The Decline of Steam Greenlight

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Gamasutra has an interesting article posted today on the decline of Steam Greenlight. What are your thoughts?

There is no doubt popularity of Greenlight has been falling as gamers grow increasingly tired of plowing through many mediocre or prototypical products without a real incentive or reward. However, what surprised me, was the worrying rate at which the decline seems to be occurring.
 
It makes sense that Greenlight has up/down cycles. Quality and rate of completion will go through cycles as well. It's a large system that has to adjust itself constantly and the pendulum swings to both sides. I don't think anything is wrong with that.
 
There are just far too many games. Too many games lead to the crash in 1983. The fact is, only a few games are actually good. Hate on EA, Ubisoft, Activision, etc. all you want, but their level of quality is greater than the vast majority of indie games. And too many indie games hurts other quality indie games.

You just can't trust the public. I'll piss off tons of people right now, but the truth is, most of us are gullible idiots of the first degree. I most likely fall into that category too. It's really hard not too. You can't trust an idiot to make a good decision, but the problem is, we don't recognize ourselves as being the stupid morons we are. Steam Greenlight leads to a cutthroat competition where it's not quality that wins out, but corruption. It's no surprise that it's failing.
 
Nytegard said:
There are just far too many games. Too many games lead to the crash in 1983.
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You fail at history. The crash involved consoles. Steam is PC gaming.

Shitty games simply get uninstalled and forgotten. PCs will continue to exist and be used for other purposes.
 
techrat said:
You fail at history. The crash involved consoles. Steam is PC gaming.
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you fail at trolling. he's simply drawing a parallel. games are games, regardless of what platform.

greenlight has unfortunately drawn a bunch of crap. i think its because everything gets the go all too easily. there's a few gems out of the bunch though. kerbal space program and the long dark come to mind.
 
Steam greenlight, what is steam greenlight? ;) I am joking but also serious, I have not heard of it before. However, the Kerbal Space program you mentioned always looks like it would be fun with humor.
 
THRESHIN said:
you fail at trolling. he's simply drawing a parallel. games are games, regardless of what platform.

greenlight has unfortunately drawn a bunch of crap. i think its because everything gets the go all too easily. there's a few gems out of the bunch though. kerbal space program and the long dark come to mind.
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A parallel that has no foundation in today's market. Consoles are a fraction of the cost, adjusted for inflation, of the machines during the crash era. PCs also were not ubiquitous and had limited function.

A bunch of shitty games on Greenlight isn't going to cause a crash. If too many crappy games and apps are going to cause a crash, then the iTunes Store should have vanished when iPhone had several hundred fart apps.

Bad games are fart apps. They get downloaded. They get uninstalled. They get forgotten.

It's not trolling when I point out that someone isn't thinking their statement through to any logical end.
 
I've never really bothered with exploring greenlight. Seems too over whelming with new stuff all the time, plus it all looks like a shitty mobile blocky game. Getting real sick of this blocky crap. It's not "retro". Old games actually had decent graphics and style. The low resolution of the time was just a given.
 
ManofGod said:
Steam greenlight, what is steam greenlight? ;) I am joking but also serious, I have not heard of it before. However, the Kerbal Space program you mentioned always looks like it would be fun with humor.
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Greenlight is buying games when they are still alpha/beta for a reduced price and hope they get finished and end up good. Some accomplish that but most fail, like DayZ.
 
I hope this piece of crap fails. Greenlight has done more harm than good when it comes to PC gaming. Finding good games shouldn't be a needle in a haystack. Ever since greenlight was released I have just been buying all my games off greenmangaming so I don't have to sift through the shit pile.
 
rezerekted said:
Greenlight is buying games when they are still alpha/beta for a reduced price and hope they get finished and end up good. Some accomplish that but most fail, like DayZ.
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You're thinking of early access. Greenlight is the community-moderated system for getting games on Steam without the support of a big publisher.
 
Quix said:
You're thinking of early access. Greenlight is the community-moderated system for getting games on Steam without the support of a big publisher.
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And it seems as if every crappy mobile port, asset flip, or just plain stupid product is trying to get approved for steam. Once that happens, the publisher is free to flood their shit catalog because they're already on Steam. I hate greenlight. Yeah, there's some good stuff that seems to come out, but most of it is just plain shite.
 
Starbound is pretty good and actively engages the community on progress. Things like DayZ kind of paint it with a bad brush IMO.

And wtf is up with H1Z1? I haven't played it but it looked so much like dayz but all the kids are raving about how awesome/terrible it is. I will never figure out how certain games can rise to the top so fast but have laundry lists of common complaints.
 
THRESHIN said:
you fail at trolling. he's simply drawing a parallel. games are games, regardless of what platform.
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Except the parallel doesn't hold up, because PC games were thriving during the crash of 83. The people most at risk are smalltime indie developers who can't get their game scene. We're not seeing a glut of bad games, we're seeing a flood of ALL games, good and bad. I can't tell you how many awesome indie games I've seen come into existence over the past few years that never would have made it from a big publisher. So the market isn't really set to collapse because consumers have plenty of great choices and the industry is bigger than ever. That said, Steam really does need a better "burial" system for sifting through the junk.
 
IMO, the current state of Greenlight merely reflects the state of indie games. It seems to me that game development has become more accessible and now many people are trying to create their own simplified games and sell them as cheap indie titles. As a result, the market is flooded with amateur works that few are interested in buying.
 
The problem is much of it just 2D 8 or 16bit Game or just plain chesse remake of diff game.
 
That in itself is NOT a problem in ANY way. A game does not have to be 3D with 30GB of high res textures to be good. Which type of game a person enjoys is entirely a personal choice. It doesn't matter what genre it is, which graphical style is chosen, how many dimensions it's in as long as it is a good example of the categories it does fall under. Axiom Verge, Shovel Knight, Steamworld Dig, and a bunch of other 2D games ooze quality and polish from every single one of their 2D pixels. That doesn't mean there aren't others that are bad examples, but simply classifying 2D games as bad seem short sighted in the extreme. I still play Super Mario World, and enjoy it as much as the day it was released.
 
Zarathustra[H];1041934627 said:
I hadn't even heard of Steam Greenlight before today.

And I use Steam a lot.
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I've known a few people that have gone through the process, and have voted on a few. It seems to work ok. It's likely got some flaws as I think it's really the first time anything like it has been implemented, but there have been some decent games to come out of it, and I know of a few more that are still in the process. Who knows why there's a decline, if there actually even is. Things tend to go in cycles, so there will probably be another uptick at some point. I'm sure Valve can refine the process more though.
 
Steam greenlight where shitty games flood the place and the only decent games are usually uncompleted messes. Steam needs to adopt an expiring policy such that games that don't gain traction over say 6 months get either put into a secondary pool of games or just get dropped. Else it just looks like a bloated game app store.
 
Darunion said:
Starbound is pretty good and actively engages the community on progress. Things like DayZ kind of paint it with a bad brush IMO.
.
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Uhhh starbound is crap. They went ~9mo without any real updates, added a couple new assets, but the gameplay itself has barely changed. Modders have done more than the team itself has since their early access debut. And comparing them to Terraria? Hah. Doesn't hold a candle despite such grand promises.
 
greenlight is what made me turn off the steam sign in popups, as it was constantly pushing unfinished games on me.
 
Quix said:
You're thinking of early access. Greenlight is the community-moderated system for getting games on Steam without the support of a big publisher.
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Oh yea, got them mixed up. Early Access has a lot of crap too.
 
Neither of these is forcing anything on the user. Just like with any store on the planet, whether it's B&M or digital, one has to make an intelligent decision based on a bit of research to get something that they want. Valve should make easily accessible options (if they don't have them already) to filter Early Access. Greenlight is actually treated fairly separately in my experience. I don't see much of its content unless I specifically go to the Greenlight page.

There's a lot of crap in any store. What makes some people more intelligent I guess is being able to make an informed decision, and ignore the bullshit.
 
J3RK said:
Neither of these is forcing anything on the user. Just like with any store on the planet, whether it's B&M or digital, one has to make an intelligent decision based on a bit of research to get something that they want. Valve should make easily accessible options (if they don't have them already) to filter Early Access. Greenlight is actually treated fairly separately in my experience. I don't see much of its content unless I specifically go to the Greenlight page.

There's a lot of crap in any store. What makes some people more intelligent I guess is being able to make an informed decision, and ignore the bullshit.
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Yup, reminds me of the 'Big Buck Hunter 4' and various other games you would see in any B&M store back in the day that I wouldn't even give a second look.
 
I haven't touched greenlight in a while. It has long since been overwhelmed with garbage.
 
Krab said:
I haven't touched greenlight in a while. It has long since been overwhelmed with garbage.
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The trick is to wait for someone or an article to tell you about a cool game being worked on that's on Greenlight. Then go check it out and vote. I personally don't just go on there and browse for games.
 
NoNRG said:
Yup, reminds me of the 'Big Buck Hunter 4' and various other games you would see in any B&M store back in the day that I wouldn't even give a second look.
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HA!! Exactly! I used to ignore most game boxes that had cross-hairs, forest environments or big antlers on them. (granted I'd sometimes have to peek out of the corner of my eye to make sure something with a crosshair wasn't actually something cool... :D )
 
THRESHIN said:
you fail at trolling. he's simply drawing a parallel. games are games, regardless of what platform.

greenlight has unfortunately drawn a bunch of crap. i think its because everything gets the go all too easily. there's a few gems out of the bunch though. kerbal space program and the long dark come to mind.
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Not just green light, but the entire store section and even Steam sales. Too much crap to shift through. Most of the games up on green light are terrible and will always be terrible. Sheer garbage is put up there. Problem is the few good games that are submitted are sadly buried. I suppose a strong campaign off Steam is required, like what Squad did.
 
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