The Valve and Steam Platform Discussion Thread

[Rahdulan]

There's a lot of interest for employees that worked in a company that did fuck all as far as games go. Who knows, maybe these people felt like releasing some titles and left.

 

[gaussgunner]

Does Valve still have a free-for-all management structure? I guess it doesn't work.

 

[Country_Gravy]

can I see your green notification thingy?

Should have asked to see my purple-headed warrior.

You missed out.

 

[Shackleton]

http://store.steampowered.com/app/643110/Living_O/

What on earth is Steam turning into? What next?

Are they not making enough $$$ from games that they need to branch out into softcore porn?

 

[J_C]

Just combine pornhub and Steam into one and I will have all my entertainment in one place.

 

[Black]

Good, at this rate hentai and porn (in that order) are a safe bet for Steam.
Unironically can't wait.

 

[pippin]

They already allow hentai games, but sex can't be the main goal/mechanic and/or you have to unlock nudity via patches

 

[gaussgunner]

Just combine pornhub and Steam into one and I will have all my entertainment in one place.

Then double the price every year...

It's too bad they killed Greenlight. Greenlight for Porn would've been lulzy.

 

[Black]

They already allow hentai games, but sex can't be the main goal/mechanic and/or you have to unlock nudity via patches

Yes, this needs to be fixed.

 

[LESS T_T]

http://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1328973169870947116

Steam Direct Now Available

As we announced in our blog post last week, Steam Direct is now available! This new submission path is designed to provide a streamlined, transparent, and accessible route for new game developers from anywhere in the world to bring games to Steam.

The rest of this post will discuss some details regarding the closure of Steam Greenlight and provide some information for developers seeking distribution via Steam Direct.


Steam Direct information for developers

With the release of Steam Direct today, we have a couple of new pieces to the process. It's worth reading the full Steam Direct Overview page to see what the process looks like and what to expect. (Note: If you have non-game software, please see Distributing Non-Game Software for information on supported types of software)

In general, the process for developers of games and VR experiences involves a few key steps:

1. Digital paperwork. We need to know about the person and/or company that we will be doing business with. So the digital paperwork includes all the expected information such as company name, address, and contact information. There is also a brief tax and identity verification process that a developer will need to go through once to get set up.
   
2. The app fee. There is now a $100 recoupable app fee for each application to release on Steam. Steamworks developers will pay this fee once as part of the initial paperwork, which will unlock the first appID. Once all the paperwork has been completed, and the developer is set up in Steamworks, additional appIDs may be purchased for $100 each. This fee for each appID is returned in the payment period after that game has at least $1,000 in Steam store or in-app purchases.
   
3. Review processes. Building a release pipeline to support thousands of developers and millions of customers is a delicate balance. We specifically don't want an onerous and detailed certification process that makes it difficult for developers to release games, but we also want some level of confidence that games are configured correctly and aren't going to do unexpected things to customers' computers. So we have a couple of brief review periods where our team plays each game to check that it is configured correctly, matches the description provided on the store page, and doesn't contain malicious content. These processes shouldn't take more than a day or two unless we find something configured incorrectly or problematic.

Along with today's release of this new path, we're also rolling out an entirely overhauled documentation system to detail the Steamworks APIs, tools, features, and best practices. In this new documentation system, developers will find a much better organized layout, including an expandable table of contents, updated search, as well as an entirely new section on the Steamworks APIs themselves.

Additionally, we've been piloting a new help tool for Steamworks developers that have specific questions or that need help with the configuration of a game. This has been helping us provide better information and faster support to Steamworks developers.


The end of Greenlight

Last week, we disabled new submissions and voting via Greenlight and have been reviewing the remaining submissions. As of today, we've greenlit many of the remaining 3,400 titles that were remaining in Greenlight. There are a number of titles that we could not Greenlight, due to insufficient voter data or concerns about the game reported by voters. Titles that are not ultimately Greenlit may still be brought to Steam via Steam Direct, provided they meet our basic criteria of legality and appropriateness.

If you are a developer with a submission in Greenlight that was not Greenlit, you may be able to request a refund if you meet the following criteria:

• If your current submission in Greenlight is your only submission, and it has not been Greenlit, or
  
• If you have more than one submission and none of them have been Greenlit.

If one of these situations applies to you, please visit the Steam help site and select the "purchases" category to find your Greenlight submission fee purchase and request a refund.


Next Steps For Steam

With this transition to Steam Direct, we'll be keeping an eye on new submissions and making adjustments as necessary. We aren't quite sure whether there will be a lot more new submissions, just a bit more, or even fewer. It's most likely that there will be an initial surge of new submissions and then a new rate somewhat higher than what was coming through Greenlight.

Our analysis suggests that quite a bit of the previous volume of submissions to Greenlight was motivated by trading card abuse, which we detailed in our blog post Changes to Trading Cards. With the changes detailed in that blog post, we expect there is a category of game-shaped objects that are unlikely to be worth someone paying even $100 to bring to Steam. So that will likely lower the rate of incoming new titles somewhat. But, Steam Direct also intentionally provides a more transparent and predictable path for new game developers, which is something we heard held back many developers, especially in non-Western countries.

After Steam Direct has been up and running for a while, we'll share some analysis of what (if any) changes in volume of submissions or behavior of developers. We also appreciate the scrutiny and feedback from developers and players (such as Lars Doucet and Sergey Galyonkin) that keep holding us accountable, making smart suggestions, and digging into our changes because this whole wonderful platform exists to serve you.

We also have work well under way for more improvements and new features to expand and improve the Steam store.

We're in the progress of completing some major updates to the Steam Curator system as detailed in our previous post here. We're also quite a ways into rewriting the core of our recommendation engine to better predict which games any given user might find most exciting. And we're also in the process of updating various sections of the Steam store that haven't received as much recent attention as the home page.

Future blog posts in this space will detail our progress or announcements on these upcoming features and improvements, and we look forward to sharing more news soon.

-Steam Team

Our analysis suggests that quite a bit of the previous volume of submissions to Greenlight was motivated by trading card abuse, which we detailed in our blog post Changes to Trading Cards. With the changes detailed in that blog post, we expect there is a category of game-shaped objects that are unlikely to be worth someone paying even $100 to bring to Steam. So that will likely lower the rate of incoming new titles somewhat. But, Steam Direct also intentionally provides a more transparent and predictable path for new game developers, which is something we heard held back many developers, especially in non-Western countries.

"Game-shaped objects", heh

 

[Sentinel]

 

[Latelistener]

It's kinda unusual that all of them just leaving suddenly after so many years. What's going on?

 

[DramaticPopcorn]

It's a false flag, they leaving Valve corp to join Valved inc which is the daughter company that's developing HL3. I want to believe

 

[Latelistener]

It's a false flag, they leaving Valve corp to join Valved inc which is the daughter company that's developing HL3. I want to believe

You mean they already made HL3, and left the studio, since their work is done.
And HL3 will came out on October 10, 2017. Exactly 10 years after Episode 2.

Spoiler

 

[pippin]

It's kinda unusual that all of them just leaving suddenly after so many years. What's going on?

People get old.

 

[LESS T_T]

Actually ValveTime recently did a roundup of people who left or joined Valve last few years: http://www.valvetime.net/threads/whos-left-or-joined-valve-in-recent-history.257815/

You can see that old guys are leaving to retire or do something new, and new (and many of them seem young) guys are joining.

 

[Latelistener]

People get old.

All of them. Simultaneously.
Kinda explains why I feel myself so old. Half-Life 3 is to blame.

 

[LESS T_T]

Achievement hunting....no, achievement feeding game is a thing, apparently. I see more and more of these kind of games recently: http://store.steampowered.com/app/655470/A_Goo_Adventure/

These games usually have hundreds of, or even thousands of achievements, and (from the looks of their community) most of them are so trivial to get and have art that made for profile decoration. So these developers are effectively selling those icons, not games. Not as shady as the card farming (at least they provide "value" to its purchasers), but it feels quite jarring.

I think Valve most likely know about this, but not sure if they consider these things "game-shaped objects" that should be discouraged.

 

[Alienman]

Another reason to over to GoG I guess, until they eventually fuck up their service too.

 

[Latelistener]

It's not the service problem, but rather the retards who use it.
Some idiots write a shitlong post about themselves like someone actually gives a fuck, using all these cheap smiles. Most importantly, they never forget the list of requirements, using which they add new "friends".
And some idiots are spending their time to write on each of their 500+ "friends" profiles, wishing them "happy holidays" and shit. The next level of faggotry.
At least, they usually don't play games.

 

[gaussgunner]

It's not the service problem, but rather the retards who use it.

Valve turned the service into a shitty social network, I'd say it is their problem.

 

[LESS T_T]

While digging about the Zemimax-Oculus VR case a bit, I found comments that an ex-Valve hardware engineer wrote 5 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13414190

Sure you don't want to make Half-life 3 in this company.

It fits a pattern. I was a hardware engineer at Valve during the early VR days, working mostly on Lighthouse and the internal dev headset. There were a few employees who insisted that the Valve VR group give away both hardware and software to Oculus with the hope that they would work together with Valve on VR. The tech was literally given away -- no contract, no license. After the facebook acquisition, these folks presumably received large financial incentives to join facebook, which they did. It was the most questionable thing I've seen in my whole career, and was partially caused by Valve's flat management structure and general lack of oversight. I left shortly after.

Overall, I think Valve is a good place to work, and I learned a lot from all of the incredibly smart people there. The main reason that I left was the difficulty in merging hardware development with the company's exceptionally successful business model. The hardware team was pressured to give away lots of IP that could have been licensed, with the explanation that hardware is just so worthless anyway compared to online software sales, there was no other choice. It's possible that this was a good faith gamble, however it still doesn't preclude the use of business contracts that would have protected our investment. It also isn't so great for morale to hear everyday that your years of work are going to be given away to another company, and then watch that company get acquired for $2B. This is especially the case since many employees strongly voiced concerns about just such a scenario.

Growth at Valve is a little funny. It's like an oil-rich nation. Gaining more citizens is not really desirable since the wealth will just get spread more thinly, and there is no way that new employees will be able to make more money than Steam already does with a very limited number of employees. I know the company is trying new things, and making honest investments in new areas, but it's hard to shake the bottom line.

I joined Valve because "flat management" sounds a lot better than it actually is. I don't think Valve's implementation is especially bad -- I would never join another company that has "flat management".

The biggest problem with flat management is that it isn't really flat. It only means that there is no formal organizational structure. Think of it like the Wild West: It's flat in the sense that you can get away with any behavior if you have enough influence or force. Those who are powerful end up ruling everyone else, making the system anything but flat. I'm not at all convinced this is better than a structured system that tries to ensure fairness (even if flawed). A lot of folks at Valve had very bad experiences with unfit managers (mostly at Microsoft), and I can understand why they developed a system to avoid the nastiness they experienced in the past. It sometimes works well: The unstructured teams appear to be very effective at product maintenance. The products that are already successful and have an established fan base do well with a small group of folks with an informal leader, who doesn't have to make difficult decisions to keep the fan base happy. For new products, there are lots of difficult decisions that affect the future of employees and customers, and it doesn't appear possible for a group to make these decisions together. I spent many, many hours in meetings discussing the same issues repeatedly because there was no leader to make a final decision and allow everyone to get back to work. Instead we just debated without end, causing everyone to become unfocused and demoralized. It's analysis paralysis in the worst way I've ever seen. I now understand why many social groups from primitive tribes to 1st-world nations have leaders and chiefs. It's fine to vote them out when necessary, but having visionary leadership is really critical to development and I don't see how this can be distributed among a group unless each person shares exactly the same vision, which I suppose is possible, but unlikely.

I think the best solution is to build structures that greatly reward effective management. Having a good manager is a tremendous benefit to both the company and the manager's reports. Of course, this is easier said than done, but the return on investment spent in this area is really quite high.

 

[Dexter]

 

[LESS T_T]

I'm not sure all the new asset flippers he mentions came through Direct. Maybe they are part of the remaining 3,400 titles Valve greenlit recently. At least one of them is.

---

Aaaand in the meantime, this is their new VR controller which tracking five fingers: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=943406651

This will increases the significance of your middle finger in gaming more than ever.

 

[BlackAdderBG]