@CircleNine said:
Steam is still looking through the games that get posted to see what they like and think is good. They're going to be accepting games that don't get whatever the magical number of votes is to reach 100%. Even reaching 100% doesn't guarantee you a spot on the store. Apple and Microsoft both charge similar fees to develop for iOS/XBLIG, and with iOS its a recurring yearly fee. The reason why people are willing to pay this fee is because Steam remains to be a pretty exclusive platform to be released on. If you don't think that you can get enough people excited about your game to even start a kickstarter or something similar to raise that $100 if you aren't able to afford it yourself, your game probably isn't worth putting up onto Steam in the first place.
@TPoppaPuff: Valve isn't making money from requiring people to pay a one time $100 fee to be able to upload things to greenlight, it's being given to charity. It isn't about them making money from the fee, its about them getting rid of/severely limiting shitty joke and spam submissions. And the dozens of people who daily posted greenlight projects about how cool it would be to see Minecraft on Steam.
And I win, because I want Steam to remain the place of (relatively) high quality games, rather than it just becoming a dumping ground for the low effort low quality cash grab shit that you see dumped onto XBLIG.
That is the shittiest argument anyone can ever make. I'm sick of hearing that. You can literally make the best game ever that everyone would love if they actually played it, but if you can't sell it to other people based on hype alone then suddenly the best game ever "probably isn't worth putting up on Steam in the first place?" That's bullshit. Getting a handful of people to take a chance on playing your game then having word of mouth propel the game is how indie games gain traction, not how much you spend on trailers. That's a big difference between indie games and big budget titles, and considering Greenlight is about indie titles and not big budget titles, that means very clearly that they are going about it all wrong and have created a system that is fundamently flawed and counterintuitive to it's own purpose, unless that purpose actually only was, "We're Valve, leave us the fuck alone, go annoy Greenlight instead."
I will say it again: $20 gets rid of virtually just as many shitty joke and spam submissions as $100. Nowconsidering justifying a $100 fee is exponentially harder than justifying a $20 fee, is it smarter for them to charge ten people $100, making just $1000 and ten potential games, maybe one of which comes out, or is it smarter for them to charge 100 people $20, making $2000 and 100 potential games, maybe ten of which come out? In what situation does anybody win in the former compared to the latter? You tell me. You lose.
And a lot of Steam is comprised of low quality cash grab shit made with bigger budgets but just as boring. XBLIG is filled with shovelware, but at least their shovelware admits to being shovelware, whereas Steam has tons of shovelware with licenses behind them. Now which is a bigger cash grab? The shitty game made by one guy because he wanted to make his game, poor as it may be, or the shitty game that was only created to sell the license, a game in which afterwards the develoopers admit it was a low quality cash grab?
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