什么是Steam Direct，与Greenlight有何不同？

Steam Greenlight was a grand experiment in support for independent PC game developers: a cheap and easy way for creators to get access to the world’s biggest game distribution platform. Unfortunately, it was also a grand failure—for every successfully “greenlit” game that would go on to be a hit, like Stardew Valley or Broforce, it seemed like dozens and dozens of poorly-made and generally undesirable titles got through, many of which were incomplete or cobbled-together from pre-bought assets.

Steam Greenlight是支持独立PC游戏开发商的一项宏伟实验：创建者可以廉价，轻松地访问全球最大的游戏发行平台。 不幸的是，这也是一个巨大的失败-对于每一个成功的“绿灯”游戏，如Stardew Valley或Broforce ，都将继续受到热捧 ，似乎出现了数十个制作不佳且通常不受欢迎的游戏，其中很多这些是不完整的或已被预购资产拼凑而成的。

As a result, Valve has introduced a complete replacement for Greenlight, now dubbed “Steam Direct.” What’s changed? What hasn’t? How likely is the new system to introduce some much-needed quality control? Let’s take a look.

因此，Valve推出了完全替代Greenlight的产品，现在被称为“ Steam Direct”。 有什么变化？ 没有什么？ 新系统有多大可能引入一些急需的质量控制？ 让我们来看看。

报名费相同，但现在每场比赛 (The Submission Fee Is the Same, But Now It’s for Each Game)

Valve has added a more serious financial barrier to entry for Steam Direct. Greenlight required only a $100 donation (which went to charity, not Valve itself) in order to put a small hurdle in the way of would-be spammers and shovelware developers. The fee for Steam Direct is also $100, but instead of opening up a mostly restriction-free developer account, it will allow developers to submit only one game or app to Steam with a single unique application ID. Additional game submissions, each of which will go through the same vetting process (see below), will also be $100.

Valve为Steam Direct的进入增加了更为严重的财务障碍。 Greenlight只需要捐款100美元(用于慈善事业，而不是Valve本身)，就能为可能的垃圾邮件发送者和垃圾软件开发人员提供一个小的障碍。 Steam Direct的费用也为100美元，但是与其开设一个几乎没有限制的开发者帐户，它还允许开发人员仅使用一个唯一的应用程序ID向Steam提交一个游戏或应用程序。 其他提交的游戏，每项都将通过相同的审查程序(请参阅下文)，也将为100美元。

It’s an important distinction. While a small team toiling away on a one-game passion project won’t have any real change in their fortunes, someone simply buying a ton of pre-made Unity game assets and hoping to flip them over to for some quick cash on Steam’s platform will suddenly be looking at a serious investment. It helps that the fee (or fees) will be recoverable on projects that earn at least $1000 in game sales or micropayments, so developers who are serious and depending on game sales for livable income will have at least a chance of making that small investment back on each title.

这是一个重要的区别。 虽然一个小团队忙于一个游戏的激情项目，他们的命运不会有任何实质性的改变，但有人只是购买了大量预制的Unity游戏资产，并希望将其转移到Steam平台上以快速赚钱突然会在寻找一笔严肃的投资。 这有助于在游戏销售或小额付款中获得至少1000美元的项目中收回费用，因此，认真对待并依靠游戏销售获得可获收入的开发商，至少有机会收回这笔小笔投资在每个标题上。

Steam正在认真对待审核 (Steam Is Getting Serious About Vetting)

The community-policed aspect of Steam Greenlight meant that Valve thought a wide-open approach was best, relying on Steam users themselves to filter the gold from the dross of the massive Greenlight catalog. That proved to be easily manipulated, as unscrupulous developers would generate fake votes or make money off of the nascent Steam trading card economy. With the new Direct system, Steam’s barrier to entry is getting a little more serious.

Steam Greenlight的社区政策规定意味着Valve认为开放方法是最好的，它依靠Steam用户自己从庞大的Greenlight目录中的残渣中过滤掉黄金。 事实证明，这种做法很容易操纵，因为不道德的开发商会从新生的Steam交易卡经济中产生假票或赚钱。 借助新的Direct系统，Steam的进入壁垒变得越来越严重。

In addition to the new $100 fee for each individual game, developers will need to submit personal and/or company identification, including verifiable tax info. That probably means social security numbers for American developers and local equivalents in other countries—the same kind of thing you’d need to submit to a new employer in order to have the local tax authority verify your pay. That’s a step too far for many less committed users, and a good way of differentiating Steam Direct from more open platforms like Itch.io or the Google Play Store.

除了每个单独游戏的新$ 100费用外，开发人员还需要提交个人和/或公司标识，包括可验证的税收信息。 这可能意味着美国开发商和其他国家/地区的本地居民的社会保险号-您需要提交给新雇主的同一类内容，才能让当地税务机关核实您的工资。 对于许多不那么投入的用户而言，这是一个遥不可及的步骤，也是区分Steam Direct与更多开放平台(例如Itch.io或Google Play商店)的好方法 。

每个游戏的手动评论 (Manual Reviews for Each Game)

While Greenlight initially only allowed a select few games to enter the Play Store proper as full titles or Early Access candidates, that net was eventually spread wide open after the user voting process was given more influence. That resulted in quite a lot of, to put it delicately, crap getting onto Early Access with no obvious intention of ever being completed. According to the introductory document for Steam Direct, that’s no longer going to be the case: the cursory examination of Greenlight will be shelved for a more serious system in which each and every game that gets onto the Steam store will be manually played by a Valve employee.

虽然Greenlight最初只允许少数几款游戏以完整游戏或“抢先体验”的候选人身份进入Play商店，但在用户投票过程受到更大影响之后，该网络最终被广泛开放。 简而言之，这导致很多事情进入了抢先体验阶段，而没有明显的意图完成。 根据Steam Direct的介绍性文件，情况将不再如此：对Greenlight的粗略检查将被搁置为一个更严肃的系统，在该系统中，进入Steam商店的每个游戏都将由Valve手动玩雇员。

Low-quality shovelware developers, like the infamous Digital Homicide, should find it harder going on Steam Direct.

臭名昭著的Digital Homicide等低质量的铲土软件开发人员应该发现，使用Steam Direct更加困难。

That doesn’t mean that low-quality games won’t ever make it through the newer, tougher filter, but it should institute a bare minimum level of quality that the flood of new titles in the last few years has lacked. As noted earlier this year, the total Steam catalog grew by 40% in a single year in 2016, largely thanks to a huge volume of Greenlight titles. With Steam Direct, that volume should decrease dramatically, hopefully with a commensurate shift up in relative quality.

这并不意味着低质量的游戏就永远不会通过更新的，更严格的过滤器来做到这一点，但是它应该建立起最低水平的最低质量，这是过去几年来大量新游戏所缺乏的。 正如今年早些时候指出的那样，Steam的总目录在2016年一年内增长了40％，这在很大程度上要归功于大量的Greenlight标题。 借助Steam Direct，该体积应会急剧下降，希望相对质量会相应提高。

这对玩家意味着什么？ (What Does This Mean for Players?)

Game developers will have some serious changes coming in the way that Steam works, but unless you were heavily invested in the Greenlight voting system, players like you probably won’t see a lot of immediate changes on the Steam storefront. A smaller number of finished and Early Access games will likely be hitting the “new releases” section for at least the next few months, and we can but hope that those fewer releases will be more worthy of actual playtime. Even if they’re not, Steam’s refund policy—which wasn’t in place when Greenlight began its steady descent into a pit of shovelware—should help alleviate any teething troubles.

游戏开发人员将在Steam的工作方式上进行一些重大更改，但除非您投入大量资金在Greenlight投票系统上，否则像您这样的玩家可能不会在Steam店面看到很多即时更改。 至少在接下来的几个月中，较少数量的成品和抢先体验版游戏可能会在“新发行”部分中亮相，我们可以但希望那些更少的发行版将更有价值。 即使不是这样， Steam的退款政策(也就是Greenlight开始稳步下降到一堆铁锹中时就没有实行)应有助于减轻任何麻烦。

That being said, Greenlight was a failure because it was easy for unscrupulous developers to manipulate. Valve seems to be trying to keep that vulnerability to a minimum with Steam Direct, but we’re going to have to give it time to see if developers find cracks in the new system.

话虽如此，Greenlight还是失败了，因为不道德的开发人员很容易操纵它。 Valve似乎正在尝试使用Steam Direct将漏洞最小化，但是我们将不得不给它时间来看看开发人员是否发现新系统中的漏洞。

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun

图片来源： Rock Paper Shotgun

翻译自: https://www.howtogeek.com/311311/what-is-steam-direct-and-how-is-it-different-from-greenlight/