Steam - Steam Direct replacing Greenlight

[Silver]

Steam is going to be rolling out a replacement for Greenlight called Steam Direct by Spring 2017.

Evolving Steam
11 February - Alden
When we consider any new features or changes for Steam, our primary goal is to make customers happy. We measure that happiness by how well we are able to connect customers with great content. We've come to realize that in order to serve this goal we needed to move away from a small group of people here at Valve trying to predict which games would appeal to vastly different groups of customers.

Thus, over Steam's 13-year history, we have gradually moved from a tightly curated store to a more direct distribution model. In the coming months, we are planning to take the next step in this process by removing the largest remaining obstacle to having a direct path, Greenlight. Our goal is to provide developers and publishers with a more direct publishing path and ultimately connect gamers with even more great content.

What we learned from Greenlight
After the launch of Steam Greenlight, we realized that it was a useful stepping stone for moving to a more direct distribution system, but it still left us short of that goal. Along the way, it helped us lower the barrier to publishing for many developers while delivering many great new games to Steam. There are now over 100 Greenlight titles that have made at least $1 Million each, and many of those would likely not have been published in the old, heavily curated Steam store.

These unforeseen successes made it abundantly clear that there are many different audiences on Steam, each looking for a different experience. For example, we see some people that sink thousands of hours into one or two games, while others purchase dozens of titles each year and play portions of each. Some customers are really excited about 4X strategy games, while others just buy visual novels.

Greenlight also exposed two key problems we still needed to address: improving the entire pipeline for bringing new content to Steam and finding more ways to connect customers with the types of content they wanted.

To solve these problems a lot of work was done behind the scenes, where we overhauled the developer publishing tools in Steamworks to help developers get closer to their customers. Other work has been much more visible, such as the Discovery Updates and the introduction of features like user reviews, discovery queues, user tags, streamlined refunds, and Steam Curators.

These improvements have allowed more developers to publish their games and connect with relevant gamers on Steam. One of the clearest metrics is that the average time customers spend playing games on Steam has steadily increased since the first Discovery Update. Over the same time period, the average number of titles purchased on Steam by individual customers has doubled. Both of these data points suggest that we're achieving our goal of helping users find more games that they enjoy playing. (You can read a more detailed analysis of our recent updates here[www.gamasutra.com].)

A better path for digital distribution
The next step in these improvements is to establish a new direct sign-up system for developers to put their games on Steam. This new path, which we're calling "Steam Direct," is targeted for Spring 2017 and will replace Steam Greenlight. We will ask new developers to complete a set of digital paperwork, personal or company verification, and tax documents similar to the process of applying for a bank account. Once set up, developers will pay a recoupable application fee for each new title they wish to distribute, which is intended to decrease the noise in the submission pipeline.

While we have invested heavily in our content pipeline and personalized store, we're still debating the publishing fee for Steam Direct. We talked to several developers and studios about an appropriate fee, and they gave us a range of responses from as low as $100 to as high as $5,000. There are pros and cons at either end of the spectrum, so we'd like to gather more feedback before settling on a number.
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More information.

 

[joxer]

I thought Valve's plan was to improve Greenlight, not to ditch it completely?
Ah well…

Kinda not sure what will this new system mean for the audience. Shall we see Kickstarter projects"the game is done but we need submission fee of $5K for steam direct"?

 

[SSIGuy]

As a board game designer looking to start my first video game later this year, this is potentially good news from my perspective. It will depend on the details. There has to be enough of a barrier to entry to stop a lot of the crud in Greenlight populating Steam but low enough to still allow small indies to get games on there. Greenlight is kind of a foggy proposition... It's never really clear how many votes you really need. I like the idea of a system where what is required to take the next step is clear so that I can plan for that. As to the dollar value on a fee, I'd prefer a higher fee (but then for me, the economics of game design are easier to bear so that's a bit of a subjective opinion).

 

[you]

Maybe they will have high entey fee but lower fee per sale.

 

[turian]

that would save us from a lot of trash thats become highly common on steam

too many lousy ugly cheap ass 1€ rpg maker on my steam store!

 

[wolfing]

that would save us from a lot of trash thats become highly common on steam

too many lousy ugly cheap ass 1€ rpg maker on my steam store!

The problem is that the damage is already done, I doubt they'll remove all those crappy games that make up like 80% of their catalog nowadays.

 

[Stingray]

Since they said "recoupable", I assume the fee is essentially refunded to you if your game actually sells. For example if the fee is $2000 then perhaps Steam only takes half its usual cut on your early sales until you've been fully refunded the $2000, or something along those lines. It's not really a fee, just a deposit. Good plan to avoid tons of junkware. $100 sounds way too low.

 

[forgottenlor]

The problem is that the damage is already done, I doubt they'll remove all those crappy games that make up like 80% of their catalog nowadays.

You would be amazed at the things they've already removed. Games with low ratings and sales are often quietly removed, which you probably don't know if you don't follow them.