Steam Direct publishing fee revealed... still 100$ :D

Community Community & Industry Discussion
41

As fun as shitposting is, there’s a time and place for that. I consider this forum a notch more professional.

Looking at the Greenlight page, assuming these are totals, there have been ~13000 greenlight games and ~7000 released games (source, source).

Greenlight was released on August 30th 2012, so let’s say 5 years ago. This means 4000 games per year, ~15 games per work day. However, this does not include games that were submitted to Steam greenlight but don’t pass. Unfortunately I couldn’t find any hard numbers on this (or soft numbers, or any numbers at all), so let’s be extremely pessimistic and say that 90% of the games that are submitted to Greenlight never make it through. That would mean that there are in truth 200000 games that have been submitted over the course of 5 years. This would make it 150 games per day for whoever is curating it. Even this number isn’t that gargantuan for a small QC team, I fully concede that point. But then, why hasn’t Valve done this before? Why don’t they intend to do it now? They talk about automated filtering algorithms when the numbers aren’t that astronomical.

I strongly disagree on the point that any QC staff would be above pushing their own agenda, after all, they’re all humans. The only thing I am 100% certain is that within 2 months of a hypothetical manual QC system going live, you could find an example of a quality game being rejected for apparent political reasons, while a much worse game gets the pass for being on the other end of the political spectrum. It’s the way the cookie has been crumbling for the past few years and it shows no sign of stopping.

Valve has said a lot of things without following up on them. Believing any gigantic monolithic company on their word alone is bound to end badly.

Again, I fully agree that a developer being able to fork over money has no connection to the quality, but this was never about stopping developers, it’s about stopping “developers”, i.e. ****-flooders. I argue that those people, who happily prance their “game” into Steam nowadays as a quick cashgrab or hell, even a prank (I remember some BS “game” from a few years ago made with the default UE4 blue mannequin, there was a lengthy discussion about it), wouldn’t be willing to fork over cash to do the same. Some “real” games not being able to do so either is I believe a small price to pay for that.

The last point I’d like to punctuate with what I said earlier - regardless of whether Steam does QC, or higher fees or whatever else could solve the issue, having a higher barrier for entry can only result in good things for the PC gaming ecosystem. Steam competitors would sprawl like daisies to host all of the games who don’t make the cut to Steam. Hell, I’ve half a mind to argue that this is the one reason why Valve doesn’t want a real entry-barrier but is instead doing “filtering algorithms” and other band-aid fixes.

Competition is always good for the end consumer.

43

lol no it’s not

Those numbers are likely inflated as well. Keep in mind that when greenlight launched, there was NO fee, and was spammed with an incredible amount of half life 3s, and other such trash, for the first few weeks as a result.

Valve has an obsession with innovating. They’re trying to build a system where games have easy access to a marketplace, that is also capable of bringing the good ones to the attention of the people who would have an interest in those games. While I’m solidly in the support of human QC crowd, I understand why they’re not doing that.

While this is absolutely an issue in certain circumstances that we need to be wary of, most games do not fit the political agenda bill in any way shape or form, and for the ones that do, it’s not particularly hard to find someone who can be neutral in such matters.

Sure, but there isn’t even an argument to be had here if we’re just going to assume everything valve says is a lie.

Except this change does stop them. Most of these atrocious games do not sell anything, and were making a profit through exploiting trading cards. Now that the fee is per entry it doesn’t allow a them to pay once, and then have a license to pump out as much garbage as they want.

I agree, but I don’t think the storefront is the place for that, due to aforementioned lack of a connection between a developer’s bank account size, and the quality of their work. In the past game engines had a higher barrier to entry, and this was by and large a good thing. There was some degree of technical knowledge required in order to create a game, and that went a long way to weeding out the idiots, there was also a much more significant connection between understanding how to work in an engine, and the quality of work you can produce. On the other hand, any idiot can pile a bunch of stolen asset packs into unity and friends, slap in a game mode, and press compile.

44

I believe a $1000.00 is too little barrier to entry, back in the day when engines cost upwards of quater of a million and publishing deals were extremely rare “indies” had to be inventive. Can’t remember off the top of my head who it was, but I heard tales of startup games companies posting floppy’s through peoples doors to find a grounding. Today the market is far more accessible, if you truly have faith in your game release a demo… Try to get as much feedback via as many media sources as possible and when demand becomes high enough start crowd funding for the fee…

With a $100.00 barrier to entry the market will become flooded just like Android / IOS. So unless you win the “game industry lottery”, you’ll need far more than a $1000.00 to get even a mediocre ROI via advertising etc… The PC market was already in decline, this is the final nail.

So unless you’re doing this as a hobby and have no fiscal expectation, you’d be better off playing the actual lottery.

45

Nonsense.
The market changed. The industry changed the market not someone else. Major software houses and hardware manufacturers changed the rules and allowed freelancers to enter the market without needing $200,000+ or $500,000+ just to get a chance.

About scams and thieves and fake games… the problem there is about the justice system that doesn’t work worldwide, those are criminal actions and the law should be enforced. Raising the entry fee won’t affect scam agencies and thieves that have plenty of money by stealing anyway, it would just limit very small software houses and single freelancers trying to sell their products to make some money and grow. Although a $250 to $500 per game fee could have been better anyway to block those thinking that publishing games is not trying to estabilish a business but just wasting money selling very bad products assembled with no effort. On the Android Play Store there are many bad apps that even don’t work correctly at all, way more than on iOS due to lack of some proper manual review…and there are even people complaining that the App Store annual fee would be too expensive, and that is beyond silly.

46

Obviously, I’m not even sure if you actually read a word I said or understood the point in the slightest… But the point was if the entry fee was higher to weed out flippers etc., there is always a way to raise the funds if you have enough faith in your own game… If the barrier to entry was $2k you’d be have to be very sure you’ve got a decent product before paying that fee…

It’s not just the flippers who add bad reputations to indie’s, it’s also dev’s releasing rubbish games (who might have a bit of money laying around).

It’s always a race to the botttom, it happens in every creative medium… We’ve already seen it in the music industry (what’s left of it), people complained that an engine that used to cost upwards of 300K+ cost $20.00 a month but in the end everyone suffers, the market will get flooded and next to nobody at the indie level will earn anything noteable…

If you think all that’s nonsense, I’d love to see a sample size after the new policy that proves it otherwise… Actions speak louder than opinions.!

47

Do you seriously believe that the music industry doesn’t make money ? Really? You should understand that most multinationals tell lies to the world. They lie. They don’t tell the truth. With the justice system not working in all major countries many rich managers claim to be poor and not making money while they keep getting richer and richer.
If the music industry was so poor all of a sudden then how comes the number of available songs kept increasing ? No one making money out of it ? All famous and not so famous singers and bands would be poor and with no money? Only a few are making money? If that was ever true after a couple of years at most the number of people involved would have dropped a lot… with no money people just don’t work for free and if there is no chance of getting rich people wouldn’t bother trying.
So no, the music industry just like the movie one there in Hollywood is not in a big crisis and they keep getting richer year on year. It is just a fact and not an opinion. Just like there is no crisis of DVD and BluRay sales just because a percentage of sales is digital downloads now. If that was ever true then big online shops like Amazon would keep getting millions of new DVD and BluRay every year with no customers buying the products or selling just a few ?
And the same applies to the PC hardware market. The 'net is full of articles telling that the industry is in a big crisis scenario and manufacturers aren’t selling enough and so on… Well, all new products are being manufactured and sold by shops worldwide. If that wasn’t true then most online shops would have gone bankrupt long time ago as well as most manufacturers. That didn’t happen at all.

48

This is better than the whole up vote green light deal, but it’s definitely going to crowd their marketplace.

49

Figures, by the time I get closer to finishing my game, the marketplace to sell it on becomes saturated and unprofitable.
What’s next, the US dollar is going to crash?
“Wanna buy my mixtape bro?” now becomes “Wanna buy my alpha game bro?”

Whoa, you actually got greenlit & voted through? You must have some quality conten-
Nah I just paid 100 bucks.
You mean steam direct? Isn’t that like 2 thousand dollars, you must be pretty confident, treating this like a real business investment.
You must have put a lot of time into this to pay that launch cost-
Nah I just paid 100 bucks.
Well, you spent a lot of time making it it though righ-
Nah only like 2 months total bro I’m a game dev now…
Really, let me see this project-
“The adventures of doge-butt, a troll face production”

50

Lol, I think that perfectly surmised everything I was saying…

51

In relation to an higher fee, if you say: “If you are serious about game dev and you believe in your game, then you will find a way to raise the money”

But, can’t the same argument be used against you:

“If you are serious about game dev and you believe in your game, then you will find a way to make your game stand out from the flood.”

52

In 2 to 5 years from now, a decent online game will make more money published on their own website with proprietary launcher than what they’ll make publishing through Steam.

This is good, IF the companies notices, that Steam is now no viable platform anymore and invest some minimal budget in marketing to bring traffic to their own online store instead.
The single player indie game developers will have to focus more on consoles to survive from now on, which means: make more polished games or die.

53

That happens in movies bro, you know the part where the hero shines and wins in the end against all odds and after a short defeat?
In real life you can have a diamond but a pool of Sh*t will always overwhelm it.

54

That won’t happen.
If Steam fails a competitor will rise and take over.
The majority of people need a single huge online store where to shop as the Apple App Store is proof of.
Before the App Store, Steam and Play Store the market was very small with cheaper shareware games sold on producers websites and more expensive games sold in physical shops. Nothing else. And everyone was making a lot less money. It was a less competitive market indeed and 2D and 3D engines had very high license costs that not everyone could afford, only estabilished businesses and rich people fundings the “startups” at the time.

55

I understand what you’re saying, but no not really… You could always get a better paying job, you can invest invest in stocks (albeit being a gamble) etc. there’s plenty of ways to make money… Expecting your game to stand out in a crowd of potentially hundreds of thousands (as the flood gates are open) isn’t the best idea. Especially as you’ll be up against other indie’s with more resources / time / skill etc. (not all indie’s are pennyless)…

I’d play it safe personally, get a demo out… See what the general interest is, get some feedback / polish it up and if it starts to pick up (only if) then get it out for crowdfunding. If it flops, send it out for more feedback (to whoever you can) keep working on it and try again.

I never expected Steam to be a ticket to success anyway, this to me just exascerbates it. I do hope that AAA developers (the main crowd draw) and players get tired of it so a new store takes hold, maybe even with a curation system or a higher point to entry.

56

Trust me if you ask gamers and customers on Steam what the price should be, they would choose a much higher price. Why? For obvious reasons that only the cheap devs that don’t want to pay more are pretending doesn’t exist. Higher entry fee = less ****. Simple. Those that are rich will still put out their **** games but thats true right now still. So I don’t want to hear the rich devs argument. If gamers would rather have a higher quality selection then you can’t argue against that by saying it’s only the selfish devs that want a higher fee so as to make the market easier for themselves.

57

For me, even higher amount such as $500 is warranted to filter out unrefined games. In developing countries, admittedly $500 is quite a big sum of money, but they payout is handsome too as you get paid in the same currencies.

As for myself - a game developer, I had already worked out something similar. Specifically, I always get approached by so called marketing guys who promised high and sky for a project and then, guess what? They asked me to create a demo which turn out not too trivial to create and, takes a month or so to finish. And then nothing happened… my time is totally wasted. So now, whenever I am in the same predicament, I will now ask a little money (it is not even covering the expenses!), and usually those guys will immediately shy away from me, lol. If they are so sure about the business prospect they are delivering to me, might as well invest a little and you can deduct the amount later when things materialize. It is just that simple.

58

Customers couldn’t care less about the entry fee for developers/sellers on Steam (just like they don’t care and know nothing about the fee on App Store). And those claiming that it should be $1000+ probably just have their own agenda… rich developers, employees of medium sized to big software houses. The big software houses don’t want competition from the smallest ones clearly.

59

Well when the doors will be soon open to anyone with almost a zero risk it will be hard to compete with someone that does the same work with 10x smaller costs but will have access to same amount of profits. For example a single dev from US or EU equals a 10-15 man team from Asia when all costs are accounted for. On top of that in developing countries they usually use pirated software and get away in those costs too. They can afford selling their equally good game with a lot smaller fee and all prices will begin to fall.

I don’t care that much about asset flips or other garbage getting flooded in. I’m more worried about app store happening all over again and game prices dropping to few dollars and it changing the mindset of the players a in customers. We might just end up having mostly one dollar games to free games with ads or IAP on desktop too.

60

Let me preface this with saying I’ve read most of the replies in this thread.

This development in publishing on steam I think is a bit backwards of a movement. I agree with that there needs to be some sort of curation process going on, at least to filter out the obviously trash games that have no purpose being on Steam in the first place. But with this new process, we’re taking that curation process out, and simply opening the flood gates.

With that said, I think the $100 price tag to get in is fine (although, I may have gone for something just a tad higher, but less then $500). I firmly believe that a barrier entry fee isn’t going to deliver better quality; it will filter out games for sure, but it would definitely be hindering plenty of legitimate (indie) game developers. The scammy, asset store flipping developers are just that - scams to some degree, and usually those people are going to have plenty of money already to continue doing what they’re doing. Even if you increase the entry fee to $500, all it is doing is hurting legitimate developers, rather then blocking out the garbage.

There is essentially no barrier now to get onto Steam, to be quite frank. People complain $100 is a lot of money, which it definitely is to some… but you’re developing a product that you intend to sell, and you need to spend some money if you want to make some as well. Even a AAA game nowadays costs $60 dollars, its really not much more then that. And to people producing small tiny games en mass and flipping assets, its absolutely nothing.

What really needs to happen, as pointed out with his statistics that it is indeed manageable, is Valve needs to get a few people dedicated to doing some QA with the kinds of games coming in. There is a reason that console developers like Microsoft and Sony have publishing requirements for games to get onto their platform - there is no reason Steam shouldn’t have the same/similar guidelines with their own set of people to monitor the stuff being submitted. I am all for everyone having a fair, easy access to the PC gaming worlds biggest market, but their really needs to be a human factor in the filter, just to get the obvious **** out. Even Apple on the mobile market has this.

But even with all this, one thing does matter, and that is having a quality unique game that stands out. As some others already pointed out, if you make a great game, do marketing correctly, getting some press attention, etc, you’ll do ok. The problem still lies though - your game will be in a vast ocean of other games, some great, some bad, and surely it will make it harder to sell, especially when your game may cost $15 and theres 5 other games someone could buy for a few dollars.

Also, people who complain about the fee not being high enough are also a bit salty in my book. You’re literally using a multi-million dollar game engine for practically nothing. With your same logic UE4 should cost a few thousand to be able to use. Get over it. :slight_smile:

61

I’m so glad of this news. i’m already tight on budget for my game, this takes a bit of pressure off.