Some months ago we had a discussion about the likely consequences of Steam’s new post-Greenlight policy. Does anyone have any analysis of how things have changed since then?
The big change is number of games per month. Greenlight was a bottleneck that reduced the number of new games by blocking and/or delaying games from getting onto the Steam store. With Steam Direct, that bottleneck is now completely gone. I heard there were about 300-400 new games getting added to the Steam store per month before Steam Direct, and now that number is around 1000 new games per month. That number will probably continue to rise.
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Is this based off analtyics/statistics or someones opinion?
I think the number will eventually go down when half or more of those developers realize they are not making back there 100 bucks every time they put up a un-fun, un-polished game! This is only my opinion.
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Im currently working on a mobil game. If it cost me 100 bucks to list it on google play I would. I expect to make little to no money from this venture. I do it because its fun for me. I dont plan to spam rubbish at the play store. Is this insanity?
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Those numbers were gleaned at random from various comments YouTubers have made about various stats recently. I have no idea how accurate those numbers are.
As far as some people giving up on Steam and eventually seeing the number of new games subside, I highly doubt it. The number of new games per month is far higher on mobile, and people continue to post new games on mobile. My guess is that the number of new games per month on Steam will continue to rise indefinitely.
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With your dedication to quality - Nope - IMO you are considered in the other half. Someone who is developing for the fun of it. You are among the half with other developers who generate quality products which hope to generate earnings.
Direct will surely reduce wanna be developers who were generating crap in hopes of quick bucks - flippers, and people who just aren’t creative/talented. Those numbers will eventually dwindle when - thoses game that are just junk don’t make a return on investment.
$100 per pop isn’t chump change when you consider some of the developers making those games were pushing 3-4 “games” every other month. Enough to keep Sterling and others, fat with terrible content to play and complain about.
I haven’t seen any of the doom and gloom predictions in my recommended games feed. So the recommendations system seems up to the job. It doesn’t appear to have made a difference to good games or customers who buy them. So from my gamer perspective its business as usual.
From a developer perspective I ran into some technical difficulties getting Pond Wars on Steam, and haven’t yet taken the time out to fix the issue and actually launch.
My guess is that the number will lower. Because those numbers are the result of a pile of games “backlogged” from Greenlight being released. They aren’t brand new games.
Yep, my Party Animals game was greenlit, even though it had horrible yes/no ratio and people hated the graphics. I’m not going to throw it up on Steam because my goal is to create a product that people will want to play so it stays where it is until I can find the means to make the graphics more cartoony like people want. But I suspect a whole lot of games also got greenlit that wouldn’t otherwise, all at once, and that many of those developers just slapped them up onto the store.
From what I understand every single game on Greenlight was automatically accepted. I’m not completely sure that’s true, but it seems to be the case from what I’ve heard.
I do not believe that that is the case. When Steam was getting rid of Greenlight, they had members of staff going through the Greenlight submissions, deciding which ones should be accepted.
I was fortunate enough to also be accepted, even though my Yes/No average was not that great.
That’s what the evidence indicates. I’ve not heard of a single person that didn’t get greenlit.
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Hmm, I see.
I’ll admit I’m dubious of their claims - or perhaps their bar for entry is rather low. Regardless, I’m pretty sure that’s the main reason for the recent influx of released games.
Good discussion. My main purpose in asking the original question was to try to determine whether it’s a good idea to release a game on Steam about a month from now, or whether it’'ll be so clogged that any new games will just get lost in the shuffle. If the current glut is caused by so many Greenlight submissions being suddenly approved at the end of Greenlight, then the volume should subside soon; but if it’s caused by people viewing the $100 submission fee as an easy way to get their game on the market, it could actually get worse, right? Which interpretation is more likely?
Considering that there was already a $100 fee - Greenlight itself - I don’t think it’s merely people thinking “it’s cheap!” On the other hand, it IS faster because they aren’t waiting for votes. On the other hand, however (don’t ask how many hands I have), it’s been merely two months since Direct started, not nearly enough to really make a game , so it’s not likely these people saw the Direct announcement and scrambled to make games. On the other hand (okay, I’m a Hindu god at this point), the cheap little “asset flip” style of games (not necessarily an asset flip, but with equivalent amounts of effort) could probably be made in a month or two.
But my bet is on it subsiding.
What is your situation?
If I were in your shoes - first of all they are probably too big for me so I’d be flopping around 
- but seriously, unless you are in a situation where “You have to ship - because the stars have aligned and you will be kicked out of your dwelling if you can’t generate income”, unless that situation exists, I might wait and watch how steam submissions play out for the next 3-4 months.
Unfortunately - the holiday season is fastly approaching - and this is the time when a lot of indies tend to spend on development, because AAA games are full-frontal and all marketers and advertisers and youtubers - are all focused on AAA. No room for the smaller indies.
So - if you buy into that theory - this gives you a small window - publish within the next 1-2 months with no analytics on steam submissions, or wait until January. 
Conversely - depending on your specific game, the genre, the huge following you already have, and how much ‘free’ marketing you already have lined up, maybe the AAA holiday season doesn’t matter that much - because you are already set to make a good showing irrespective of them damn corporate developed video games hording all the attention.
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Okay well I got a part time job at a augmented reality startup. Now its paying so much money I can actually afford to pay for custom art + music. Higher production values might help you stand out from the crowd abit
The only thing I can say is you either got to get lucky or start a larger strategy of building up a set of niche games. Play the long game instead of the short game, so make quality games, and try to make them in a way that your first set of fans will like the next game. I guess thats abit depressing that we are going to be flooded out - oh well no one said it would be easy.
Maybe, since the Greenlight fee is the same as the free for a single direct game, each developer had one Greenlight submission approved? I dunno. I hadn’t even checked the email linked to my Steam account in a while. I didn’t think to even go check until Bored Mormon (who I can’t tag for some reason) said that Pond Wars was approved.
I am quite literally in that situation, after a depressing string of failures. I may try to polish my game a little in my spare time, but I have to focus more on the difficult task of finding decent freelance gigs to get my income level up in a very short amount of time, while fighting off the crippling fear of potentially being homeless. I don’t want to rely on another project when I know it will likely tank as well. Anywho, after that little bit of joy, back to work!
Errrrr…have you looked at his username?
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GL Hemi - any possibility of landing a full-time paid job? That seems a more stable route moving forward and allows for development without the stress of making a super hit title.
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