Steam Greenlight is a mess. Itâs a system for bringing lesser-known games onto Valveâs store that doesnât really help people who play games or make them. Two years ago, Valve said the plan was to kill it and replace it with something less broken. And yet, here it remains. So, whatâs next?
First, the good news: Steam Greenlight still has an expiration date. Unfortunately, right now it reads, ââŚsomeday.â The plan is to pull the plug on Greenlight (and hopefully throw it into a dark, mysterious ravine that is said to feed on peopleâs collective hatred for a thing, such that it will never return) and replace it with a system thatâs entirely user-driven. Theoretically, anyone will be able to put a game on Steam with no pesky gatekeepers standing in their way. Valve business development authority Erik Johnson explained it to me during an interview at GDC:
â[Greenlight] is our first step,â he said. âUser-generated stores is the goal. We learned the lesson from back in the publisher days that weâre bad at picking games. Itâs hard. If you sat us down in a pitch meeting and told us to pick the next ten big games, weâd almost certainly get it wrong. Everything weâre doing now is heading in the direction of being more out of the way, just providing people tools and letting that take care of itself.â
And while it doesnât seem like much progress has been made in that transition, Johnson said that Greenlight devs regularly tweak it (in admittedly small ways) to make it shine ever so slightly brighter. Moreover, he noted that important changes are happening elsewhere in order to clear the path to an entirely open Steam storefront. For instance, user-created maps and items in games like DOTA 2 and Team Fortress 2âwhich can be sold for real cash, netting some players thousands of dollars per yearâoffer a glimpse into the future of Steam.
Itâs an ambitious plan, for sure, but itâs tough not to want more, you know, direct progress after two years. I asked Johnson why weâre still waiting, and he put it to me like this:
âOur goal is that users can self-publish their products on Steam. The realities of the world intervene on that. It becomes difficult. Itâs not just something where weâre like, âNow we can do it.â There are technical issues and stupid legal issues and all of that.â
âYou donât get there overnight, but we need to keep pointing in that direction. I think the most recent big Steam update is [indicative of that]. Weâre trying to ship more games. Greenlight was created at a point where we literally could not ship games fast enough. People were making games too fast. Games that were good just werenât getting shipped. Our customers have every right to be pissed about that. Content needs to get in their hands as quickly and efficiently as possible.â
Which is true, and Greenlight has given rise to some huge hits like Five Nights At Freddyâs and Besiege that might not ever have made it onto Steam otherwise. But the great Greenlight gameflood of 2013 (and onward) led to a new problem: too many games, some of which are, to put it lightly, crap. Boom quickly went bust. Solving one problem, as is often the case, revealed another. And while Valve has tried to cut down on the chaosâboost the signal, reduce the noiseâby implementing systems like Steam reviews, Steam curators, and broadcasts, many users still donât feel like thatâs enough. Tons of games wash up on Steamâs fabled shores every day, and people donât know which ones are worth their time. Johnson admitted thatâs still a work in progress:
âI donât think that fundamentally customers have problems with a huge range of content on Steam,â he said. âWhether thatâs genre specific or age-appropriate specific or whatever. I donât think users care that there are all these games on Steam. I think the question is, âIs Steam doing a good job of putting me in contact with things I care about?â Weâre not there yet. Weâre not at the point where weâre doing that efficiently. Weâre a long ways off from where we want to be. Complaints are valid, and theyâre useful data for us. Weâll try to fix it.â
That, however, brings us to the big problem: Greenlight is still around right now, and itâs busted, sparking like a frayed wire plugged into a socket. These arenât small issues, either. As Iâve discussed previously, itâs broken as a system, and it will continue to cause unintended problems until things change in a big way. Once again, Johnson didnât hesitate to agree that the system is in need of major improvements, especially in light of recent incidents involving developers giving away free games for Greenlight votes or signing with publishers to get them through Greenlight faster. But, also again, Johnson didnât give me much of a picture of what an overhauled, pre-open-storefront Steam Greenlight will look like.
âThereâs definitely drag,â he said. âThereâs totally a drag right now. Iâve heard from developers [about issues]. The thing that made us really nervous is some developers are signing with publishers thatâll get them through Greenlight more quickly. That is not how we want content to flow to customers. Thatâs something we take very seriously and weâre gonna be very careful about as we get to the other side.â
âWe need to improve. We need to improve everything all the time. I think Greenlight as it is right now exists as a stopgap between where we were in self-publishing [and where we want to end up]. The guys who are really close to Greenlight are always making changes to make it work as efficiently as it can. The reality is, us continuing to be involved with games before they can ship on Steam is the problem thatâs worth attacking. Greenlight is one of those transitional things that, when weâre on the other side of it, we think things will be really great.â
Hereâs hoping. For now, though, we still donât have a timeframe for The Futureâs arrival, or even an idea of what it will be like. Valveâs working behind-the-scenes, and Iâm sure the technical and legal issues theyâre coming up against are immense, but Greenlight has evolved from temporary solution to problem in its own right. Fingers crossed that Valve is able to combine all the pieces into something much, much better sooner rather than later.
Youâre reading Steamed, Kotakuâs page dedicated to all things in and around Valveâs stupidly popular PC gaming service. Games, culture, community creations, criticism, guides, videosâeverything. If youâve found anything cool/awful on Steam, send us an email to let us know.
To contact the author of this post, write to [email protected] or find him on Twitter @vahn16
