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

When Greenlight started out it seemed like it would be doing small indies a favor by helping them get approved where they usually would not have a chance to get on steam. This was supposed to be a way for start-ups and such to potentially gain support from the community and allow them to launch a game that would have been unreleasable without a publisher otherwise. At least that was the idea in theory, look at the list now and you will see that its cloged an jammed with many games that have either launched on other platforms or are made by veteran developers.

Take Pinball Arcade which has had great success on consoles and mobile platforms, why the hell is Valve denying them access and making them go through greenlight? Worse is the fact that game like these while popular dont stand a great chance of being "lit" in the first place as most people can get there fix on another platform. Want more? How about Jets n Guns, a game that came out in 2004 and is one of the best shumps on the pc, why cant they bypass greenlight and just get on the store? Last one, Out of the Park Baseball 13, a highly successful baseball sim and very long running franchise is also on greenlight, what in gods name do they have to prove, its obvious they know there stuff and its a shame because a Baseball sim has a snowballs chance in hell on greenlight.

I could understand if Valve had some extreme quality control on what went up in the store, but by no means is that the case as most people who frequent there store already know. Some of the stuff that gets released on there is plain crap and we all know it. It seems as if Valve has turned a once good idea into a catchall for games they dont want bothered with, denying promising or long standing but niche developers a real chance and basically condemning them to there own version of development hell. It be different if greenlight had a faster turn around, but at a measly 10 or so games a month most developers out of the top 20 don't have a chance as there game will lose steam in the voting on greenlight and fall out of the top long before they ever have a chance.

Steam has become a near necessity for small developers looking for success on the platform as its really cornered the digital market, Valve needs to stop throwing up roadblocks to seemingly random games that should already be on the damned store. I hope Valve change there way of doing this soon.

I was certainly puzzled to see that Asylum needed to be green-lit. I mean, hell, you can buy Scratches on Steam (and you should). But then again, I don't actually know anything about Steam's induction process.

P.S. - Everyone should check out The Cat Lady on Greenlight (here: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=114327732&searchtext=). It's actually a pretty respectable portrayal of depression, attired in the grotesque and macabre.

I don't know what it's like, so this is just speculation, but maybe there's something about the normal process to getting your game on Steam that makes some developers just go through Greenlight instead, even if they could get through the process eventually, with the rational being if not enough people greenlight it, then it probably wouldn't have sold well on Steam anyway?

You're right though, I've noticed the same thing, games which seem like they previously would have just gotten accepted, going through Greenlight, and clogging the service for the little guy, who it was designed for.

@mylifeforAiur: Yea, at least they got greenlit though, another one that comes to mind is Cook, Serve, Delicious!. That game is great from everything i'v heard and the quicklook was great as well. Too bad they dont stand a chance on Greenlight either.

My issue with Greenlight is that a great deal of the games on it are so underwhelming. I was expecting a ton of fresh, interesting ideas, but everything looks like I would lose interest after playing for an hour or so. I just want to be wowed again...

@BraveToaster said:

My issue with Greenlight is that a great deal of the games on it are so underwhelming. I was expecting a ton of fresh, interesting ideas, but everything looks like I would lose interest after playing for an hour or so. I just want to be wowed again...

The thing is if a game is that special that it creates that kind of feeling and is that fresh it shouldn't need Greenlight in the first place.

Yeah, it would be a shame to see steam's market get flooded with a bunch off crap.

Do games have to make their way through Greenlight if it's from a developer with nothing else on Steam? I keep thinking back to that entry fee and its intended purpose to deter time-wasters and no-hopers. Surely if you have a proven track record with earlier games that have sold well on the service, they ought to detach the velvet rope and let you through automatically with subsequent ones.

If that's the case and any new developer - major and minor Indie studios alike - has to go through Greenlight, if only for that first game, I could see it being an explicable roadblock. I'd like to think Greenlight is in service to the developers themselves rather than the games, where getting Greenlit is like a community-approved license to do business with Valve.

I remember when this first started being a thing, Brad expressed the sentiment that he hates to sound like an elitist, but this depends on people to have tastes. I thought he was right then and I still think he is - Steam Greenlight isn't a great idea because there's no quality control, it all depends on people's tastes, and, well...

I do agree that Greenlight is at least good for voting on games for steam though like you I'm just not understanding why they don't put more games that are indie & already made on steam. There's been so many that were in the voting section of greenlight or approved recently which should have been just added to steam.

I don't think it's a perfect set-up by any means, but I think it's as good a solution as could be expected. The old model of having the Valve teams solely responsible for determining what games are suitable for sale on Steam means that a lot of great small projects can fall through the cracks. But if XBLIG and the iOS/Android markets are any indication, a majority of consumers for these games are fucking morons that will buy goddamned anything with zombies and mining in it. So having an early sorting process done by users, while still leaving the final say up to Valve's team, minimizes both problems relatively well.

You are definitely right that if a game is truly something special, it shouldn't need to go through the class government popularity contest of a system, but if it really is something special, it shouldn't have much problem standing out among the garbage. And even though it's dumb that they need to do all this to get their stuff on Steam, it's still more of a chance to get onto Steam than these games would have had without Greenlight.

On the other hand, I'm totally with you in not understanding why established, credible developers, some one whom are already selling other games on Steam, are made to go through the process.

@dudy80 said:

@BraveToaster said:

My issue with Greenlight is that a great deal of the games on it are so underwhelming. I was expecting a ton of fresh, interesting ideas, but everything looks like I would lose interest after playing for an hour or so. I just want to be wowed again...

The thing is if a game is that special that it creates that kind of feeling and is that fresh it shouldn't need Greenlight in the first place.

And this is why the other games get upvoted, because people think like this.

It turns out I'm just not that often in the mood to look through a bunch of games and see which ones I'd like to play. Hell, I'm not even that often in the mood for that with the games I have installed.

. none of the games i vote for get the green light it's a load of shite and the one's i vote are the bestest of all. but then their is euro truckers 2 ..........

Getting on steam doesn't mean automatic success for them, humble bundle is a way better place for indies to get their game noticed.

It's essentially a popularity contest. As such, some of the more deserving games are going to be overlooked.

Yea I don't get why some games are on Greenlight. Maybe it is cheaper? I'm sure there are submission costs and such and maybe those costs are a lot more than $100. Also I think a lot of games go on Greenlight long before they are ready for release. You'll see games still in prototype stages appear on Greenlight which is not at all what the service was meant for. Half the time I feel like I am voting based on promises. They say they will include X, Y, and Z features. But they shouldn't be trying to get their game on Steam until those features actually work. Greenlight seems to have become the thing indie developers put their games on to gauge people's interest in the idea and get feedback. That is a fine thing to have but that wasn't what Greenlight was made for. Because of that you have to slog through a ton of prototypes before you can vote on something that is actually close to being done. I wouldn't submit a game to Steam unless it was 90% finished. I don't exactly like what Greenlight has become. Also, instead of being a platform for fresh new ideas, it has become a breeding ground for shitty copy cat games. It feels like almost every game I look at on Greenlight falls into one of four or five different categories. What Greenlight has mostly shown me is that most game designers just aren't very good. And that is a shame.

It's baffling to me that some stupid Leisure Suit Larry game can get greenlight and Cook, Serve, Delicious or Kentucky Route Zero can't.

@Milkman said:

It's baffling to me that some stupid Leisure Suit Larry game can get greenlight and Cook, Serve, Delicious or Kentucky Route Zero don't.

Kentucky Route Zero has been Greenlit. Apparently because it was an IGF finalist? I feel like that wasn't reported on anywhere, but that's what the wiki says.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=111329296

However, it has not been released on Steam yet. There is definitely a weird delay sometimes with games that are literally already released elsewhere and Greenlit, yet they somehow still takes months for them to show up.

Of the first batch of 10 games that got approved, only McPixel and Towns have been released, and it was back in September that they were approved. I guess some of those projects are still in progress, are maybe the devs just have a hard time integrating Steam achievements/Steamworks/Steam Cloud saves into their game, but yeah, it seems kind of dumb that something like Kentucky Route Zero isn't immediately just available on Steam.

If people want the game enough you can bypass parts of Greenlight. I think Resonance did it. They rose fast enough to bypass the rest.

@BisonHero: Ah, I wasn't aware of that. That's awesome. Now, get Cook, Serve, Delicious on there and I'll be happy.

@BisonHero: That's whats bugging me most about Greenlight these days. As a side issue to the topic creator's point that most of the greenlit games are well-known and already being sold elsewhere, even after they win the fans' votes Valve continues to sit on them!

Black Mesa was a slam dunk success in the first class of approvals. The developers have had the mod out there for months, complete with Steam achievements. On their FAQ, they say they've submitted the same build to Valve when they were greenlit, and have no idea when it will appear on the store. Yes this is a free mod, but it's something that would drive people to boot up Steam, similar to free apps in iOS. And they are dragging their feet with full games that the fans have voted on as well. It's a disturbing trend for Valve to be acting more like Microsoft, making developers wait months before arbitrary slots open up or something.

I'm going through my greenlight queue from time to time, which for some reason is always full of terrible-looking Japanese 16-bit style MMO/F2P games. Out of 100 items I think I've up-voted maybe 10 games.

I thought that Valve had said that the "traditional" way of getting on Steam will still be there as an alternative after Greenlight comes. Guess this only applies to games with X millions budget now.

@believer258: It makes sense. You can put 10 artsy games that 5 people will buy or the stuff that people want to play. This is the basis of Greenlight to let users choose what would they play.

The way i see Greenlight working so far is that it is Valve protecting themselves slightly from giving "shelf space" to games that really wont sell well. You can say a console game sells well and that is all well and good but PC gamers are different from console gamers. The TC's example of pinball games are a good example. I play pinball games, i do enjoy them but you can't say they aren't a small market. Throwing it up on Steam and saying "Here, buy this" only for it to make very little money on Steams end, not the publishers, makes it not worth the cost of putting a bigger name title there. It's why i think the people who voted and got "Euro Truck Simulator" find it funny, which is great but the game is only going to be brought by some for the "lol physics". Only the fans really want that games on there and so a lot of people who up-voted it wont buy it.

It's really hard to say its been 100% bad so far but it is a good way to judge how the ebb and flow of Steam is going right now. When some indie games are doing far better then others, i would think Valve are watching it and judging for themselves.

@valrog said:

I thought that Valve had said that the "traditional" way of getting on Steam will still be there as an alternative after Greenlight comes. Guess this only applies to games with X millions budget now.

The traditional way is going through a publisher. No need for millions of budget but you still need a publisher. Hotline Miami for example would have to go through Greenlight if Devolver D. didn't publish it.

Did some voting a couple of days ago and was shocked.

Steam Greenlight needs more zombie themed games. Seriously. It´s like not even half of my queue says "Something something Z" on it. It also needs more half-horror games with bad graphics aimed at preteens (and Patrick Klepek).

Nah, in all honesty- it´s a fucking slog to get to anything even remotely interesting. I don´t think they should allow games that can´t even show any gameplay/screenshots yet. I can absolutely see how something like Pinball Arcade gets the short end of the stick in there. Nobody even makes it to Pinball Arcade. Nobody clicks through five pages of "here´s my concept painting for a fireaxe"- and if they do, chances are they´re not really interested in the same games we are. Because they´re 13 years old and waaaay into Slender and Zombies.

I remember when this first started being a thing, Brad expressed the sentiment that he hates to sound like an elitist, but this depends on people to have tastes. I thought he was right then and I still think he is - Steam Greenlight isn't a great idea because there's no quality control, it all depends on people's tastes, and, well...

@Danteveli said:

@believer258: It makes sense. You can put 10 artsy games that 5 people will buy or the stuff that people want to play. This is the basis of Greenlight to let users choose what would they play.

@ProfessorEss said:

@believer258 said:

I remember when this first started being a thing, Brad expressed the sentiment that he hates to sound like an elitist, but this depends on people to have tastes. I thought he was right then and I still think he is - Steam Greenlight isn't a great idea because there's no quality control, it all depends on people's tastes, and, well...

But that is kind of elitist as it implies that "having taste" means having the same taste as the individual saying it. This is the same type of person who grumbles when their game gets beat 1,000,000 to 1 because "everyone has bad taste except for me". Giving people who believe they have "good taste" the ability to push through what they like is less akin to quality control than straight up mass voting. As far as the topic is concerned I'm sure there's a complicated web of reasons as to why a developer would opt to go through Greenlight or why Valve would decide to put them through it.

I am not saying you're wrong, but... let's take a look at that Apple store for games, or the one on Android, or the one on Windows Phone? You know, the kinds of places where crap gets through daily just because people will pay a dollar or something for it? Yeah, there's not much taste there, and that's what I'm afraid Steam Greenlight will become.

Yes, I understand that taste is subjective and all, but I don't want to see every turd that a couple of basement dwellers can pop out get through Steam Greenlight because a bunch of other basement dwellers want to play it for ten minutes and then never touch it again when something interesting and different that some people might have worked really hard on couldn't pass because it a) didn't have a publisher and b) wasn't silly top-down zombie shooter #546705.

But maybe this is just me being incredibly cynical and somewhat hypocritical, as I don't actually visit Steam Greenlight that much.

I'm kind of freaked out about Greenlight right now actually. I'm working on a small project that I'm planning on selling, and I have no idea how I could possibly get it through Greenlight. It isn't the sort of thing that propagates through video or screenshots, and I don't expect it to achieve wild success. I do however think that it would serve its audience very well and would do well over time through word of mouth. So what the heck am I supposed to do?

@believer258 said:

I remember when this first started being a thing, Brad expressed the sentiment that he hates to sound like an elitist, but this depends on people to have tastes. I thought he was right then and I still think he is - Steam Greenlight isn't a great idea because there's no quality control, it all depends on people's tastes, and, well...

To me it's not even that simple. I mean greenlight puts the approval process in the hands of people who have most likely never even played the game in question. So not only is steam putting games up on the store based on people's taste, they relying on people's opinions of screenshots and promises.

I am not saying you're wrong, but... let's take a look at that Apple store for games, or the one on Android, or the one on Windows Phone? You know, the kinds of places where crap gets through daily just because people will pay a dollar or something for it? Yeah, there's not much taste there, and that's what I'm afraid Steam Greenlight will become.

Yes, I understand that taste is subjective and all, but I don't want to see every turd that a couple of basement dwellers can pop out get through Steam Greenlight because a bunch of other basement dwellers want to play it for ten minutes and then never touch it again when something interesting and different that some people might have worked really hard on couldn't pass because it a) didn't have a publisher and b) wasn't silly top-down zombie shooter #546705.

@ProfessorEss said:

@believer258 said:

I am not saying you're wrong, but... let's take a look at that Apple store for games, or the one on Android, or the one on Windows Phone? You know, the kinds of places where crap gets through daily just because people will pay a dollar or something for it? Yeah, there's not much taste there, and that's what I'm afraid Steam Greenlight will become.

Yes, I understand that taste is subjective and all, but I don't want to see every turd that a couple of basement dwellers can pop out get through Steam Greenlight because a bunch of other basement dwellers want to play it for ten minutes and then never touch it again when something interesting and different that some people might have worked really hard on couldn't pass because it a) didn't have a publisher and b) wasn't silly top-down zombie shooter #546705.

That's fair, but I also don't want to see every two hour, gimmicky indie game get pushed through because it's considered interesting by the people with "good taste" :)

Let's be fair here: That is also "bad taste". Only, it's the bad taste of people who consistently believe that they have "good taste" so it's more pretentious.

What this really needs is some sort of middle ground. Like... a middle man. Like... whatever Steam used to do for these sorts of things, for instance.

We have Kickstarter for popularity contests.

EDIT: I seem to be using more ellipses today than Jay used to.

@hughesman said:

So not only is steam putting games up on the store based on people's taste, they relying on people's opinions of screenshots and promises.

There have been examples recently of games being put up for commercial sale on Steam in half-finished or broken states: The War Z and Cortex Command. Both didn't have feature lists so much as a list of promises of what would maybe be in the game someday. They didn't go through Greenlight, but they're pretty strong evidence that Steam's QA process is nowhere near infallible and that customers need very clear guidance on which games are actually complete and which are works-in-progress.

You can list an unfinished game on Greenlight, right? I'm worried that we're going to see this sort of thing happen again as unfinished projects get rushed through Greenlight based on hype and popularity, then have their "Alpha" version come out that never delivers on what they advertised to get them through Greenlight in the first place. Case in point: Towns.

@SagaciousJones said:

@hughesman said:

So not only is steam putting games up on the store based on people's taste, they relying on people's opinions of screenshots and promises.

There have been examples recently of games being put up for commercial sale on Steam in half-finished or broken states: The War Z and Cortex Command. Both didn't have feature lists so much as a list of promises of what would maybe be in the game someday. They didn't go through Greenlight, but they're pretty strong evidence that Steam's QA process is nowhere near infallible and that customers need very clear guidance on which games are actually complete and which are works-in-progress.

You can list an unfinished game on Greenlight, right? I'm worried that we're going to see this sort of thing happen again as unfinished projects get rushed through Greenlight based on hype and popularity, then have their "Alpha" version come out that never delivers on what they advertised to get them through Greenlight in the first place. Case in point: Towns.

Again, you're not wrong, but some quality control is better than none.

yea it worries me that War Z passed through Valves regular curation, but other games which obviously deserve to be on the service (unepic comes to mind) are rejected and forced into greenlight.

@believer258 said:

Again, you're not wrong, but some quality control is better than none.

Oh, I didn't mean to imply otherwise. If Greenlight is a way of narrowing the load for their QA team, fantastic. Still, I've had my faith in the quality of games listed on Steam rather shaken and the Greenlight process may be a recipe for making those problematic games even more common.

@rebgav said:

@dudy80 said:

Worse is the fact that game like these while popular dont stand a great chance of being "lit" in the first place as most people can get there fix on another platform.

If a game won't sell on Steam because everyone already has it on another platform, why waste resources bringing it to the service?

It's way, way too early to try to assess the effectiveness of Greenlight. It needs a couple of years to start forming observable patterns in the approval and submissions process as well as the performance of greenlighted games on the storefront.

I never said it wouldn't sell, i just meant its less liekly to get a huge amount of buzz around it. Its not as if Valve loses money for games that dont sell well on steam or something, there basically taking zero risk. Sure, not all games deserve to be on steam but i think if you already have a release on a platform as strict as Xbox Live your good enough to get a game on steam.

I think they should just cancel greenlight, and implement some kind of open store where Steam gets a cut. Just have it all exist on the side of the real Steam store. That way we can just buy those games we want right away on Steam, and we won't be swamped with projects that don't exist.

Sure that means there will be a lot of shovelware but Steam can easily implement better search tools, plus the real Steam games will be in a separate store so to speak.

I thought it was a lousy dumb idea from the beginning. I rarely voice it because, criticising valve is like internet heresy. Gabe Newell is a very smart guy but to much of a populist in my opinion.

i dunno- i don't really have a problem with greenlight. it's simply another channel for developers to use- i don't think ALL developers are being funneled in that direction; you can still pony up the money if you want a traditional steam release with all the bells and whistles. as mentioned earlier, it's simply a way of bypassing a publisher- it's being vetted by the mob as opposed to suits. and yeah, that won't always have a positive outcome (be it shlock getting through, or good niche games getting overlooked). but such is life, and i still have faith that true quality will rise to the top. and at the end of the day, it's still an additional option for release where one didn't exist before, albeit an imperfect one.

tl;dr- mcpixel got greenlit. that certainly says SOMETHING.

[quote]i don't think ALL developers are being funneled in that direction;[/quote]

They are, almost everyone who isn't a major established publisher or developer has to go through the process. It's just the worst idea.

I have a lot of problems with Steam in genral. I feel like they keep adding features, but never improving on features they already have.

Like why are they featuring games I already own. That is just a time waster, for me and for them. Im not asking them to put a game I dont own on sale. Just stop showing me crap that I own, or at the very least put a badge or something so I know I own it.

Also show me the ratings, in the pop up on the front page.

I will say though they did take some of my suggestions - The workshop page dose float the games you own as opposed to randomly showing you crap. And the Search dose bring you back to the last page you were at as opposed to the first page.

But in the last 6 months they have added Linux support, Big Picture, and Greenlight, and improved almost nothing about steam actually works.

It always surprises me that games like Kentucky Route Zero or that Euro Truck Simulator 2 even need to be green-lighted to get on Steam.

@deerokus said:

They are, almost everyone who isn't a major established publisher or developer has to go through the process. It's just the worst idea.

do you have evidence to that effect? RPS seemed to indicate in this article

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/09/27/valve-on-steam-greenlights-failings-fixing-them/

that greenlight is an option, not mandatory. i don't doubt that a small-time developer can't afford a traditional steam release, but take a game like hotline miami- that wasn't greenlight, was it?

edit: i just did some of my own research. if you look here-

http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/about/?appid=765&section=faq

it states:

"Who should submit their games to Steam Greenlight? Is there another way to submit my game to Steam?

Steam Greenlight has replaced our previous submission process. Any developer or publisher who is new to Steam and interested in submitting their game to the platform should submit their game through Steam Greenlight."

i think the important bit of info there is "Any developer or publisher who is new to Steam..." granted- that would seem to put untested properties at a disadvantage...but that's sort of part-and-parcel to being untested. i'm still confident that if you produce a really quality product worthy of mass distribution (like FTL, or hotline miami)- you'll get the critical mass you need.

Hotline Miami has a publisher, who already had a few games on Steam. Devolver Digital, who are small, but publish all the Serious Sam games. I think that's why it didn't have to go through that process.

Edit: as for evidence, it's on their own page.

http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/about/?appid=765%A7ion=faq

"Steam Greenlight has replaced our previous submission process. Any developer or publisher who is new to Steam and interested in submitting their game to the platform should submit their game through Steam Greenlight."

This happened a couple of months AFTER that RPS article.

@deerokus:

ha- great minds eh? anyway- you're absolutely right in indicating that it's mandatory for new entities, i stand partially corrected- but again, that really doesn't bother me too much. if they really are good- they'll get a publishing deal (even from a small publisher, it doesn't have to be activision), or they're do the social engineering necessary to get the greenlight vote. it'll just take blood sweat and tears, like small-time development (hell even AAA development) always has.

edit: even taking kentucky route zero as an example- yeah, bummer that had to languish in greenlight for a bit, but look at what happened- the quality was recognized by the IGF, and steam granted an automatic release. that won't work for everyone, but this isn't like quality work isn't be recognized full-stop. it'll be interesting to see the path something like fez takes- will they self-publish and thereby hit up greenlight? or will they go another route. guess we'll see.

@rebgav said:

@dudy80 said:

@rebgav said:

@dudy80 said:

Worse is the fact that game like these while popular dont stand a great chance of being "lit" in the first place as most people can get there fix on another platform.

If a game won't sell on Steam because everyone already has it on another platform, why waste resources bringing it to the service?

It's way, way too early to try to assess the effectiveness of Greenlight. It needs a couple of years to start forming observable patterns in the approval and submissions process as well as the performance of greenlighted games on the storefront.

I never said it wouldn't sell, i just meant its less liekly to get a huge amount of buzz around it. Its not as if Valve loses money for games that dont sell well on steam or something, there basically taking zero risk. Sure, not all games deserve to be on steam but i think if you already have a release on a platform as strict as Xbox Live your good enough to get a game on steam.

Clearly Valve doesn't feel the same way about it.

Steam sells games, it's not an indie game archiving service. If a dev's potential customers are not voting their game up on Greenlight then they're basically telling the developer that they don't want to buy their game - at what point is that a problem with the system? Already we've seen games which were turned down by Steam's traditional submission methods Greenlighted and made available for sale on the service to the benefit of the consumers, the service and the developers. Steam is not the only way to sell a game on the internet, so if someone is determined to make money from their efforts there are other avenues available to them.

Indie game archiving service? Fuck, pinball arcade is one of the best pinball games to come out in years, also Out of the Park Baseball is about as long standing a franchise as you can get and basically the best baseball sim ever made. I already said im not advocating putting everything on greenlight thats on there as there is a shit-ton of garbage that is just filler, but in amongst that is some games that are way better then some of the garbage that gets put on the store. 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.

Greenlight has for me now become almost a warning of low quality. Shame really :/