Unity are the ones who created this flood of “trash games” to begin with.
They cannot blame the kids making asset flips and selling those things; Unity explicitly places ads on gamers’ forums and websites telling those kids they can make their own games without any professional experience… Of course Unity’s reputation is ruined, they’ve asked for it!
For many times I said in their forums I openly blame Unity for this, not Valve or the mobile App Stores.
Steam Direct is the first step, after which your game may enter Early Access. Some way it works with Greenlight.
MORE NONSENSE !
Without the indie market made of very small software houses and single freelancers there would be no Unreal Engine 4 with just a 5% fee , no Unity at cheap price, no CryEngine… And Steam wouldn’t have been the huge financial success that it is now.
There would be no marketplace for Unreal Engine and other engines either.
Everything would have remained like it was before … which means medium and big software houses with plenty of money able to rent/buy very expensive professional 3D Engines licenses and that’s it.
And the App Store by Apple wouldn’t exist either.
I disagree. Even Epic realized there is a huge income from personal projects and made the engine free for hobbyist. Don’t forget we got this engine with the slogan “If You Love Something, Set It Free”. Steam also won’t get rid of the possibility to get some easy extra cash. But like I said, they should make a clear line between personal projects and games from bigger teams.
Good lord. You’re expecting an indie to become a corporation before he can market a game? I’m having to agree with an earlier post that those calling for steep entry requirements are wanting to limit access to others as a competitive tool.
“Indie” = small/individual company.
A company must have LLC registered documentation; An indie company can be one guy working from home, there are MANY.
If you don’t have LLC documentation you cannot call yourself “indie”, at most you are a startup project.
Registering as LLC is not that expensive, by far is cheaper than what you’ll pay as entry fee to publish each game on Steam; it cost a few bucks a month if you do it right when registering your company.
I’m pretty sure all countries have ways for anyone to register an individual or two-people business, so you do not have to work as an informal worker, this way you have the same rights anyone working for companies out there do have while you make indie games full-time.
If you don’t do this, when you’re 60~80 and spent your whole life working as an indie dev, you will totally regret it when you find-out all the benefits for life you just didn’t care about when you were young.
People saying this is non-sense are probably very very young to realize.
?? Are you serious?
And no, most countries aren’t a dream land and in Europe the laws are a real mess with very high taxes.
Not everyone has $100,000+ always ready to risk to create even a small company.
Most freelancers have to start with as low as $5,000 overall (or even less…in many countries is way less than that) which includes buying hardware and software licenses as needed.
In my country if I register as a company of any size the taxes double although very large companies have ways to avoid paying full taxes … the small ones have to pay everything and can’t afford paying plenty of lawyers and accountants to pay less taxes.
Without registering as a small company I still have to pay around $3,000 to $5,000 fees plus a 50% taxes fee on anything I would get from either Apple or Valve by selling apps and games on their online shops. As a small company the taxes would be a lot higher overall, even up to 70% in some cases… here more you earn and more the taxes get insanely high. So if what I do is a complete failure I would end up losing money and breaking even could even be impossible, if it is a success I would get only half or less of what is left after the 30% cut to Apple or Valve and another 5% to Epic Games. Which means that without selling many copies there is no chance to get enough money to create even a small company.
Anyway this whole indie market didn’t happen by chance, the big software houses managers wanted to do it. Valve with Steam, Apple with the App Store, Epic Games with Unreal Engine free with a 5% fee and so on.
Now if Valve does a U-turn and raises prices again like it was before by adding an high fee the whole market would be affected no one excluded. Which means way less money flowing, less people buying marketplace assets on either Unreal Engine or Unity stores, less people willing to risk creating a game if Steam is too expensive to access. If Apple would follow Valve by raising costs too that would be the end of the last decade online digital sales marketplace since Steve Jobs created the App Store.
these are the steps required in my state of california. LLC California - How to Start an LLC in California | TRUiC
Also It’s around $800 a year in taxes. (Some states are way less. But still not cheap. And I have no Idea about other countries.)
So it’s worth it if you have made some money and have money to do so.
But it shouldn’t be a requirement, as it is not a cheap nor quick process. But it would be prudent to do so if you are making money and wish to grow.
I am particularly not worried about what Valve will do because since 3 years ago they have said Greenlight was a temporary experiment.
Let me say that again:
A “shovelware” or “trash game” isn’t trash if it is selling. Valve knows that and they want those billions Apple Store is generating every year, aka: Valve will open the flood gates more and more, but in a way to not break their partnership with bigger studios that still use Steam to sell their games.
You should be glad that Valve is removing Greenlight, really. I don’t get why you’re so mad about it, the fee will small, I can bet it will never be over $1.000 and probably not even half of that; just make a nice game and that won’t be a problem.
And you’ll have monies to open a company and pay your taxes for your future you have rights to use healthcare services.
I think there is no way to know what is the best solution, therefore why not try some of them simultaneously.
Steam store splits into sections, where each section implements a possible solution - high fees, LLC, demos, greenlight, … In a couple of years, they could finally chose the best solution based on some indicators, such as costumer satisfaction and sales.
Naturally, there couldn’t be duplicates - your game would be either in the high fees section or at the LLC or in one of the others.
There, everybody happy.
But again, this could end up been too costly and messy.
I would prefer to see something more innovative focusing on aligned incentives. For example incentivize gamers to discover great games by putting their money where there mouth is. By allowing gamers to buy “steam game tokens” for which each game has a fixed amount set by steam. Steam takes 10% of their 30% revenue cut and places open bids to buy back the game tokens on an public exchange. Game developers get a fixed percentage of their games tokens and can sell them on the open market to raise money etc. Gamers that discover a great game early on can profit by holding the tokens until they become worth more.
Thus the demand for game tokens of successful game will become worth tons of money and therefore incentives are aligned with gamers and game makers. And developers can drive demand with there steam game tokens in game by allowing in game purschases to be made with there tokens.
There are a few companies currently trying to promote this model with music etc but unfortunately it will take a big players like Steam, Apple etc to make it happen.
What they propose now has zero innovation, but that is what happens to all successful companies. They stop taking risk and play it safe.
I posted this in Unity with a few name changes.
**
Here’s what we know: (3 years ago they announced Greenlight was just a temporary experiment.)**
1.2004 and 2014 = 3827 games were released on Steam
2. In 2015 Steam stopped curating Greenlight submissions.
3. 2015 = 2064
4. 2016 = 4207
5. 2017 Steam announced the death of Greenlight
The real issues here are:
Things to considerate:
1.Fee is non recoverable. ($100-$1000)
2.No guarantee that shovelware will disappear, in fact now you can just buy your way in regardless of the quality.
3.30% revenue cut.
Suggested Solutions:
The idea of Epic becoming a publisher portal with their Epic Games launcher is pure ;
Unfortunately I can’t see any interest from them to do it at the moment. Who knows, maybe till the end of this decade we see something happen with Tencent’s help maybe ?!
In fact many though this is what they would do, but they ended up focusing only on their own games instead.
I would be all in and start a new indie project right away if Epic open their launcher as a publishing platform for UE4 indie developers;
Why not? [MENTION=35] Sweeney[/MENTION] take 30% instead of 5% 
“We want to have happy customers, and we do that by having as much of the content on Steam that customers are interested in,” Steam engineer Alden Knoll said. “It’s really all about building a system where good content will naturally rise to the top.” (Source)
Personally I am interested in this statement: “It’s really all about building a system where good content will naturally rise to the top.”
Good content doesn’t just mean a good game, it’s a good company, it’s good marketing, it’s good customer service, it’s good value, it’s of value to the customer. If you have a great game and everything else is of **** quality your result is a sparkly ****. A pay wall in my opinion separates out those who are serious about game development and those that “Want to make games for a living.” Basically the difference between professional and an amateur team. Money doesn’t make you a professional, the right mindset does and a professional team is mostly likely to create good content.
If anything, nobody should let Steam’s decision bother them, they are a business offering a service to game developers seeking publishing and distribution options. If a developer doesn’t like what Steam is doing, don’t use their service.
On a side note did anyone catch Humble Bundle’s new announcement as well? Source
Hi,
I’m glad you like this idea. Technology move very fast and I wouldn’t be surprise if they already started this since last year.
Many good things can come from having a game shop here:
For developers it means free advertising and perhaps a total 30% instead of 30+5%. This alone is nice intensive to go exclusive.
Developers have the option to keeping it exclusive or going over to Steam and get shafted for a few more dollars.
I like the idea of Epic providing a service similar to Steam. (I am not a fan of Steam at all.) I also like the idea of having the option to use either Steam or some hypothetical Epic equivalent, with the UE4 royalties being 5% for games sold outside of Epic and %30 for those sold within Epic’s marketplace.
Steam needs some competition.
Epic Games is sitting on a possible Steam killer; they have no idea…
Not to sure… Epic would have to compete with the biggest online game seller!
I would welcome it if they did it for sure… But could they do it? Or will they just publish some games to all platforms like they used to? (if they even to anything.)
And there are other competitors… GOG, Origon, that ubisoft thing? Competition is stiff.
But a Steam Killer I do not believe it to be. (Sadly… But I really should stop being so pessimistic! 
)
ohh… I get it. Try and convince Sweeney we need a zzt remake in ue4 while you are at it. 