Actually the practice has been against Greenlight ToS for a while as "Soliciting" however it has never been a rule enforced due to the lack of interest and broadness of said terminology.
EDIT: Also I hope you all know now that this practice is officially declared HERESY! As decreed by the God EMPRAH GABEN!
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I never had a need to read the Greenlight ToS but this statement makes no specific mention that this process isn't acceptable and whilst it points to the ToS it doesn't imply that said documents states anything different.
Looking at this their basically saying you can whore your turd for votes but if we do we'll probably delay your release.
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I detect a bit of Heresy in your tone of type, trying to correct our emperor! HERETIC! Never question or try to educate the educated! To death with your flesh!
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Yeah! Blood for the Blood God!...Why are you looking at me like that?
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Additionally, you agree not to post any item to Greenlight that contains the following:
Soliciting, begging, auctioning, selling, advertising, referrals, racism, or discrimination.
Solicit - ask for or try to obtain (something) from someone - They were asking for votes in exchange for the game.
Selling - give or hand over (something) in exchange for money - They did not offer money, but instead a game that has monetary value and would ultimately save you money from not having to purchase it, in exchange for a vote.
You could argue that means in-game only, but the previous rules clearly stated "Before you post your game or software" while this states "any item" which to me, implies that it includes the announcements and what not that go along with the game on Greenlight.
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But of course everyone wanted grass simulator on steam!
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As long as bundle ones are still okay.
Also, I'm half expecting some greenlit titles that pulled that tactic to go "Sorry, Valve said it isn't allowed, so now we can't give you free keys, but thanks for voting for us".
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I was thinking this too. Wouldn't surprise me at all.
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These devs doing this are HERETICS, but supporting them? That is what real HERESY is!
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Hah this will happen, now there is the perfect excuse :D
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Why? WGN doesn't give free copies in exhange for votes. They did at first, but that was aaaages ago - I guess they figured it was a bad idea and stopped.
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"This has been coming up more and more lately, and seems to warrant discussing our perspective on the practice of giving away copies of your game (either directly or as a drawing) in exchange for votes."
Well maybe WGN isn't exchanging keys for votes. But the devs are. Through WGN.
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"This has been coming up more and more lately, and seems to warrant discussing our perspective on the practice of giving away copies of your game (either directly or as a drawing) in exchange for votes."
Nothing on WGN is in exchange for votes. You don't need to vote to enter a giveaway, they don't lead you to believe you need to vote, and nobody checks or even knows whether you voted. Of course you can't get a Steam key for a game until it's on Steam (obviously) but that isn't particularly convincing.
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Like I said, WGN isn't exchanging keys for votes. Atleast not anymore. But the devs are exchanging keys for votes through WGN.
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In what way are the devs are exchanging keys for votes through WGN?
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What's wrong with that? And in what way are the devs are exchanging keys for votes through WGN?
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I already did. You didn't understand it though. There's no more point continuing this conversation with you. Have a nice day.
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Well, that was rude, and quite unnecessary.
Look, I see you feel that pledging keys to promote a product being equivalent to exchanging keys for votes in a sense is perfectly self-evident, and you're getting frustrated about having to explain it. I have nothing against you - I wanted to understand your point of view but didn't mean to cause you any frustration, so I apologise for having pressed the question.
Anyway, while I accept that you're using sarcasm, I genuinely hope that you have a nice day too.
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What's "wrong" with developers pledging keys for promotions is that this both violates the terms of service of both Steam's general policies and those pertaining to Steam Greenlight; and also violates the terms stated in Valve's recent announcement regarding vote buying, bribing, and promises with Steam keys once the game in question is Greenlit.
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I can't find where this violates any terms of service. Could you point out the terms in question?
By "Valve's recent announcement" are you referring to this thread's titular announcement? That's to do with giving games or chances to win games in exchange for votes, which WGN does not do.
Promoting their own game and pointing out the greenlight page is what devs are supposed to do. Limited (time or quantity) giveaways is a fair way of promoting yourself - Valve themselves do this.
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It violates the Rules and Guidelines For Steam: Discussions, Reviews, and User Generated Content, in particular the rule prohibiting "[s]oliciting, begging, auctioning, raffling, selling, advertising, referrals." Unfortunately, Steams policies are outdated and thus there is some uncertainty as to whether Steam Greenlight items qualify as "User Generated Content"; and whether vote buying and promotional key promises fall under any of the aforementioned categories (esp. "soliciting", "begging", "raffling", and "advertising"). Nevertheless, despite the lack of clarity on these issues, Steam policies are still in effect and one could easily argue that the behaviors of the developers violate these terms. Moreover, Valve's recent statements regarding such conduct by developers only reaffirm these sentiments.
This is an issue about the conduct of the developers, not of WGN, and even mauiithegreat stated as much above.
Promotional giveaways are appropriate and fair conduct for developers if and only if the items used in the promotional giveaway(s) are not related to the game or product they are promoting (assuming the game is still within the Greenlight system). For example, it's appropriate to promote a Greenlight game on SteamGifts by means of game giveaways, but not by means of promising keys of the game in exchange for votes, notoriety, or publicity of any sort. In doing so, they are skewing the data regarding whether the community actually wants the game and facilitating their chances of being illegitimately Greenlit.
Assuming Valve does do that (you have provided no evidence of this), namely giveaways of games in order to promote the games they are giving away, this is fundamentally different from the activities of the developers. Whereas the games Valve would be purportedly promoting would already be released and therefore no longer subjected to the Greenlight system, the Greenlight developers would be promoting their game in order to ensure that it becomes Greenlit. This is a striking and important distinction between the two phenomena, and one which completely dismantles any further argumentation along this line of reasoning. The only comparable activity would be the developers promoting their game by means of giveaways post-release and after being Greenlit, which is completely fair and appropriate in that case. The key factor, however, is whether they are within the Greenlight system or without.
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That's quite a textwall. I'll have to address your paragraphs one post at a time.
Regarding the Rules and Guidelines For Steam: Discussions, Reviews, and User Generated Content, please refer to the opening paragraph:
"These guidelines apply to all places in the Steam Store and Community where users can post content. This includes, but is not limited to, discussions, comments, guides, product reviews, screenshots, artwork, videos, tags, Steam Workshop, and Steam Greenlight."
The WGN website is not a "place in the Steam Store and Community", and as such does not violate the rules and guidelines in question. If it were not so then steamgifts, steamtrades, steamcompanion, indie royale, indie game stand and many other sites would also be in violation
Moreover, Valve's recent statements regarding such conduct by developers only reaffirm these sentiments.
That's vague. Could you please indicate which recent statements you are referring to.
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It's nowhere near as long as the one I just typed earlier.
I am fully aware that WGN is not under Valve's jurisdiction, and both I and mauiithegreat have tried to explain that our criticisms are leveled at the developers being promoted through WGN, not WGN for promoting the developers.
The statements to which I am referring are those cited in the article above, specifying that developer vote buying and promising keys for promotions should cease immediately.
Responding to your second post, there was no "shift in target," since I never once argued that the target was originally WGN in the first place. Neither had mauiithegreat. It has already been established multiple times by both you and mauiithegreat (and even me, as well) that WGN is not currently exchanging keys for votes and hasn't for many months now (it used to but has since ceased of its own accord). One could argue, however, that they are accepting keys in exchange for promoting the game, which is in itself technically a variation of vote buying.
Perhaps mauiithegreat poorly stated what he meant, but I interpreted his post as meaning that the developers are buying votes with keys and WGN is facilitating this, if not directly doing so. Anyway, like I stated above, WGN is participating in a variation of indirect vote buying by accepting keys from the developers in exchange for promoting their games. Although voting for the Greenlight game is not a requirement, the notoriety and increase in popularity is sufficient enough to lead to votes which otherwise would have not occurred. This in itself may not be wrong per se, but since WGN used to exchange keys for votes, that impression very well may remain among the userbase. Since there is no explicit statement by WGN on the giveaways that voting is not required (it implicitly encourages voting in the first step every time), many may be voting for the sole reason that they believe this is a requisite for receiving their game.
Addressing your third post, if by "made up on the spot" you mean that it is my personal opinion or statue, then yes it was. However, I didn't simply make it up on the spot; that it an opinion of mine I have held for a while now, ever since vote buying and other inappropriate developer activities began occurring to promote their Greenlight games.
Finally, with regard to your fourth post, your evidence only verifies your claims that Valve has given away games before in some capacity. However, it completely fails to address the entire rest of the paragraph, which clearly argues that even if your aforementioned claims are true, they are nevertheless invalid because they attempt to compare two otherwise disparate phenomena.
In the future, it's probably best to consolidate your responses into a single post. I'm not sure why you don't do this, but it may make it easier for others to follow your argument, especially if it becomes split due to multiple responses on each post.
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The reason is that I experienced reading through your wall of text (intended as a descriptive term, not as pejorative) and found it somewhat unpleasant to read. Also, it makes your intention and any points that you are trying to get across very unclear, and places an enormous burden on anyone attempting to reply. I don't ascribe any malice on your part, but since I'm aware of how unpleasant trying to answer your post was I felt that it would been inconsiderate of me to do the same to you.
I hope that's a satisfactory answer.
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This is an issue about the conduct of the developers, not of WGN
The issue at hand is that the statement that Valve has made regarding offering games or entries into raffles in exchange for votes on Greenlight, the question as to whether this will kill WGN, and the answer that it probably won't affect them because WGN doesn't offer anything in exchange for votes. Trying to shift the target to developers using WGN doesn't change the fact.
Also, you are linking to a post which states :"Like I said, WGN isn't exchanging keys for votes. Atleast not anymore. But the devs are exchanging keys for votes through WGN." - that is untrue. Devs are not exchanging keys for votes through WGN. And if they were then, by extension, WGN would be too.
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Regarding your plea that "promotional giveaways are appropriate and fair conduct for developers if and only if the items used in the promotional giveaway(s) are not related to the game or product they are promoting (assuming the game is still within the Greenlight system)", I'm of the opinion that this is something you just made up on the spot.
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Regarding your fourth paragraph and your claim that I have no evidence of my statement that Valve has used limited (time or quantity) giveaways to promote themselves, I did a quick search and right off the bat got this reference to Valve making Portal free for a limited time
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Now how will I know what Greenlight games really, Really, REALLY suck? It was so much easier to see "Everyone gets free keys!!!! (*)" then click no thanks.
(*) By everyone we actually only mean like 18 or 19 people we were giving keys to anyways.
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well what do you know..valve support is doing some actual shit
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Lets see if they start removing some of the games first, or if it goes no further than this post.
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Ah all those devs that abused Steam Greenlight suffering the wrath of GABEN. It would be truly a beautiful sight!
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beautiful sight? really? It's pretty shit Devs have to go through this process to get onto steam
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At the moment they are not doing anything. They just said "We don't like that".
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(...) We don't think that is healthy for the system (...)
Took them some fucking time to figure this one out after Artifex Mundi and Teyon started this. Around sixteen months, to be exact - but then again, it took them fifteen before they realised it may be a good idea to write in explicit way that Too Early Access gives no guarantee to see complete game one day and they don't give a damn about it as long they get their cut.
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I don't think this will actually change anything. All they said is it will take longer to get greenlit, not that its banned. It's still gonna be the same as it always was!
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Devs give away keys in exchange for votes in the hope that it will get them greenlit sooner. If there's a general sense that it will have the opposite effect then the practice may well become less common.
This has a positive feedback in that fewer devs giving away keys in exchange for votes reduces the perception amongst devs that they need to give away keys to everyone who votes in order to get greenlit. It's an uncomfortable situation because, in addition to everyone who voted in order to get a key, you also end up having to give keys to those who voted without needing the impetus - they were the ones the devs were counting on selling to after getting onto Steam, and leaving them out of the key giveaway would alienate them so they'd .lost out on sales either way.
In a nutshell, Valve is trying to reduce vote-selling not by taking action against it, but by trying to spread the word that it isn't necessary and actually sets you back more than it helps you.
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"We don't think that is healthy for the system "
So they didn't really mention whether they will take action against people who do this right? It was more of a statement of their opinion on it?
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Pretty much. Free copies for votes don't hurt valve's sales like cross-region trading so I would've been surprised if they actually did something.
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Apart from when Greenlight started(Made a few genuine votes then), all my votes there are for games that were bundled/promoted.
Imho they should just ditch Greenlight entirely.
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^ This.
The system is broken beyond any repair and amount of Greenlight bundles reflects it. Every Indie dev that wants their game on Steam now either promises free keys for votes or puts his game in a bundle. Just get rid of it.
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As you, indeed, today has no sense as doesn't reflect real interest in the game, but interest on the key itself (to trade, giveaway,...) or on the +1.
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Greenlight is trash anyways. There are some actually nice games I've been waiting to see greenlit but dont get the advertisement they need. No one is going to sit down and go through greenlight...hundreds of games if not thousands. Trading copies of your game for votes was the easiest way for advertisement. Giving away AAA games for advertisement was probably the cheapest and best way without giving away your game for votes (Gravi comes into mind).
And whats the point of greenlight with early access around anyways? I see plenty of games skip greenlight and get on EA. They dont have a big publisher behind them...am I missing something?
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Is this actually a Valve announcement? I can't seem to find an original source (Greenlight group, googled title), although parts of it are in the Greenlight FAQ.
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Finally.
Could they now retroactively kick Grass simulator* from Steam please?
- And any other rubbish games that they let slip through quality check
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Maybe this will finally kill that cancerous WGN group, or at least move us in the right direction
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please tell me in what way WGN was cancerous, im genuinely curious
also fyi, the group was already moved since a long time to its proper website so good luck with that
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I see you are a mod for both WGN groups.
It's more or less developers bribing their way through the Greenlight system. It just feels dirty. Not to mention they lose sales just by giving hundreds/thousands of copies of their games away, whether it's for advertising or not. A lot of the times the games are so bad that the only reason they even get through Greenlight in the first place is because they give it away. This kind of system needs to be stopped, because as stated in the article posted here, it doesn't accurately reflect customer interest, and is one the reasons we see so much garbage on Steam.
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Now obviously I cant speak in the names of the devs, however many of the games we helped distributing through the site were genuinely good (the only exceptions are maybe games like the Slaughtering Grounds, Grass Simulator but these were mostly as far as I know pretty much doing a favor for these devs and nothing more). Also trash games would get in regardless, people may feel free to vote with their wallet if they think a game is not worth buying
Also its the devs own choice if they decide to use that profit they lost to drum up interest to their groups and I would highly argue with you that most of these garbage came through such promo. In fact those most of these bad games we have seen lately came through without such , and mostly through Publishers dumping their old games on Steam and Early Acces and so on and so forth
What im trying to say is: no need to demonise one factor when there are in fact a thousand mores that are truly ruining steam
Then again this just reflects my personal opinion as an everyday gamer
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Dunno if bad taste or just trying to bullshit us....
I dont think most of the trash you helped greenlight would've gotten in without the free key they provided through your website. Some games seem interesting but you have to admit most were/are pure garbage.
That's the point of grenlight, asking people if they'd buy this game if it's getting greenlight so in a way people are suppose to vote with their wallet or at least the intention to buy the game. With free key the votes are biased and market is flooded with crappy games nobody's buying, just the "vote yes and get free copy (or not) people have these things sitting in their library. Not only that but decent games don't get greenlit because of this.
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okay then, apart games like Grass Simulator, Slaughtering Grounds, which of these games you think were as bad? Im genuinely curious because its all nice and cool to make the big talk but in itself doesnt prove your point on the slightest.
Also with this bad taste logic I could also go around and calling out people for instance "oh you like point and click games, dirty causals!" and alikes. What some people likes to play or not is none of your business, with all my due respect.
Also dont be naive, greenlight was ALWAYS a popularity contest, im not sure if any of you seriously believe that these wgn held promos would have really made any big freakin difference? or you just went with the crowd of ignorant people stating the same tired bullshit that some naysayer started to spread and everybody jumped on the angry mob train? You actually remind me those people crying about cheap indie greenlight bundles too, citing them as part of the problem, nevermind you actually had to spend money on thosel.
Wanna know whats bullshit? when people always resort to the usual "oh good games dont get greenlight because of such and such" lament. I have yet to see somebody actually prove this instead of talking shit
oh and FYI we already concluded these promotions anyway so everybody calm their tits down.
Now if you excuse me, I have better things to do than arguing about something which was never a real issue unlike how some people tried to picture it
Good day sir
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Well it seems to me you are calling people who dont agree with your group.
Did somewhere i cried about cheap indie games? Don't think i did, thess bundles actually made me find out some games i probably wouldnt've find out about, some were good, some were bad. Nothing to cry about.
I haven't kept track of all games that were greenlit trough your group, but when you send announcement and I check the games on it, many of them belong more to Kongregate than on Steam. Even on Kong I probably wouldn't play these games.
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says the guy calling others having a bad taste, double standards much? Nowhere I called out anybody for anything, so im not sure where you are getting this idea. However I will make a remark when somebody is saying nonsenses based on basically nothing
also tastes may differ
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Fuck you buddy, WGN is a awesome group, they help devs and they help us, they are made of good people. They help every dev, not just the shitty game making devs.
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What use is this when they're shutting down Greenlight anyway? After they make money off of it they finally start condemning. Silly Volvo.
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Because they like making knee-jerk reactions to things, especially post relevance.
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That's why just about every Greenlight game that has offered free keys in return for a vote has been Greenlit in no time at all. Hmmm. How does that work, Valve.
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Oh, at last, thank you volvo, maybe this madness would stop now.
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This is definitely a step in the right direction for Greenlight, but I still can't get over all of the trash that Valve allows on Steam. It's actually harder to find games worth playing these days.
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Is it just me not seeing any actual statement about what action valve is going to take in practice when dealing with those?
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not only you, this just a ... warning, not a rule or something like that
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- 101
I'd say, i do agree with Valve on this one...
Great one!
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(taken from Greenlight group)
Full text:
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