Greenlight Spotlight

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Valve Requires Greenlight Entry Fee

People haven’t been quiet about the problems of Greenlight, as many submissions are at best naive first time game makers, while others are jokes or even requests. To combat this Valve have added a $100 submission fee for Greenlight, with that money then being donated to the ChildsPlay charity. The games that have been uploaded previously get to stay without paying.

Like everything on the internet opinions are divided. Here are a few interesting comments I found on my Twitter feed: 

Mike Bithell ‏@mikeBithell

@gamesbritannia $100 means more to an unemployed student than a design lead.. but to me, $100 is 10 game sales, which you'll get.

Sophie Houlden ‏@S0phieH

being successful on steam doesn't mean they are good for indies, it just means they were good for you. you sound silly arguing it means more

Matthew Wegner ‏@mwegner

$100 for Greenlight, $100 for IGF, $100 for iOS App Store? Soon, it may cost as many as THREE HUNDRED dollars to make games professionally!

Edmund McMillen ‏@EdmundMcMillenn

Fun fact: entering the igf costs 100$, i entered 3 games a year for 7 years, this is long before SMB and Isaac... quit bitchin *Greenlight*

Ed Key ‏@edclef

$100 for a greenlight listing seems pretty gross to me. The number of ppl with $100 and a crap game >>>> # of poor but awesome designers

Aubrey Hesselgren ‏@HilariousCow

Greenlight is not designed to catapult you to assured success. Make a great game. Make 'em BEG you to put it on steam. Fuck the acoustics.

Pat Ashe ‏@patrickashe

Main problem with Greenlight fee is you're paying $100 to be judged by people who use 'looks like a flash game' as valid criticism.

Mark Brown ‏@britishgaming

My thoughts on Steamgate: Why do people think they are entitled to get on Steam for free? It's Valve's shop, Valve's rules.

Richard Fine ‏@Superpig

Interesting that people are outraged at a barrier to entry for Greenlight but aren't talking about the barrier to entry for Steam itself.

My own opinions on Greenlight? Well firstly this wouldn’t have been such a big deal if the fee was around in the first place, but hindsight is a wonderful thing. Steam isn’t an indie game service, it is primarily just a PC game service where a lot of games that happen to be made by indie developers have managed to thrive, so a $100 entry fee isn’t obscene. Valve want to encourage only “serious” developers to submit, furthermore Steam is Valve’s biggest business, and while Valve are pretty cool, if you doubt that you will make over $100 in profit once on Steam then you’re probably not worth Valve’s time. However, those reasons are why I think there should be a $100 entry fee for submitting games to Steam proper. 

Paying for Greenlight however seems wrong, because once you’re onto Greenlight you’re hardly any nearer to getting onto Steam. With something like the AppStore, sure you have to pay before you know your product will be allowed, but Apple make it really clear what they do and don’t allow, so if you follow their rules it’s a pretty safe bet you will get onto their service. Moreover your fee grants you access to betas and the like. With Greenlight all you get is the ability to advertise on their page, so you may never even get close to being considered.

How does Valve fix Greenlight? I’m not sure. An open door policy to submissions obviously won’t work. It might be best if all submissions were first moderated by Valve, but then Valve are picking and choosing just like they do for Steam. Perhaps a Kickstarter type system where users donate $1 each? But that would mean you need a Greenlight for Greenlight. Whatever Valve eventually do, I don't think it can stay the way it is now.

Steam Greenlight News

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Greenlight Highlight: FRACT OSC

Myst meets Rez by way of Tron? I’m in. Thumbs up. Favourited.

Ok, you probably want more information than that.

FRACT OSC is a first person puzzle game that has you exploring an abstract audiovisual world. Pretty much every action seems to have a dynamically synthesised reaction, and your progress feeds into a powerful looking music creation tool. I’m a composer who loves synthesisers so obviously this is my kind of groove, but it looks like Phosfiend has done a good job at making the music tools not look completely terrifying to normal people. In-fact I’d quite like to see those tools in a simple iOS synthesiser app one day. The visuals are also great. They might not be pushing the boundaries of modern computing, but they get a lot of milage out of the striking colours and crazy environments.

Definitely check FRACT OSC out. It is currently sitting at 0%, and that’s just unacceptable.

Greenlight Page

Official Site

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Lewis Denby, co-developer of Richard & Alice has written up a piece on five problems he has with the Greenlight service.

It's an interesting read, and hopefully Valve have their ear to the ground on how to improve the service.

Greenlight: Five Initial Concerns

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Greenlight Highlight: Richard & Alice

First impressions matter, and to be honest the icon for Richard & Alice doesn’t fill you with the belief that this is going to be a game worth your time. If you dig a little deeper however, you will see that what Richard & Alice lacks in visual flair it makes up for in atmosphere. Set in a world where the weather has run rampant and wrecked civilisation you guide Richard & Alice through multiple story threads that I imagine are all quite miserable. After reading through their blog it also seems like they’re really focussing on puzzle design, so there won’t be any inane pixel hunting type tasks blocking your progress. Furthermore as an extra point in the games favour, the music sounds like a great mix of forlorn and harrowing.

Richard & Alice is a good example of the pros of the Greenlight system. Valve doesn’t need any help deciding if the next indie game by Johnathan Blow or Edmund McMillen should be on Steam or not. They have reached a point where a certain level of quality in their games is almost assured. What Valve would struggle with, and where Greenlight can be helpful is finding the games that are rougher around the edges, but still do some really interesting things. I think Richard & Alice might be one of those games, and I hope to see it on Steam one day.

Greenlight Page

Official Site

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Valve’s Steam Greenlight system launched a few days ago, offering a rather innovative way to help game developers get onto Steam’s digital distribution service. Anyone can create a page on Greenlight, allowing them to tell the world about their game. The idea is that the community will find the best games, and up vote them to a point where Valve takes notice and puts the game onto Steam. Unfortunately the Greenlight system is rather bare at the moment, and with 690 games having been uploaded already there is an awful lot to shift through.

This is where the Greenlight Spotlight comes in, helping you find the games to check out and the games to avoid. If you want to write a piece about a game on Greenlight, or the system as a whole just get in touch. Similarly we’re hoping developers will be up for interviews and maybe even podcasting to futher explain why you should pay attention to their games.