About six weeks ago Valve pulled the trigger on Steam Greenlight, and a lot of gamers everywhere
rejoiced at the decision while the majority of the indie dev scene uttered worried groans
of uncertainty.
For the last five years we seen Valve's motto of "anyone can ship anything" in action,
and they really weren't kidding when they said that.
Absolutely anyone can ship anything on Steam and we've seen the quantity of games increase
while the quality overall has decreased.
Steam Direct was slated for release in Spring of this year, which means it is just around
the corner and yet we're none the wiser about how it will differ from Greenlight.
All we've been told so far is that they are moving from a pay-once-rely-on-votes system
to pay-per-submission system, and even then Valve has not settled on a price to charge
developers.
So, really, we have absolutely no idea if this new system will stop the shovelware shite
or mediocre meme games trickling into the store front like a bad case of the tummy troubles.
All we can do is keep every appendage crossed that it will be successful in it's attempt
to filter out the questionable content and keep the store front stocked with fresh, delicious
goodies for us to peruse, purchase, and play.
I've spent the last year reviewing cheap games that made their way onto Steam via the
Greenlight system, and while that have been a few hidden gems, the vast majority have
been complete and utter tosh.
The lack of quality control on Steam Greenlight has been blatantly obvious for quite a while
now and Valve have been unclear about how Steam Direct will step up to the plate in
this regard.
But without some sort of oversight, we get crap like Quickscoper Doge: The Dank Illuminati
Memes or VERY BAD GAME being available for people in it for the lols, and automated bots
to attempt to push through to the store front.
And do people honestly want shit like this available on Steam?
No.
No one does.
And if you don't believe me, come, let us watch the trailer for VERY BAD GAME together.
Wait, what the fuck is this?
This isn't…
Oh.
Oh.
Ha ha.
Oh you've got to be kidding me.
Wow, really?
Oh this is just embarrassing!
I was drunk yesterday.
How?
I don't understand it.
I don't get how people can.. put their name to this shit.
How are they not embarrassed?
This isn't even a trailer.
This is a random.. random number of stock images that they just stole.
That's the entire game and this is the entire frickin' trailer.
See, look they haven't even made the game: "which engine will it be made?"
This is ridiculous!
How?
And why?
I.. ugh.. and this.. this is on Steam for people to vote for.
Thanks.
Thanks.
Nothing is impossible.
Do you now see what I'm saying?
No one wants this game or any other game like it to grace the store front, and frankly this
kind of crap should even be able to compete for a chance to be released on Steam.
These games simply don't deserve it.
Developers like this need to piss off back to whatever dark corner of the web they came
from and not flood Steam with streams of hot, putrid waste like this.
All it does is encourage more unprofessional developers to get on board the Steam Greenshite
Train and peddle their foul, sloppy creations.
So just what can Valve do to ensure Steam Direct doesn't find itself sitting in the
same dark, dank latrine with unpolished turds scattered around it?
I have few ideas.
Number one: Introduce some form of quality control.
This one is so bloody obvious.
Valve should get together a team big enough to manually sift through every single submission
to ensure they meet all the requirements necessary before being published to the store front.
It's not like Valve can't afford to pay people to do this kind of work.
They are not a small Mom 'n Pop company they were perhaps 20 years ago.
Valve has an estimated worth of 2.5 billion dollars and hires only 360 people.
By comparison, a digital retailor and social media platform company called Garena, also
have an estimated worth of 2.5 billion, but they employee over 2000 people.
So it's definitely feasible for Valve to bump up their numbers a little and employee
a team to oversee the quality of the games being released in their digital store.
Especially if they will no longer be donating the fees of game submissions to charity like
they have been doing with the current developer fee.
They did mention that developers would be able to recoup the cost of the fee, but, again,
Valve haven't been clear about what this exactly entails.
Now, if Valve REALLY don't want to pay people to do this sort of work, they could look into
creating a volunteer-based system kind of like Counterstrike has done with its Overwatch
program.
Out of the millions of users on Steam, Valve could easily find thousands of people willing
to spend time vetting games in exchange for a game or two each month.
I know that I would!
Valve could perhaps assign 10 people per submitted game and create a feedback form that these
volunteers would need to complete in full within a 7 day time period.
Sure, Valve would need to hire a few people to then review the feedback, but I imagine
most of that could be automated depending on how they would write their feedback form.
This would mean that Valve get more eyes on the games being slated for release on their
platform, the volunteers would get at least one free game each month, and we would see
a cleaner Steam overall.
Naturally the volunteering idea would need to be refined and tweaked somewhat, but I
think you all understand the general gist of it.
Number two: Introduce basic standards for games being released on Steam and hold every
developer to them.
If quality control assessment does become a thing – and it bloody well should – Valve
must make sure that every game is looked at and treated fairly.
This should mean that each game must include a trailer that shows actual up-to-date gameplay
footage, a decent description, correct classification, and the game itself should be tested to ensure
that it is a game, that it loads correctly, appears bug-fee, and isn't of a low quality.
And by low-quality, I'm talking about games that appear to have been thrown together in
an afternoon or generic asset flips that we've seen an abundance of on Steam Greenlight.
If these basic requirements are not met, the game gets either a permanent or temporary
denial slapped on it, the fee perhaps gets partially or fully refunded to the dev, and
if given the option, the developers can re-submit after fixing the issues mentioned in the denial
statement.
Number three: This one isn't specifically about Steam Direct, but more of a general
thing that Valve should introduce alongside Steam Direct.
If a game does get through the vetting process and everything on the surface looks hunky-dory,
but ultimately the game ends up being riddled with bugs, is unplayable, or doesn't live
up to the promises made *ahemNoMan'sSkyahem*, then Valve need to be faster in pulling those
games from their storefront.
A supermarket wouldn't continue selling a bad batch of cookies after waves of complaints
came rushing in about those cookies, would they?
No.
They wouldn't.
That's part of quality control.
Ensuring that the products you're selling are good for consumers to purchase.
And if they're not?
You pull them from the shelves.
I know that this topic has been talked to death by gaming websites, forums, and fellow
YouTubers.
But so long as Steam is the biggest digital distributor of games across the globe, we'll
continue to talk about the huge issues with the platform.
Outside of my hopes and wishes for Steam Direct, I have one bigger one.
I really would like Valve to communicate more openly with it's customers, and in general
improve it's customer support.
It's been over six weeks since I reported the fake awards on a game on Steam, and have
Valve done a single thing about it yet?
Have the fuck.
In fact, the dev behind that dodgy behaviour is already attempting to get the game's
sequel Greenlit.
And that right there is why Steam Greenlight slowly suffocated itself to death.
And why we are all hoping that Steam Direct doesn't turn out to be a Greenlight system
with a little bit of paint slapped on it.
Fingers crossed!
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