The time has finally come. Like a killer on death row, Steam Greenlight slowly makes its somber march toward execution, atonement for it’s crimes! But is Greenlight truly to blame? Is such an execution justified?
Steam Greenlight had a lot of good ideas behind it. It was a user driven service that allowed budding developers to submit their games onto Steam for little money, and allowed Steam users vote for games that they would have loved to play, which has led to many great games being given a home on Steam’s marketplace through Greenlight curation.
On paper, Steam Greenlight seemed like a solid system: A one time 100 dollar fee to upload games for Greenlight would drive away joke submissions, and allow only serious developers a spotlight. User curation would assure that only the highest quality of games would ever reach digital store shelves. Features like these would, overall improve both the mass and the quality of Steam’s games library… in theory. Despite it’s potential, Greenlight flopped because in its creation, Valve greatly overestimated the Steam user base’s capacity for logical, well meaning curation, and underestimated the lengths shady Steam groups, and amateur hour “game developers” will go to make their dollar and waste our time.
For every uninspired open world survival game, for every pooping, watch grass grow, sitting on the couch, “simulator”, there are mobs of steam groups ready to promote and advertise garbage games, and subsequently overshadow the far less frequent, high quality titles uploaded for approval. Steam groups like “Yolo Army” pride themselves with the promotion of the most talentless, creepy, bigoted, self titled “developers” Steam has to offer. Greenlight was a free-for-all. Quality didn’t seem to matter, games were curated and approved under shady, and seemingly random circumstances.
Coinciding with the launch and popularity of Steam Greenlight, roughly 40% of the games currently cataloged on the Steam library today were uploaded in 2016 alone. With 4027 games, of varying quality being launched that year, it’s pretty apparent that Greenlight was doing much more harm than good.
In the eyes of many, Valve especially, Greenlight was a complete failure that flooded the marketplace with some of the worst games in history. For many, Greenlight’s demise is a cause for celebration, a way to clean the slate, and foster a less toxic Steam community, but I feel that Greenlight’s shortcomings weren’t an inevitability, but result of Valve’s insistence on hands off moderation. Valve is notorious for is woeful customer service and abysmal manual support and nowhere was this more prevalent than Steam Greenlight. The reason Greenlight groups and amateur hour game developers were so problematic and prevalent was because Valve took no steps into removing them. The reason a game development studios could peddle poorly received games onto the marketplace over and over again, was because Valve took no steps to prevent it. Valve threw Greenlight into the water and made little to no attempt at teaching it to swim. When it realized that Greenlight failed and that people were rallying against it, Valve railed against it too.
Valve’s current proposed replacement to Greenlight, “Steam Direct” seems like it could be a major step toward a higher quality market place, requiring developers to provide legal information, and potentially pay a fee significantly higher than 100 dollars, but Steam Direct isn’t without red flags. The proposed fee for uploading a game could be any were between the original 100 bucks or an insane $ 5000 that would deter any small time developer not willing to cause serious financial harm to themselves.
Right now, in the aftermath of the Greenlight catastrophe, Valve attempts to find a middle ground between a completely open and unmanaged store front, and an expensive inclusive one via an uploading fee, rather than through hands on support. I have my doubts about Steam direct, and I still harbor warm feelings towards Greenlight, but I have no faith in the future of Steam if Valve insists on an entirely automated system. Steam Direct will be another disaster if Valve just throws it in the water.
Chunks of gaming 