Ukerric
Bearded Ape
- 7,921
- 9,572
I think it's high time someone pointed out that Steam Greenlight is a massive failure.
It's basically the Amazon school of though for books, applied to games. The idea that editors/distributors aren't needed, and foist off their most useful job (vetting professional productions/manuscripts; investing in potential new ventures/authors) onto the customers. Well, it turns out that the customers aren't very good at figuring out if a potential game pitch reflects a game that goes to completion. Customers in general lack the experience of evaluating game and teams, lack the information about the team's apparent ability to produce, etc. So they fail at picking games, except that Valve doesn't fully care since they didn't lose any money on it. The only risk they run is if people get really pissed at too many failed Greenlight Early Access and drop Steam as a platform. Which, given their Amazon-level grip on the digital distribution is increasingly difficult to do.
Except that, with Amazon, at least you know there's a book to download on your kindle. With Greenlight/Early Access, you're paying for the outline of a book on the promise of delivery of the book. There's a reason book editors allow only pitches of books from established authors that haven proven they deliver actual books with a minimum quality.
