Gabe Newell: "Our Goal Is To Make Greenlight Go Away"

Andy Chalk

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Nov 12, 2002
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Gabe Newell: "Our Goal Is To Make Greenlight Go Away"


Gabe Newell says Steam Greenlight has been useful but he doesn't want to keep it around forever.

Steam Greenlight has been the kind of mess that only Valve can make: inherently flawed and yet wildly successful. Making the cut on Greenlight has become a priority goal for virtually every indie developer in the PC game, yet Greenlight itself is the subject of complaints from all corners, at least in part because its actual workings remain a dark and arcane mystery.

Like it or not, it's become a very big part of how Steam works, yet Valve Archduke Gabe Newell made it clear during his address at Steam Dev Days that it's not going to be around forever. "Our goal is to make Greenlight go away," he said. "Not because it's not useful, but because we're evolving."

[tweet t=https://twitter.com/DaveOshry/status/423514948182884352]

Evolving into what, exactly, remains to be seen, but the great and frequent waves [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/131094-Steam-Greenlights-50-New-Titles-including-Shadowgate] of games getting approval suggests that perhaps the system has succeeded a little too well. It's also possible that Steam's apparently-runaway growth is making Greenlight too unwieldy to be practical: Valve announced today that the number of active Steam accounts increased by 15 percent over the final three months of 2013, from 65 million to 75 million, and while more than 80 percent of Steam revenues for the year were split virtually evenly between North America and Europe, both Russia and Brazil showed very strong year-over-year growth of 128 percent and 75 percent respectively.

Source: Twitter (Dave Oshry) [https://twitter.com/DaveOshry]

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Falterfire

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Jul 9, 2012
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The article says Gabe Newell but the tweet is from a Dave Oshry. Is that an alias of Newell I was unaware of, or is there some context that makes it clear he's quoting Gaben? Or is the article just a mistake?
 

UNHchabo

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Falterfire said:
The article says Gabe Newell but the tweet is from a Dave Oshry. Is that an alias of Newell I was unaware of, or is there some context that makes it clear he's quoting Gaben? Or is the article just a mistake?
His previous tweet just before that:

Gabe talking about how he wants us to take control of content on Steam. Take control of the store & how we promote our games. #SteamDevDays
 

Dark Knifer

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I wis when they say things like this they describe what the hell they are doing. I like valve but I wish they would not leave people in the dark after making a pretty big statement like that.
 

gamegod25

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Honestly....I'm okay with that. There has been such a flood of crap on greenlight that something needs to be done.
 

the7ofswords

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Must we refer to Mr. Newell as an "Archduke" in the year 2014? I mean, it was 100 years ago that some Archduke or another was assassinated.

Something to do with some little kerfuffle over in Europe, as I recall ...
 

Alarien

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Way too much indie junk on greenlight lately. Agreed. I'm ready for something else.

The great Indy invasion of the last year or two has been really good for gaming, particularly for PC gaming, but we need something to whittle down the number of titles to something that is palatable. Right now, it's almost impossible to find that diamond amongst all the coal. It almost reminds me of looking at Atari 2600 titles circa 1982 (or, more recently, the glut of PS1 games in 1996).
 

Shadow-Phoenix

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Why not just kill greenlight here and now and only release a slew of games on early access that are at least into Beta so we don't end up with half dead games or games in Alpha that span 2 years alone.
 

kanetsb

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The problem with GL is that, while initially, many people browsed this section and voted on the games - now hardly anyone does. Which makes it easier for crappy games to get through. And generally, flooding the Steam store with mediocre or bad indie games, will lead to market saturation and will hit the games which are actually good.

Another thing is the slew of early access games. Creators of these games seem to be under the impression that not only are they getting money for alpha-quality games but also - free testers (that paid for their future jobs). I guess it's ok when we're talking about some 5$ title from a 2-men dev team that can't afford actual testers, but when major studios are joining in on this "fun" - srsly, stop, now.
 

AntiChrist

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Gabe Newell: Our goal is to make Greenlight go away. That is why we have devised a time machine in order to go back in time and prevent ourselves from creating it in the first place. Now, stand back - when this baby hits 88 mph, you're going to see some serious shit.
 

Kyogissun

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Jan 12, 2010
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So I'm going to guess that 'evolve' means:

-Do away with shitty games that clutter up greenlight that nobody is actually going to buy
-Clean up those and other shitty games that enter into early access
-Make it that legitimately good games will be purchased and praised and that these shit games I have been mentioning so far are able to be properly outed as shit and not have their money wasted on by consumers
 

Albino Boo

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the7ofswords said:
Must we refer to Mr. Newell as an "Archduke" in the year 2014? I mean, it was 100 years ago that some Archduke or another was assassinated.

Something to do with some little kerfuffle over in Europe, as I recall ...
Its all right as long as Gabe doesn't go to Sarajevo and he rescinds all vac bans on Serbs.
 

Dr.Awkward

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Mar 27, 2013
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I think a lot of Greenlight's entries would "go away" if a mobile game market opened up through Steam, partially negating the gap between iTunes and Google Play. Most of them started on mobile devices, and I have a feeling that many of those will be happy enough if Steam got into the market.
 

Vivi22

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Dark Knifer said:
I wis when they say things like this they describe what the hell they are doing. I like valve but I wish they would not leave people in the dark after making a pretty big statement like that.
They've stated several times since Greenlight came out that they want the store to become more community curated rather than relying on them to approve games for sale. That might have been clearer were this story reporting on actual news which has been known for months now rather than a tweet throwing out a comment second hand. This really is old news at this point, and it lacks detail that was released quite some time ago.
 

neonsword13-ops

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Mar 28, 2011
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Ahh-who-wha-noooooooo D:

But I wanted 1,000+ uninspired and unoriginal Minecraft clones clogging up my library!

Think of the blocks!

THE BLOCKS, GABEN!
[sub][sub][sub]Good fucking riddance. I can only come up with a handful of good greenlight games, and even with the $100 entry free, it still doesn't stop the shit from getting in.[/sub][/sub][/sub]
 

thiosk

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Massive revenue growth in BRICs is evidence of Steam's massive success: brazil and russia are both places where game sales are widely considered untenable due to systemic piracy.

Its evidence that it really is a service issue. Steam provides a better service than the pirate bay, when it comes to PC gaming.
 

Snacuum

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"Evolving into what, exactly, remains to be seen, but the great and frequent waves of games getting approval suggests that perhaps the system has succeeded a little too well."

I don't see the problem.

Games that deserve to be sold through Steam are clearly meeting Valves criteria that they stipulated with Greenlight. That's what they wanted it to do.

Crap games on Greenlight?
Doesn't matter, there's tonnes of crap that still sells.

A million Minecraft and DayZ clones?
Doesn't matter they still sell.

Some games aren't guaranteed sales even after success on Greenlight?
Doesn't matter because that's still exactly what happens to the traditionally curated games.

But Early Access crap!
Sorry that's not actually related to Greenlight.