So that got on Greenlight

So earlier this morning, gaming - and Steam - were rocked and in the news again when what could only be described as the most vile piece of filth in recent memory to hit gaming, got on Greenlight. I tweeted about it at: https://twitter.com/dsmart/status/595596006974169088

At this point, given all the issues with GreenLight and which Valve, as far back as 2013 admitted (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/07/23/valve-admits-to-greenlights-failings-working-on-fixes/) had problems (most of which still persist today) and which back in early 2014 were musings of its closure (http://www.gameskinny.com/c9fm6/time-to-evolve-valve-dumping-steam-greenlight), I tweeted that "It may be time for Valve to kill Greenlight".

Apparently some took issue with the fact that I was expressing something that, well most of us as devs and gamers have expressed so many times before.

The issue here is not about it being taken off-line after two hours of reporting by the Steam community. No, that's not it at all. The issue is that it got on there and was published to the community in the first place. THAT'S the issue.

And it's not the first time that something like this has happened either.

You can't go about crying over spilled milk or crying foul when the cat leaps out of the bag; but you can take a look at the big picture and say "...know what, this shit ain't working".

I love Valve and the Steam ecosystem, however, the issues with Steam has always been about one simple thing: people are broken.

Most of the forums are a lawless frontier in which the mods are completely overwhelmed or non-existent; store page "review bombing" is a thing, and then there's Greenlight. Well, go look.

All this nonsense is down to, again, one simple fact: people are broken.

Leaving the ecosystem to "gamers" for self-policing, is akin to giving the keys to the kingdom to your wicked stepmother while you're on vacation. She cannot be trusted. Period. End of story. The broomstick in her closet should have been a glaring clue.

So, with the issues in the forums, review page bombing, the on-going challenges (go ahead and Google all the stories for yourself) with the Greenlight process, and which most devs still can't even figure out how games get selected, you have a completely broken community system and which has got too big to police, and already too big to fail.

As a dev, I am torn when I consider all the positive sides to Greenlight and all the opportunities that it presents for small and aspiring game developers. But with all the complaints over the years, and then something like this happens, where does it go from here? It's not like Valve can spin it off to a third-party. And while they have customer service problems (http://www.pcgamer.com/valve-on-customer-service-support-we-have-to-do-better/) to deal with, it's not like they're going to put those resources into policing Greenlight, when those resources are better spent on paying customers who require customer service.