Valve reacted to the flood of fake and porn-titled indie games that infected the company’s Steam Greenlight proposal by forcing developers to pay $100 (about £60) as an entry fee, with the money going towards a charity.
However, indie developers are hopping mad about having to shell out the money just to apply to Greenlight, especially since there are no guarantee gamers would vote on their game. For example, Slenderman Stories: The Orphanage was downvoted by gamers because of the concept, without even seeing the game.
Slenderman Stories gets bashed by fans automatically.Even before the $100 charge, Steam Greenlight has become less a way to get games noticed and more a beauty contest by way of American Idol voting.
Valve in the meantime has issued a statement, reading, ”We always try to build quick iteration into our process for development of new features, and Greenlight will be no different. We have a huge list of suggestions from customers and the lessons we’ve learned from shipping, so Greenlight will definitely continue to evolve over the next weeks and months as we tune the system and add valuable features.”
Indie developers probably aren’t mollified by Valve’s non-answer to their complaints. Stay tuned.
