imho personally i don’t believe having to pay a fee before publishing will fix it.
you can pay for it and then publish the slop anyway.
these people definitely have the time and motivation, so i don’t think paying will stop them.
though i think everyone seems to agree this is not an issue that can be fixed simply by one method.
for example, afaik, in google play store for example, you have to pay and have to upload a lot of data, and yet, it’s drowning with slop too.
but adding a fee could hurt people that want to start participating.
so i think it’s a delicate option and a double edge sword.
on steam you have to pay yes, but you also
- have to pass a review process with what seems to be humans,
- and you have to wait a couple of weeks before putting it to sell.
- and things that people aren’t interested in, are shoved to the end of the queue by the algorithm.
fab doesn’t have any of those. so those are alternatives too.
i have submitted things to steam and i’ve sent a few emails back-forth and the reviews where sensible. and i wasn’t allowed to publish something that wasn’t broken, but lacked a detail.
the ux on steam is abhorrent, it’s extremely annoying to setup. but the review process seemed human, with sensible requests.
on fab it was automated and my project was rejected even though it’s really well tested. and i’ve sent an email and nobody replied.
so i think they could start there before making, what it seems to be, like a change so impactful.
on itchio i.e. i haven’t seen much ai content, (though i don’t browse it as much as i browse fab).
itchio has no review process or fee. so something to say about it.
of course fab is being targeted because it’s backed by epic i think.
i saw an ai walking alligator whose tail was so butchered it was absolutely unusable. any human moderator would have rejected that.
i was born in south america, and i know that an upfront payment could be prohibitive, even though it seems like a very small amount to people in USA in some countries it could either be a massive amount, or could be very difficult to obtain an international credit card.
and there are people really talented in south america.
there are many other countries with the same issue.