Not saying the author is necessarily right in all circumstances, but it was an interesting read from someone who’s done it.
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Interesting read, cheers for posting James.
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Nice article. Thanks for sharing.
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Steam is making some big changes. Greenlight is gone and pay to publish appears to be taking its place.
Haven’t read the full article yet as I am at work still.
On balance I think having a gate fee for Steam Direct is a good thing for serious gamedevs, as it will cut down the shovelware noise. I rather suspect the fee will go through a number of changes - $500 for a US indie is a different story to $500 for a team in Brazil or even Syria. One suggestion I saw was 100x the store price, making a $1 game more affordable to publish than a $50 title. I’d be down with that model.
If it cost me $500 to submit a game to steam, I wouldn’t. At least not until that game is selling well enough on other markets to pay the cost itself.
I don’t know why Steam can’t get like a dozen interns, or new hires, and have them play games all day. Then they rate each game for functionality, and that it’s not just another asset store flip, then it gets into the program.
That would take care of a lot of the garbage that gets submitted.