone directly on steam but Valve was suggesting testing the waters with greenlight. Alos just because you thin it is a great game does not mean it has appeal to other people.

To be fair, the last couple of Leisure Suit Larry games (i.e.: the ones that aren't point and click adventures) are pretty bad.

I'm puzzled to the fact that Dragon's Lair needed to be Greenlit on Steam.

I do enjoy though that some games that don't make Greenlit get put on GOG. Love me actually having a game that isn't hooked to a bloated program.

Considering there's no way to sort by 'rating' on steam or any other way of filtering out badness, this kind of barrier to entry is needed just to make it at all desirable to rummage through their selection when you don't have a particular game in mind.

There has been quite a lot of recent discussion how "bad" Greenlight is. I disagree. Our game Legends of Eisenwald got greenlit in the last batch, so you might think I am prejudiced but here is an article that came out before we were greenlit and when I actually thought that it would take lots of effort to be accepted: http://www.flesheatingzipper.com/gaming/2013/05/legends-of-eisenwald-developer-says-steams-greenlight-service-is-great-explains-inner-workings/

Greenlight is not perfect, of course, but it's so much better than previous submission process!