The average person SHOULD be able to make, in essence, $100 an hour (this is INCLUDING their investment income, obviously it is difficult to rake in $100 on salary alone, except for the very best people.)

You're kidding right? The national median household income in the US is $45000 (or ~$21 an hour). Do tell me where you think they'll make up the other $79 an hour.

It is too much... If you can't manage your money, at least.

I agree with this.

The average person SHOULD be able to make, in essence, $100 an hour (this is INCLUDING their investment income, obviously it is difficult to rake in $100 on salary alone, except for the very best people.)

I heavily disagree with this: I imagine many of the indies who would make use of Greenlight would be young, maybe early 20s. I'd be surprised if any of these people had any kind of job earning them $50 an hour, and even more surprised if they had enough investments to earn another $50/hour off of.

But I'm gonna go ahead and guess you just wanted to troll a little more.

Another important point is that Valve found itself without option about its Game Selection.
They receive thousands of emails about games that want to be published on Steam, and its few employees that took care of the selecion could not bare anymore this "burden".
Besides great games could be shadowed by bigger AAA publications that should be selected first.

With Greenlight they can make thousands of customers highlight their list of what is interesting or not. And then the game selection should be more fair to small indie game developers.

@OP
The $100 is pretty reasonable.
The fact that this money is going to donation makes it very easy to pay.
After developing a full game that is ready to be released, donating 100 bucks is the least concern of a game developer.

Late to the topic, but:

[quote name='Alan Greenspan' timestamp='1347393185' post='4979026']
The average person SHOULD be able to make, in essence, $100 an hour (this is INCLUDING their investment income, obviously it is difficult to rake in $100 on salary alone, except for the very best people.)

You're kidding right? The national median household income in the US is $45000 (or ~$21 an hour). Do tell me where you think they'll make up the other $79 an hour.
[/quote]
Yeah, $100 in an hour is stupid... but going by that median value, in five hours you already reached $100. You can get that easily in a single work day, and then some more. Still doesn't look unreasonable. The problem may be in countries where salaries are much lower but cost of life isn't as low in proportion.

Then again, if you ever plan to release a commercial game, you're probably going to need way more than $100 to cover many other costs too...

I have no problem paying to host a game (unless I am making a free game); it costs $100 annually for an iOS dev license for instance.

I don't see why they decided to give it to charity, or make a big deal over it - that smacks of insecurity and appeasement. I'd just say "we're introducing a $100 fee" and leave it at that.

$100 is a drop in the bucket...It's a token amount to sort out people who are not serious...

I don't see why they decided to give it to charity, or make a big deal over it - that smacks of insecurity and appeasement. I'd just say "we're introducing a $100 fee" and leave it at that.

To be fair they did. They said it was 100 dollars that would go to a charity and left it at that and haven't said a word about it again. Worked well. Right when it happened I noticed the games have gotten much higher in quality and the number of games has decreased drastically.

[quote name='d000hg' timestamp='1347639252' post='4980105']
I don't see why they decided to give it to charity, or make a big deal over it - that smacks of insecurity and appeasement. I'd just say "we're introducing a $100 fee" and leave it at that.

To be fair they did. They said it was 100 dollars that would go to a charity and left it at that and haven't said a word about it again. Worked well. Right when it happened I noticed the games have gotten much higher in quality and the number of games has decreased drastically.
[/quote]

Yea. It did cut out all the trolling. I think $100 is perfectly reasonable. Yes, it is not perfect, to some $100 is less than to others. But look at it this way: The indie does not mean 'I never had a programming or graphics design job in my life'. Steam is a portal of high quality games.

The Greenlight has to cut out trolling and all those idea noobs (who used to frequent this forum) - you know the type, I am the idea guy and I have enormously awesome MMORPG ideas worth billions and why the hell nobody would join me type of noobs. Those also have to be kept out. People are stupid enough to have utterly overinflated view on the value of their ideas when they don't have to spend $100; few are stupid enough to spend $100 though.

I don't mind the $100 fee. My grief at it being a $100 fee is far outweighed by me elation that it isn't $150. Living on a week by week budget here, but that is with some hobbies that cost money to get me away from the computer so I can keep something resembling a lifestyle up. So my me to afford it I'll just have to take a few weeks off the woodworking, or manage to sell a coffee table or something.

As for the $100 fee thinking, I've been reviewing the games on steam greenlight hoping to give the thumbs up so that I can get some good karma when I release my own game on it. But there are so many things on it, well after they introduced the $100 fee, that I suspect were added before the $100 fee came into effect. And because of the service valve is running here I very much doubt they can just delete the stuff that borders on violating the rules outright, so the voting process will have to take place.

It seems like a lot of the stuff is just ideas for games or games that aren't really ready to be marketed yet going up on steam before their time. It makes me cry how many thumbs down I had to give because I just couldn't in good conscience hit the thumbs up button. Message to other devs: I want to thumbs up everything! Please don't put just ideas or games that aren't ready in terms of their mechanical depth up because I can't vote up on those, because it would hurt the people who have waited till the right moment to show the world their work, and I believe those devs deserve all the support I can give them.

I think something to keep in perspective with the steam greenlight costing $100 is that it is a fantastic marketing tool. How much time would you have to spend spamming outlets with press releases in the hopes to drive interest/sales up when a good video that represents your game well is right there in the customer's queue of trailers to watch. It's worth the money just because of that.