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It seems people are downvoting just because Steam Greenlight keeps telling you how many games you haven't voted for. A silly excuse, but that's what it seems like from the Steam forums.

Your game looks pretty awesome. Unfortunately, I detest the genre; so sorry for the downvote.

Urgh boy, downhill I go!

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The RPS article about Steam Greenlight has some pretty amazing shit about people banding together to troll downvote games in only the first week.

But it seems like, as of now, there is no real reason to care about the downvotes? They don't seem to actually affect anything, as far as anyone knows. It's the comments I'd worry about. Trolls who insult your game for whatever reason are bad because they put random viewers in a negative mood just by existing. Or something. Internet.

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It seems almost insulting that developers have to grovel for votes and pray they don't get troll-voted when games like Eternity's Child and Stalin VS. Martians both made it to Steam.. Oh and Bad Rats... How on Earth did that game make it unto Steam?

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Yeah, it's weird as fuck. But that's why Greenlight exists now. It'll change.

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Update: Steam has removed the ability to see my own ratio of up-votes to down-votes. So I guess that was a fun novelty for a while, I'll just ASSUME it stays up?

The RPS article about Steam Greenlight has some pretty amazing shit about people banding together to troll downvote games in only the first week.

I can't find anything in this article about people doing that. I actually disagree with a few things other developers say in this article.

I have a different view on trolling than most other people do, I think. The word "troll" has completely lost it's meaning; people just use it to describe someone with an opinion they don't like. Whenever I see negative comments, it's 90% of the time someone who actually didn't like what they got, not some clown who's being a cartoon Dick Dastardly for no reason.

Those DO exist, they're just much rarer than the internet makes out. Practically all the negative comments I've got (not many!) have been genuine, and even stuff like "Isn't this a flash game? ppffffff!!" I can still see where that person's coming from. I definately wouldn't want the power to report or delete those kind of comments.

This guy especially:

Matt James also notes that Steam apparently isn’t yet driving traffic to his game – “rather I’ve driven traffic to my [Greenlight] page through twitter etcetera.” James previously had his game Leave Home flat-out rejected for Steam release, but “I’m not yet sure if this is any better for me.”

You have this whole thing backwards! It's not supposed to drive traffic to your game, and it's not supposed to be a different avenue to release it. It's just a page for you to say "I still think I should be on Steam!!!" as loud as you can. Of course you're supposed to make tweets and facebook posts and tell everyone about it yourself!

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I wasn't expecting this thread to end up so depressing, lol.

Have anyone had a good experience with Greenlight? Found an interesting game on there maybe?

th_emot-suicide.gif

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So far, I discovered and voted for Signal Ops and Dreams; so, Greenlight was valuable so far.

But, I don't know... the grey background of Steam and visual uniformity of each games pages makes it a very depressing experience to go around and find games that could be interesting.

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Here's a sad realisation: The comments all say things like

"Yeah I would love to play this!"

"I wanna buy this, so thumbs up from me!"

"The trailer looks good, I would love to see more of this game."

...but our game has been finished and came out a year ago, and is still for sale right now. This is something I already knew, but these people equate being released on Steam to being released AT ALL. Just instinctively, without even thinking, if it's not on Steam then it might as well just be on my hard drive. How many of you guys have actually checked if you can already buy these games your finding? There's no release date on these pages.

Not being on Steam being equal to not being out is kind of how it feels when you're the people trying to sell stuff- except from our perspective it's a problem we have to work with and I guess the consumer is only pretending it's a problem for them. Cos really it's the same .exe either way and you all bought Minecraft, right?

Probably a lot to talk about there, but ah whatever I'll start worrying about it when submitting the next game.

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Speaking personally, I hate buying games anywhere but Steam or GOG, pretty much. Oh, and the Telltale website, 'cause they do it right. U: I'm opening up to Desura, though, mostly because of the Indie Royale bundles. But, essentially, I like having it all in one place. Those people no doubt feel the same. Still, it's weird that they assume your game hasn't been released at all.

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For a lot of people "not being on steam" is a reason not to buy it. And that's a real shame than Steam has gained this, more or less, monopoly.

And as usual, the comments on greenlight are as terrible as on most other sites.

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EDIT: So, there was this whole "page 2" thing I didn't see existed before I posted. Looks like the conversation moved on. Whups. As for "not-being-on-Steam" = "no buy", I see AAA games that way, as I figure they have no excuse. That said, I have a bunch of indie stuff on my desktop that I bought straight from the source (your game included, I_smell). I'm kind of shocked more people don't scale their expectations for release in similar ways. Really? You're interested in this low-budget, independent thing but you still expect it to be on this giant service that occasionally caters to "bigger" small productions as well?

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The problem has nothing to do with expectations and everything to do with convenience.

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...but our game has been finished and came out a year ago, and is still for sale right now. This is something I already knew, but these people equate being released on Steam to being released AT ALL. Just instinctively, without even thinking, if it's not on Steam then it might as well just be on my hard drive. How many of you guys have actually checked if you can already buy these games your finding? There's no release date on these pages.

Not being on Steam being equal to not being out is kind of how it feels when you're the people trying to sell stuff- except from our perspective it's a problem we have to work with and I guess the consumer is only pretending it's a problem for them. Cos really it's the same .exe either way and you all bought Minecraft, right?

This will probably make you sad, but this is exactly how I feel regarding PC games. 95% of all Pc games I have purchased in the last like 7 years have been through Steam and if they are not on Steam its almost guaranteed that I wont get them. If its a series/game I really want there is maybe a 50% chance ill buy it if there is a boxed copy available, but if its digital download only its probably 10% or less.

I did not buy Minecraft but I did buy Receiver for the $5 it costs or whatever, and it was lame so that really turned me off. I also did not buy Battlefield 3 simply because it was not on Steam and I probably wont buy the next one either if its only or Origin. I was interested in Home but would literally never have bought it if it didnt come out on Steam. I am much more likely to download a game as freeware and then donate afterwards, then buy if digitally if its not on Steam (though I realize thats not really a sustainable business model).

For a lot of people "not being on steam" is a reason not to buy it. And that's a real shame than Steam has gained this, more or less, monopoly.

And as usual, the comments on greenlight are as terrible as on most other sites.

I guess its bad that Steam has a monopoly, but Steam is also the best service by miles. Origin may be much better then EADM was but its still the same company and they burned me much too bad with their old service for me to give them a second chance without a significant reason to do so. Desura dosent have the selection. Amazon's games marketplace seems decent but Ive only bought from them when it was a Steam redeemable game, same goes for GreenManGaming (they do have amazing prices though).

One of my biggest hesitations to trying another digital distribution platform is that I dont want to have to manage a second program, either running it all the time when I dont need it or having to wait to launch and log in when I could continue to consolidate to Steam.

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Well- destroying PC gaming outside of ValveSoftware.com. PC games on Steam are doing great, and also browser games are doing fine.

I guess there's a deep trench between those two that me and 600+ other games have apparantly failed to jump, and if the only victims of convinience are the developers who can't make games very well then you can't really point the finger at people for being bad or wrong.

It's like being annoyed at people for not buying Xbox Live Indie Games. It's not the customer's job to go out of their way to support anyone or stop PC gaming from being destroyed.

...unless you're doing the marketing for a Kickstarter campaign.

Speaking of which, I thought about XBLIG yesterday and I think the percentage of games that jump from Greenlight to Steam will be about the same as games that jumped from XBLIG to XBLA. It's kind of the same concept, right?

EDIT- I'm kind of freely slapping the keyboard as I just woke up here, so don't take anything I say seriously.

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It's kind of the same concept, right?

Nnnnooo. Greenlight's explicit purpose is to get games on Steam. XBLIG is an alternative to XBLA. Very rarely, Microsoft will take note of a particularly impressive XBLIG game and offer to publish it on XBLA, but it's not a user-vetted system like Greenlight is.

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I can understand the "if it's not on Steam, I don't want it" sentiment, it can get very annoying to have or create many accounts for just a handful of games when you can have them all under the same account, not to mention it's another site with your personal information that might not be as secure.

I don't mind buying digital games on other sites that just sell them to you, but when they ask you to create an account... Yeah, I already have a Steam account, a Desura one, a GamersGate one, an Adventure Shop one and I know I'll eventually have to get an Origin account. I just don't want another one, this is just too much!

And frankly, even if half the games that are on Greenlight are already on Desura, I'd rather wait and see if they make it to Steam, simply because I like the Steam interface better.

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You sir are single handily destroying PC gaming

This is an entirely different discussion and I think you are massively oversimplifying the whole situation. Out of all the platforms, the PC seems like the best option for moving towards digital distributions since you are almost guaranteed to have internet access and large storage capabilities. Im not sure how the nearly 400 games I have purchased for PC in the last 6 years in killing it, but I guess I must be since I'm only buying from Steam - the largest and most diverse platform for getting games delivered straight to your computer.

but when they ask you to create an account... Yeah,

Making an account isnt too bad its when you are required to run the platform's program in order to play the game. If I could just download the game and then run it from my Program Files folder (or better yet, drop it into Steam as an EXE and get the overlay to work) then I would be more likely to expand.

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This is an entirely different discussion and I think you are massively oversimplifying the whole situation.

He was also joking, I'm willing to bet...

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Frankly, I prefer buying games through the developer. I bought La Mulana and Lone Survivor and The Witcher 2 that way, and it's not exactly a headache to not have to launch a front-end platform to get them running. The option exists to create a shortcut to any game in your Steam library though, if you're really into that sort of thing. I think Remo mentioned this in a podcast at some point.

Also, everyone should buy La Mulana.

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Adding a shortcut doesn't fix the main problem which everyone who says that always seems to conveniently ignore: the convenience of having everything to do with that game all in one place. I don't have to go to the website and remember whatever information I need to access the download link and maybe have to renew my key if they're particularly archaic (it still happens, for some reason) or at the very least find that key in my email archives IF they even ever emailed it to me and THEN download and then install it and then add the shortcut to Steam and then finally play it. Instead of doing all of that? l only need to find it in my Steam library, double-click to install, and play it. And, bonus, if it's a more recent game, it probably has Steam Cloud support, so I can pick up right from where I left off on another computer or a year ago when I had to uninstall for whatever reason.

Steam is fucking ridiculous in how convenient it is. It's not just about being able to run a game from within the Steam client. There are dozens of other reasons Steam is great.

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