Hello /v/, I come to you all today with a proposal.
First of all, I'd like to let you all know that although I work with Steam's management at valve, the feature I'm describing here is currently being kept under wraps from everyone but a select few partners, and should be making it's first appearance late into next year. As such, I cannot at this time disclose any details other than what I'm outlining here.
The new feature we'll be introducing is called Steam Upfront. It is an experimental measure to decrease piracy by, and I quote, "crowdfunding pirated copies of the game". On a basic level, each game released under Upfront will have a quota that needs to be met during the pre-order period that approximately meets the publisher's expected sales for the game through it's lifetime. If this quota is met, the game will be released into our Free-to-Play collection and be available for anyone on Steam to download. You can pledge as much as you want to see the game release for free, however there will be no refunds on the pledged amounts.
I'd like to see some discussion around this matter, hence why I brought this here. Unfortunately other video game discussion fronts tend to be too loud about this kind of thing so I can't take it there, but I believe that here we'll be able to keep it relatively under wraps.
Even though you are not a valve employee, i want to share my opinion.
The business model where you pay to use a license of a software is stupid, and does not reflect the reality of how paying covers the cost of developing and publishing.
I don't care who pays for a game. I dont pay for using a game. I pay because i want a game ( or a certain type of game) to exist.
I don't think at all that it's unfair if a minority covers the cost of maintaining a game while everyone else is freeloading.
we all benefit from the existence of a good game
What i will not abide is a blind bargain. You will get no preorder money from me. but i will pay a lot if i know that a game will be good.
instead of upfront, let me pay voluntarily to bring down the minimum price for everyone else.
>>318413137
That is stupid.
>>318413991
That is a Dutch Auction and marginally less stupid.
Neat, but I'd still be banging on a sense of entitlement because my money helped unlock it for everyone. What's in it for me to help everyone else?
>>318415083
you get an(1) extra steam trading card with your game
I'd still pirate it.
I can actually see valve doing this.
>>318415083
We haven't really decided on that yet, but we're considering the current pre-order tiers becoming contribution bonuses for people who pledge more.
>>318415039
>That is a Dutch Auction
no, it's not
>>318415194
Yeah, but I never really gave a shit about the cards and I still want /me back.
>>318415514
I'd have to see it in action, I suppose.
I think of all the things valve could do, they should make Steam more modular itself. Having the steam core, and then a list of modules it can download and run.
Big Picture? When the hell am I going to use that?
Steam music? That's taking up room it doesn't need.
VR? I'm blind in one eye, that shit's probably useless to me.
There's just a lot of features that are neat, but only to the people who use it. By letting people pick the bits and pieces they want through the installer, it would reduce the system resources used, right? Would probably make it friendlier to Unix distributions, too.
I realize this thread probably is bullshit, but I just gotta voice my idea.
>>318415769
i've been on the internet for years, and never have i agreed more with a person.
>>basically improved kickstarter, but I still dont want to invest money in a game of which I dont know how it will turn out, especially these days with pre-release hype, donation tiers, and dev promising features they dont release.
>>318416925
We've been burned before, right?
>tfw no cubeworld
