Valve, a company well-known for their innovations, great titles like Half-Life, as well as their platform, Steam. The latter is what I would like to discuss here, as on 7th of May Valve held a live chat with some indie developers, discussing one of the more interesting areas of Steam – Greenlight project.
Greenlight, as you most probably know, is a program designed to allow independent developers to sell their games on Steam. As a relatively new feature, Greenlight is still under development and Valve wanted to know what does the most interested group, the devs, have to say about it. We have the chat trimmed down to the juiciest bits by Crunching Coalas. There is little info which could be of interest to an average player, but these are worth pointing out:
• Valve aims to provide Steamworks API to a broader range of developers, so that Greenlight games could be started before the actual voting process.
• Also, their goal is to have Greenlit more games than now, but it will require some technical improvements
• In the future, Greenlight may be divided into "Games that are ready to go" and "Games that are in development" sections.
• Games are Greenlit based on multiple conditions and individually, so the "Yes" votes are not the only factor
• Valve is not going to force people to use Greenlight, despite some developers being discontent with the number of users regularly browsing it
• It is possible that a "Demo" button will be introduced to Greenlight
Seeing how Steam is the leading force in the online distribution of games, we can surely expect it to develop further. And seeing how indie games are currently becoming more and more popular (thank God), it is only natural that Valve would try to improve their Greenlight. Well, good going guys!
Posted 11-05-2013, 03:09
• Games are Greenlit based on multiple conditions and individually, so the "Yes" votes are not the only factor
Valve said that there are many factors, including the success on other platforms, coverage amount, interest in the game... So I would not say that Greenlight took the selection from Valve, it broadened it rather
Posted 11-05-2013, 02:56
How many votes does a game need now anyway?
In my opinion, though the idea is good I do agree with what Jenssen said; it should have been an addition rather than a complete replacement. Reason being, the thing that bothers me is the games that haven't been greenlit but, if Valve were to accept it themselves, probably wouldn't need to be at all. Only voted on a handful but there's a game called Mutant Mudds, for example, that I did vote for. It's been released on Nintendo's eShop, initially being a DS release; it's available on GOG.com (from where I bought it); you can find it on Desura; it's on Gamersgate; and even as an iOS app, with pretty reasonable reviews across the board. Yet a game like WarZ is accepted blindly and then excused. Hm.
Furthermore, solely relying on the community is...difficult, to say the least. Like I said, I've only voted on a handful, but there's very likely many hidden gems in there that Valve would accept themselves, and I think that's a little sad, and no doubt disheartening to those developers.
Posted 11-05-2013, 02:34
It's not. Valve themselves are no longer accepting games directly, unless they are from a big publisher or someone who have already published games on Steam before. Games like Postal 2 had to go through Greenlight, even.
Posted 11-05-2013, 02:08
I'm pretty sure it is an addition....and it gives the indies a bit more of a platform to advertise themselves on.
Posted 10-05-2013, 20:21
Greenlight shouldn't have been a replacement to Valve's selection process. It should be an addition. Games that don't get selected by Valve personally should go to Greenlight, and then if enough people vote them up, they get greenlit.