Today, Valve announced the decision to alter Steam Greenlight. Steam Greenlight is where the community could help pick the next Steam releases. Developers were able to submit their games for approval, including information, videos and screenshots–but many of the games that made it through weren't what Steam had in mind. Specifically, there were a million clones of games that already exist, many troll games–like a 9/11 game– or games that didn't exist. There were also games that Steam considered 'offensive' that it had to take down. More than 700 games populate Greenlight as of this writing–that's a ton of games given how long the service has been up. The announcement reads:
The first update is a $100 fee for someone to post to Steam Greenlight. The proceeds will be donated to Child’s Play. We have no interest in making money from this, but we do need to cut down the noise in the system. (Note: Anyone who has already posted a submission to Greenlight will not have to retroactively pay for any existing submissions, but will need to do so for any future submissions.)
While I understand the need to pare down the joke submissions, I'm sad that this was the solution that Valve saw fit to implement. It's exclusionary. Not everyone has $100 dollars to drop for the opportunity to be considered to maybe sell a game on Steam.
Those who think that $100 dollars isn't much money have the priviledge to say that and are also not cognizant of the full indie scene out there. Many wonderful developers creating amazing games would not be able to submit under this system, and were they to make money off the sales of their game on their own–which many suggest to be the solution to tackle the issue–then that becomes money they'd much rather spend on neccesities. Unfortunately gaming has no shortage of gatekeepers trying to keep people locked outside, and this is just the newest example. Moreover, it's plain rude to assert that the money shouldn't be an issue to someone. What if it genuinely is? How dare you say it isn't or shouldn't be?
A conversation about policing the content that makes it on Steam to ensure that there is only material that is serious about submission is valid. Let's have that discussion. Lets not have a disgusting classist discussion about people needing to be able to afford something when not everyone can do such a thing.
