The Green Party
For a certain breed of indie developer, Steam Greenlight was a godsend. By putting the game up for a Greenlight vote, you could get an initial feel for how well the game would be received. If enough people voted for your game, you could get it out in front of the larger community of Steam users. Yes, the system did get abused, and there's a terrible amount of "shovelware" floating around, but overall it's been a good thing for Valve, a good thing for Steam users, and a good thing for the indie game scene. Killing Greenlight is a retrograde move that will ultimately do more harm than good by putting the ability to get a game in one of the largest digital marketplaces outside the means of most starting indie developers and certainly ones outside North America and Europe which do not have access to the capital necessary to pay the fees.The Direct Approach
Whatever benefits may have been conferred by Greenlight, they are feathers against the avalanche of shit that's been choking Steam the last couple of years. "Joke" games, terrible RenPy visual novels, outright scams, and that's just the games themselves. Bad behavior by so-called "developers" has gotten completely out of hand, with crap games being obviously made with flipped assets, team leads demonstrating their megalomania by picking fights and making threats, and other questionable practices have shown that the lowest common denominator is buried under sewer muck and eager to drag anything that moves down to its level. Gabe Newell should have taken "Old Greenie" out behind the shed and shot it ages ago. While the fee won't deter the truly dedicated, and won't necessarily keep every psycho out of the store, it will at least get people who claim they want to be game developers a much needed reality check and have them seriously consider their life choices instead of going "hurrr, play muh games!"Polarizing, ain't it?
To be completely fair, both camps do have valid points. Sturgeon's Law seems almost tailor made for this scenario: "90% of everything is shit." In this respect, whether there's going to be a fee or not, 90% of everything on Steam is or will be shit. It doesn't matter if a game was brought on by the acclamation of the community or because somebody ponied up the scratch to get it put up, there's a one in ten chance that that game will be "good" by a reasonable standard. And that's assuming that personal tastes and preferences don't factor into the determination of that standard. Good luck with that one.
I can see both sides of the argument as far as the fee question goes. The size of the fee has yet to be determined, so there's an element of uncertainty. If the fee is basically a nuisance (the $100 USD that was mentioned in Valve's press release), it'll certainly stop people going for cheap lulz, but won't necessarily hinder somebody who's more determined to truly put forth an effort into being a troll. And even the most starving of dev teams should be able to put a C-note together by hitting up friends and family, and checking under the couch cushions for loose change. If the fee goes to the other end ($5000 USD, as was also mentioned as a possibility), it will absolutely lock out trolls looking for cheap laughs, but will also lock out earnest teams who are trying to get their particular passion project out to the world, and definitely locks out would-be dev groups who are trying to get something started under sub-optimal economic conditions. It can be argued that Valve charging the fee (whatever it ends up being) is analogous to spaces being sold at a swap meet or storefront spaces being rented out in a building. The analogy falls apart when you consider that that this fee is applied for every game, and is on top of the cut Valve takes from each sale.
The fee's ultimate price, whether it's a single fixed price or has some sort of sliding scale involved, will do a great deal to determine the response from the indie community. Not all indies are created equal, and some do have the resources to cough up the fee. The larger question is: should they? Having been around the block a time or two, I've seen where prices that are perceived to be excessive have led to situations where people avoid using the product or service. It's not like the old days where dev groups strapped for cash pirated 3DS Max to make character models, then quietly plowed the proceeds into purchasing legit copies. This is paying for access, on a per title basis, an either-or situation which will either cause indie devs to pony up or find other places to peddle their wares. And there are other digital stores out there, such as GOG.com and GreenManGaming to name a couple. While these storefronts don't have the reach Steam does now, it's entirely likely that an excessive fee from Valve to put products on Steam will cause people to shift over to those alternatives. It's been my position for some time that Steam has had a disproportionate share of the market, and this move could very well cost them market share because of the bad taste it leaves in the mouths of indie devs.
Where does this leave consumers? They're probably going to be the second most direct beneficiaries of this move. The current flood rate of titles on Steam will likely be pruned back to a more manageable level and titles which are not obvious wastes of time will continue to be presented. However, the existing glut of titles, good and bad, on Steam will not be going away. Ben Kuchera over at Polygon makes a good point that the fee will not help Steam suddenly become more likely to connect gamers with games they didn't know they wanted. That, however, is a completely secondary consideration. This move is aimed squarely at developers and those claiming to be developers.
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