It's not clear to me that charging money implies quality results - indeed, it's an insult to the idea of free software. Though at least the money goes to charity.

Publishing on iOS requires a $99/year developer membership fee. Although user ratings and reviews help to a certain extend, Google's Play marketplace for Android is full of low-quality and poorly functioning apps. You're not really worse off with Steam than you are with iOS, and as cowsarenotevil says, "works" is a term than can loosely be applied to both the iOS app store and the Android marketplace.

Firstly, I disagree - not had problems with Android software, and claiming one platform has poor quality is just POV and going the way of OS flamewars... But also, you're conflating charging money, with the review process that IOS requires. Plus, Google Play costs money too, albeit $25 instead of $99/year. Nokia Store OTOH is only 1 euro, but also has a review process like IOS to prevent non-functioning applications. These are separate issues.

Not that this should matter here, if a game is so bad it doesn't even function, it's not going to get support.

It's not clear to me that charging money implies quality results - indeed, it's an insult to the idea of free software. Though at least the money goes to charity.

I think the actual value charged is not important. Having a charge at all is a barrier that causes anybody who is not serious about it to back away. Having no barrier at all makes it really easy to troll with games that you have no intention of actually producing.

I was watching Randy Pausch's last lecture recently, and as he puts it, "The brick walls are there to keep the other people out," meaning that barriers are there to keep out people who don't care enough, not to keep everyone out.

I think the problem is people fundamentally don't get Valve's model. Valve isn't a "plan ahead" company; Valve is a "realese this, get feedback, tweak tweak tweak." Look at Steam - it started as horrible, opaque and boycotted mess. Today it matured into PC's leading digital distribution system. Team Fortress 2 went through several (unbalanced) changes with its items system, until reaching fair stability of today, and expanding even more. Same could be said with episodic content - they tried it, and clearly, it hasn't worked out as much as they hoped.

Greenlight is no different. In the short time, they already added and removed the "required x% of votes" and changed the wording on the vote buttons.

I think Valve's plan is to get the system running for a while, collect data and improve on how it works, then maybe take like the top 10 games, and make their "success-level" (aka votes up vs. down) as the effective barrier to enter Steam. In the end, I think it's a better way than arbitrarily saying "you must get x likes" just because x felt right. Tho, I agree they could do a better job of communicating that is their approach, IF my speculations are right.


Also, they can't fairly base that number on existing sales or other website popularity, as Greenlight is a different platform (pre-digital distribution) with different level of commitment ("would you buy" != "bought/like") and community (just registered steam users willing to put in personal time to vote).

Lastly, it was all fine an dandy initially, but the $100 fee creates a bit of an expectation of calculable ROI. Without knowing what one's chances are, it's hard to estimate if it's worth investing into the system (regardless of what the fee amount is). From reading a few online forums, that seems to be one of the main reasons behind the negative reaction to the fee.

I think 100 USD is the minimum required to make the system perceived as serious. If lower, I'd expect it to get flooded by teen weekend programmers. Who are sometimes good but I'd say 99% shit.

I really don't know how anyone serious can have a negative reaction about that.

...Lots of good info...

Excellent informative post. My hat is off to you, sir.

$100 once is ok but not charging about 30-40% for every purchase.

$100 once is ok but not charging about 30-40% for every purchase.

30-40% is actually on par with or better than many other options available to indie developers, and better than you would normally expect from traditional publishers. The alternative is setting up your own distribution system, which then takes some of your time, incurs operating costs, and doesn't have the huge fan base you get with something like Steam; for most developers it works out better to be on Steam even though you're sharing the profits.

$100 once is ok but not charging about 30-40% for every purchase.

When I worked for a large developer that in turn worked for a large publisher, they took 100% of the first 1 million purchases, and 95% of every purchase after that.
Most of our games did not sell anywhere close to 1 million copies, so there were no royalties paid
However, they did pay for most of the development costs, so we at least always almost broke-even, even though there was no profit.

Giving only %30 of your income to the sales & distribution part of your business is an amazing deal.
If you were to try and sell your product in physical stores, you'd be losing at least 40% of your sale price to retail/distribution overheads.

If you set up your own online store, you might pay much less for distribution (assuming you get a good price from your hosting company -- keep in mind Steam lets me download terabytes of data at multiple MiB/s all around the world), however, you'd instead have to pay a fortune in advertising in order to get as many visitors to your site as people who visit the steam store.

... And unlike alot of other companies, Steam does not request, badger, require, or attempt to purchase exclusivity...

Actually, while I'm not sure what the full story was with Battlefield 3, it is rumoured that Valve wanted exclusive rights to Battlefield 3. EA wanted to see their headline game on every distribution platform available. Valve do not want their games on Origin. I like steam alot and its a better system than anything else but Valve are not angels.

Actually, while I'm not sure what the full story was with Battlefield 3, it is rumoured that Valve wanted exclusive rights to Battlefield 3. EA wanted to see their headline game on every distribution platform available. Valve do not want their games on Origin. I like steam alot and its a better system than anything else but Valve are not angels.

The whole Origin vs Steam debacle was because EA deliberately (As in, "did so knowingly and intentionally, with forethought") violated Steam's terms of service by selling DLC through EA's system built into games to bypassing Steam, and then pretended to be the victim when Valve removed their games. Whether or not Valve should take a cut of DLC or in-game purchases is up for debate, and I'm not firmly on Valve's side on the point (but it's a complex issue), but that's not the point: it was clearly in Steam's terms of service (and had been for awhile), and EA intentionally slipped in-game non-Steam DLC purchases into multiple of their recent releases after they were already on Steam, forcing Valve to remove them from Steam afterward, and then EA blamed Valve and pretended they were getting bullied - which was amusing, because EA is really large, and has previously offered to buy Valve out, and most people online didn't buy into it recognizing how 'coincidentally' EA was launching their own rival service, and it was in EA's interest to claim Valve's ToS was too restrictive.

EA could've negotiated a new deal with Steam, or could've not made their DLC available to the Steam versions of the game (boycotting with entire games or just the games' DLC), or could've publicly commented on the issue and opened dialog, or could've let Valve have the cut they've always been taking without complaining... instead they snuck Origin purchasing into multiple games already on Steam at once, then acted surprised and shocked, and acted like this was something new Steam added to the ToS. It had nothing to do with Valve demanding exclusivity; it had to do with profit sharing from DLC, and EA acting like a child to raise awareness of Origin instead of negotiating a better deal.

[Even non-Origin digital sales require Origin to be installed]
[Battlefield 3's Absence on Steam Blamed on Restrictive Terms of Service]

EA was 100% in the wrong in this case, in my opinion.
I don't agree with everything Valve does; nor do I think they are perfect... but they are a lot better than EA.

Here was Valve's response after the whole debacle:
"I think at the end of the day we're going to prove to EA they have happier customers, a higher quality service, and will make more money if they have their titles on Steam. It's our duty to demonstrate that to them. We don't have a natural right to publish their games." [Valve's response]

That is a good response. EA during that time went around criticizing everything it could think of about Steam, and hinting heavily that Origin is a better choice for developers.

If one company (Valve) has a reputation of integrity and openness and of working with and alongside developers and customers, and another company (EA) has a history of abusing other developers and customers, then they get into a public spat of some kind, why would you believe the company with the proven track-record of deceit?
Again, as you mentioned, Valve isn't an angel. But at the same time, past events have earned them more trust, and lost EA trust. If a situation is unknown, I'm going to give Valve the benefit of the doubt, and EA I'm going to scrutinize harder looking for ulterior motives... and since they 'just so happened' to launch their own rival distribution store at the same time, you didn't have to look too far at all.